258 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



chairs, and on one kind of chair for dinner, and 

 in another kind of chair for a nap after dinner ! 

 So an artist finds that a chance relation to 

 each other, from some point where he happens 

 to be standing, of — perhaps — a stream, rocks, 

 trees and a distant hill, under some particular 

 condition of lighting is more beautiful in form 

 and colour, or more impressive in light and 

 shade, than from any other standpoint. This 

 is accidental. Nature has not arranged all 

 these things for this purpose. The artist sees, 

 or feels, that had Nature's chief aim with 

 regard to these things been their pictorial 

 effect from this point of view, she could have 

 made them even more effective. So by addi- 

 tions and omissions he makes his picture more 

 effective, truer to the central impression the 

 scene has made upon him, than it would be 

 were he merely to make as nearly a literal 

 transcript of the scene as the means at his 

 disposal would permit. This, in the realm of 

 aesthetics, is the counterpart of preferring a 

 chair to a stone in the realm of physical 

 utilities. And this is the way in which Cot- 

 man, like all true artists, made use of nature 

 for the purposes of art. 



