Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/115

DRAWING ; and this kind of stroke can only be secured when it is backed by a sure knowledge of the underlying form. The poor and uncertain draughtsman fumbling for form loses all "quality." Turn the pages of any exhibition catalogue, and you will find it difficult to place your finger on the name of a really fine landscape painter who is not also a fine draughtsman. And I think that inquiry will disclose the fact that the best of them have devoted at least four or five years pretty exclusively to the study of drawing. This is none too much. But the best place to acquire this knowledge, even for a landscape painter, is not out of doors before nature; because it is so much easier to study drawing in-doors from the nude. In art, as in the other affairs of life, those go fastest and furthest who follow the line of least resistance. In the open, [81]