Yet the individuality of the
artist is impressed upon every canvas. The changes to which we refer are
these,--foregrounds suggested by or painted from living forms. In one
view of Nemi we saw a superb black, gold, and crimson butterfly resting
on a flower. Yet these foregrounds require more strength, more "body,"
more of that which artists achieve who achieve nothing else. We notice
far more individualism in tree forms. The ideal tree, that is, the tree
as it should be, and the conventional one coming against the sky on one
side of the composition, the one bequeathed by Claude, have given place
to Nature's homelier types. The question as to the meaning of passages
no longer arises. The lines are drawn with a decision, with a sense of
certainty, raising them above all doubt. In the rendering of distant
mountains, Mr. Dillon evinces new knowledge of what such forms
necessarily imply,--their tendency to monotone and to flatness, yet
preserving all their essential surface markings, and their inevitable
cutting outline against the sky,--which sharpness Mr. Tilton as yet has
only hinted at, not represented. Positive edges are the true.--But we
have no further space to devote to these particulars of landscape form.
In these Mr. Tilton has many rivals and not a few superiors.
There is left us the pleasant privilege of alluding to an ability which
we believe he shares with none, and which enables him to give his
present pictures their great value.
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