■W'SU] JUFIE- HANDBOOK OF ART CULTURE. 1. Botany of 13th Century. (Apple-tree and Cyclamen.) ART CULTURE: A HAND-BOOK OF ART TECHNICALITIES AND CRITICISMS, SELECTED FKOIX THE WOKKS OF JOHN RUSKIN, -AND ARRANGED AND SUPPLEMENTED BX EE Y. W. H. PL ATT, FOE, THE USE OF SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES; TOGETHER WITH A NEW GLOSSARY OF ART TERM'S, AND AN ALPHA- BETICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF ARTISTS. NEW YORK: JOHN WILEY & SON, 15 ASTOR PLACE. 1*873. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, By JOHN WILEY & SON, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. Chas. E. Wilbour, Printer and Bookbinder, 205-213 East 12 th St., NEW YORK, PREFACE. This Handbook of Art-Laws is an expansion of system- atized notes of Kuskin's voluminous criticisms on art, cited for parallel reading, by the Editor of this book, to his Art- Lecture classes. It is now published with the hope that the student may be led by its help, as a grammar of art principles and technicalities, to a more thorough acquaint- ance with Ruskin's original, eloquent, and exhaustive works. Sustained by the vast wealth accumulated by commerce and speculative enterprises, art and foreign travel have become prominent and very general enjoyments of our times ; and because uninformed thousands annually rush through Europe, utterly unable to appreciate the wonder- ful creations of a past civilization everywhere around them, Art-Culture has been made as important, in a senior course of study, and as a preparation for intelligent travel, as a knowledge of history and modern languages. To meet this increasing educational necessity, this volume has been prepared as a text-book of highest authority. CONTENTS OF THE ANALYSIS. INTRODUCTION. PAINTING. PART I. — Subject Art. Page Chapter I. — The Value of Art 1 " II— Schools of Art 4 " III. — Art Language, Thought, and Laws 25 ^ " IV.— Lines 30 " V. — Composition... 49 " VI.— Tone 104 " VII.— Light 120 " VIII.— Color 146 " IX. — Chiaroscuro 194 PART II. —Landscape Art. Chapter I. — Perspective 207 " II. — Classes of Landscape...... 223 " III.— The Motive of Landscape 229 " IV. — Sketching from Nature 243 11 V. — Perfectness of Sketching 286 " VI.— Foregrounds 302 " VII.— Backgrounds 322 " VIII.— Distance and Outline 336 " IX. — Distance and the Focus of the Eye 338 ' ' X. — Distance and the Power of the Eye 345 " XI. — Distance from Spectator affecting Colour of Picture 361 Sculpture SCULPTURE. 367 vi CONTENTS. ARCHITECTURE . Page Chapter I. — History of Architecture 407 " II.— Value of the Laws of Architecture 410 " III.— Schools of Architecture 412 " IV.— Gothic Architecture 418 " V.— Composition 428 ANALYSIS OF THE CONTENTS. Page Preface iii Contents of the Analysis v Analysis of the Contents vii INTRODUCTION. 1. Kightness of work, xix 2. Faults of a picture xix 3. Work represents the worker xx 4. Distinction between art and manufacture xxi 5. Art an infection or an education xxi 6. Moral character the foundation of art xxii 7. Art gifts the result of the morality of generations xxii 8. Lovely art springs from virtue xxiii 9. 10. Turner's love of nature xxiv PAINTING. Part I.— Subject Art. CHAPTER I. — Value of Art, ■1. Art — its essential value 1 2. Art related to civilization 1 CHAPTER II.— Schools of Art. 1. The Athenian, Florentine, and Venetian 4 2. Errors of art schools 7.. 6 3. Confusion of art schools 8 4. Eclectic school fails to correct 11 5. Rank of art schools : a. From a love of the beautiful 17 b. From character of subject 18 G. Corruption of art schools 19 7. The Great Masters of the schools 20 viii CONTENTS. Page CHAPTER III. — Art Language, Thought, and Laws. 1. Art language is technicality 25 2. Art thought is feeling 26 3. Difficulty in fixing limit 26 4. Difference between decorative and expressive language 27 5. Instance in the Dutch and early Italian schools . 28 6. Art laws and art intuitions 29 CHAPTER IV.— Lines. 1. Abstract beauty of lines 30 2. Curved lines unequal in beauty 31 3. Law of curvatures 33 4. Law of curvatures . 34 5. Law of curvatures 34 6. Law of curvatures 35 7. Beauty of curvature decided by experience 36 8. Reason of delightfulness of curves 36 9. Superiority of curves over right lines 37 10. Nature's mode of producing curves 38 11. Nature's mode of producing curves 39 12. Nature's mode of producing curves 39 13. Nature's mode of producing curves 39 14. Nature varies her curves infinitely 40 15. Illustrations in the ivy leaf 40 16. Contrasts and unity of curves . 41 17. Curves in mouldings and traceries 42 18. Ornaments to imitate nature 44 CHAPTER V. — Composition. 1. Law of Principality 49 2. Law of Repetition 52 3. Law of Continuity 55 4. Law of Curvature 59 5. Law of Radiation 65 6. Law of Contrast 77 7. Law of Interchange 83 8. Law of Consistency — breadth 84 9. Law of Harmony 86 10. Law of Help 98 11. Law of Grouping 99 I. Principal Laws 99 CONTENTS. ix Page II. Number of Figures 100 III. Principal and subordinate groups 101 IV. Attitude of Figures 101 V. Form of Group 101 1 . Angular : a. Diagonal ; b. Pyramidal ; c. Diamond 102 2. Circular 102 3. Horizontal 103 CHAPTEK VI.— Tone. 1. Meanings of the word " Tone." — First, the right relation of ob- jects in shadow to the principal light 104 2. Secondly, the quality of colour by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it 104 3. Difference between tone and aerial perspective 105 4. Middle tints of old masters perfect 105 5. Their middle tints and darkness 106 6. General falsehood of such a system 107 7. Turner's principle 108 8. N. Poussin's "Phocion" 109 9. Turner's "Mercury and Argus " 109 10. The "Datur Hora Quieti" 110 11. The second sense of the word " Tone " Ill 12. Difference between Turner's drawings and paintings Ill 13. Not owing to want of power over 'materials Ill 14. Two distinct qualities of light 112 15. Falsehoods by Titian in light 113 16. Turner refuses such means 114 17. But gains in essential truth by the sacrifice 114 18. The second quality of light 115 19. The solecisms of Cuyp 116 20. Turner perfect in the whole — not so much in parts 117 21. Turner's power in uniting a number of tones 118 22. Eecapitulation 119 CHAPTER Nil.— Light. V. Nature's light unapproachable 120 2. White paper appears darker than blue sky 121 3. Reason for this 122 4. The white of the clouds compared with the paper and the blue of the sky 123 X CONTENTS. Page 5. Heaven-light and earth-darkness compared 123 6. How this should be studied 124 7. Earth is bright when seen right 125 8. The colours of the earth 126 9. The colour of landscape and white paper compared 127 10. The colour of shadows 127 11. True scales of contrasted light and shade. — Nature, Rembrandt, Turner, and Veronese's light 129 12. These as to contrasts of colour 130 13. These and Da Vinci compared 131 14. The wet ink test — Veronese's principle 132 15. The carmine spot test 133 16. The Venetian rule of colour 134 17. Some truths must be chosen and represented, others must be excluded 135 18. The masters who choose light — the masters who choose colour. 135 19. Advantages of those who choose colour over the others 136 20. First advantage, illustrated by drapery by Da Vinci in the Louvre 137 21. This method peculiar to the Roman and Florentine schools. . . . 138 22. How to study colour and shade 139 23. The third advantage of the colourists 140 24. The sanctity of colour revealed 142 CHAPTER VIII.— Colour. I. Importance of colour 146 II. Colour-science 151 A. — Colours classified. B. — Colours modified. C. — Colours characterized. D. — Colours harmonized. 1. Harmony of Analogy 151 2. Harmony of Contrasts t 435 III. Colour- Art 152 1. Truth of colouring 152 2. Ideality of colouring 152 3. Force of colouring 153 4. Balance of colour , 153 5. Gradation of colour 154 a. Gradation in nature 154 b. How can this gradation be effected ? 155 c. Colours change in gradation 156 CONTENTS. Xi Page d. Three processes of gradation 157 A. — Mixing while colours are wet 157 B. — Laying one colour over another 158 C. — Breaking one colour over another 160 6. Tone of colour 162 First, preciousness of white 162 Secondly, conspicuousness of black 162 Black as used by Velasquez 163 Thirdly, accordant and discordant colours 164 Fourthly, colour and form 165 Fifthly, colour and distance 166 IV. Colourists 168 1. Colourists as to shadows 168 2. Colourists as to light 169 V. Turner's truth of colour 171 1. The colour of G. Poussin's " La Riccia " 171 2. As compared with the actual scene 171 3. Turner is himself inferior in brilliancy to nature 173 4. Impossible colours of Salvator, Titian 174 5. Poussin, Claude 175 6. Turners translation of colour 177 7. Nature's brilliancy often unapproachable 178 8. Observers often incredulous as to this 179 9. Colour of the Napoleon 181 10. Necessary discrepancy between the attainable bril- liancy of colour and light 182 11. Less in Turner than in other colourists 182 12. Its great extent in a landscape attributed to Rubens.. 183 13. Turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid colour 184 14. The basis of grey, under all his vivid hues 186 15. The variety and fulness even of his most simple tones 186 16. Following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature 187 17. His dislike of purple, and fondness for the opposition of yellow. Nature in this respect 188 18. His early works false in colour 189 19. His drawings invariably perfect 190 20. The subjection of his system of colour to that of chiaroscuro 190 CHAPTER IX.— Chiaroscuro. 1. No particular effects of light to be examined 194 Xii CONTENTS. Page 2. Distinctness of shadows chief means of expressing vividness of light 195 3. Total absence of such distinctness in the works of the Italian school 196 4. And partial absence in that of the Dutch 196 5. Turner's perfection in this respect 197 6. The effect of his shadows upon the light 199 7. The distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and modern schools 199 8. Second great principle of chiaroscuro. Both high light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity, and only in points.. 201 9. Writers on art disagree as to this 202 10. And consequent misguiding of the student 202 11. The great value of a simple chiaroscuro 203 12. The sharp separation of Nature's lights from her middle tint . . 204 13. The truth of Turner 205 Part II.— Landscape Art. CHAPTER I.— Perspective. 1. Great painters do not study it as a science 207 2. First principles of perspective 209 3. Placing of the sight-point, &c 213 a. The Sight-point 213 b, The Sight-line 214 G. The Station -line. . 214 d. The Station-point 215 4. The general placing and scale of the picture 219 CHAPTER II.— Glasses of Landscape. 1. Heroic, Classical, Pastoral, Contemplative. 223 2. Spurious landscapes 224 3. Relation of figures _and landscape 225 4. Emotion essential to all pictures 225 5. Two opposite errors , 227 CHAPTER III. — The Motive of Landscape. 