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which some momentary exigency of handling may demand.

All his large water-colours are painted indoors from the sketches and studies which he has made in the open. To attempt large work out of doors is not, he thinks, judicious because there is some risk of the original impression inspired by the subject being lost during the protracted labour necessary to realise it on any considerable scale. His limitation of the size of his sketches is due to the belief, founded upon experience, that an artist is less liable to wander from the treatment which he decided on at first for the material before him if he does not try to deal with this material in too ambitious a manner. In sketches to be finished at one sitting it is useless to have too much ground to cover – there must always be a certain amount of emptiness in large paintings which are done with excessive rapidity; while, on the other hand, the result of giving several sittings to one study is generally to produce a conflict of ideas in which anything like decisiveness in the interpretation of the subject is apt to disappear. Sir Ernest's method