At all events,
Beard's animals are so endowed with individual characteristics, that we
make of them personal friends, who can never die so long as our memories
endure. The herbage in the foreground is tenderly wrought, and the whole
picture preaches an impressive sermon.
No. 151. 'An Autumn Evening'--Regis Gignoux, N. A. This picture does not
satisfy us nearly so fully as others we have seen by the same artist.
The general effect strikes us as somewhat artificial, the light does not
seem to fall clearly from the sky, but as if through prisms or tinted
glass. We have seen the inside of a shell, or the edge of a white cloud
turned toward the sun, glittering with similar hues, very beautiful for
a small object, but wanting in dignity and repose for an entire
landscape. We remember with great pleasure Gignoux's 'Autumn in
Virginia,' and his painting of 'Niagara by Moonlight' gave us a far more
majestic impression of the great cataract than the famous day
representation by Church. As we gazed, we called to mind a certain night
when the moon stood full in the heavens, vivid lunar bows played about
our feet, and, mounting the tower, we looked down into the apparently
bottomless abyss, dark with clouds of mist, seething, foaming, and
thundering. We shuddered, and hastened down the narrow stairway, feeling
as if all nature must speedily be drawn into the terrible vortex, and we
become a mere atom amid chaos. The picture caused us a shivering thrill,
and we acknowledged the power of the artist.
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