1. All great compositions have a leading emotional purpose 229 2. The motive of the " Rietz, near Saumur " 229 3. The time of this picture 230 4. Horizontal and curved lines express its motive 230 CONTENTS. Xiii Page 5. Radiating lines and motive 232 6. Buildings and the motive , 232 7. The people and the motive 233 8. The "Fall of Schaffhausen " analyzed 233 9. Action and the motive 234 10. Composition g-rows out of the motive 234 11. Turner's use of details 236 12. The form and group — incidental remarks 236 13. Group of leaves , 237 14. All details must harmonize 238 15. Nothing should be in a picture that does not help its purpose. . 240 CHAPTER IV '.—Sketching from Nature. 1. Lines of foliage 243 2. Lines of trees and boughs, &c 244 3. Lines indicative of action in other things 248 4. Light and shade drawing 250 5. Tinted drawings 254 6. Four different ways of working from nature 256 7. Choice of subject , 260 8. Laws of leaf and tree drawing 265 First, good and bad artists distinguished by observing organic law 269 Secondly, to show individuality in leaves, clouds, &c, marks the great master 269 Lastly, the mystery of indistinctness 273 9. Modes of representing water 277 a. Reflections or pictures in the water 277 b. Lines of disturbance 278 c. Shadows on or beneath the water 279 d. Colour of water and objects reflected 281 10. Clouds 282 CHAPTER V. — Perfectness of Sketcliing. 1. The reserve or limit of a sketch 286 2. Perfect sketching is thorough but not complete 286 3. Sketching a means, not an end 287 4. Classes of sketches of true painters. — Experimental 288 5. Determinant 288 6. Commemorative 289 xiv CONTENTS. Page 7. Sketches as memorandum 289 8. Turner's habit 291 9. His liberty with the topography of Lausanne as to its castle . . 293 10. The same as to the spires , 293 11. The same as to neighbouring hills 293 12. The same as to trees, &c 294 13. How he notes a sandstone cliff , . . . . 294 14. The rapidity of his work . . 295 15. The certainty of his sketch 295 16. Have a purpose before sketching 295 17. Colour sketches 296 18. This the Venetian way 297 19. Amount of ground colours not important to a great painter . . . 298 20. The whole picture must be imagined before sketched 299 21. The mind must be calm 300 22. High qualities only form a high artist 301 23. No false person can paint 301 CHAPTER VI. — Foregrounds. A. Foregrounds of rock and soil 302 1. Rocks drawn by the ancients 302 2. Salvator's limestone foregrounds 302 3. Salvator's acute angles 303 4. Light and shade of rocks in nature 304 5. Salvator confused both 305 6. Ancients expressed no fissure or splintering 305 7. Instances in particular pictures 305 8. Stanfield's works 306 9. Opposed to Salvator's. . . 307 10. The rocks of Harding 307 11. The ancient foregrounds of loose soil 308 12. Loose soil foregrounds may be beautiful 308 13. The ground of Teniers 309 14. Importance of these minor points 310 15. Observance of them denotes the master 311 16. Ground of Cuyp 311 17. Ground of Claude 312 18. Weakness of Claude 313 19. Compared with Turner. 313 20. Turner's foreground 314 21. Geological structure of his rocks 315 22. Their curved surfaces and fractured edges 315 CONTENTS. XV Paye 23. Their perfect unity 310 24. Their drawing tells their geological history 310 '25. The foreground of Llanthony 316 26» Turner's drawing of weathered stones 317 27. Turners complicated foreground 318 28. And of loose soil 319 29. The ideal foregrounds of the Academy ,. 319 30. The lesson to be derived from all 320 B. The botanical foregrounds of the ancients 320 CHAPTER VII.— Backgrounds. 1. Conventional or mediasval 322 2. Imitative backgrounds , 323 3. Light backgrounds 330 4. Backgrounds of historical painters 335 CHAPTER VIII.— Distance, 1. Distance and outline 336 CHAPTER IX. Distance and Indistinctness as dependent on the focus of the eye. 1. Distance attained by drawing, not hue 338 2. Objects at different distances not seen at once 339 3. Especially such as are both comparatively near 339 4. Foreground or distance must be sacrificed 340 5. Ancient masters failing in this, failed in distance 341 6. Modern artists succeeded in this 341 7. EspeciaUy Turner 343 8. Turner's figure drawing justified 343 CHAPTER X. Distance and Indistinctness as dependent on the power of the eye. 1. Objects retiring from the eye indistinct 345 2. This causes confusion but not annihilation of details 345 3. Instances in various objects .' 346 4. Nature never vacant and never distinct 347 5. The old masters either distinct or vacant 348 6. Instances from Nicholas Poussin 348 7. From Claude 349 8. And Caspar Poussin 350 xvi CONTENTS. Page 9. Landscape painting to be full and finished 351 10. Breadth is not vacancy 352 11. Turner's fulness and mystery 353 12. Further illustrations in architectural drawing \ . . . 354 13. In near objects as well as distances 355 14. Vacancy and falsehood of Canaletto 356 15. Still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds 356 16. Space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and vacancy. 357 17. Swift execution best secures perfection of details 358 18. Finish more necessary to landscape than to historical subjects.. 358 19. Recapitulation 359 CHAPTER XI. Distance and the colour of a painting from its position. 1. Colours soft at a distance 361 2. Colour intensified by distance „ 362 3. Every picture has its own necessities of distance 363 SCULPTURE. 1. Definition 367 2. Sculpture and National Life 367 3. Essentia] Principles of Sculpture .• 368 a. The Production of Bossiness j b. Abstract Beauty of Surface ) " ' 4. The Instincts of Sculpture 369 a. The Instinct of Mimicry. 369 b. The Instinct of Idolatry 369 c. The Instinct of Discipline 370 5. Composition of Greek Sculpture 372 a. Likeness 372 b. Rightness 372 c. Masses 373 d. Drapery 374 e. Accessories inadmissible 377 f Grouping 377 g. Lines 378 CONTENTS. XVII Page 1. Lines of Motive 378 2. Lines of Truth 378 3. Lines of Beauty and Grace 379 4. Lines of Repose 380 7i. Symmetry and Proportion 384 i. Unity 387 /. Variety 388 h. Harmony 389 I. Exaggeration 389 m. Anatomy 390 n. Bas-relief 391 Schools of Sculpture - 393 1. The Greek Yenus and the Italian Venus , 396 2. Greek Sculpture and Florentine Sculpture 398 3. No Passion or Personal Character in Greek Art , ) > 399 Otherwise in Florentine Art ) 4. Greek Art with respect to the World 401 a. It is the Root of all Simplicity 401 b. Of all Complexity 402 5. Greeks the origin of all broad, mighty, calm concep- tion, and also of all that is delicate and tremulous . . 403 AKCHITECTUEE. CHAPTER I. The General History of Architecture 407 CHAPTER IL The Value of the Laws of Architecture 410 CHAPTER III. The Schools of Architecture .• 412 A. Greek : Lintel Architecture 413 1. The Doric ' 414 2. The Ionic 414 3. The Corinthian 414 4. The Composite 414. 5. The Tuscan 415 xviii CONTENTS. Page B. Romanesque: Round Arch Architecture 415 1. The Bizantine changed to Arabian G-othic 415 2. The Lombardic changed to Teutonic Gothic 415 C. Gothic : Architecture of the Gable 415 1. General Distinctions 415 2. Tests of Good Gothic 418 First, Steep Gable 418 Second, Gables over principal Doors and Windows. . . 418 Third, Cusped Arches and Foliated Apertures 418 Fourth, Arches carried on true Shafts and Capitals . . 419 3. Gothic flexibility and variety of Gothic Schools 419 4. Aspiration as a law of Gothic Schools 420 1. Towers 421 2. Campaniles . . . 423 3. Spires 424 CHAPTER IY. Composition 428 1. Law of Principality . . 428 2. Law of Proportion 429 a. No Proportion between equal things 429 b. Must be three Terms 429 c. Proportion Vertical Division _ , 430 3. Law of Masses or Breadth 431 4. Laws of Harmonies 433 General Principle of Contrast 433 Seven Rules of Harmony of Contrast and Analogy 437 Contrast or Form for the Mountain Villa 440 Analogy or Assimilation of Form with Landscape 443 Colour of Building and Landscape 448 A new Glossary of Art Terms 451 An Alphabetical and Chronological List of Artists, with critical references 471 INTRODUCTION. In different places of my writings, and through many years of endeavour to define the laws of art, I have insisted on rightness in work, and on its connection with virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that the impression left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, it was ever impress- ed at all — has been confused and uncertain. In begin- ning the series of my corrected works, I wish this principle (in my own mind the foundation of every other) to be made plain, if nothing else is : and will try, therefore, to make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it into un- mistakeable words. And, first, here is a very simple state- ment of it, given lately in a lecture on the Architecture of the Yalley of the_Somme, which will be better read in this place than in its incidental connection with my ac- count of the porches of Abbeville. 2. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the ex- pression, " by what faults " this Gothic architecture fell. We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the merits of a piece of stone ? The faults of a work of art are the faults of its work- man, and its virtues his virtues. Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly ; a virtuous one, beautifully ; and a viciou*3 one, basely. If XX INTRODUCTION. stone work is well put together, it means that a thought- ful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy of jDleasure ; if too little, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell these most precious of all legends, — pictures and build- ings,— you may read the characters of men, and of na- tions, in their art, as in a mirror ; — nay, as in a micro- scope, and magnified a hundredfold ; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as under a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent him- self to you, every other way ; but he cannot in his work : there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees, — all that he can do, — his imagina- tion, his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; if a honey- comb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble. And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it. 3. You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, whether you theoretically admit the principle or not. Take that floral gable ; * you don't suppose the man who built &tonehenge could have built that, or that the man who built that, would have built Stonehenge % Do you * The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west end of Rouen Cathedral, pierced into a transparent web of tracery, and en- riched with a border T)f " twisted eglantine." INTRODUCTION. xxi think an old Roman would have liked such a piece of filigree work \ or that Michael Angelo would have spent his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out ? You will find in the end, that no man coidd have done it but exactly the man who did it ; and by looking close at it, you may, if you know your letters, read precisely the man- ner of man he was. 4. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave reason. Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most necessary to be known, that, while manufacture is the work of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit of man ; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it : and by what- ever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, the same vice or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That which is born of evil begets evil ; and that which is born of valour and honour, teaches valour and honour. All art is either infection or education. It must be one or other of these. 5. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one of which understanding is the most precious, and denial the most deadly. It is written in the history of all great nations ; it is the one sentence always inscribed on the steps of their thrones ; the one concordant voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful animal race, with intense energy and im- agination. They live lives of hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline : they become fierce and irresistible soldiers ; the nation is always its own army, and their king, or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, or Barbarossa, or Coeur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, or Frederick the Great : — Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Venetian, — that is in- violable law for them all ; their king must be their first soldier, or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, xxii INTRODUCTION. after their great military period, comes the domestic period ; in which, without betraying the discipline of war, they add to their great soldiership the delights and posses- sions of a delicate and tender home-life : and then, for all nations, is the time of their perfect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their national ideal of charac- ter, developed by the finished care of the occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was, or can be : palpably the history of it, — unmistakeably, — written on the forehead of it in letters of light, — in tongues of fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of crime. But always, hitherto, after the great period, has followed the days of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for pleasure only. And all has so ended. 6. The foundation of art is in moral character. Of course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two differ- ent things ; a good man is not necessarily a painter, nor does an eye for colour necessarily imply an honest mind. But great art implies the union of both powers : it is the expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul — and a right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however dex- terous. 7. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only the result of the moral character of generations. A bad woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, nervous power, and vigour and harmony of invention, at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct, renders, after a certain number of generations, human art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little INTRODUCTION. xxiii m a one ; and persistent vicious living and following of plea- sure render, after a certain number of generations, all art impossible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of the laws of nature ; and mistake, in a nation, the reward of the virtue of its sires for the issue of its own sins. The time of their visitation will come, and that inevitably ; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. And for the indi- vidual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I . said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height by the schools of a great race of men ; and it is still but a tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul ; and the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on a man, or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may not see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn how to look, and the folds themselves will become transparent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of light, or as a winding-sheet. 8. Then farther, observe, I have said (and you will find it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is rooted in virtue, so it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic in its own nature. It is often didactic also in actually ex- pressed thought, as Giotto's, Michael Angelo's, Durer's, and hundreds more ; but that is not its special function, — it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful ; but beautiful with haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of myths that can be read only with the heart. For instance, at this moment there is open beside me as I write, a page of Persian manuscript, wrought with wreathed azure and gold, and soft green, and violet, and ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It is wrought to delight the eyes only; and does delight them ; and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his xxiv INTRODUCTION. head ; but not much more. It is not didactic art, but its author was happy : and it will do the good, and the harm, that mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an early Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken about two miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont Blanc in the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil of Athena's weaving : a faint light of morning, peaceful ex- ceedingly, and almost colourless, shed from behind the Yoirons, increases into soft amber along the slope oi the Saleve, and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud that rests upon the grass, but rises, high and tower-like, into the zenith of dawn above. 9. There is not as much colour in that low amber light upon the hill-side as there is in the palest dead leaf. The lake is not blue, but gray in mist, passing into deep shadow beneath the Yoirons' pines ; a few dark clusters of leaves, a single white flower — scarcely seen — are all the gladness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby spots of the eastern manuscript would give colour enough for all the red that is in Turner's entire drawing. For the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not so much in all those lines of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made him take plea- sure in the low colour that is only like the brown of a dead leaf? in the cold gray of dawn — in the one white flower among the rocks — in these — and no more than these? 10. He took pleasure in them because he had been bred among English fields and hills ; because the gentleness of a great race Avas in his heart, and its powers of thought in his brain ; because he knew the stories of the Alps, and of the cities at their feet ; because he had read the Homeric legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and the givers of dew to the fields ; because he knew the faces INTRODUCTION. XXV of the crags, and the imagery of the passionate mountains, as a man knows the face of his friend ; because he had in him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and death, which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days of its first sea kings ; and also the compassion and the joy that are woven into the innermost fabric of every great imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have lived by the Christian faith with any courage or truth. And the picture contains also, for us, just this which its maker had in him to give ; and can convey it to us, just so far as we are of the temper in which it must be received. It is didactic if we are worthy to be taught, no otherwise. The pure heart, it will make more pure ; the thoughtful, more thoughtful. It has in it no words for the reckless or the base. 11. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly of my life, — and both have been many and great, — that does not rise up against me, and take away my joy, and shorten my power of possession, of sight, of understanding. And every past effort of my life, every gleam of rightness or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this art, and its vision. So far-as I can rejoice in, or interpret either, my power is owing to what of right there is in me. I dare to say it, that, because through all my life I have desired good, and not evil ; because I have been kind to many ; have wished to be kind to all ; have wilfully injur- ed none ; and because I have loved much, and not selfish- ly ; therefore the morning light is yet visible to me on those hills, and you, who read, may trust my thought and word in such work as I have to do for you ; and you will be glad afterwards that you have trusted them. 12. Yet remember, — I repeat it again and yet again, — that I may for once, if possible, make this thing assuredly clear : — the inherited art-gift must be there, as well as the life, in some poor measure, or rescued fragment, right. Queen of Air, Chap. iiL ART CULTURE. PAET I. PAINTING. PAINTING. I.— Subject Aet. CHAPTEE I. VALUE OE AET. 1. That art is valuable or otherwise, only as it ex- presses the personality, activity, and living perception of a great human soul. If it have not this, it is worthless. "Worthless, I mean, as art ; it may be precious in some other way, but, as art, it is nugatory. Once let this be well understood among us, and magnificent consequences will soon follow. Let me repeat it in other terms, so that I may not be misunderstood. All art is great, and good, and true, only so far as it is distinctively the work of manhood in its entire and highest sense ; that is to say, not the work of limbs and fingers, but of the soul, aided, according to her necessities, by the inferior powers ; and therefore distinguished in essence from all products of those inferior powers unhelped by the soul. In this high sense neither Photography nor Topography is art. All art as mere art is a low and common thing, and what we indeed respect is not art at all, but instinct or inspiration expressed by the help of art. 3 S. V. 188. 