Studying: Various pictures of recent years – also the winter and spring folios of 1920. Got out the notes on Winter Dawn, 1920, and the 1920 water-color – made a drawing for mood of this subject –
What would I not give to be out in the woods on days like this! The roaring of the wind thru 38. some dense copse would be the most enjoyable thing imaginable. Will I never be able to study nature as I would, until, by a partial isolation or complete isolation from her, the keenness of my interest will have been dulled? I hope not, and I think not. I have just finished Burrough’s “Locust’s and Wild Honey.” Evidently he had most of his time to give over to his study. I envy him. Writing as he did, fifty years ago, he has a nature which is wilder than ours of to-day, perhaps more lovable, but broader. I find that so many of his impressions coincide with my own.
Brilliant sunlight—a stiff S.W. cold (+6˚): a combination that seems only to belong to late February—the sound of a February wind; as in the [Till] Eulenspiegel legend of Winter & Lucifer, the nearer it gets to Spring, the more Winter blows at the heart of the earth to freeze it—
The sky is streaked vague blue and white; sunlight dim; the streets are dusty; the air is warm; almost motionless, yet there is a subtle coolness which is pleasant.
Evening—B & I to chamber music concert at the Gallery. A fine program beautifully played—a trio of Mozart, Sonata (piano and violin) of Beethoven and a Trio (Opus 101) of Brahms.
What a difference snow makes in a landscape. Our snow-less winter was monotonous, and without any seasonal character. Now, with the recent snowstorm everything is changed...
Loose clouds dawn, which soon evaporated beginning first on the northern horizon, where a broad band of clear cerulean appeared – soon the whole sky was clear, and the sun blazed forth full and strong –
Actually, how fortunate I am that at 68, I am still able to do many things, have a voracious appetite which has to be curbed and not forced; eating is a mundane thing but a good appetite is a joy.
Another fine bit of news is that the book that he and Lloyd [Goodrich], [James Thrall] Soby and two others are doing on 50 American painters, is now being showed by a publisher who will furnish 50 reproductions in full color (mine being “The Song of the Telegraph”)
I think I see nature with a more complicated eye than earlier. Where once a fleet of clouds blown by a wind across the ragged sky was enough for me, and now I look at it, troubled how best to put it down "on canvas."