Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/303

THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART of the race to which he belongs. That he does this is amply proved by the fact that any reasonably expert judge will tell you whether a picture belongs to the French or the Dutch or the Scandinavian school, without knowing the name of the painter, or anything more of the picture than the canvas itself discloses. It is impossible, therefore, to avoid the conclusion that racial individuality in art is fact—and a very real and solid fact at that. In some of our modern schools of painting, this racial character is so strong as quite to dominate and submerge the individual note, so that it is often difficult to distinguish the work of one well-known painter from that of some equally celebrated fellow-artist. This is particularly true of the Dutch school, for instance. In fact, the whole art of the Netherlands [239]