SUNRISE Come, see what a charming day the landscape painter has! He rises early, at three o'clock in the morning, before the sun. He goes off to sit at the foot of a tree; he looks; he waits. At first he sees nothing in particular. Nature is like a white canvas with vague masses outlined 5 upon it. Everything is hazy; everything trembles in the little fresh breeze of dawn. Bing! the sky brightens . . . The sun has not yet torn away the mist which hides the fields, the valley, the hills on the horizon. The silvery night mists still 10 climb above the cool green grasses. Bing! .. bing! a second ray of the sun. The up, joyous. . . . Each has a A first ray of the sun .. The leaves stir in the chill Beneath the foliage, birds 15 are singing, invisible; it seems as if their songs were the prayer of the flowers. Cupids with butterfly wings seem to be flying over the fields, and the tall grasses bend in waves beneath them. . . The painter can see nothing; everything is there. All the landscape is behind the thin 20 veil of mist, which rises. . . rises. . . rises, inhaled by the sun, and, still rising, reveals the silver blade of the river, the meadows, the trees, the cottages, the flying distance. The painter sees all the landscape that at first he could only divine. 25 Bam! the sun has risen . . . bam! the peasant at the end of the field with his cart drawn by two oxen! . Ding, ding! the bell of the old sheep that leads his flock! .. Bam! Everything glows; everything burns; every5 thing is bathed in a full light, a light still pale and caressing. The background, simple and harmonious, loses itself in the infinite sky, beyond the dense blue air ... the flowers lift their heads . . . the birds fly here and there. A country-man on a white horse rides into a sunken road, out 10 of sight. The little rounded willows seem to strut about on the banks of the river. It is adorable! and he paints . . . and he paints. And O the beautiful chestnut cow up to its body in the wet grasses! He must paint that . . . Crac! there it is! Attributed to COROT. HELPS TO STUDY Corot was a famous French landscape artist, who loved to paint trees, water, and animals seen in the silvery light of early morning. This selection shows how he looked at outdoor things. It is a description, or a picture made with words instead of the paint brush. These two kinds of pictures are not just the same. In a painting we actually see the shape and the size and the color; in a description we are only told about them, and we see them only with our mind's eye, or imagination. In the second place, when we look at a picture we see everything at once, all the objects, whether they are far away, in the background, or in front of the picture, in the foreground. In reading a description, our mind's eye can see only a part at a time. Then, of course, a painting shows a much larger number of things than a description. Both paintings and descriptions are different from photographs. A photographer has · to take a picture of everything in front of his camera, ugly details as well as beautiful. But the artist and the writer can leave out what is ugly or disgusting. They can also make us see just what they want us to see. An artist, for example, can make a background simple by painting only a few objects, and harmonious by selecting objects that go well together. Or, if he loves the morning mist, he can paint it in such a way as to make us love it too. Although pictures show us people and landscape more vividly than description, there are a few things that description can do better. It can show us a succession of pictures, as in this selection, and it can tell us about sounds and odors and motion, which a picture can only hint at. In this description, bing, bam, and crac are words used to show that a change has taken place in the appearance of the landscape, and a little row of dots to show that a change is still going on. 1. How does the landscape painter begin his morning? 2. Why is it natural for him to think that the white mist is like a canvas? 3. What is meant by nature? 4. Draw "vague masses' of white paper. upon a bit 5. What does the painter see when the sky brightens? What does he not yet see? 6. When the first rays of the sun shine out, what does he see and hear? 7. What makes him imagine that he sees the wings of cupids? 8. As the mist slowly rises, what becomes visible? does the distance fly, or go back? 9. Why 10. When the sun has fully risen, what does the painter see in the foreground? 11. What is the foreground? 12. Why is the light still pale? Why is it said to be "caressing"? 13. What is meant by the background losing itself in the sky? 14. What is there in this picture to show that the landscape is not American? For Study with the Glossary: Cupids, inhaled, divine, infinite, dense. THE RIVER RHONE For all other rivers there is a surface, and an underneath, and a vaguely displeasing idea of the bottom. But the Rhone flows like one lambent jewel; its surface is nowhere, its ethereal self is everywhere, the iridescent rush and 5 translucent strength of it blue to the shore, and radiant to the depth. Fifteen feet thick, of not flowing, but flying water; not water, neither, melted glacier, rather, one should call it; the force of the ice is with it, and the wreathing of the clouds, 10 the gladness of the sky, and the continuance of Time. Waves of clear sea, are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the 15 wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, and never-fading flash, and never-hushing whisper, and, while the sun was up, the 20 ever-answering glow of unearthly aquamarine, ultramarine, violet-blue, gentian-blue, peacock-blue, river-of-paradiseblue, glass of a painted window melted in the sun, and the witch of the Alps flinging the spun tresses of it forever from her snow. 25 The innocent way, too, in which the river used to stop to look into every little corner. Great torrents always seem angry, and great rivers too often sullen; but there is no anger, no disdain, in the Rhone. It seemed as if the moun tain stream was in mere bliss at recovering itself again out of the lake-sleep, and raced because it rejoiced in racing, fain yet to return and stay. There were pieces of wave 5 that danced all day as if Perdita were looking on to learn; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of overlaid ripples, like crystal sand; there were currents that twisted 10 the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill streams, and were looking busily for mills to turn again; there were shoots of stream that had once shot fearfully into the air, and now sprang 15 up again laughing that they had only fallen a foot or two; and in the midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skimming instead of petrels, and the dear old decrepit 20 town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sapphire. JOHN RUSKIN: Præterita. HELPS TO STUDY This description of the Rhone River was written by John Ruskin, a famous Englishman who wrote books on many subjects, and it is found in Præterita, a delightful account of his early life. He is watching the river from one of the banks in the old city of Geneva. He loved both the city and the Alps that look down upon the city; but in this picture |