240 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



gives us a vast amount of information about 

 trees, while he often idealises them, and never 

 makes us feel as if we were among the trees, 

 or looking at them from a less or greater dis- 

 tance. They are painted trees, very beauti- 

 fully painted trees, in a painted world. Thus 

 Hamerton says of him that "notwithstanding 

 a profound knowledge of the natural world, 

 there was such a strong art-faculty, and such 

 a disposition to refer to preceding art that he 

 was never enslaved to nature. The mere fact 

 that, having the choice of town or country, he 

 could live in London, is in itself sufficient 

 evidence that his mind had never been over- 

 whelmed by nature to the point of sacrificing 

 its human liberty and individuality." 



We have an admirable illustration of this 

 rendering of nature in the terms of art in one 

 of Turner's best-known pictures, "Crossing the 

 Brook," in the National Gallery. Turner had 

 been down to Plymouth with Mr. Cyrus 

 Redding. They had observed a view on the 

 river Tamar similar to the one in the picture, 

 of which Turner made little more than a mental 

 note. " Meeting him in London one morning," 

 says Mr. Redding, "he told me that if I would 



