Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/110

LANDSCAPE PAINTING mass. Moreover, values are one of the few things in art that can be learned by almost any one who is gifted with ordinary eyesight; and for that particular reason they should engage the earnest attention of every serious student. One who has thoroughly mastered them has gone a long way on the road to success in painting. Of course, all that has here been said refers only to the art of the past and of the present, for it is by no means certain that the intellectual and spiritual conditions which now bind us will endure forever. When I try to draw aside the veil, and peer into the mists of the future, I seem to see another art, less material, more akin to the pure spirit of music; an art stripped of all that is gross and material; an art in which abstract beauty alone shall rule. In this new art values may very possibly be [76]