Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/113

DRAWING only to that kind of good, sound, commonplace drawing which serves to uphold a picture in which color and sentiment are the main things; but not, of course, to the truly great drawing which is beautiful in and by itself, and which is one of the rarest qualities in all art—so rare indeed that the great draughtsmen of the world can be counted upon the fingers of one hand. Of these probably Holbein and Leonardo were the most eminent examples. In the work of these two men the sense of refined and tender line was so exquisite that we should almost prefer to have it without color; and indeed when color was used to secure the added beauty of modelling, as in the "Mona Lisa," it was always flat and conventional. It would be impossible, for instance, to imagine a Holbein painted in the impressionist manner of the [79]