Page:Masterpieces of the sea (Morris, Richards, 1912).djvu/90

WILLIAM T. RICHARDS one sky, so different from the water on another shore or under another sky. This study was an arduous one. The facts must all be stored in the memory and the effect worked out by a mental process. To do this and at the same time add to the result of an intellectual process the vigor and robustness which comes from work done directly in the presence of the thing depicted was an impossibility all at once, and the earlier attempts were marked by a thinness and smallness of style, which gave great offense to the learned art critics. But no one could deny that the facts were for the first time accurately stated, and the effect upon the other painters of the sea was immense. It worked a revelation in the minds of the younger men; and it will never again be possible to make the world accept the old-fashioned wave drawing for accurate representation."

It would hardly be possible to estimate the number of pictures produced by Mr. Richards in his long and 58