LANDSCAPE
From the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of
painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. But
work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there
are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will
help you in figure-work. The manner of painting figures has been much
modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of
view which are due to the study of landscape and the important
position that it has come to occupy.
In the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a
branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure
painters. In this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is
now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. But further
than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range
of painting. From the development of the study of outdoor nature, and
particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of
nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or
unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the
figure as on the painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible
to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter
of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the
figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of
course now.
The whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of
color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well
as in the other branches of work.
=Pitch.=--In no direction is this more marked than in the matter of
_pitch_, or _key_. With the study of landscape, the range of gradation
from light to dark has broadened. A picture may now be painted in a
"high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in
it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty
years ago.
This question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration.
One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck
with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever
kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation.
This is not merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist"
idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country
within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now.
I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in
any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work--are light
in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker.
The impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the
work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models
out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape
out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of
the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and
carried it farther.
=Bright Pictures.=--Whatever may be thought of the work of those
painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that
they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present
quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a
permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true--true
to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor
light _is bright_, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too
great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once
this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence
all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of
knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view
have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look
for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go
out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years
ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not
have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For
our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the
eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.
=Average Observation.=--I say we see only what we look for, what we
expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at
first. In looking at nature the average observer does not even see the
obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a
rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of
the relations of things; no analysis; no real _seeing_, only a
conventional acceptance of a thing as a _thing_. Men look at nature
with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different
idea. Nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been
accustomed to see in other pictures. They get their idea of how nature
looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently
conceived they have difficulty in taking it in.
For this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." I remember
being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what I thought of "these
bright pictures." When I asked which pictures he had reference to, I
found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting
landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color
and value. One would think that the fact that the whole force of an
extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would
produce a picture with at least truth of observation. Yet this was not
what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked,
which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an
extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish
sky, reflected in a pool of water. The "bright picture" seemed to me
exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with
"nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just
the point. The average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature
what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature.
But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He may paint a dark picture,
but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. He may not paint
daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so.
With every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts
so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal
with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression.
[Illustration: =On the Race Track.= _Degas._
To show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.]
The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may
not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore
not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you
cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious
that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There is
no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it
is the most vital quality. You might as well paint water without
recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without
recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.
=A Help.=--You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as
well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look
through at your landscape. Have one side covered with black velvet and
the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the lights
with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a
frame.
=Key and Harmony.=--But you should remember that the high key for
out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither
does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your
picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious
and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced
type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony
with them. It means that good color is always good color, and will
always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of
either. One picture is simply a different note from the other, that is
all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations
of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing
them, and your picture will be harmonious.
Make your notes just _all over_ your canvas. Have some of them just
and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to
make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony.
The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the
colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try
for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door
color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.
The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement,
vibration and life,--these are the things which the modern painter has
discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made
modern landscape a vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or do
not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel,
and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they
are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.
=Landscape Drawing.=--Landscape is more difficult to draw than is
generally thought; not only is the character affected by the _scale_
of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The
curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to
give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably
exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are
seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to
be gained by just representation of them. To give the character of a
tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more
precise observation than it generally gets.
[Illustration: =Willow Road.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important
things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each
line than about the number of lines.
Don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many
objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided
what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to
express, and then draw most carefully those parts. See which are the
_most expressive lines_ in it. Get the swing and movement of those
lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get
these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as
subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you begin to
paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.
Don't get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time
and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the
mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many.
Having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of
color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in
other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the
real reason of existence of your picture.
In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been
said of sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most
bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and
colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will
neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you
just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike.
Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the
general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before
you even at the risk of over-repetition. In no kind of picture can you
drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In
landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must
select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to
concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize
those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.
=Selection.=--When you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the
French call it, select it for something definite. There is always
something which makes you think this particular view will make a good
picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in
detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the
whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a
beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees,
or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a
group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you--else you
had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know
quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.
When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for,
then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that
characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a
very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave
out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the
only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception
of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole
field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in
the expression of it.
=Detail.=--Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether
big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more
important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express
character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail _where the
emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not
a touch more.
=Structure.=--Have your foreground details well understood in drawing
and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it
does require _structure_. Everything requires structure. _Structure is
fundamental to character._ If you will not take the trouble to study
the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all.
Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough
to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.
I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but
"structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would
get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If
you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the
anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the
world, you will understand its character, and that is what is
important, everywhere.
=Work in Season.=--Make your picture in the season which it
represents. I don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in
winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer
quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half
painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up"
afterwards.
Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin
and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of
material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working
from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to
work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at
least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will
find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed
material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply
it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the
picture, you can just go out and study it.
=Out-of-door Landscapes.=--The most important movement in modern art,
the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have
mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. It was thought by some
clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to
take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from
a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole
picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way,
certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the
color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and
frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The
spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture
was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as
things in themselves interesting and important. The result on
landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed
unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the
making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.
It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these
men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for
itself, or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with
landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. Make
sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please;
but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you,
and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. For
your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will
get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get
any other way. You will also acquire a power of concentration and of
selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the
utmost importance to you.
=Impressionism.=--It is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein
air_ without mention of the "Impressionists." You should understand
what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the
impressionist stands for. Whether we like it or not, this work is not
to be ignored. It has tried for certain things, and has shown that
they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed
to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands.
In the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow."
