Note the varied quantity of the edge in white mass of tunic. (The reproduction does not unfortunately show this as well as the original.)

Photo Anderson]

In naturalistic work the necessity for painting to one focal impression is as great as the necessity of painting in true perspective.  What perspective has done for drawing, the impressionist system of painting to one all-embracing focus has done for tone.  Before perspective was introduced, each individual object in a picture was drawn with a separate centre of vision fixed on each object in turn.  What perspective did was to insist that all objects in a picture should be drawn in relation to one fixed centre of vision.  And whereas formerly each object was painted to a hard focus, whether it was in the foreground or the distance, impressionism teaches that you cannot have the focus in a picture at the same time on the foreground and the distance.

Of course there are many manners of painting with more primitive conventions in which the consideration of focus does not enter.  But in all painting that aims at reproducing the impressions directly produced in us by natural appearances, this question of focus and its influence on the quality of your edges is of great importance.

Something should be said about the serrated edges of masses, like those of trees seen against the sky.  These are very difficult to treat, and almost every landscape painter has a different formula.  The hard, fussy, cut-out, photographic appearance of trees misses all their beauty and sublimity.

There are three principal types of treatment that may serve as examples.  In the first place there are the trees of the early Italian painters, three examples of which are illustrated on page 197 [Transcribers Note:  Diagram XXIII].  A thin tree is always selected, and a rhythmic pattern of leaves against the sky painted.  This treatment of a dark pattern on a light ground is very useful as a contrast to the softer tones of flesh.  But the treatment is more often applied nowadays to a spray of foliage in the foreground, the pattern of which gives a very rich effect.  The poplar trees in Millais’ “Vale of Rest” are painted in much the same manner as that employed by the Italians, and are exceptional among modern tree paintings, the trees being treated as a pattern of leaves against the sky.  Millais has also got a raised quality of paint in his darks very similar to that of Bellini and many early painters.

Giorgione added another tree to landscape art:  the rich, full, solidly-massed forms that occur in his “Concert Champetre” of the Louvre, reproduced on page 151 [Transcribers Note:  Plate XXXIII].  In this picture you may see both types of treatment.  There are the patterns of leaves variety on the left and the solidly-massed treatment on the right.

[Illustration:  Diagram XXIII.

EXAMPLES OF EARLY ITALIAN TREATMENT OF TREES