Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/89

MASTERPIECES OF THE SEA beautiful only when it was true, and he resolved, with the spirit of his age upon him, to give up visions and seek the miraculous facts.

It is to illustrate this characteristic that I am going to quote a passage from one of the soundest critics of art we have had in this country, Dr. Alfred C. Lambdin, an old friend of Mr. Richards', whose deeply-based views never faltered in dealing with the artist's gifts.

"With that power of analysis which always distinguishes him he strove to ascertain the laws which govern the wave forms, and from that time for several years he devoted all his intelligence to the study of the sea. To him was given in reward that rare opportunity which comes to so few men, to do a new thing. No artist had ever before studied the wave motions in an exact and scientific manner, so as to understand the relations of one wave to another and of all to the undercurrents and the wind and the tide, and all those varied forces which make the water on one shore, or under 57