2. Historically, great success in art is apparently con- nected with subsequent national degradation. You find, in the first place, that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed 2 VALUE OF ART. none : you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede ; the Athenian by the Spartan ; the Greek by the Roman ; the Roman by the Goth ; the Burgundian by the Switzer : but you find beyond this, — that even where no attack by any external power has accelerated the catastrophe of the state, the period in which any given people reach their highest power in art is precisely that in which they appear to sign the warrant of their own ruin ; and, that from the moment in which a perfect statue appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry and courage seemed to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a sculpturesque paralysis, or a many-coloured corruption. But even this is not all. As art seems thus, in its deli- cate form, to be one of the chief promoters of indolence and sensuality, — so I need hardly remind you, it hitherto has appeared only in energetic manifestation when it was in the service of superstition. The four greatest manifes- tations of human intellect which founded the four princi- pal kingdoms of art, Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Italian, were developed by the strong excitement of active superstition in the worship of Osiris, Belus, Minerva, and the Queen of Heaven. Therefore, to speak briefly, it may appear very difficult to show that art has ever yet existed in a consistent and thoroughly energetic school, unless it was engaged in the propagation of falsehood, or the en- couragement of vice. And finally, while art has always thus shown itself ac- tive in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly directed to the exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but races who live by depreciation and slaughter nearly always bestow ex- quisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear. Queen of Air, Lect. 1. VAI4JE OF AET. 3 Does it not seem then, on all these counts, more than questionable whether art-culture promises any good % Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the delight of the workman is in what he does and produces, in- stead of what he interprets or exhibits, — there art has an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, and it issues, if long pursued, in the destruction of both in- tellectual power and moral principle / whereas art, de- voted humbly and self -forgetfully to the clear statement on record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and salvation. Queen of Air, Lect. 1. Now, when you are once well assured of this, you may logically infer that when Art is occupied in the function in which she is serviceable, she will herself be strength- ened by the service ; but when distorted to the deception or degradation of mankind, she will be herself equally misled and degraded. Good art, which interprets, rather than imitates nature, always exalts. In a word, good art always consists of two things : First, the observation of fact ; secondly, the manifesting of human design and authority in the way that fact is told. Great and good art must unite the two; it cannot exist for a moment but in their unity ; it consists of the two as essentially as water consists of oxygen and hydrogen, or marble of lime and carbonic acid. Queen of Air, Lect. 1. CHAPTEE II. SCHOOLS OF AET. I. There have only yet appeared in the world three schools of perfect art, — schools, that is to say, that did their work as well as it seems possible to do it. These are the Athenian, Florentine, and Venetian. 1. The Athenian proposed to itself the perfect repre- sentation of the form of the human body. It strove to do that as well as it could ; it did that as well as it can be done; and all its greatness was founded upon and in- volved in that single and honest effort. 2. The Florentine school proposed to itself the perfect expression of human emotion — the showing of the effects of passion in the human face and gesture. I call this the Florentine school, because whether you take Raphael for the culminating master of expressional art in Italy, or Leo- i nardo, or Michael Angelo, you will find that the whole energy of the national effort which produced those masters had its root in Florence ; not at Urbino or Milan. I say3 then, this Florentine or leading Italian school proposed to itself human expression for its aim in natural truth; it strove to do that as well as it could — did it as well as it can be done — and all its greatness is rooted in that single and honest effort. 3. Thirdly, The Verietian school proposed the represen- tation of the effect of colour and shade on all tilings, chiefly on the human form. It tried to do that as well as it could — did it as well as it can be done — and all its greatness is founded on that single and honest effort. For illustration: There's the (so-called) "Theseus" of SCHOOLS OF ART. 5 the Elgin marbles. That represents the whole end and aim of the Athenian school — the natural form of the hu- man body. All their conventional architecture — their graceful shaping and painting of pottery — whatsoever other art they practised — was dependent for its greatness on this sheet-anchor of central aim : true shape of living man. Then take for your type of the Italian school, Raphael's "Disputa del Sacramento;" that will be an accepted type by everybody, and will involve no possibly questionable points : the Germans will admit it ; the English Academi- cians will admit it ; and the English Purists and Pre-Ra- phaelites will admit it. Well, there you have the truth of human expression proposed as an aim. That is the way people look when they feel this or that — when they have this or that other mental character: are they devotional, thoughtful, affectionate, indignant or inspired? are they prophets, saints, priests, or kings ? then — whatsoever is truly thoughtful, affectionate, prophetic, priestly, kingly — that the Florentine school tried to discern and show : that they have discerned and shown ; and all their greatness is first fastened in their aim at this central truth — the open expression of the living soul. Lastly, take Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," in the Louvre. There you have the most perfect representation possible of colour, and light, and shade, as they affect the external aspect of the human form, and its immediate accessories, architecture, furniture, and dress. This exter- nal aspect of noblest nature was the first aim of the Vene- tians, and all their greatness depended on their resolution to achieve, and their patience in achieving it. Here, then, are the three greatest schools of the former wTorld exemplified for you in three well-known works. The Phidian "Theseus" represents the Greek school pur- suing the truth of form; the "Disputa" of Raphael the 6 SCHOOLS OF ART. Florentine school pursuing truth of mental expression; the "Marriage in Cana" the Venetian school pursuing the truth of colour and light. Two Paths, 25 et passim. The perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose, with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in the details of the work is found only in the old Pre-Raphaelite periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphael- ite school. In the works of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Belline, and one or two more, these two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the knowledge of those days enabled them to be fulfilled ; and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to the uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe, the most perfect instance of expressional purpose with technical power which the world has yet produced. II. Errors of Art Schools. In the Post-Raphaelite period of ancient art, (such as the period of Claude, Graspar Pous- sin, Salvator Rosa, Cuyp, Berghem, Both, Ruysdael, Hob- bima, Teniers in his landscapes, P. Potter, and Canal etti — Editor) and in the spurious high art of modern times, two broad forms of error divide the schools ; the one con- sisting in the superseding of expression by technical ex- cellence, and the other in the superseding of technical excellence by expression. 1. Superseding expression by technical excellence. — ■ This takes place most frankly, and therefore most innocent- ly, in the work of the Venetians. They very nearly ignore expression altogether, directing their aim exclusively to the rendering of external truths of colour, and form. Paul Veronese will make the Magdalene wash the feet of Christ with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will introduce the supper at Emmaus as a background to the SCHOOLS OF AET. 7 portraits of two children playing with a dog. Of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we shall reason in another place ; at present we have to note it merely as displacing the Venetian work from the highest or expressional rank of art. But the error is generally made in a more subtle and dangerous way. The artist deceives himself into the idea that he is doing all that he can to ele- vate his subject by treating it under rules of art ; introduc- ing into it accurate science, and collecting for it the beau- ties of the (so-called) ideal form ; whereas, he may, in reality, be all the while sacrificing his subject to his own vanity or pleasure, and losing truth, nobleness, and impressiveness for the sake of delightful lines or creditable pedantries. 2. Superseding technical excellence by expression. — This is usually done under the influence of another kind of vanity. The artist desires that men should thiuk he has an elevated soul, affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contemplates with separated egotism the course of his own imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look at the real facts round about him, in order that he may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. He lives in what he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations ; which are, in fact, nothing more than ordinary weaknesses or instincts, contemplated through a mist of pride. A large range of German art comes under this head. A more interesting and respectable form of this error is fallen into by some truly earnest men, who, finding their powers not adequate to the attainment of great artistical excellence, but adequate to rendering, uj3 to a certain point, the expression of the human countenance, devote themselves to that object alone, abandoning effort in other directions, and executing the accessories of their pictures feebly or carelessly. With these are associated another group of philosophical painters who supj)ose the artistical merits of other parts adverse to the expression, as drawing 8 CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. the spectator's attention away from it, and who paint in gray colour, and imperfect light and shade, by way of en- forcing the purity of their conceptions. Both these classes of conscientious but narrow-minded artists forget that colour, if used at all, must be either true or false, and that what they call chastity, dignity and reserve, is, to the eyes of any one accustomed to nature, pure, bold, and imper- tinent falsehood. No man ever despised colour who could produce it. 3 M. P., 30. III. Confusion of Art Schools. Our Schools of Art are confused by the various teaching and various interests that are now abroad among us. Everybody is talking about art, and writing about it, and more or less interested in it ; everybody wants art, and there is not art for everybody, and few who talk know what they are talking about ; thus students are led in all variable ways, while there is only one way in which they can make steady progress, for true art is always and will be always one. Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply, Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias ; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its principles, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same. Observe this that I say, please, carefully, for I mean it to the very utmost. There is hut one right way of doing any given thing required of an artist / there may be a hundred wrong, deficient, or mannered ways, but there is only one complete and right way. Whenever two artists are trying to do the same thing with the same materials, and do it in different ways, one of them is wrong ; he may be charmingly wrong, or impressively wrong — various circumstances in his temper may make his wrong pleas- anter than any person's right ; it may for him, under his CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. 0 given limitations of knowledge or temper, be better perhaps that he should err in his own way than try for anybody else's — but for all that his way is wrong, and it is essential for all masters of schools to know what the right way is, and what right art is, and to see how simple and how single all right art has been, since the beginning of it. But farther, not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them, without any choice, or more intense perception of one point than another, owing to our special idiosyncrasies. Thus, wThen Titian or Tintoret look at a human being, they see at a glance the whole of its nature, outside and in ; all that it has of form, of color, of passion, or of thought ; saintliness, and loveliness; fleshly body, and spiritual power; grace, or strength, or softness, or whatsoever other quality, those men will see to the full, and so paint, that, when narrower people come to look at what they have done, every one may, if he chooses, find his own special pleasure in the work. The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian ; the thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanctity ; the colourist, colour; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrow- er people will find their special taste so alone consulted, as that the qualities which would ensure their gratification shall be sifted or separated from others ; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the gratification of other men. Thus, Titian is not soft enough for the sensualist, Correggio suits him better; Titian is not defined enough for the formalist, — Leonardo suits him better ; Titian is not pure enough for the religionist, — Raphael suits him better; Titian is not polite enough for the man of the world, — Vandyke suits him better; Titian is not forcible enough for the lovers of the picturesque, — ■ Rembrandt suits him better. So Correggio is popular 10 CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. with a certain set, and Vandyke with a certain set, and Rembrandt with a certain set. All are great men, but of inferior stamp, and therefore Yandyke is popular, and Rembrandt is popular,* but nobody cares much at heart about Titian; only there is a strange under-current of everlasting murmur about his name, which means the deep consent of all great men that he is greater than they — the consent of those who, having sat long enough at his feet, have found in that restrained harmony of his strength there are indeed depths of each balanced power more wonderful than all those separate manifestations in in- ferior painters: that there is a softness more exquisite than Correggio's, a purity loftier than Leonardo's, a force mightier than Rembrandt's, a sanctity more solemn even than Raff aelle's. Do not suppose that in saying this of Titian, I am return- ing to the old eclectic theories of Bologna ; for all those eclectic theories, observe, were based, not upon an endea- vour to unite the various characters of nature (which it is possible to do), but the various narrownesses of taste, which it is impossible to do. Rubens is not more vigorous than Titian, but less vigorous; but because he is so narrow- minded as to enjoy vigour only, he refuses to give the other qualities of nature, which would interfere with that vigour and with our perception of it. Again, Rembrandt is not a greater master of chiaroscuro than Titian ; — he is a less master, but because he is so narrow-minded as to enjoy chiaroscuro only, he withdraws from you the splen- dour of hue which would interfere with this, and gives you only the shadow in which you can at once feel it. Now all these specialties have their own charm in their own way; and there are times when the particular humour * And Murillo, of all true painters the narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, for those reasons the most popular. CONTUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. 11 of each man is refreshing to us from its very distinctness ; but the effort to add any other qualities to this refreshing one instantly takes away the distinctiveness, and therefore the exact character to be enjoyed in its appeal to a par- ticular humour in us. Our enjoyment arose from a weak ness meeting a weakness, from a partiality in the painter fitting to a partiality in us, and giving us sugar when we wanted sugar, and myrrh when we wanted myrrh; but sugar and myrrh are not meat : and when we want meat and bread, we must go to better men. TV. The eclectic schools endeavoured to unite these op- posite partialities and weaknesses. They trained them- selves under masters of exaggeration, and tried to unite opposite exaggerations. That was impossible. They did not see that the only possible eclecticism had been already ac- complished ; — the eclecticism of temperance, which, by the restraint of force, gains higher force ; and by the self-de- nial of delight, gains higher delight. This you will find is ultimately the case with every true and right master ; at first, while we are tyros in art, or before we have ear- nestly studied the man in question, we shall see little in him ; or perhaps see, as we think, deficiencies ; we shall fancy he is inferior to this man in that, and to the other man in the other ; but as we go on studying him we shall find that he has got both that and the other ; and both in a far higher sense than the man who seemed to possess those qualities in excess. Thus in Turner's lifetime, when people first looked at him, those who liked rainy weather, said he was not equal to Coj)ley Fielding ; but those who looked at- Turner long enough found that he could be much more wet than Copley Fielding, when he chose. The people who liked force, said that " Turner was not strong enough for them; he was effeminate; they liked De Whit, — nice strong tone ; — or Cox — great, greeny, dark masses 12 CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. of colour — solemn feeling of the freshness and depth of nature ; — they liked Cox — Turner was too hot for them." Had they looked long enough they would have found that he had far more force than De Whit, far more freshness than Cox when he chose, — only united with other ele- ments ; and that he didn't choose to be cool, if nature had appointed the weather to be hot. The people who liked Prout said " Turner had not firmness of hand — he did not know enough about architecture — he was not picturesque enough." Had they looked at his architecture long, they would have found that it contained subtle picturesque- nesses, infinitely more picturesque than anything of Prout's. People who liked Callcott said that " Turner was not cor- rect or pure enough — had no classical taste." Had they looked at Turner long enough they would have found him as severe, when he chose, as the greater Poussin ; — Call- cott, a mere vulgar imitator of other men's high breeding. And so throughout with all thoroughly great men, their strength is not seen at first, precisely because they unite, in due place and measure, every great quality. Now the question is, whether, as students, we are to study only these mightiest men, who unite all greatness, or whether we are to study the works of inferior men, who present us with the greatness which we particularly like? That question often comes before me when I see a strong idiosyncrasy in a student, and he asks me what he should study. Shall I send him to a true master, who does not present the quality in a prominent way in which that stu- dent delights, or send him to a man with whom he has direct sympathy % It is a hard question. For very curious results have sometimes been brought out, especially in late years, not only by students following their own bent, but by their being withdrawn from teaching altogether. 1 have just named a very great man in his own field — Prout. We all know his drawings, and love them : they have a pecu- CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. 13 liar character which no other architectural drawings ever possessed, and which no others can possess, because all Front's subjects are being knocked down or restored. (Prout did not like restored buildings any more than I do.) There will never be any more Prout drawings. Nor could he have been what he was, or expressed with that mys- teriously effective touch that peculiar delight in broken aud old buildings, unless he had been withdrawn from all high. art influence. You know that Prout was born of poor parents — that he was educated down in Cornwall ; — and that, for many years, all the art-teaching he had was his own, or the fishermen's. Under the keels of the fishing- boats, on the sands of our southern coasts, Prout learned all that he needed to learn about art. Entirely by himself, he felt his way to this particular style, and became the painter of pictures which I think we should all regret to lose. It becomes a very difficult question what that man would have been, had he been brought under some entirely whole- some artistic influence. He had immense gifts of composi- tion. I do not know any man who had more power of invention than Prout, or who had a sublimer instinct in his treatment of things; but being entirely withdrawn from all artistical help, he blunders his way to that short-com- ing representation, which, by the very reason of its short- coming, has a certain charm we should all be sorry to lose. And therefore I feel embarrassed when a student comes to me, in whom I see a strong instinct of that kind : and cannot tell whether I ought to say to him, " Give up all your studies of old boats, and keep away from the sea-shore, and come up to the Royal Academy in London, and look at nothing but Titian." It is a difficult thing to make up one's mind to say that. However, I believe, on the whole, we may wisely leave such matters in the hands of Provi- dence ; that if we have the power of teaching the right to anybody, we should teach them the right ; if we have the 14 CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. power of showing them the best thing, we should show them the best thing ; there will always, I fear, be enough want of teaching, and enough bad teaching, to bring out very curious erratical results if we want them. So, if we are to teach at all, let us teach the right thing, and ever the right thing. There are many attractive qualities incon- sistent with rightness; — do not let us