TREES IN MODERN PAINTING 285 



light affects different objects differently, their 

 relative effects on the sight are altered. You 

 look out in the early morning. All is grey, the 

 trees seem as if they were asleep. There is an 

 increase of light near the horizon. Differences 

 at once assert themselves. These are the 

 beginnings of shade and shadow. The trees 

 seem to be awakening. They are beginning to 

 think. In the evening, distant trees that were 

 quite clear a few minutes before grow dim in 

 the waning light. The nearer trees have be- 

 come darker. The water in the pond, that we 

 had hardly seen before, now gleams out from 

 the darkness beneath the trees. For a time 

 there is a concentration of light against dark ; 

 then they begin to merge into one another. 

 Night is coming. The world is going to sleep. 

 When the sky is clear, and much more when 

 there is alternate sun and cloud, the changes 

 are endless in their variety. From morning to 

 night is one long light and colour symphony. 

 To suggest, in pigments that cannot change — 

 alas, how often in another sense pigments do 

 change! — the unceasing changefulness of the 

 natural scene, is one of the triumphs of the 

 painter's art. Some painters hardly attempt it. 



