TREES IN PAINTING 223 



French landscape art ; and, in the constant 

 action and re-action of art and nature, when 

 nature threatens to take too much of the field to 

 itself, a return to Claude will always be good as a 

 means of restoring a more equitable distribution, 

 Claude's influence is to be seen in our own 

 country in the work of Richard Wilson, 

 Turner and others. Another influence is to 

 be seen in the work of the Norwich School, 

 that of the Dutch landscape painters. Here 

 again a Ruskin can detect many lapses from 

 truth. But the Dutch painters, with all their 

 mannerism and mechanical touch, did, none the 

 less, take a kindly interest in such landscape 

 as was accessible to them. It is not merely an 

 affectation that leads to such high prices being 

 given now for Hobbema's works. His pictures 

 do interpret, with much sympathy and insight, 

 the quiet charm of a flat and often well-wooded 

 country ; and they have qualities of tone and 

 colour, and a pleasantness of composition, both 

 in mass and light, that quite ingratiates them 

 to our feeling. Who that has seen the picture 

 has not a strong affection for the somewhat 

 unkindly treated trees in his *'The Avenue, 

 Middelharnis," in our National Gallery? 



