Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/100

LANDSCAPE PAINTING work which we are proposing to execute. In this matter the golden rule is reserve. We lose rather than gain in power by forcing the note, and a picture in which the whole scale from black to white should be employed would be absolutely without atmosphere, and without charm. It would indeed be a crudity and a horror, from which we would flee with hands on high. The whole beauty of a canvas depends often on the wisdom with which we make this choice of key—whether our picture is pitched in the upper, the middle, or the lower register, and whether we use a limited or an extended scale. It is evident, of course, that we could attentuate our scale to the vanishing point, so that a breath would almost blow the picture from the canvas; just as by going to the other extreme we should fatally brutalize the work. [68]