The Countryside

Abstract

Mr. Juliart, you think that all it takes to be a landscape artist is to throw a few trees here and there, terrace the land, put up a mountain, show some streaming water which is blocked by some boulders, extend a field as far as the eye can see, light it up with the sun and the moon, draw a pasture and place some animals within the pasture? Do you not think that these trees should also be strongly felt; that there is a certain poetry in imagining them, according to the subject matter, lithesome and elegant, or broken and cracked, hanging, hideous; whereas here they are pressed together and dense, it is important that they be majestic and beautiful, as opposed to few and separate, air and light must circulate between their branches and trunks and that their layering should be warmly painted; that these waters, by imitating the limpidity of natural flowing, must show me as through a mirror, the almost image of the surrounding scene in which the light must tremble on their surface; and that they must foam and whiten when they encounter an obstacle; that one must know how to create this foam; provide the mountains an imposing view; to open them up by suspending the craggy summit above my head and dig caves, to strip them in one place and cover them with moss in another, prick its summit with bushes and practice poetic license, which through them reminds me of the ravages of time, the vagaries of things and the age of the world.