Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/101

VALUES But within the limits of, say, the number ten and the number ninety of the scale, there exist a dozen or more keys of value, any one of which we are at liberty to select. It is equally evident that a picture painted in any one of these keys would be true to nature, if the relative values within the scale were carefully noted and adhered to. But in every case there would be one of those keys which would have suited the mood of that particular picture better than any other, and it is in the intuitive selection of just the right key that the true artist most frequently shows his power. As a rule, it may be said that the upper middle range will be found best to suit the great majority of pictures, but there are motives whose brilliancy calls out for the highest attainable key of light, and others whose brooding mystery must hide itself in the shadowy [69]