Identifier: artistsarabsorsk1870blac (find matches)
Title: Artists and Arabs : or, sketching in sunshine
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Blackburn, Henry, 1830-1897
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Sampson Low, Son, and Marston
Contributing Library: Boston Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Boston Public Library

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S. Chap. VI. the distribution of strength, that they would resistat spear-point the approach of a lion, and almostturn a charge of cavalry. If we snap off thepoint of one of the leaves it is a needle, and athread clings to it which we may peel off downthe stem a yard long—needle and thread—nature-pointed, nature-threaded ! Should not artists seethese things ? Should not poets read of them ? Here we are inclined to ask, if the aloe flowersbut once in a hundred years^ how is*it that every-where in Algeria, we see plants of all ages withtheir long flowering stems, some ten or twelvefeet high ? Have they combined this year toflower, or are botanists at fault ? Of the cactus, which also grows in wild pro-fusion, we could say almost as much as of thepalms and aloes, but it might seem like repe-tition. Suffice it, that our studies of their sepa-rate leaves were the minutest and most rewardinglabour we achieved, and that until we had paintedthe cactus and the palmetto growing together, we
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A STUDY HF ALOES, PU Chap. VI. SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 125 had never understood the meaning of ^tropicalvegetation. Many other subjects we obtain at the Bouza-reah; simple perhaps, and apparently not worthrecording, but of immense value to a student ofNature. Is it nothing, for instance, for a painterto have springing up before him in this clearatmosphere, delicate stems of grass, six feet high,falling over in spray of golden leaves against abackground of blue sea; darting upward, sheer,bright, and transparent from a bank covered withthe prickly pear, that looks by contrast, like therock-work from which a fountain springs ? Is itnothing to see amongst all this wondrous over-growth of gigantic leaves, and amongst the tendercreepers and the flowers, the curious knotted andtwisted stem of the vine, trailing serpent-like onthe ground, its surface worn smooth with time ?Is it nothing for an artist to learn practically,what white heat means ? It is well worth coming to North Africa in 126 AR

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