TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 279 



— a picture always associated in my mind with 

 Fred Walker's masterpiece, 'The Harbour 

 of Refuge'. The garden is that of the 

 old casde at Murthly, then inhabited by Sir 

 Douglas Stewart ; and near at hand is the 

 park where ' Christmas Eve ' was painted. To 

 emphasise the tone of sadness he sought to 

 convey, Millais at first painted in the figure 

 of a widow (and I think also a child) wander- 

 ing amidst the scenes of bygone happiness; 

 but as he could not get the figures to his satis- 

 faction, he wisely painted them out. Another 

 difficulty was how to break the broad expanse 

 of the terrace in the immediate foreground, 

 and this he got over by introducing part of a 

 beautiful old fountain which he discovered in 

 another corner of the garden. This is the 

 only feature which is not in the scene as it 

 actually exists to-day." 



Millais' landscapes are so familiar to every- 

 one, either in the original or in reproductions, 

 that it is worth while further to emphasise this 

 affection for trees ; and I will take as another 

 instance one of the finest of his pictures, painted 

 in his strictly Pre-Raphaelite days, ''Autumn 

 Leaves ". I have already mentioned the Lom- 