teach them, — let us be content to waive them. There are attractive qualities in Burns, and attractive qualities in Dickens, which neither of those writers would have possessed if the one had been educated, and the other had been studying higher nature than that of cockney London ; but those attractive quali- ties are not such as we should seek in a school of literature. If we want to teach young men a good manner of writing, we should teach it from Shakspeare, — not from Burns ; from Walter Scott, — and not from Dickens. And I believe that our schools of painting are at present inefficient in their action, because they have not fixed on this high principle what are the painters to whom to point ; nor boldly resolved to point to the best, if determinable. It is becoming a matter of stern necessity that they should give a simple direction to the attention of the student, and that they should say, " This is the mark you are to aim at ; and you are not to go about to the print-shops, and peep in, to see how this engraver does that, and the other engraver does the other, and how a nice bit of character has been caught by a new man, and why this odd picture has caught the popular attention. You are to have nothing to do with all that; you are not to mind about popular attention just now ; but here is a thing which is eternally right and good : you are to look at that, and see if you cannot do something eternally right and good too." But suppose you accept this principle : and resolve to look to some great man, Titian, or Turner, or whomsoever it may be, as the model of perfection in art ; — then the CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. 15 question is, since this great man pursued his art in Yenice, or in the fields of England, under totally different condi- tions from those possible to us now — how are you to make your study of him effective here in Manchester? how bring it down into patterns, and all that you are called upon as operatives to produce? how make it the means of your livelihood, and associate inferior branches of art with this great art? That may become a serious doubt to you. You may think there is some other way of producing clever, and pretty, and saleable patterns than going to look at Titian, or any other great man. And that brings me to the question, perhaps the most vexed question of all amongst us just now, between con- ventional and perfect art. You know that among architects and artists there are, and have been almost always, since art became a subject of much discussion, two parties, one maintaining that nature should be always altered and modified, and that the artist is greater than nature ; they do not maintain, indeed, in words, but they maintain in idea, that the artist is greater than the Di- vine Maker of these things, and can improve them ; while the other party say that he cannot improve nature, and that nature on the whole should improve him. That is the real meaning of the two parties, the essence of them ; the practical result of their several theories being that the Idealists are always producing more or less formal conditions of art, and the Realists striving to produce in all their art either some image of nature, or record of nature ; these, observe, being quite different things, the image being a resemblance, and the record, some- thing which will give information about nature, but not necessarily imitate it.* * The portion of the lecture here omitted was a recapitulation of that part of the previous one which opposed conventional art to natural art. 16 CONFUSION OF ART SCHOOLS. * -X- * * * •» You may separate these two groups of artists more dis- tinctly in your mind as those who seek for the pleasure of art, in the relations of its colours and lines, without caring to convey any truth with it ; and those who seek for the truth first, and then go down from the truth to the pleasure of colour and line. Marking those two bodies distinctly as separate, and thinking over them, you may come to some rather notable conclusions respecting the mental disposi- tions which are involved in each mode of study. You will find that large masses of the art of the world fall definitely under one or the other of these heads. Observe, pleasure first and truth afterwards, (or not at all,) as with the Ara- bians and Indians ; or, truth first and pleasure afterwards, as with Angelico and all other great European painters. You will find that the art whose end is pleasure only is pre- eminently the gift of cruel and savage nations, cruel in tem- per, savage in habits and conception ; but that the art which is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and that all great and successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production of thoughtful, sensitive, earnest, kind men, large in their views of life, and full of various intellectual power. And farther, when you examine the men in whom the gifts of art are variously mingled, or universally mingled, you will discern that the ornamental, or pleasura- ble power, though it may be possessed by good men, is not in itself an indication of their goodness, but is rather, un- less balanced by other faculties, indicative of violence of temper, inclining to cruelty and to irreligion. On the other hand, so sure as you find any man endowed with a keen and separate faculty of representing natural fact, so surely you will find that man gentle and upright, full of nobleness and breadth of thought. I will give you two instances, the first peculiarly English, and another pecu- SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. 17 liarly interesting, because it occurs among a nation not generally very kind or gentle. I am inclined to think that, considering all the disad- vantages of circumstances and education under which his genius was developed, there was perhaps hardly ever born a man with a more intense and innate gift of insight into nature than our own Sir Joshua Reynolds. Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua did into the minor varieties of human heart and temper ; and when you consider that, with a frightful conventionality of social habitude all around him, he yet conceived the simplest types of all feminine and childish loveliness ; — that in a northern climate, and with gray, and white, and black, as the principal colours around him, he yet became a colourist who can be crushed by none, even of the Venetians ; — and that with Dutch painting and Dresden china for the prevailing types of art in the saloons of his day, he threw himself at once at the feet of the great masters of Italy, and arose from their feet to share their throne — I know not that in the whole history of art you can produce another instance of so strong, so unaided, so unerring an instinct for all that was true, pure, and noble. Two Paths, Lect. 11. V. Rank of Art Schools, from a Love of the Beau- tiful. — Schools of art become higher in exact projxjr- tion to the degree in which they apprehend and love the beautiful. 1st Rank. — Thus Angelico, intensely loving all spiritual beauty, will be of the highest rank. 2d Rank. — Paul Veronese and Correggio, intensely lov- ing physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank. 18 RANK OF ART SCHOOLS. 3d Rank.— Albert Durer, Rubens, and in general the Northern artists, apparently insensible to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether shapely or not, of the third rank. No certain Rank. — Teniers, Salvator and Carravaggio, and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank, or, as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss. 3M. P.,34. VI. Rank of Art Schools, from Character of Subject. — (1.) The habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the Na- tivity, Transfiguration, Crucifixion (if the choice be sin- cere), implies that the painter has a natural disposition to dwell on the highest thoughts of which humanity is capa- ble ; it constitutes him so far forth a painter of the highest order, as, for instance, Leonardo, in his painting of the Last Supper. (2.) He who delights in representing the acts or medita- tions of great men, as, for instance, Raphael painting the School of Athens, is so far forth a painter of the second order. (3.) He who represents the passions and events of ordi- nary life, is of the third order. (4.) In this ordinary life, he who represents deep thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his Claudia and Isa- bella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his sphere. (5.) He who represents the slight malignities and pas- sions of the drawing room, as, for instance, Leslie, is of still another rank. (6.) He who represents the sports of boys, or the sim- plicities of clowns, as Webster or Teniers, is still of another rank. (7.) He who represents vices and brutalities, of no hon- orable rank. COERUPTION OF ART SCHOOLS. 19 VII. Corruption of Art Schools. — Yet the corrup- tion of the schools of high art, so far as this particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth to beauty. Great art dwells on all that is beautiful ; false art omits or changes all that is ugly. Great art accepts nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction, by removing or altering whatever it thinks ob- jectionable. The evil results of which are manifold : — Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white can- vas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places before he can make it look luminous in others ; nor can an uninterrupted succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty ; it must be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be devel- oped. Nature has, for the most part, mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both, and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow perishes in the burning desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of un- gainly sanctity; but the modern German and Paphael- esque schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real faith except in straight noses and curled hair. Paul Ver- onese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the queen; Shakespeare places Caliban beside Miranda, and Autolycus beside Perdita; but the vulgar idealist with- draws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his inno- cence to the safety of the cloister; he pretends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment, 20 THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. while, in truth, he has neither courage to front the mon- ster nor wit to furnish the knave. Dwelling upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at once monstrous and mor- bid. High and un corrupted art consists neither in alter- ing nor improving nature. 