TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 263 



them, are natural. Man and horse and plough 

 and cart seem quite at home in their unfenced 

 roads or their neighbouring fields. Yet the 

 design that is never absent from the artist's ren- 

 dering of them gives them an idyllic appearance 

 which suggests that when mere man and his im- 

 plements have left them, the dryads may come 

 out from their hiding-places ; and it is quite 

 without surprise that in one drawing, where 

 we are taken into a mountain-gorge, through 

 which tumultuous torrents leap and roar, we 

 and the trees are the only spectators of a 

 fierce contest between a centaur and a giant. 

 Here, for once, Cotman gets on to Turner's 

 ground ; he feels and personifies the vast 

 powers of nature ; a vision of the ages opens 

 out before us ; but for the most part it is the 

 beauty of our own day that we see, without 

 reflection on what has gone before or what 

 shall come after. 



The tree-drawing of David Cox and De 

 Wint is much broader than that of Cotman, 

 and has no such loving subtlety of interpreta- 

 tion. Trees for them are incidental to land- 

 scape ; they never seem to take trees, either 

 singly, in groups, or in masses, as the main 



