Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/181

ON SCHOOLS I confess that I was somewhat surprised when, at the end of a year's work, I had not a single satisfactory canvas to show. At the end of eighteen months I began to suspect that something was radically wrong, and when, at the end of two years, I was still without a picture worthy of the name, I became genuinely discouraged. About this time I was at work on another huge "Salon," a canvas some twelve by eight feet in dimension, if I remember rightly, which depicted the interior of a birchwood in autumn, with a single figure of a peasant girl raking up the dead leaves. The work was well toward completion. It was, I knew, well drawn, sound in values, and at least as true and delicate in color as the average picture. It was an honest endeavor, at any rate, and my very best; yet down deep in my heart I felt that it [137]