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of the northern horison, I can equally prefer, here, stronger green and red colors, South East, in middle sky and distance.
[[underlined]] Contrasting color patterns [[/underlined]] are pictorial detail, a dull green lawn maeandered by violettish paths, a green hill intersected by bluish tree trunks, a greenish riverbank lined with orangebrown dry leaves, blue water patterned with darker or white swirls or reflexes, a rose horizon traversed by cool blue clouds [[image - illustrative drawing: four horizontal lines]] (rose+w; io+w.) seen one evening North. E.t.c. are such effects and require, beyond giving form and relief to them, no detail as grass, leaves etc whatever since [[underlined]] the decorative is the detail of the pictorial [[/underlined]], while actual petty detail is merely photografic. - Caffins book "how to study paintings" quite well explained for the layman, ignoring the more critical pictorial points. Velasquez' Las Meninas setting the figures at bottom of high air space: So many since, Rembrandt, Whistler. Also the Dutch Landscapists and sea painters put the horizon at 1/6th or less down. [[image - 2 sketches of low-set figures]] Hence the top part, usually gloomy or misty, is a principal means of expression. It would be absurd to so de-press a portrait.
[[underlined]] We get less out of reality [[/underlined]] and nature for a painting than we carry into both, into nature with our mind an eye, into canvas with the brush. I want to [[underlined]] see [[/underlined]], by the Passaic river, what I need to make the drawing pictorial, but I can only observe there actual facts, which help to characterise, or give truth to the drawing or colors. Only the imagination

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