THE LANDSCAPE MOTIVE 



EVERY work of art should have its subject, 

 theme or motive. This principle is suffi- 

 ciently obvious. In the natural style of 

 landscape gardening, however, it becomes especially 

 important to keep this principle in view, and to 

 have some very definite method for putting it into 

 effect. In certain types of gardening it may pos- 

 sibly answer to give a general, more or less vague, 

 feeling of beauty, or of festivity, or of courtliness, 

 but when one essays the larger flights of composi- 

 tion in informal landscape, it is positively neces- 

 sary to artistic success that some definite, concrete 

 motive be adopted and developed. 



Comparisons with the other arts are illuminating 

 at this point. The idea of the theme or motive * 

 is universally recognized in music. If we adopt the 



* In common studio patter this word is always pronounced 

 and written motif; but since we have a plain English spelling 

 for precisely the same word, I prefer to spell it motive. 



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