Children on a Fence

~Not all of the figure painters drawn to the water-color exhibition around 1874 were equally involved in illustration, or equally committed to the narrative-based, English tradition seen in the work of Edwin Austin Abbey and John La Farge, introduced in the previous chapter. Winslow Homer, raised as an illustrator, would quit the business in 1874; Thomas Eakins, an...

In his 1874 treatise on watercolor technique, Aaron Penley insisted, “As no one can write a language correctly before he has learnt to spell and is acquainted with grammar, so can no person be able to portray correctly or readily effects in Nature, unless he has been previously taught to draw.” …