CHARACTER IN TREES

[Among the loose sheets in the Pierpont Morgan MSS. (see above, p. lxiii.) there is a fragment headed “Vegetation,” which deals, in a very suggestive way, with an aspect of the matter not touched upon in the text—namely, the character which may be given by an inventive painter to his trees, so as to enhance the harmony of a composition:—]

“This is not so with all the other accessaries of a picture even by the greatest masters; very often a piece of architecture, or furniture, or drapery is introduced merely for the sake of its lines (the impannata and the sediola are of no dramatic value whatever to the two madonnas to which they give names), but a good painter never introduces a passionless tree.

“Look back to Plate 11 (vol. iii.). The foliage there is in entire sympathy with the quiet ecclesiastical landscape—everything walled, spired, peaceful, and precise, but full of light. The trees grow in untroubled straightness as they need no strength of bough, the madonna's presence rendering storms impossible; with lisping leaves they express their timid reverence for her; sweet original trees, their leaves not yet expanded, nay, they will never expand them, lest they should cast anything like shadow on the sunny fields.

“Take up and compare directly with this Plate Turner's ‘Hedging and Ditching’ of the Liber Studiorum—the expression of steady commonplace-character in a bitter world.