3 M. P., 34. VIII. The Great Masters. — I will now name the masters whom I think it would be well if we could agree, in our Schools of Art in England, to consider our leaders. The first and chief I will not myself presume to name ; he shall be distinguished for you by the authority of those two great painters of whom we have just been speaking — Reynolds and Velasquez. You may remem- ber that in your Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition the most impressive things were the works of those two men — nothing told upon the eye so much ; no other pictures retained it with such a persistent power. Kow, I have the testimony, first of Reynolds to Velasquez, and then of Velasquez to the man whom I want you to take as the master of all your English schools. The testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez is very striking. I take it from some fragments which have just been published by Mr. William Cotton — precious fragments — of Reynolds' diaries, which I chanced upon luckily as I was coming- down here : for I was going to take Velasquez' testimony alone, and then fell upon this testimony of Reynolds to Velasquez, written most fortunately in Reynolds' own hand — you may see the' manuscript. " What we are all," said Reynolds, " attempting to do with great labor, Velas- quez does at once? Just think what is implied when a man of the enormous power and facility that Reynolds had, says he was "trying to do with great labor" what Velasquez " did at once." Having thus Reynolds' testimony to Velasquez, I will take Velasquez' testimony to somebody else. You know THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. 21 that Yelasquez was sent by Philip of Spain to Italy, to buy pictures for him. He went all over Italy, saw the living artists there, and all their best pictures when freshly painted, so that he had every opportunity of judging; and never was a man so capable of judging. He went to Rome and ordered various works of living artists; and while there, he was one day asked by Salvator Rosa what he thought of Raphael. His reply, and the ensuing conversa- tion, are thus reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse, which, thus translated by Dr. Donaldson, is quoted in Mr. Stirling's Life of Velasquez : — " The master" [Yelasquez] "stiffly bowed his figure tall And said, ' For Rafael, to speak the truth — I always was plain-spoken from my youth — I cannot say I like his works at all.' u ' Well/ said the other " [Salvator], " ' if you can run down So great a man, I really cannot see What you can find to like in Italy ; To him we all agree to give the crown.' " Diego answered thus : ' I saw in Venice The true test of the good and beautiful ; First in my judgment, ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men is.' " " Tizian ze quel die porta la handier a." Learn that line by heart, and act, at all events for some time to come, upon Yelasquez' opinion in the matter. Titian is much the safest master for you. Raphael's pow- er, such as it was, and great as it was, depended wholly upon transcendental characters in his mind ; it is " Ra- phaelesque," properly so called ; but Titian's power is simply the power of doing right. Whatever came before Titian, he did wholly as it ought to be done. Do not suppose that now in recommending Titian to you so strong- ly, and speaking of nobody else to-night, I am retreating 22 THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. in anywise from what some of you may perhaps recollect in my works, the enthusiasm with which I have always spo- ken of another Venetian painter. There are three Vene- tians who are never separated "in my mind — Titian, Veronese, and Tin tore t. They all have their own un- equalled gifts, and Tintoret especially has imagination and depth of soul which I think renders him indisputably the greatest man / but, equally indisputably, Titian is the greatest painter }' and therefore the greatest painter who ever lived. You may be led wrong by Tintoret # in many respects, wrong by Raphael in more ; all that you learn from Titian will be right. Then, with Titian, take Leo- nardo, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. I name those three masters for this reason : Leonardo has powers of subtle drawing which are peculiarly applicable in many ways to the drawing of fine ornament, and are very useful for all students. Rembrandt and Durer are the only men whose actual work of hand you can have to look at ; you can have Rembrandt's etchings, or Durer's engravings actual- ly hung in your schools ; and it is a main point for the student to see the real thing, and avoid judging of masters at second-hand. As, however, in obeying this principle, you cannot often have opportunities of studying Venetian painting, it is desirable that you should have a useful standard of colour, and I think it possible for you to ob- tain this. I cannot, indeed, without entering upon ground which might involve the hurting the feelings of living ar- tists, state exactly what I believe to be the relative posi- tion of various painters in England at present with respect to power of colour. But I may say this, that in the pecu- liar gifts of colour which will be useful to you as students, there are only one or two of the pre-Raphaelites, and Wil- liam Hunt, of the old Water Colour Society, who would * See Appendix I. — " Eight and Wrong." THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. 23 be safe guides for you ; and as quite a safe guide, there is nobody but William Hunt, because the pre-Raphaelites are all more or less affected by enthusiasm and by various morbid conditions of intellect and temper ; but old Wil- liam Hunt — I am sorry to say " old," but I say it in a loving way, for every year that has added to his life has added also to his skill — William Hunt is as right as the Venetians, as far as he goes, and what is more, nearly as inimitable as they. And I think if we manage to put in the principal schools of England a little bit of Hunt's work, and make that somewhat of a standard of colour, that we can apply his principles of colouring to subjects of all kinds. Until you have had a work of his long near you ; nay, unless you have been labouring at it, and try- ing to copy it, you do not know the thoroughly grand qualities that are concentrated in it. Simplicity, and in- tensity, both of the highest character ; — simplicity of aim, and intensity of power and success, are involved in that man's unpretending labour. Finally, you cannot believe that I would omit my own fa- vourite, Turner. 1 fear from the very number of his works left to the nation, that there is a disposition now rising to look upon his vast bequest with some contempt. I beg of you, if in nothing else, to believe me in this, that you can- not further the art of England in any way more distinctly than by giving attention to every fragment that has been left by that man. The time will come when his full pow- er and right place will be acknowledged ; that time will not be for many a day yet : nevertheless, be assured — as far as you are inclined to give the least faith to anything I may say to you, be assured — that you can act for the good of art in England in no better way than by using whatever influence any of you have in any direction to urge the reverent study and yet more reverent preservation of the works of Turner. I do not say " the exhibition " 24 THE GREAT MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS. of his works, for we are not altogether ripe for it : they are still too far above us ; uniting, as I was telling you, too many qualities for us to yet feel fully their range and their influence ; — but let us only try to keep them safe from harm, and show thoroughly and conveniently what we show of them at all, and day by day their greatness will dawn upon us more and more, and be the root of a school of art in England, which I do not doubt may be as bright, as just, and as refined as even that of Venice her- self. The dominion of the sea seems to have been associ- ated, in past time, with dominion in the arts also : Athens had them together ; Venice had them together ; but by so much as our authority over the ocean is wider than theirs over the ^Egean or Adriatic, let us strive to make our art more widely beneficent than theirs, though it can- not be more exalted ; so working out the fulfilment, in their wakening as well as their warning sense, of those great words of the aged Tintoret : "Sempre si fa il Mare Maggiore." Two Paths, Lecfc. 11. CHAPTEE III. ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT. I. Art Language. — Painting, or an generally, as snch, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. He who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. He has done just as much towards being that which we ought to respect as a great painter, as a man who has learned how to express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being a great poet. The language is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than lan- guage, and all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision and force are in the words of the orator and poet, neces- sary to their greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. It is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective great- ness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally deter- mined. Speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call a man a great painter only as he excelled in precision and force in the language of lines, and a great versifier, as he excelled in precision or force in the language of words. A great poet would then be a term strictly, and in pre- 26 ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT. cisely the same sense applicable to both, if warranted by the character of the images or thoughts which each in their respective languages conveyed. II. Art Thoughts. — Take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or pictures (I use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen: — the "Old Shepherd's Chief -mourner." Here the exquisite execution of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are lan- guage— language clear and expressive in the highest degree. But the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the Bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life — how un watched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep ; — these are all thoughts — thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the Man of Mind. It is not, however, always easy, either in painting or literature, to determine where the influence of language stops, and where that of thought begins. Many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed, that they would lose half their beauty if other- wise expressed. But the highest thoughts are those which ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT. 27 are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled, are in exact proportion to its independency of language or expres- sion. A composition is indeed usually most perfect, when to such intrinsic dignity is added all .that expression can do to attract and adorn ; but in every case of supreme excellence this all becomes as nothing. We are more gratified by the simplest lines or words which can sug- gest the idea in its own naked beauty, than by the robe or the gem which conceal while they decorate ; we are better pleased to feel by their absence how little they could bestow, than by their presence how much they can destroy. There is therefore a distinction to be made between what is ornamental in language and what is expressive. That part of it which is necessary to the embodying and conveying the thought is worthy of respect and attention as necessary to excellence, though not the test of it. But that part of it which is decorative has little more to do with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the frame or the varnishing of it. And this caution in dis- tinguishing hetween the ornamental and the expressive is peculiarly necessary in painting ; for in the language of words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expres- sive to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is immediately stigmatized as error. But the beauty of mere language in painting is not only very attractive and entertaining to the spectator, but re- quires for its attainment no small exertion of mind and devotion of time by the artist. Hence, in art, men have frecpiently fancied that they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only learning to speak melo- diously, and the judge has over and over again advanced to the honor of authors those who were never more than ornamental writing masters. 