Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/140

LANDSCAPE PAINTING Of the works of Monticelli, Watteau, Gaston La Touche, and their fellows, we therefore ask no more than they have given us. We are content to saturate our souls in their sensuous loveliness; to take deep draughts of this intoxicating wine of beauty and to dream the day away. We do not say that their work is greater or less great than that of Millet or Winslow Homer or the other master painters of humanity. We only say that it is different, and we are glad that it is as it is and not otherwise. In the garden of art there are many mansions. We love to wander from one to another under the wide and bosky shade, and are happy that we must not dwell always in the same palace—be it ever so beautiful.

Now there is no question but that this elusive and exquisite surface beauty this so-called "quality" is peculiarly [104]