. Trees in nature, myth and art; . nce at such a tangle in nature. So with the willow-trees in Holman HuntsThe Hireling Shepherd and Millais Ophe-lia ; so, also, with the Lombardy poplars inMillais Autumn Leaves and The Valeof Rest, and with the bole of the ancientoak in his The Proscribed Royalist—to takeonly a few examples. If we had never lookedclosely at the beautiful texture, colour and formof common vegetation, we could hardly fail todo so ever after, if once we had carefully lookedat the marvellous painting of detail in suchpictures as these. No previous painters haddone such work as th
. Trees in nature, myth and art; . nce at such a tangle in nature. So with the willow-trees in Holman HuntsThe Hireling Shepherd and Millais Ophe-lia ; so, also, with the Lombardy poplars inMillais Autumn Leaves and The Valeof Rest, and with the bole of the ancientoak in his The Proscribed Royalist—to takeonly a few examples. If we had never lookedclosely at the beautiful texture, colour and formof common vegetation, we could hardly fail todo so ever after, if once we had carefully lookedat the marvellous painting of detail in suchpictures as these. No previous painters haddone such work as this. With regard to manyof them the doubt would be, as we have alreadyseen, whether we could identify, as beingmeant for any particular kinds of trees, thosethat appeared in their pictures. Holman Huntand Millais, and the imitators of their closelyrealistic painting, have not only representedtrees so that they are at once recognisable bythose who are familiar with their general appear-ance, they have quickened our observation and. THE PROSCRIBED ROYALISTBy Sir J. E. Miliars, TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 273 taught us to see in the infinitely intricate detailof nature, beauty that otherwise we might havepassed by unnoticed. Such pictures as Holman Hunts TheHireling Shepherd and Strayed Sheep are in art what the descriptions of RichardJefferies are in literature. It is not the broadeffect of the landscape that has been portrayed,but the detail of plant, tree, insect, bird andanimal life, in all its variety of form andcolour. In the immediate foreground of theformer picture we can almost count the bladesof grass. The mallow, the marigold, thepoppy, the convolvulus are painted with closeliteralness. The nearest willow is a botanicalstudy ; those farther away hardly less peep through the trees, beyond the corn-field, into another field, is delightful ; eventhough, as many a critic would say, it is whatno one would ever see who was occupied withthe main subject of the pict
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