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-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.
