OCR Text |
Show 364 PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. fresh combinations; even in the icy north, herbs covering the earth, large alpine blossoms, and a serene azure sky cheer a portion of the year. Hitherto landscape painting has pursued amongst us her pleasing task, familiar only with the simpler form of our native floras, but not, therefore, without depth of feeling, or without the treasures of creative imagination. Even in this narrower field, highly gifted painters, the Caracci, Gaspar Poussin, Claude Lorraine, and Ruysdael, have, with magic power, by the selection of forms of trees and by effects of light, found scope wherein to call forth some of the most varied and beautiful productions of creative art. The fame of these master-works can never be impaired by those which I venture to hope for hereafter, and to which I could not but point, in order to recall the ancient but deeply-seated bond which unites natural knowledge with poetry and with artistic feeling; for we must ever distinguish in landscape painting, as in every other branch of art, between productions derived from direct observation, and those which spring from the depths of inward feeling and from the power of the idealizing mind. The great and beautiful works which owe their origin to this creative power of the mind applied to landscape painting, belong to the poetry of nature, and, like man himself, and the imagination with which he is gifted, are not riveted to the soil, or confined to any single region. I allude here more particularly to the gradation in the form of trees from Ruysdael and Everdingen, through Claude Lorraine to Poussin and Annibal Caracci. In the great masters of the art, we perceive no trace of local limitation; but an enlargement of the visible horizon, and an increased acquaintance with the nobler and grander forms of nature, and with the luxuriant fulness of life in the tropical world, offer the advantage not only of enriching the material substratum of landscape painting, but also of affording a more lively stimulus to less gifted artists, and of thus heightening their powers of production." (35) p. 245.-"From the rough bark of Orescentias and Gustavia." In the Crescentia cujete (the Tutuma or Calabash-tree, whose large fruit-shells are so useful to the natives for household purposes) -in the Cynometra, the Theobroma (the Cacao-tree), and the Perigara (the Gustavia of Linnreus-the delicate flowers break through |