574 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



The bare idea of leaving an order for a painting is conclusive evidence to 

 the artist that his customers know nothing of pictures, and he fills the order from 

 a furnisher's stand-point, not from an artist's. 



To persons who admire and intend to buy, but who do not pretend to criti- 

 cally judge oil paintings, this hint will be valuable. A view of distant, snow- 

 crowned mountains with sunset clouds behind them will never be satisfactory, 

 and the longer one owns and studies such a picture the less satisfying it will 

 become, that is, if it is prized as a mountain view. If it was bought for the 

 clouds, it may be worth the money, though that is doubtful. The sunset hues of 

 clouds and peaks in Colorado could not be outdone in vividness by any brush, it 

 is true; neither could they have even justice done them by any brush in Colorado, 

 hence they were better not attempted; but furthermore the warm colors of a sun- 

 set background bring the mountains so near that their immensity and majesty are 

 necessarily lost. No perspective cati overcome a red and yellow sky sufficiently 

 to make a white peak drawn against it seem " miles and miles away." The only 

 thing that can in a measure overcome the effect of these warm colors in a " dis- 

 tance" is the Moran haze. It would, perhaps, be more nearly correct to say the 

 Turner-esque haze, for it is well known that Thomas Moran was a close student 

 and a copyist of Turner's works, but as Moran is so well known in this country, 

 though his two large paintings in the Capitol, at Washington, as the greatest 

 artist who has ever attempted. Rocky Mountain scenery, and since his style .has 

 been clumsily aped by so many amateur landscape painters, is it not allowable to • 

 speak of the Moran haze? The writer has never seen his " Grand Canon of the 

 Yellowstone," nor the "Chasm of the Colorado," having never visited Washing- 

 ton City, — a confession which almost every American who has traveled at all 

 should blush to make, — but all who have seen even one of his smaller pictures 

 understand what is meant. 



To the unpracticed eye this haze is very beautiful, but unless it is made by 

 an artist it will soon be discovered that there is no picture behind it, that instead 

 of looking through a visible atmosphere at an outspread landscape, one is really 

 looking through a very gauzy veil hung before a hard wall. 



After having looked at a great many pictures by western artists, the conclu- 

 sion was very plain that if one wished to secure a picture of the mountains that 

 would give the best idea of distance and height, he must select a clear, cool sky. 

 If mists are attempted, let- them be earthly, not heavenly. It should not be nec- 

 essary to say that unless a purchaser knows when a picture is well drawn he runs 

 a great risk of wasting his money, but no class of persons understand better than 

 artists themselves, that thousands of pictures are bought every year in Colorado 

 by persons who really know nothing about pictures, and that thousands of paint- 

 ings are sold every year by " artists" who really know nothing of art. 



But after one has gone the round of western artists' studios, examined their 

 work, beenfpleased and disappointed by turns, with mountain, plain, glen, water- 

 fall, sky and foliage, he will ask, " Where among them all is our coming Ameri- 

 can Landseer or Rosa Bonheur ? " " Why have we not one among us who can 



