TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 227 



and subtle appreciation than theirs of the truth 

 and beauty of nature. Still, his landscapes are, 

 in the main, compositions; and his trees are 

 conventional in character and but little in- 

 dividualised. It does not seem as if they had 

 ever become to him much more than incidents, 

 though very picturesque ones, in the general 

 scene ; he does not turn to them, and make 

 the interpretation of their life and beauty to 

 any extent a main feature in his work. 



Thomas Gainsborough, younger than Wilson 

 by thirteen years, has achieved fame both as a 

 portrait painter and as a landscape painter, the 

 relative estimate in which his portraits and his 

 landscapes have been held varying greatly 

 from time to time. Redgrave, in A Century 

 of Painters of the English School, describes 

 Reynolds's statement that "it is difficult to 

 determine whether Gainsborough's portraits 

 were most admirable for exact truth of resem- 

 blance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like 

 representation of Nature," as ''a strange judg- 

 ment, written more with a view to a well- 

 rounded period than to any true criticism on 

 his rival's landscape art, which was anything 

 but portrait-like. It would puzzle a critic," 



