LANDSCAPE PAINTING BY BIRGE HARRISON

FORWARD

This little book represents the fulfillment of a promise to put into permanent form certain impromptu talks on landscape painting given before the Art Students' League of New York at its summer school at Woodstock, N. Y. No effort has been made to elaborate the themes treated, the writer feeling that what might be gained in literary form might very well be lost in spontaneity and conciseness of statement. It is hardly necessary to say that these little talks make no claim to infallibility of judgment They simply represent the present beliefs and convictions of a painter who is himself still a student; but they are sincere, at least, and “straight from the shoulder."

It is to be regretted that the art of color printing has not yet reached a stage of development where it can be trusted with the reproduction of a masterpiece of landscape, which often depends for its beauty on color-tones and color-transitions of extreme delicacy. In the present volume it has been judged best to confine the reproductions to simple half-tones in black and white — to give no color rather than color which is false and misleading; and the illustrations here included are therefore presented, not as adequate representations of the works themselves, but as hints and suggestions only of the qualities which give to those works their distinction and their beauty.

Thanks are due to the editors of Scribner's Magazine, The North American Review, The International Studio, and Palette and Brush for permission to reprint here certain of the chapters which have already appeared in the publications mentioned.

B. H.
Woodstock, N. Y., 1909.