Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/53

COLOR and accepted, the methods of the older masters were adhered to. So great and true a colorist as Corot, even, continued to "rub in" his shadows in the warm browns of the sixteenth century painters. Of course, this "rub in" was later painted over with the violet and pearl-gray tones of out-door nature, but the brown underlay has begun to "strike through" in many of his pictures, and it may in the end seriously impair some of them. It was not until the "luminarists" came along with their gay and militant iconoclasm that the old tradition was wholly cast aside, and the pearly stream of out-door color at last flowed pure and free and undefiled. And if it happens (as it very well may) that we shall also cast aside the luminarists' patchwork system of prismatic spots and splashes, we shall nevertheless be eternally their debtors [27]