Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/313

THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN ART for art in the United States, and we are certainly justified in assuming that native artists of the first rank will arise to meet the demand. Conceding this much, it will be interesting, and also I think quite possible, to forecast the general trend of the movement and the general character of the new art—for new it is bound to be.

If the American painters of thirty years ago had been separated into two groups, the figure-painters on one side and the landscape men on the other, the balance would have been found to be fairly even. If the same thing were repeated to-day, fully two-thirds of our ablest painters would be found in the camp of the landscapists. This shifting of the balance is most significant, for it shows a new drift, a tendency on the part of our artists to carry their easels out into the open; to paint, or to try to [247]