This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 Excerpt: ...to my statement; but it is just this picture (which stands quite alone amongst figure painters' landscapes) that has led me to my conclusion. Masterly in painting, poetic in feeling, it still remains a transcript of a given section of nature. It can make no claim to composition, and its sky is a non-essential. The happy title, ' Chill October, ' has, however, given the landscape its finishing touch of poetry. I can think of no other picture that has been so enhanced by a title. Having in mind my admiration for Millais as a painter, and my love for him as a man, it may be felt that I have overstepped the lines of good taste in my criticism. But having launched out in an argument in support of a conviction, my only safety is in honestly stating my thoughts. How is it to be explained that figure painters have so seldom attempted to paint landscape, pure and simple? They have combined figure with landscape over and over again, or, I should rather say, introduced landscape as background to figure subjects. But of landscapes, possessing their own interest, and having their own mission, unaided by human interest, --how many can be enumerated from the figure painter's hand? There must be other than commercial reasons for this omission, because the figure painter admires, and loves, nature as much as the landscape painter. No effect, when out of doors, escapes his eye; he is, perhaps, of all individuals to be counted the greatest appreciator of landscape work. Some explanation may be found in the distinct difference of' seeing' between the painters of the two types of art. The figure painter looks more for objects to paint in nature that are near, --the other, for those that are distant. The firstnamed starts his subject with a foreground that is within a few yards of