Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/82

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS and floating depth to a sky full of clouds, or the silvery gray of a long vista of New Jersey beach. He knew nature so well, was so much in her secrets, that he was alive to all her myriad beauties of tint and changing hue; but his paint did not always take on the magic of his model, tho' in pictures like that memorable one of the bare tracery of the trees against a winter's sunset his brush was dipped into tones that were not far from nature's own.

It was, indeed, characteristic that Mr. Richards should restrain himself in the use of color. His whole life was one of salutary restraint. He was half-Quaker in his treatment of the alternatives which life presented to him. He liked simple clothes, and plain surroundings; why should he not see nature in her simpler colors; or, when confronted with a choice, cleave to the subdued and quiet and unsensational? He had his own wise ways and he followed them whether they led from convention or not. He would no doubt have admired 52