Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/220

LANDSCAPE PAINTING when I was quite a youngster that all of the really beautiful effects, the things which I particularly wished to paint, would not wait my pleasure. They were often evanescent moods that lasted but ten minutes at most,—or they were night scenes. So I began to make studies from memory—one little study every day. After five years of this training I found that I could reproduce fairly well any scene which I had been able to study for ten minutes; and now after twenty-five years of practice my memory has become automatic; so that if I fail with any of my canvases it is not because my memory fails me but because of technical difficulties or poor judgment in the selection of the motive. On several occasions I have painted effects seen from the window of a flying train. I should advise you to begin the same kind of study." [170]