Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/199

MURAL PAINTING beautiful art of the ancients have entered a blind alley which ends against a blank wall. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but in art it leads only to a fall. Until very recent years, almost all important mural decorations were figure compositions in which landscape played only a minor part; but the trend of modern life points clearly to a time—a time in the very near future, I believe—when pure landscape will be largely used in mural work. We can already point to several important and eminently successful attempts of this kind in the city of New York, and there is little reason to doubt that this number will be added to rapidly as the fitness of the material for the purpose is recognized and the beauty and decorative quality of the result is seen and appreciated. [153]