Studio: international art (5.1895)

Ringwood as a Sketching Ground

also, but between is the long thin line of mist fields to Rockford Common. There are hundreds

with the look of a shadowy shallow sea, and the of subjects in this direction; you will not see much

trees for phantom ships. This appearance is well of the river, but you will find a typical Hampshire

worth attempting to put on canvas, though it stream, shallow mostly, with deep pools here and

cannot be called easy to accomplish, and the effect there and a ford or two. There are splendid

is finest at dawn. . studies of colour and an endless variety. Perhaps

Go in another direction up to Ashley Common, a gorgeous field of pea in blossom, almost strangled

beyond the Third Bridge. Here is another with masses of corn marigold, poppies and came-

variety of subject. Gorse and gravel-pits as a mile. A poor soil for the farmer is a rich one

strong foreground with birches and oaks. Below for the artist. Barley-fields and clover meadows,

are fields which by the river are packed with broken by lines of indistinct green, where the young

iris, and with " withy " beds close to where the turnip crop shows through on a rich purple arable

main road, a bright orange streak, winds to the land softened into grey where the light catches on

town over the old brick bridge under the aspen the upturned sods, with a long bank of poppies on

poplars, the town itself a band of reddish grey the further side and charlock seen beyond. In

closed in by the heights of the Forest. For " life," the background a ridge of wooded hills dotted

perhaps some men digging gravel, a fisherman drying with farms and cottages, the gaps along the top

his nets, and maybe a few figures leaning over the showing in straight lines of russet where the

parapet of the bridge. You can get good studies heathery ground on the edge of the New Forest

of bait-catchers with their nets, or a man with a appears. Further on still is the common land of

punt full of eel-pots or reed-cutters sawing the the Forest itself, with heather and gorse to your

" spears " from either bank, and there is always heart's content and miles upon miles of distance,
plenty of cattle about, cows and Forest ponies Then, quite in the opposite direction, there are

chiefly. woods on the road to Christchurch through Heme,

Again, take the road past the church. Half a or in Somerley Park, dense with towering pines

mile on you will come to a footpath across the and bracken, as gloomy as you please, while dotted

UNDER THE ASPEN POPLARS, RINGWOOD BY E- W' CHARLTON

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