Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/76

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS III.

What was there in the sea pictures of Mr. Richards that picked them out from all others for remembrance; that made it easy for the most critical layman to say with conviction: "That's a Richards"?

In the first place they were frankly true. He painted what he saw. He made no effort to put into the picture what was not in nature.

No sensational composition; no strained effects of light and shade; no affected accent of any sort were in his mind. He wanted the observer to see what he had seen and he set it down with the sense of proportion and the eye to justness which were his central traits of character.

Perhaps it was this recognition of simplicity as the touchstone of the artist that gave Mr. Richards his bias for Wordsworth. Those who know Wordsworth's epochal preface to the "Lyrical Ballads" will 48