Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/84

LANDSCAPE PAINTING Whistler painted them, the refraction distributed evenly all over the canvas. Whistler, in fact, was past master of the art of refraction, its one great and supreme prophet; and it is to the consummate and most artistic use which he made of this one quality that his work owes all of that emotional, appealing, and poetic charm which is its distinguishing trait. Of course every artist of any training at the present day is more or less aware of this phenomenon, otherwise his pictures would not find acceptance at the hands of the juries, for they would be hopelessly hard and edgy and unatmospheric. No one, for instance, would to-day think of painting the spots of sky showing through the interstices of a large tree with the tint he had mixed for the sky out in the open on the other side of the picture. If he did so paint these [54]