TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 239 



the open air, he executed thousands of sketches 

 and studies, thereby amassing a wonderful 

 knowledge of natural fact. The tree-drawing 

 of the earlier water-colourists had been very 

 conventional ; with Turner, who was a close 

 observer, and had a wonderful visual memory, 

 it became remarkable for detailed truth. 



Not that Turner bound himself to literal 

 fidelity to fact. He was first and foremost an 

 artist, and used his great knowledge of nature 

 to artistic ends ; but probably no other painter 

 has ever woven so much fact into the texture 

 of his art-work. He did not, as did Constable, 

 seek to give an illusory feeling of actuality. 

 We rarely feel when before his pictures and 

 drawings such emotion as we feel when before 

 a natural scene. He laid in his work broadly, 

 but it was not the breadth of natural effect, 

 but of artificially disposed form and colour, 

 based upon, but not closely imitated from 

 nature. Then he added the details; and in 

 the result, we have great beauty, and an 

 astonishing assemblage of facts, but a whole 

 that is distinctly artificial — using the word with 

 no depreciatory significance. So, confining 

 ourselves to our particular subject, Turner 



