Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/250

LANDSCAPE PAINTING and dexterity of his every stroke. The youth spoke enviously of the joy it must be to have attained to his perfect facility of technic and to know every time a picture was begun that it could be carried through easily to a successful end.

"My dear boy," was the reply, "you will never reach that happy land here below. I sweat blood over every one of my pictures, and there is never a one that is not at some time a failure. Every new picture brings a new problem, and who knows if we may be able to solve it. But if there were no new problems we should all cease painting; for there would be no more art."

The true artist, after all, is greedy for work. He needs no spur to goad him to his best endeavor. The danger lies upon the other side. Cazin used to say, "An artist has no time to care for [196]