2IO 



Garden and Forest. 



[April 30, 1890. 



their own land,' and making- them responsible for the dam- 

 age caused by such fires. To secure the passage and en- 

 forcement of such laws, should be the aim of our various 

 forest associations and of all persons interested in forest- 

 property. 



The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table has the love and ven- 

 eration of the old school New Englander for those noble 

 Elm-trees which, when he was a boy more often than now, 

 were the glory of the typical New England homestead; 

 and thirty years and more ago he proposed the scheme of 

 an imaginary work illustrated by photographs taken upon 

 the same scale of magnitude, and accompanied by letter- 

 press descriptive of New England Elms. Now at last this 

 scheme assumes definite shape, and Little, Brown & Co., 

 of Boston, are to publish "Typical Elms and Other Trees 

 of Massachusetts." Dr. Holmes himself, as is fit and be- 

 coming, stands god-father to the enterprise in a charming 

 introduction; the illustrations are reproductions, by the 

 photogravure process, of photographs made by Mr. Henry 

 Brooks, of Medford, whose fellow-townsman, Mr. L. L. 

 Dame, furnishes the accompanying text which supplies 

 historical and statistical information about the different 

 trees. Tree lovers in America have long felt the desira- 

 bility of a work of this sort to preserve portraits of famous 

 and remarkable American trees just as Strutt preserved in 

 his classical " Silva Britannica" portraits of famous British 

 trees, and Mr. Brooks earns their gratitude by doing this very 

 thing. The work is not taken in hand too soon. Many 

 of the trees which were famous in New England when 

 New England was an English colony, disappeared long 

 ago, as have many of the less famous trees Dr. Holmes 

 speaks of in his preface; and the number of really great 

 and distinguished trees is growing less every year in all 

 the northern parts of the country, where changed condi- 

 tions, material and social, are rather against their succes- 

 sors replacing them in historical interest or in mere bulk 

 of trunk and spread of branches. Mr. Brooks' book wdll 

 appeal to all lovers of trees. It will be a quarto volume of 

 more than one hundred and twenty pages and will contain 

 fifty illustrations. It proposes to show the possibilities 

 attainable in Massachusetts by trees of different species 

 under favorable conditions. Trees remarkable for age, 

 beauty, size or historic interest have been selected. 



Flower Painting. 



TO paint a flower well four things must be shown : color, 

 form, texture and substance ; the hue of the blossom 

 must be rendered, its outline and the shape of its petals, the 

 peculiar quality of the surface of these, and the degree of 

 solidity or fragility in which their accumulation results. Then, 

 to make a good picture with the chosen flowers, other things 

 must be considered — as the grouping of the subject, its light- 

 ing and the general color-scheme of which the hue of the 

 flowers themselves forms but a part. The task, in short, is a 

 very complicated one. If the amateur is apt to consider it the 

 easiest he could attempt, his recklessness is explained by the 

 fact that even a poor rendering of a very beautiful theme will 

 attract the uncritical eye. One needs to paint admirably well 

 to please any one with the picture of a potato ; but a picture 

 of a Rose, though it be but a travesty, passes for something 

 pretty with the majority of observers. 



The more experienced artist, knowing the difficulty of his 

 enterprise, usually takes the quite allowable course of insist- 

 ing more upon one side of his theme than upon the others. 

 Perhaps he lays most emphasis upon the decorative effect of 

 his picture as a whole, trying to do no more than indicate the 

 characteristics of the flowers which are its most prominent 

 feature. He arranges them in an effective mass and insists 

 on their coloristic beauty as related to the surroundings which 

 he has supplied for them, leaving their form, their texture and 

 their substance to be divined from the hints he gives. If 

 these hints are rightly given, if they point to the truth although 

 they do not explain it, and if the main explanation is truth- 

 ful and beautiful, the critic finds no fault with the picture. 

 He accepts it as an interpretation of one quality which the 

 flowers possess ; and he knows that it is not needful that art 

 should try to show more than one thing at once. Naturally, 

 in this kind of flower painting, only such models should be 



chosen as lend themselves best to the special aim in view. 

