Stranica 85 [85]
-REFLEXIONS IN RIPPLED WATER 47
is darkest, and vzce versá. A still greater disturbance
will leave only vague streaks from dark and light
spaces in the sky above. For even when water is much
ruffled there generally remain—long after all definite
image is lost—broad bands of light on the surface
radiating from the eye towards those parts of the
sky which are most luminous. (See Fig. 19, page 58.)
This is an important principle in marine painting.
The sea, however rough, hardly ever shows the same
tone or colour in all directions. Within the limits of
a picture it generally varies somewhat, though that
part of the sky which gives rise to the difference of
tone may be far above the usual limits of the field
of vision. By watching on sunny days the display
of light under the sun—for at midday it is often too
wide to be called a “streak”’ of light—we get a hint as
to the way in which the water is affected by different
regions of the sky. We saw on page 38 that witha
fair movement of the water this display persists from
the time of the sun’s position at a high altitude—no
definite limit can of course be named—until it is only
a few degrees above the horizon, thus showing how
great a depth of sky affects every part of the rippled
water. But we found that the width of the dazzling
surface beneath the sun depended not only upon the
sun’s altitude but also upon the state of the water,
that, as the sun approached the horizon, the golden
pathway narrowed and finally disappeared, though
lasting longer in smooth than in rough water. So, in
a picture, it would be erroneous to make the rippled
abruptly with the top of the bluff and takes no account of the
sloping base or talus below.