Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/289

THE TRUE IMPRESSIONISM not only of the individual artist, but of the race to which he belongs, and the epoch in which he lives. It will not do for Americans to make Oriental rugs or Japanese color-prints; and we have all seen and deplored the Japanese attempt to assimilate and reproduce our own occidental art—have shuddered indeed at the brilliant and hollow shell without a soul. Is it not enough for us to admire without attempting to imitate, to surround ourselves with the beauty of all ages and all peoples while calmly pursuing the type of beauty which it is given to us to see as none others have been able to see it? Now, if I am not much mistaken, the form of beauty which appeals to us as it has appealed to no other race in any other epoch of the world's history is the poetry of out-of-door nature, her mystery, and her ever-varying and shifting [227]