iancy of execution too manifest.

His over-fondness for brilliant execution I have already noticed. He is
fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced with few
touches, than something very like a tree produced with many. Now, it is
quite allowable that occasionally, and in portions of his picture, a
great artist should indulge himself in this luxury of sketching, yet it
is a perilous luxury; it blunts the feeling and weakens the hand. I have
said enough in various places respecting the virtues of negligence and
of finish, (compare above the chapter on Ideas of Power in Part I. Sect.
II., and Part III. Sect. I. Ch. X. Sec. 4,) and I need only say here,
therefore, that Harding's foliage is never sufficiently finished, and
has at its best the look of a rapid sketch from nature touched upon at
home. In 1843, (I think,) there was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the
Water-Color Society,--the clear green water of a torrent resting among
stones, with copse-like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a
white flower (water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the
trees on the left of this picture were mere broad blots of color dashed
upon the sky and connected by stems. I allow the power necessary to
attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused: by no
such means can any of the higher virtue and impressiveness of foliage be
rendered. In the use of body color for near leaves, his execution is
also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or round dots, which
can be understood only for foliage by their arrangement. This fault was
especially marked in the trees of his picture painted for the Academy
two years ago; they were very nearly shapeless, and could not stand even
in courtesy for walnut leaves, for which judging by the make of the
tree, they must have been intended.

Sec. 30. His bough-drawing and choice of form.

His drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right, and
very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent faults,
the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed to its texture, the
pencil checking itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes, and knots,
instead of following the grand and unbroken tendency of growth: the
second, that however good the arrangement may be as far as regards
merely flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are none of those
composed groups of line which are unfailing in nature. Harding's work is
not g