TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 273 



taught us to see in the infinitely intricate detail 

 of nature, beauty that otherwise we might have 

 passed by unnoticed. 



Such pictures as Holman Hunt's '* The 

 Hireling Shepherd " and " Strayed Sheep " 

 are in art what the descriptions of Richard 

 Jefferies are in literature. It is not the broad 

 effect of the landscape that has been portrayed, 

 but the detail of plant, tree, insect, bird and 

 animal life, in all its variety of form and 

 colour. In the immediate foreground of the 

 former picture we can almost count the blades 

 of grass. The mallow, the marigold, the 

 poppy, the convolvulus are painted with close 

 literalness. The nearest willow is a botanical 

 study ; those farther away hardly less so. 

 The peep through the trees, beyond the corn- 

 field, into another field, is delightful ; even 

 though, as many a critic would say, it is what 

 no one would ever see who was occupied with 

 the main subject of the picture. Compare 

 this detail with the following description in 

 Richard Jefferies' Notes on Landscape Paint- 

 ing : '' Among the meadows the buttercups 

 in spring are as innumerable as ever and as 



pleasant to look upon. The petal of the 

 18 



