TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 247 



blowing in from the sea. Not only have their 

 lighter branches and twigs been bent over, but 

 so also have their stems, when not far above 

 the ground. 



In the oil-painting "Apollo and the Python," 

 and the Liber plate "Jason," the monsters 

 half-hidden among the trees are made more 

 terrible by huge, fallen and riven trunks, and 

 broken branches which bear witness to their 

 terrible, evil power. 



"Dragons of the prime" could not have 

 wrought more havoc amid trees than do the 

 avalanches, the fall of rocks, and the fierce 

 storms among the Alps. There the firs and 

 pines have to struggle hard to maintain a bare 

 existence ; and here again Turner felt deeply 

 the pathos — the tragic pathos — of the battle 

 for life under such terribly adverse conditions. 

 Here is what Ruskin, writing in Modern 

 Painters of the Liber plate "Arveron," says 

 about this struggle: "The soil of the pine is 

 subject to continual change ; perhaps the rock 

 in which it is rooted splits in frost and falls 

 forward, throwing the young stems aslope, or 

 the whole mass of earth round it is undermined 

 by rain, or a huge boulder falls on its stem 



