226 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



limits within which the present chapter is con- 

 fined. With regret I have found it necessary 

 to restrict myself to a sketch, and that a sum- 

 mary one, of the treatment of trees in English 

 art alone. The aim of the whole book, how- 

 ever, in any part of it, is not to exhaust the 

 subject. It seeks merely to introduce it to 

 such readers as may not yet have interested 

 themselves in it. And if any reader is not 

 acquainted with the landscape art, and in 

 particular, the variously interpretative tree- 

 painting of — to name but three of the leaders 

 of one group of men — such painters as Corot, 

 Rousseau and Daubigny, I hope it may not 

 be long before he finds his way to them. 



It has been said, and not by his country- 

 men only, that modern painting begins with 

 Hogarth. His younger contemporary, Richard 

 Wilson, may be regarded as at least the im- 

 mediate forerunner of modern landscape paint- 

 ing. It has too often been assumed, on an 

 imperfect acquaintance with his works, that 

 he was little, if anything, more than an imitator 

 of the Poussins and Claude ; but there are Eng- 

 lish and Welsh landscapes by him that show, in 

 niany respects, a much more closely observant 



