In “Mrs. Morgan’s Place,” Reveau Bassett reveals his gift for capturing a landscape’s harmony. Notice how there is a subtle, sympathetic lean to everything: the fence posts, the roof slats, the tree limbs, the grass. Manmade and natural objects all list gently to the right, testaments to the invisible but indomitable Texas wind. Even the fluffy clouds, which Bassett has built up quite literally with thick swoops of white, look on the verge of wafting away.

Reveau Bassett, with his quick, sure strokes and uncanny ability to capture mercurial skies, was a master of plain-air painting. By the time “Hill Country Landscape” was painted, Bassett had traversed the Southwest time and again, balancing his easel before a smorgasbord of landforms. But - as this painting attests - the subtle undulations of Texas’s Hill Country held no less charm for Bassett than the grandiosity of Tule Canyon or Big Bend.