But in this disregard of convention there is a kind of summing up of his beliefs as an artist. Though he had changed the outward aspect of his art he was still in spirit a Pre-Raphaelite, and a Pre-Raphaelite he remained to the end of his days. He depended more upon the keenness of vision natural to him, and assiduously cultivated by years of close observation, than upon what powers he may have had of abstract imagining; and he sought to only a limited extent to set down upon his canvas those mental images which satisfy men who look upon nature chiefly as a basis for decorative designs. The mental image with him was a direct reflection of fact, not an adaptation modified and formalised in accordance with recognised rules, not a fancy more or less remotely referable to reality; but he had certainly an ample equipment of that taste which enables the painter to discriminate between the realities which are too crude and obvious to be worth recording, and those which by their inherent beauty claim a permanent place in an artist's memory. He had, too, the judgment to see that the nude, treated as it would have to be to satisfy his æsthetic conscience, would be too plainly stated to be entirely acceptable.
He found a much more appropriate field for the exercise of his particular capacities by turning to landscape painting. Many of his earlier figure compositions had been given backgrounds which showed how well he could manage the complex details of masses of tangled vegetation, or the broad and simple lines of a piece of rural scenery; but in 1871 he attempted for the first time a landscape which was complete in itself and not merely incidental in a picture mainly concerned with human interest. This landscape, "Chill October," was at the Academy with his "Yes or No?" "Victory, O Lord," "A Somnambulist," and the "Portrait of George Grote," and it was welcomed by a host of admirers as a new revelation of his versatility. It has certainly qualities which justify the estimation in which it was and is still held; and though it lacks that imaginative insight into poetic subtleties which accounts for so much in the work of a master like Turner, it must always claim the respect of art lovers as a large, dignified, and sincere study of nature in one of her sadder moods. It is the reserve of the picture, its reticent realism, that chiefly makes it memorable, for it is neither imposing in subject nor striking in effect; but in its broad simplicity there is something rarely fascinating.