Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/192

LANDSCAPE PAINTING the attention of the gaze which has at first been occupied with the proportions of the apartment, the hall, or the church which it helps to beautify. It is, in fact, applied art in the highest sense of the term. As a mural painting must always remain in its original position, it is peculiarly dependent upon its surroundings, and the mural painter has not only to consider the form and position of the space which the picture is to fill, but the color of the surrounding walls and the quantity and quality and direction of the light which it will receive. In its most important aspect, therefore, it is the exact opposite of the easel picture; for while the easel picture must, first of all, be true to nature and express nature's mood, the mural decoration must, first of all, be true to the architecture and express its mood. It must, in other words, pick up the scheme [148]