Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/112

 VI

DRAWING

is the grammar of art. As grammar is the framework on which all good literature is built, so drawing is the foundation of all good painting. It is no more possible to imagine a great picture with crude and incompetent drawing than it is to think of a great sonnet whose grammar should be uncouth and halting. Like grammar, also, drawing is not a virtue to be extolled in a picture, but an essential to be demanded.

Fortunately, both grammar and drawing may be learned by any one of good average intelligence. In reference to drawing, however, this statement [78]