ABSTRACT
Styles that cast a glance backward in time, drawing their inspiration from settled modes of perception as much as from immediate experience, pose awkward problems for criticism. Mr. Fairfield Porter is an artist unembarrassed by good painterly manners; yet he is very far from being merely genteel. The visual world one encounters in his work—those commodious interiors in which lovely young girls sit comfortably reading, the landscapes of Maine and Long Island, the affectionate portraits of family and friends, the flower paintings in which each stroke is set down with unabashed delight—all seems at first glance so familiar, so given, so easy. For underlying the correctness of Mr. Porter's style, with its well-bred synthesis of French elegance and American dryness, one discerns a pictorial mind of unusual intelligence. This quality of intelligence is abetted by a fine sensitivity to the nuances of direct observation, and both the intelligence and the sensitivity act as a brake against the painter's.
