Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/234

LANDSCAPE PAINTING across the hills or bouts on the golf-links—the eye always open and the mind passively but delightfully receptive. One of our very greatest painters, who is now gone, never learned this important lesson. When the flame burned low, and work lagged, he drank coffee to stimulate his tired nerves. When even this failed to rouse the exhausted energies he had recourse to alcohol, and when finally the great work was completed the painter was often launched upon a spree of a fortnight's duration. It thus happens that a man who temperamentally disliked alcohol, who was normally one of the gentlest and soberest of men, has gone down in history as a roysterer and a dipsomaniac. He burned himself out before his time; but in thus recklessly using up his vital energies, he produced a series of wonderful pictures that will remain for all time one of the [182]