 Peonies, Chrysanthemums, China Asters and a hundred com- 

 mon summer flowers like the Eupatoriums and Goldenrods 

 are by nature adapted to a treatment in which a mass of gor- 

 geous color is the aim, depending little upon form, texture or 

 substance for the beauty we find in them ; and the same may 

 be said in a lesser degree of Geraniums and of double Violets, 

 which are good material for smaller pictures of the kind. Any 

 one who has been familiar with our annual exhibitions will 

 remember the delightful large water-colors of Miss Greatorex, 

 where, very often, masses of brilliant blossoms have been 

 shown in the white paper cones dear to Parisian peddlers, giv- 

 ing a delightful picture not, in strict truth, of the flowers, but 

 of their coloristic beauty. 



It would not be wise to choose such flowers as these when 

 effects of linear beauty are desired in a picture, but there are 

 others admirably suited for such a purpose, like the Iris, the 

 Amaryllis, the Narcissus, the Tigridia, and many kinds of Lil- 

 ies, from the Japan Lily of the garden to the Wild Lily of the 

 fields. All these are exquisite in color, but owe their peculiar 

 charm even more to form. So beautiful, indeed, are their 

 forms that if these are sympathetically felt and faithfully ren- 

 dered, color may be entirely suppressed and still the picture 

 be pleasing. A black and white drawing of a row of China 

 Asters would be scarcely worth making ; but such a drawing 

 of a row of Irises might be well worth seeing. Decorative 

 artists have known these facts in all the great building ages of 

 the world. The Lotus, the Honeysuckle, the Iris, the single 

 Rose and star-shaped blossoms of one sort or another have 

 been most conspicuous in architectural ornament when it is 

 painted as well as when it is carved. 



Certain flowers are chiefly remarkable for what may be called 

 dignity of bearing. The Gladiolus has this dignity together with 

 great beauty of form in the individual flowers ; the Fox-glove, 

 the Larkspur, the Tuberose and the Crown Imperial have it ; 

 and the Hollyhock has it without any special elegance of form. 

 Again, a graceful habit is the most characteristic trait, as with 

 the Solomon's Seal, the Laburnum, many flowering shrubs, 

 and, in a different way, the Lily-of-the- Valley and the Poppy. 

 Still again, an angular, somewhat eccentric manner of growth 

 is the plant's main characteristic, as in many which Japanese 

 artists love to paint; and flowers of such kinds should, of course, 

 be painted so as to bring out their special qualities most clearly. 



No one would paint flowers chiefly for their texture (as one 

 might paint a piece of satin) or chiefly for their substance ; 

 these are characteristics which can sometimes be almost over- 

 looked, and at other times be made of accessory importance. 

 That is to say, when the picture as such is the prime consid- 

 eration, when a general decorative effect is desired above all 

 else. When we come to absolute portraiture — to the render- 

 ing of flowers for themselves, not for the part they can play 

 in some larger scheme of beauty — then texture and substance 

 must be as much considered as form and color. To give the 

 shape and tint of an Azalea blossom without giving its trans- 

 lucent texture, its fragile substance, would be to caricature it. 

 To paint a Catherine Mermet Rose and not show that it is solid 

 and heavy would be — not to paint this Rose. Naturally it is 

 very difficult .to achieve all these qualities together — to give 

 the form of a flower exactly without making it seem hard, its 

 color exactly without slurring its form, its substance exactly 

 without travestying its texture. It is so difficult that we rarely 

 see complete success except where the task has been simpli- 

 fied as much as possible. The best portraits of flowers are 

 apt to be those where a very few blossoms of a single sort 

 have been arranged and lighted as simply as possible. When 

 Mr. La Farge shows us a single Water Lily he gives its form, 

 its color, its texture, its substance — almost its odor. But did he 

 conceive a large group of Water Lilies with adjuncts of various 

 sorts, arranged and lighted so as to make a striking pictorial 

 effect, he would probably choose some one quality of the 

 flower for accentuation and merely hint at the others. At all 

 events, though success with his single blossom cannot have 

 been easy, it would be infinitely more difficult with many. 



When flowers are painted as they grow out-doors in masses, 

 forming part of a landscape composition, then, naturally, 

 nothing but their color need be insisted upon, no matter what 

 may be the dignity or elegance of their forms upon closer ex- 

 amination. Color is always the quality that, as painters say, 

 "carries furthest," remaining distinct at a distance where 

 forms and even habits of growth may be quite invisible. 



On the average exhibition wall we seldom enough find any 

 true excellence in the painting of flowers. Even good taste in 

 the placing of the models so that their peculiar characteristics 

 might best be presented to the painter is very rare. Gladioli 

 are heaped together in a low bowl ; double Violets are spread 



