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Thb Piano. By Thomas W. Dewing. In the Freer Gallery or Art, Washington, D. C. 
Without falling into the danger of 
grouping our artists dogmatically, it 
cannot be denied that a certain quality 
of mind has been constant among many 
of our American creators. In the ex¬ 
pression of this mind one discovers a 
subjective attitude which used nature’s 
reality as a foundation for the ideal. It 
would seem that the work of such men 
as Homer Martin, Blakelock, Albert 
Ryder and George Fuller had created 
an American tradition. This tradition, 
inspired by our American life and land¬ 
scape, appears to be, relatively to this 
country, what the poetry of Hardy’s 
novels is to rural England. Extremely 
local and personal, the art seems 
paradoxically to become universal, and 
it is at this point that the master may 
be classified or definitely related to his 
time. Universality in art is achieved 
accordingly as the artist selects poetic 
symbols of wide application. Many of 
these earlier men were self-taught but, 
in spite of this handicap, their expres¬ 
sion was founded upon such science as 
they could work out for themselves. 
Dewing, as is divined in his work, must 
have concluded, early in his career, that 
form in art, the sense of proportion, is 
the basic structure, without which 
poetic feeling is rarely adequately ex¬ 
pressed. Like harmony and counter¬ 
point in music, the mastery of form 
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