little, although he painted much, inexorably blotting out, no matter
after what expenditure of labor, the work that failed to respond to his
idea, and striving constantly to be simple, straightforward, and
impressive, without being vapid, arrogant, or dogmatic. He possessed in
large measure that rarest of gifts to genius--modesty--and approached
the secrets of nature and life more tremblingly as he passed from their
outer to their inner circles. It was a necessity of his peculiar feeling
and manner of study that he should develop a lingering, hesitating,
half-uncertain style of painting, which, however variously it may be
viewed by different minds, is undoubtedly of the utmost effectiveness in
describing the principles, rather than the facts, of nature and life.
This way of presenting his idea, which some call a "mannerism,"--a term
that has wrongly come to have a suggestion of contempt attached to
it,--was with him a principle, and employed by him as the one in which
he could best express truth. Art may justly claim great latitude in this
endeavor, and schools and systems arrogate too much when they seek to
define its limitations. Absolute truth to nature is impossible in art,
which is constrained to lie to the eye in order to satisfy the mind, and
continually transposes the harmonies of earth and sky into the minor
key. Fuller offended the senses often, but he touched that nerve-centre
in the heart, without which impressions are not truly recognized. He won
liking, rather than startled men into it, and his art, instead of
approaching, retired and beckoned. His figures never "came out of the
frame at you," as is the common expression of admiration nowadays. He
put everything at a distance, made it reposeful, and drew about figure
and landscape an atmosphere which not only made them beautiful, but
established a strange and reciprocal mood of sentiment between them. He
alone of all American painters filled the whole of his canvas with air;
others place a barrier to atmosphere in their middle distance, and it
comes no farther, but he brought it over to the nearest inch of