TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 277 



there is the most careful study of trees, ''The 

 Two Gentlemen of Verona" and "The Hire- 

 ling Shepherd," the landscape is only a back- 

 ground for figures. Millais, on the other hand, 

 painted many landscapes, in which trees were 

 a prominent feature; and even in his later 

 work, after he had renounced the minute 

 detail of his Pre-Raphaelite days, his tree- 

 painting bore the impress of a personal affection 

 for individual trees. One cannot look at them 

 without feeling this ; and if we turn to his son's 

 biography of him we shall find that such 

 affection was really characteristic of the man. 

 " Though himself no gardener," says the bio- 

 grapher, ''he was, as might be expected of the 

 painter of ' Ophelia,' fond of everything that 

 grew and flowered. Of a solitary bed of lilies 

 of the valley which raised their heads amidst 

 the London smuts in our back courtyard he 

 was inordinately proud ; and a vine that climbed 

 over the back of the house, and in summer led 

 its dainty tendrils through the open windows, 

 he came to regard with almost the scientific 

 interest of such horticulturists as Pope and 

 Shenstone. Apropos of his love for Kensing- 

 ton Gardens, Miss Jameson, my mother's 



