Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/218

LANDSCAPE PAINTING the man or woman who is gifted with a sub-conscious nature of unusual power or activity; for the so-called flashes of genius represent the beautiful and perfect correlations and harmonies that can only be compassed at the source of things, and without the bungling interference of reasoning man. Instinct, intuition, and inspiration are other words which we use to describe this phenomenon, but they all mean the same thing. There is no man, probably, who has more need of the help of this faithful sub-conscious servant than the artist, for so many of the mental processes of art must be instinctive. Moreover, in the purely mechanical sense, painters, and especially landscape painters, are peculiarly dependent upon a well-trained memory. When I was a student in Paris a certain celebrated painter [168]