244 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



are reminded, when amongst the trees, of no 

 other painter so often, and in so many various 

 ways, as of Turner ; and his works help us 

 more than those of any other painter to see the 

 beauty and majesty of the woodland. 



On an earlier page I have grouped together 

 a number of the chief points of interest that 

 trees have for modern landscape painters. All 

 of them are illustrated over and over again in 

 Turner's works. His feeling for the vital 

 energy of the tree, the trunk and stem and 

 branches carrying a weight of leafage that 

 endangers its stability under the force of 

 gravitation and of the tempest, is constant. 

 He often makes us realise it the more by 

 carrying somewhat too slender stems high into 

 the air, and then, and then only, branching 

 them out ; so that the tree seems to be pre- 

 cariously balancing its foliage at a great height 

 from the ground. His trees are inverted 

 pyramids which only living power within them 

 could maintain. The intricacy of their branch- 

 ing, and the infinity of leaves of which their 

 heaviest looking masses are composed ; the full 

 expansion of the tree when it grows alone ; 

 the contracted or one-sided growth to which 



