Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/43

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA steamers furnish a six-day ferry across the sea. It was a serious undertaking, especially if funds were limited, as was the lot of young Richards.

But, with a stout heart and confidence in his own talent, he sailed away from home, and visited Paris, Florence and Rome, where he spent a good deal of time with no express effect upon his painting; though contact with the work of the contemporary French and Italian schools was a vastly excellent discipline for a youth who had hitherto been influenced only by the lesser followers of those great men. He never spoke of receiving any ideas from such masters, but it was his aim to see at first hand what they were producing; and to an imaginative lad with ambition to succeed in painting, their methods and designs must have been deeply stimulating. Nor did his art show any effect from a closer knowledge of the great works of the Renaissance and antiquity. Yet the mental discipline must have been quietly powerful and as his drawing grew in precision 25