242 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



''no, it cannot be". Mr. A. W. Hunt, in 

 English Art in the Public Galleries, calls 

 them fir-trees, and says "the facts of an 

 actually existing scene have been a little over- 

 much bent, like the fir-tree bough on the left, 

 to the painter's will". Apparently the trees 

 are intended to be Scots pines. But the note 

 of the Scots pine is rigidity. These trees, in 

 stem and foliage alike, are sinuously graceful. 

 Turner has tamed the wild tree to bring it into 

 harmony with the luxuriant beauty of the rest 

 of the scene. 



Ruskin has no difficulty, in Modern Painters 

 and elsewhere, in showing what a vast record 

 of fact there is in Turner's finished and un- 

 finished works. In common phrase, they are 

 a mine of information. An encyclopaedia of 

 natural appearances might be made out of 

 them. Ruskin says that his sympathy was 

 absolutely infinite, so all-embracing that he 

 knew nothing but that of Shakespeare com- 

 parable with it, and he compares Turner's 

 observation of natural fact with Bacon's work 

 in science. Redgrave — who differs widely from 

 Ruskin in his art criticism — says : " Turner's 

 water-colour paintings, indeed, epitomise the 



