ed
ground, the absence of detail allowing greater force to the distant
groups.

In the Marine subject, especially with the sea running toward us, long
lines are created across the foreground, but with respect to these, as may
be noted in nature, there is a breaking and interlacing of lines in the
wave form so that the succession of such accents may lead tangentially
_from_ the direction of the wave. A succession of horizontal lines is
however the character of the marine subject. When the eye is stopped by
these it has found the subject. Only through the sky or by confronting
these forms at an angle can the force of the horizontals be broken.
Successful marines with the camera's lens pointed squarely at the sea have
been produced, but the best of them make use of the modifying lines of the
surf, or oppositional lines or gradations in the sky.

In a large canvas by Alexander Harrison, its subject a group of bathers on
the shore, one single line, the farthest reach of the sea, proves an
artist's estimate of the leading line. On it the complete union of figures
and ocean depended. Its presence there was simple nature, its strong
enforcement the touch of art.

The eye's willingness to follow long lines may however become dangerous in
leading away from the subject and out of the picture. What student cannot
show studies (done in his earliest period) of an interesting fence or
stone wall, blocking up his foreground and leading the eye out of the
picture? It is possible to so cleverly treat a stone wall that it would
serve us as an elevation from which to get a good jump into the picture.
Here careful painting with the intent of putting the foreground out of
focus, could perhaps land the eye well over the obstruction, and if so,
our consideration of the picture begins beyond this point. If the
observer could take such a barrier as easily as a cross country
steeple-chaser his fences and stone walls, there would be no objection,
but when the artist forces his guest to climb!--he is unreasonable. For
two years a prominent American landscape painter had constantly on his
easel a very powerful composition. The foreplane of trees, with branches
which interlaced at the top, made, with the addition of a stone wall
below, an encasement for the picture proper, which lay beyond. The lower
line, i.e., the stone wall, was in constant process of change, obliterated
by shadow or despoiled by natural dilapidation, sometimes vine-gro