230 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



John Crome, the founder of the Norwich 

 School of landscape painting, and his pupils 

 James Stark and George Vincent, were much 

 influenced, as I have already mentioned, by the 

 work of such Dutch painters as Hobbema and 

 Ruysdael. Their trees are strongly reminiscent 

 of those of Hobbema ; but they are more stiff 

 in the rendering both of branch and leafage. 

 It is difficult to think of such branches as 

 waving in the wind, or of the leaves being 

 huddled by it into confused masses. And, 

 again, as with Gainsborough, we need not 

 search through their pictures for this, that and 

 the other tree that we know well in nature. It 

 must suffice if we can distinguish, say, the oak. 

 But we get pleasant renderings of the wood- 

 land, if conventional in both form and colour. 



With John Constable there comes a change. 

 His art is a distinct step in advance. It greatly 

 influenced the landscape painting of France and, 

 through France, that of other countries. There 

 is no bituminous brown in his pictures. He 

 found that England was, as Blake also saw it, 

 a ''green and pleasant land," and he painted 

 it as he saw it. *' He never thought nature too 

 greeUy' says Redgrave, "nor left the full foliage 



