Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/120

LANDSCAPE PAINTING sunlit landscape. Of course, if this kind of study were regarded as merely a form of dissipation, a little spree as it were, to vary the dull monotony of landscape routine, it might have its good points. Change is a great tonic; and it does no harm occasionally to shoot arrows at the stars even if you know that they will not carry. But for students seriously to shoulder all these problems at once, shows both courage and naïveté, but little discretion. Did they know that Sorolla himself worked for twenty-five years at the problem before he painted his first successful out-door canvas, they would perhaps attack it with less enthusiasm. But courage is an admirable thing, and it seems a shame to put obstacles in its path. I have said that Holbein and Leonardo da Vinci were probably two of the [86]