Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/271

THE TRUE IMPRESSIONISM the photographic lens in no way resembles the lens of the human eye. The very fact that it is a more perfect instrument is against it. It gives us scientific facts; and scientific facts are generally artistic lies. Art has nothing to do with things as they are, but only with things as they appear to be, with the visual not the actual, with impressions, not with realities. It is a scientific fact, for instance, that trees are green, and yet it is only under the rarest combination of favoring circumstances that a tree is really green to the visual sense. It is much more likely to be pearly-gray or royal-purple or rich amber or sapphire-blue, according as it happens to be seen under the pale effulgence of dawn, the shimmering blaze of noonday, the golden glow of sunset or the azure mystery of night. And it is the same with every other landscape feature under the great [211]