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116 and the trivial. There are in the small canvas by Vegetti, ' Mother, wliy are you crying ? ' botli pathos and realism ; there is artistic completeness in that of Giani ; while those by Segantini and Morbelli stand out as distinctly original in their peculiar selection of effects and treatment of ideas. Indeed, an exhaustive analysis might be made of the work of Segantini alone, who of the two is less biassed by the methodism of French technique, less imbued by the strain of a pessimism which in Morbelli now and then trenches on morbidity. At first one is not quite certain whether to be in agreement or not with Segantini's work, for it is all rather Kzarre, though fascinating perhaps on this very account, as experiments in out-of-the-way directions are wont to be, if for no worthier reason than their divergence from the well-worn highway of self-satisfied conventionalism. But in tliis case there does seem to be a better reason, and the strangeness does not result from any ambitious soaring into historic or classic themes. On the contrary, the subjects are of the simplest, the treat- ment alone marking them out as original. Among the twenty or more of Segantini's works drawn or painted in various materials is ' A Study in Light and Shade,' merely of some sheep feeding in the penned-off shelter of a shed, through the back of which are seen a field glowing with bright sunlight, and women at agricultural toil, who spot the field at intervals with little blots of shadow. The tone is admirable, while the lean truthfulness of the old sheep, the conscientious value of each particular rail and bar to the general effect of the scheme, is akin somehow to the earnest interpretation of those of our painters who erstwhile bore the title of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. But owing perhaps to climatic or atmospheric differences, the deeply blue sky in both the ' Winter at Savogrim, Canton Grisons ' and the ' Ploughing,' painted in the same neighbourhood under an autumn sun, is peculiarly unsuggestive in every particular of that lucid depth and aerial significance, which we in our misty home have learned to look for as an essential in a pictm-ed sky. For it is here, as Mr. Ruskin has somewhere said, in comparing the skies of Turner with those of the men who came before him — even the classic Claude did not escape — that sooner or later in their work a point is reached in which we touch upon solid paint and canvas, whereas he, our Turner, for the first time gave adequate expression to the mystery of light and distance, so that in regarding his skies it seems possible to pass on and on through luminous infinitude of space and cloud, still feeling that an infinitude lies beyond. But in Signor Segantini's case it is not so much canvas that we come upon as a wall of solid paint, upon whose deep colour the snowy undulations with the figures ' tobogganing ' smite the sky in a way wellnigh destructive of any retention of perspective. The little houses, too, half hid by the rounding curve of the hill, look like toy blocks, perfectly distinct, and not like large objects rendered small by reason of their greater distance ; the dog also, keeping pace with his mistress and in the shadow of her descending sledge, looks curiously unreal and uncomfortably large. In the other picture, again, the phalanx of distant movmtains rises into the air with a piercing sharpness of outline which serves to accentuate still further the hard flatness of the air- less space ; and although the sun is shining some- where and its brightness plays upon the peaks and ridges of these icy caps ; although it spreads in autumnal warmth over the dark ground, over the horses and peasants at the plough, there prevails a sense of loneliness — perhaps due to those quiet far- away mountains — as of some place stranded and left for ever out of reach of the sweeping tide of human life. And yet does it lie altogether in the subject .'' Not necessarily, one would think, for there in another room is a painting of ' Alpine Scenery ' by Dall Orta, in which the descending glaciers, the tilted strata, and rugged blocks and crags, the verdurous slopes and cattle at the margin of the mountain lake, tell quite another tale — of solitude may be — yet rather of the quietness of a summer's day, where- in the whirr of insects and bird-notes chime with faintly rhythmic pulse to the far-off throb of human thought. Although this deficiency of aerial value is hardly compensated by other things, Segantini's versatility comes out in his other themes. There is one, for instance, a study, delightful for its unity, called ' My Models.' It is of two children, a boy and girl, in an artist's studio, earnestly studying a half-com- pleted picture by the light of a lantern. The effect here is broader and simpler, and the colour is sweeter than in the others ; unless we except as being also delicate in harmony the two out-of-door subjects called ' Shearing ' and the ' Autunm Sun,' which are even more interesting as tentative essays. For the rest, Segantini's smaller sketches give proof of a singular degree of poetic feeling and refinement not too commonly associated with the clever, and in many instances merely facile technique of the major part of the work here seen of the Italian painters. But in this same school (the Milanese) are two or three remarkable pictures, as well as several clever ones, and many which are bad. Of the first kind, ' The Work of the Day ended,' by Giovanni Giani, is remarkable as an experiment in low tone, and the