Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/249

CHARACTER up on values, refraction and other technical things which are not always remarkably interesting, but which you must have at your finger-ends before you can "let yourself go." And even when you have reached that happy stage, the necessity for hard and unremitting labor has not ceased. Sargent will tell you that he has frequently scraped out a single head twenty times. For the optimistic student who looks forward to the happy time when the necessity for hard work shall be ended there is inscribed over the portals of the palace of art this special motto: "All hope abandon ye who enter here."

A young painter once stood behind the veteran Jules Breton, while he was at work upon one of his important pictures—his favorite subject of little maids in their white communion robes. It was delightful to observe the ease [195]