Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/237

TEMPERAMENT and keyed to pitch, while we husky chaps have to flog ours up to the point. We must dig painfully through the outer layers of flesh and muscle before we can get at the spirit, while the invalids are all spirit. Personally, I know that my best work is always done the morning after a spree, when I come to the studio a bit shaky and with the nerves all on edge." Although this highly immoral statement was evidently made largely with a view to picturesque effect, it did, nevertheless, enunciate a truth that has generally escaped attention; for it is quite true that (given sufficient strength to drag the body about) physical weakness is not an insuperable bar to success in art. Very frail men and very frail women have achieved distinction in various artistic callings. This, however, applies more particularly to the [185]