Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/93

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA busy career. From the eighteen-fifties to nineteen hundred and five is a wide stretch—fifty-five years of ceaseless sowing makes a great harvest. But nobody could now trace all the work he did. We realize its extent by the examples known to each of us, prized dearly by their owners and held in many American cities publicly and privately.

If the many who own "A Richards" could be led to tell us of it, the record would roll up a great tribute to the genius and industry of one independent American man of thought and action in a day of apathy; and it would prove, some time, of value for the annals of a period in American art, rich in its formative influences toward a distinctive national school.

Of this movement, William T. Richards was a beginner and a leader. If we stand now for anything in art it is for the straightforward conveyance of facts. This is not the utmost limit of any art. There are ideals beyond facts and imaginative truths beyond ideals. 59