Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/280

LANDSCAPE PAINTING requires many a long and weary year to learn to see.

And to think that but for those stored-up facts it would all have been so easy. If painters, gazing upon nature, could only look forth with the simplicity of a new-born child, which opens its eyes for the first time on a fresh and virgin world, the principal problem of art would be solved in an instant. Give us, Oh, Lord! to see! and we will find the means of expression. It is a simple platitude to say that an artist can always paint as much as he sees. All of the fumbling, and struggle, and hard work connected with a picture comes of the effort to see just a little more, just a little better. Technique truly is mere child's play. It is a question, moreover, if too much technique is not a serious handicap to any artist—if indeed it does not tend to [218]