26o TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



not obtrude itself. It looks as if he had 

 chanced upon a scene where nature had tried 

 her hand at picture-making. We do not feel 

 far from nature, as we not unseldom do in 

 Turner's work. In Cotman's later work he so 

 forced the contrast of warm and cool colour, 

 purple and blue in one part of the picture, and 

 glowing yellows in the other part, that we 

 quite lose touch with nature ; but this was not 

 so with his earlier work. 



We are concerned here with what he has 

 to tell us about the trees ; or, rather, what he 

 has to show us of them, and the showing — 

 even in his black-and-white drawings — is most 

 instructively delightful. We see trees in great 

 shady masses, with stem and branches show- 

 ing here and there to tell us how the masses 

 are borne in the air ; and through openings 

 between them, a distant river-valley with the 

 stream and a glimpse of bright sky emphasis- 

 ing the shadiness of the trees. Shadow, shade, 

 and glittering or gleaming light alternate amid 

 foliage that never fails to suggest that the 

 densest masses of it are made up of an as- 

 semblage of small individuals, moving in groups 

 only, and each member of a group with a 



