. Trees in nature, myth and art; . not feelfar from nature, as we not unseldom do inTurners work. In Cotmans later work he soforced the contrast of warm and cool colour,purple and blue in one part of the picture, andglowing yellows in the other part, that wequite lose touch with nature ; but this was notso with his earlier work. We are concerned here with what he hasto tell us about the trees; or, rather, what hehas to show us of them, and the showing—even in his black-and-white drawings—is mostinstructively delightful. We see trees in greatshady masses, with stem and branches show-ing here an
. Trees in nature, myth and art; . not feelfar from nature, as we not unseldom do inTurners work. In Cotmans later work he soforced the contrast of warm and cool colour,purple and blue in one part of the picture, andglowing yellows in the other part, that wequite lose touch with nature ; but this was notso with his earlier work. We are concerned here with what he hasto tell us about the trees; or, rather, what hehas to show us of them, and the showing—even in his black-and-white drawings—is mostinstructively delightful. We see trees in greatshady masses, with stem and branches show-ing here and there to tell us how the massesare borne in the air ; and through openingsbetween them, a distant river-valley with thestream and a glimpse of bright sky emphasis-ing the shadiness of the trees. Shadow, shade,and glittering or gleaming light alternate amidfoliage that never fails to suggest that thedensest masses of it are made up of an as-semblage of small individuals, moving in groupsonly, and each member of a group with a. BREAKING THE CLODBy J. S. Cotman. From a drawing in the British Museum TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 261 capricious waywardness of its own; and yetthat even the waywardness is under and branches that gleam in the sunlightare opposed to masses of shade behind themin a way that brings out their structure withstartling vividness. At other times we havesimply masses of foliage, too dense for stemand branch to be seen, yet we feel that wecould push our way through them. The senseof design does not reduce wild nature to bond-age, and the various kinds of trees retain theirindividuality and habits of growth. Cotman had a truer feeling than Turner forthe character of the Scots pine, and contraststhe towering self-reliant look of it with thegracefulness of the silver birch, which, how-ever, as we have seen, possesses an endurancethat its appearance does not suggest. Hisoak-trees have enormous strength of bole, andsturdiness of tortuous bough ; and th
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