THE MIDDLE YEARS

BETWEEN the U.S. Civil War and World War I, American painting was as vigorous and diverse as at any time in its history. Such artists as Eakins-- Ryder, Inness and the young Glackens ranged across the field of art, from dreamy romanticism to meticulous realism. As Part II of its retrospective look at U.S. painting, TIME presents these four masters from the middle years of American history (see color pages). Their paintings are included in a show of American pictures from the Brooklyn Museum, on view this week at Manhattan's Knoedler Galleries.

What the four had in common was honesty and joy in life. Otherwise, they were as different as artists can be. Albert Pinkham Ryder best expressed their common joy when he remarked that "the artist needs but a roof, a crust of bread and his easel, and all the rest God gives him in abundance." Thomas Eakins expressed their straightforwardness while teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For insisting on using nude models in class, he was forced to resign. (Later, in one of his most famed paintings of a nude--overleaf--Eakins soberly included the chaperone.)

Both men, the first an uncompromising romantic and the second a thoroughgoing realist, fortunately had simple tastes to match their small incomes. Ryder used to compare himself to an inchworm revolving on the end of a twig. The fact that he was able to take his time resulted in some of the richest painting ever done. Once, after 18 years of work on a picture, he said hopefully: "I think the sky is getting interesting." Eakins made only $15,000 (the price of a single Eakins canvas today) in all his years of painting, but he did have the appreciation of a few perceptive men.

Among them was Walt Whitman, who cried over the roofs of the world that Eakins "is not a painter, he is a force."

If Eakins was a force, George Inness was just a gentle spirit. Epileptic and almost entirely self-taught, he lived in the shadow of such showy Hudson River school painters as Thomas Cole and Asher Durand. Inness preferred for subject matter the limited, charming sort of view that his studio window in Montclair, N.J. commanded. His wish, he said, was to paint not the melodramatic panoramas then in fashion, but "civilized landscape." By "civilized," some said, he meant simply "well-pruned." Still, in age, Inness began to have a little success. Today the modesty of his art seems to set off, not cloud over, its brilliance.

Like Inness, William Glackens snuggled up to nature. The only activity in a class with painting, he believed, was fishing. Glackens served an apprenticeship as an art journalist, sketching news events for the old Philadelphia Press. There he made friends with three future members of the "Ashcan School," a band of painters dedicated to mingling reporting and romance in a new. sketchy sort of realism. Glackens lent allegiance to the group, but trips to Paris awakened a far deeper loyalty to Renoir.

Eakins' realism and Ryder's romanticism owed little or nothing to European influences. Inness seemed to echo the Barbizon school, but in fact came to his quiet peeks at nature independently. With Glackens, the bonds between American and European painting were tightened once again. The world dictatorship enjoyed by Picasso & Co. was soon to turn the bonds to chains, which have only in recent years begun to fall away.

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