TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 245 



it has to submit when in company with other 

 trees — all these and other general facts of tree- 

 life are recorded time after time. 



The pathos of the old age of trees was 

 evidently deeply felt by Turner. Of one in- 

 stance of this, an aged willow in the Liber 

 Studiorum ^\dXe, ''Hedging and Ditching," the 

 Rev. Stopford Brooke says: "The long past 

 of the willow in which it patiently grew into 

 power, the lifeless ruin it has become, are both 

 recorded in the drawing. The bark has been 

 stripped away, so that we can follow all along 

 the trunk the sinewy strength of its interwoven 

 fibres, the upgrowth of its knotted branches, 

 and the hollowing of their decay. There is 

 not a truer and mightier piece of etching in the 

 whole of this book." 



Another Liber plate, ''Crowhurst, Sussex," 

 may be mentioned for the great variety of its 

 interest. Though the trees are in leaf there 

 has been a fall of snow, and their stems tell 

 dark against the whiteness of the valley-fields 

 and the hill-side. It was a similar effect that 

 recently drew from a friend the remark, which 

 I have already quoted : "How this reminds 

 one of an etching!" In the "Crowhurst" 



