LAND & WATER 
January 31, iqiS 
The New Landscape 
By Charles Marriott 
A Welsh Valley 
PERHAPS the best way to describe the newer lands- 
cape painting is to say that it is more fundamental 
than that of yesterday. Caring comparatively little 
for subtleties of light or atmosphere, or minor acci- 
dents oi surface, it lays em basis upon the bones of the land ; 
and it becomes decorative not so much by inventing patterns 
as by discovering and confirming natural rhythms. 
It does not foHow that 
tlie landscape of yester- 
day was mistaken in its 
aims. Problems of light 
and atmosphere had to 
be mastered, and it w as 
right to study the 
markings on the skin of 
the cosmic beast as well 
as the larger facts of its 
anatomy, and to gft 
skill in reproducing sur 
face and texture. Nor 
is there anything reaUy 
new in the more modern 
landscape. The human 
mind has always been 
possessed with the idea 
of unity an harmony 
under the apparent 
\ariety and irregularity 
of Nature, and one has 
only to turn to the pic- 
tures of Wilson and 
Cotman to see this idea 
expressed or acted upon 
in painting. What it 
amounts to is that 
modern painters are 
"touching earth" again 
after a fruitful excur- 
sion into the air. Even 
in their treatment of 
trees one sees the difference between their aims 
those of most nineteenth-century painters. They are 
mtich more interested in the growth of the tree than 
ill the flicker of light on its foliage, and in following its 
growth they are apt to insist on regularity of branching. 
In short, it seems as if modern landscape painters instinctively 
recognised that they have not fulfilled their function unless 
they have given us a stronger hint of order in the universe 
than might be apparent to the casual eye. Whether this 
order be looked upon as Divine or only physical, does not 
really affect the question ; there is a tacit recognition, and 
so.Tietimes an over-emphatic assertion, of law ; and th.- 
Trokes Farm, Devon 
and 
typical modern landscipo assumes the origin and development 
of the earth as we read about it in our books of geology :.nd 
physical geography. 
Art being the expression of life, it would be surprising ratlier 
than otherwise if this renewed sense of order in landscape 
painting had not some correspondence in contemporary hfe ; 
and sure enough there is in contemporary Hfe a startled "recog- 
nition of the impor- 
tance of order and of 
discovering its natural 
bases. That this recog- 
nition should some- 
times be expressed in 
disorderly ways does 
not alter the truth ; 
at bottom the Rus- 
sian Revolution is a 
frantic attempt to find 
the broad bases of 
human character and 
relationship u p o n 
which alone a stable 
society can be organ- 
ised. The means adop- , 
ted may be arbitrary 
cnc u ;h ; but the belief 
implied is that an 
arbitrary scheme of 
^ociety, such as " the 
union of Germany with 
the sword of Prussia," 
will not do. Apart 
fi om all questions of 
('C|uity and justice, the 
demand for the recog- 
iiition of nationalitv 
nallv comes from the 
lielie/ that security re- 
quies it. The attempt 
is to find the social 
there is room for many diff r- 
eally 
hy Robert Bevnn 
centre of gravity. Of course 
ences of opinion as to where the social centre of gravity 
lies ; hence the trouble > but it is significant, particularlv in 
view of the newer landscape painting— which may be looked 
upon as the unconscious reflection in art of what the, social 
reformers are bothering their heads about— that there seems 
to be a growing conviction that the social centre of gravity 
IS after all in the land. After all these years, and in spite of 
all our progress in manufacture and commerce, we are coming 
back to the belief that the rock-bottom of ?odety is tlie man 
with the hoe ; and that tlie only true basis of social .security 
'.s a wise recognition of liis rights and adjustment of his 