Any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside,
is a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow are incidental to
the impressionist, not essential. It is only one of the ways of
handling color by means of which it was found possible to express
certain qualities of light.
Before everything else the real impressionist stands for the
representation of the personal conception and method as against the
traditional. He believes that if a man has anything of his own to say,
he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature
has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a
personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas
and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that
whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express
it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is
_his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is
"personal."
=Luminosity.=--The impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the
light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it
vibrates. He does not think that living light can be represented by
dead color. He strives to make his color live also. This is the secret
of the purple and yellow. By the contrast of these two colors, by the
combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors
and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and
so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. He actually applies on his
canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color
scientifically. He applies practically in his work those laws which
the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. The result in some
hands is garish, crude. But the best men have shown that it is
possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous
brilliancy that have never before been attained. The crudity is the
result of the man, not of the method.
=The Application.=--The application of all this to your own work is
that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the
observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of
pigment as will bring this about. Try to study the actual contrasts of
color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. Study the facts
which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other,
and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results.
=The Luminists.=--This is the principle of all "loose painting"
carried out scientifically. It is the cause of the peculiar technique
of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The
manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of
outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the
quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what
they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate
explicable.
Now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical
application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of
the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of
out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for
yourself. If the complete adoption of it implies too much of a
sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then
modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the
balance of qualities you most want. There is one way to get light and
brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you
need it.
This is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. The placing
of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding
to the brilliancy of light. You will find this most useful when you
want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight
and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the
richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more
strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can.
Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of
objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of
warm and cool than contrast of light and dark.
Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising you to be an impressionist.
I wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at
nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will
be of use to you in the painting of landscape. I would have you know
what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in
certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then I
would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely
serve your purpose.
Do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because
of any advocacy whatsoever. Know first what you want to paint and why.
Let nature speak to you. Go out and look at landscape. Study and
observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use
the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. Don't ask
yourself, nor let any one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method?
or, Does this belong to this or that school? Don't bother about
schools or methods at all. Look frankly to see, accept frankly, and
then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. Be
sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will
surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and
whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor
matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in
painting, and method of representation one of the least.
=Atmosphere.=--A universal characteristic of nature will be a
fundamental one in landscape. A landscape which you cannot breathe in
is not a perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere, and the
expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. But
atmosphere is not haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness
of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do
most in getting it. You had better not try for atmosphere as a thing,
but as a result. Anything so universal and so indefinite can be
expressed by no one thing. If you try to get it by any one means you
will miss it. Study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness
of value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be
satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that
your picture will not lack atmosphere.
=Color of Contour.=--An important thing for you to look for and to
study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy
even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a
combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will
reveal themselves to you.
No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color
surrounding it lacks variety. All along the edge of forms and objects,
of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The
outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from identity
of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself.
The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The
inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness,
gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are
qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of
light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant
variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the
visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the
picture, and all the objects represented in it.
Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the
movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their
own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is
most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and
air.
=Skies.=--In the painting of the sky there are several points to be
kept in mind. The sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement.
Cloud masses change continually. If there are no clouds there is
constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of
color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a
dead, flat tint.
Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad,
flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with
horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a
lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm
and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed
color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will
be flat and even, but not dense and dead. So far as the sky is
concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not
by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.
=Clouds.=--If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get
the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. As
they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be
characteristic. The type form is what you must get, and the suggestion
of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of
the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. The direction of the
sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud
mass is never hard, never rigid. The pitch and luminosity and subtlety
are what give you most of the effect of it.
Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a _cumulus_, _cirrus_,
_stratus_, or what not. This character is important; but the character
lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental
outlines or the special position of it for the moment.
=Sky Composition.=--The massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor
in the composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is
capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. As it is not
constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with
truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as
an element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the
forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of
them.
=Diffused Light.=--Much of the characteristic quality of out-door
light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the
refraction and the reflection of the sky. The light which bathes the
landscape comes in all directions from the sky. Necessarily, then, the
sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it.
Even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in
the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell
against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will
look lighter. There are times when the sun glares on a white building
or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue.
But these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would
give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light,
even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the
higher value. It is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or
the reverse, as we cannot have both.
Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is
really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if
there be a bit of sun breaking through on it.
But in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always
lighter and more luminous than anything under it.
=Three Planes.=--It will help you in understanding the way the light
falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes,
and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according
to the position of the sun with reference to them.
The position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a
point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything
that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at
some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some
sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly,
the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full
amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of
foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by
diffused and reflected light. The planes lying between these two
extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at
right angles to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun declines
from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the
horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late
afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses
are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and
water are in shadow.
However obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less;
and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in
landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know.
Millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art
of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these
facts.
He said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the
light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or
less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color
and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its
representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects,
lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties of the art rested
on it. He showed a painting of a single pear in which these things
were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete
and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the
observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything
which was vital to painting.
=Short Sittings.=--This characteristic, and the steady change of
position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are
directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting
from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very
long at a time. The light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only
takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is seldom that
you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half
at a sitting. Some men do work two or three hours, but they are not
studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three
hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under
these conditions. Of course on gray days this is less marked, but you
must suit your sittings to the time and facts.
It would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time
on each, and many days on all. You would have the truest work.
Monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he
starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and
paints on each till the light has changed. Theodore Robinson seldom
worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one
canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and
sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons.
Any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color
must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors.