All the more astonishing is the earnest certainty of touch and the robust energy which are visible in his other works. His portraits of men, especially the one of his father, that kingly old man with the long, white beard and the furrowed brow, take their place beside the best productions of English portraiture, which are chiselled, as it were, in stone. In "The Last Muster" he showed that it is possible to be simple and yet strike a profound note and even attain greatness. For there is something great in these old warriors, who at the end of their days are praying, having never troubled themselves over prayer during all their lives, who have travelled so far and staked their lives dozens of times, and are now drawing their last breath softly upon the seats of a church. Even his more recent groups--"The Assemblage of the Curators of the Charterhouse" and "The Session of the Magistrates of Landsberg"--are magnificent examples of realistic art, full of imposing strength and soundness. In the representation of these citizens the genius of the master who in his "Chelsea Pensioners" created one of the "Doelen pieces" of the nineteenth century, revealed itself afresh in all its greatness.
Beside portrait painting the painting of landscape stands now as ever in full bloom amongst the English; not that the artists of to-day are more consistently faithful to truth than their predecessors, or that they seem more modern in the study of light. In the province of landscape as in that of figure painting, far more weight is laid upon subject than on the moods of atmosphere. If one compares the modern English painters with Crome and Constable, one finds them wanting in boldness and creative force; and placed beside Monet, they seem to be diffident altogether. But a touching reverence for nature gives almost all their pictures a singularly chaste and fragrant charm.
(_By permission of Messrs. Boussod, Valadon & Co., the owners of the picture._)]