28 ART LANGUAGE AND ART THOUGHT. Most pictures of the Dutch school, for instance, except- ing always those of Rubens, Vandyke, and Rembrandt, are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words : while the early efforts of Cimabue and Giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stam- mering lips of infants. It is not by ranking the former as more than mechanics, or the latter as less than artists, that the taste of the multitude, always awake to the lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to the highest, is to be formed or elevated. It must be the part of the judicious critic carefully to distinguish what is language, and what is thought, and to rank and praise pictures chiefly for the latter, considering the former as a totally inferior excellence, and one which cannot be compared with nor weighed against thought in any way nor in any degree whatsoever. The picture which has the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is a greater and a better picture than that which has the less noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully ex- pressed. ~No weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh, one grain or fragment of thought. Three penstrokes of Raffaelle are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work that ever Carlo Dolci polished into inanity. A finished work of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the sources of pleasure belonging to colour and realization — valuable in themselves, — are so employed as to increase the impressiveness of the thought. But if one atom of thought has vanished, all color, all finish, all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought. Nothing but thought can pay for thought, and the instant that the increasing refinement or finish of the picture be gins to be paid for by the loss of the faintest shadow of an idea, that instant all refinement or finish is an ex- crescence and a deformity. 1 M. P., 10-11. ART LAWS. 29 III. Art Laws. — There are laws of truth and right in painting, just as lixed as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. Those laws are perfectly ascertain- able by labour, and ascertainable no otherwise. It is as ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be for a person who had never studied chemistry to lecture on affinities of elements. Pref. 3 M. P. While in painting, much knowledge of what is technical and practical is necessary to a right judgment, and while every great composition is in perfect harmony with all true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for eye, ear, or thought to trace; while it is possible to reason, with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles, when the thing is once done, yet all our reasoning will not enable any one to do another, thing like it, because all reasoning falls infinitely short of a divine instinct. Thus we may reason wisely over the way a bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out certain things about the angles of it. But the bee knows nothing about the mat- ter. It builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. And, from a bee to Paul Veronese, all master-workers work with this awful, this inspired unconsciousness. 3 M. P., 89. CHAPTER IV. LINES. § 1. Abstract beauty of form is supposed to depend on continually varied curvatures of line and surface, associ- ated so as to produce an effect of some unity among themselves, and opposed, in order to give them value, by more or less straight or rugged lines. The reader will, perhaps, here ask why, if both the straight and curved lines are necessary, one should be con- sidered more beautiful than the other. Exactly as we consider light beautiful and darkness ugly, in the abstract, though both are essential to all beauty; Darkness mingled with colour gives the delight of its depth or power; even pure blackness, in spots or chequered patterns, is often exquisitely delightful ; and yet we do not therefore consider, m the abstract, blackness to be beautiful. Just in the same way straightness mingled with curvature, that is to say, the close approximation of part of any curve to a straight line, gives to such curve all its spring, power, and noble- ness: and even perfect straightness, limiting curves, or opposing them, is Fig. i.' often pleasurable : yet, in the abstract, straightness is always ugly, and curvature.always beautiful. LINES. 31 Tims, in the opposite figure (Fig. 1), the eye will instantly prefer the semicircle to the straight line ; the tre- foil (composed of three semicircles) to the triangle ; and the cinqfoil to the pentagon. The mathematician may perhaps feel an opposite preference ; but he must be conscious that he does so under the influence of feelings quite different from those with which he would admire (if he ever does admire) a picture or sta- tue ; and that if he could free himself from those associa- tions, his judgment of the relative agreeableness of the forms would be altered. He may rest assured that, by the natural instinct of the eye and thought, the preference is given instantly, and always, to the curved form; and that no human being of unprejudiced perceptions would desire to substitute triangles for the ordinary shapes of clover leaves, or pentagons for those of potentillas. § 2. All curvature, however, is not equally agreeable ; but the examination of laws which render one curve more beautiful than another, would, if carried out to any com- pleteness, alone require a volume. The following few examples will be enough to put the reader in the way of pursuing the subject for himself. Take any number of lines, a b, b c, c d, &c, Fig. 2, 32 LINES. bearing any fixed proportion to each other. In this figure, b c is one-third longer than a b, and c d than b c, and so on. Arrange them in succession, keeping the inclination, or angle, which each makes with the preceding one always the same. Then a curve drawn through the extremities of the lines will be a beautiful curve ; for it is governed by consistent laws ; every part of it is connected by those laws with every other, yet every part is different from every other ; and the mode of its construction implies the possibility of its continuance to infinity ; it would never return upon itself though prolonged for ever. These characters must be possessed by every perfectly beautiful curve. Fig. 3. If we make the difference between the component or measuring lines less, as in Fig. 3, in which each line is longer than the preceding one only by a fifth, the curve LINES. 33 will be more contracted and less beautiful. If we enlarge the difference, as in Fig. 4, in which each line is double the preceding one, the curve will suggest a more rapid proceeding into infinite space, and will be more beautiful. Of two curves, the same in other respects, that which sug- gests the quickest attainment of infinity is always the most beautiful. Fig. 4. § 3. These three curves being all governed by the same general law, with a difference only in dimensions of lines, together with all the other curves so constructible, varied as they may be infinitely, either by changing the lengths of line, or the inclination of the lines to each other, are con- sidered by mathematicians only as one curve, having this peculiar character about it, different from that of most other infinite lines, that any portion of it is a magnified repetition of the preceding portion ; that is to say, the portion between e and g is precisely what that between e and e would look, if seen through a lens which magnified somewhat more than twice. There is therefore a peculiar equanimity and harmony about the look of lines of this 2* LINES. kind, differing, I think, from the expression of any others except the circle. Beyond the point a the curve may be imagined to continue to an infinite degree of smallness, always circling nearer and nearer to a point, which, how- ever, it can never reach. § 4. Again : if, along the horizontal line, A b, Fig. 5 opposite, we measure any number of equal distances, a h, b c, &c, and raise perpendiculars from the points b, c, d, &c, of which each perpendicular shall be longer, by some given proportion (in this figure it is one third), than the preceding one, the curve x y, traced through their extremi- ties, will continually change its direction, but will advance into space in the direction of y as long as we continue to measure distances along the line a b, always inclining more and more to the nature of a straight line, yet never becoming one, even if continued to infinity. It would, in like manner, continue to infinity in the direction of x, always approaching the line a b, yet never touching it. § 5. Am infinite number of different lines, more or less violent in curvature according to the measurements we adopt in designing them, are included, or defined, by each of the laws just explained. But the number of these laws themselves is also infinite. There is no limit to the multi- tude of conditions which may be invented, each producing a group of curves of a certain common nature. Some of these laws, indeed, produce single curves, which, like the circle, can vary only in size; but, for the most part, they vary also, like lines we have just traced, in the rapidity of their curvature. Among these innumerable lines, however, there is one source of difference in character which divides them, infinite as they are in number, into two great classes. The first class consists of those which are limited in their course, either ending abruptly, or returning to some point from which they set out ; the second class, of those lines whose nature is to proceed for ever into space. Any por- LINES. 35 tion of a circle, for instance, is, by the law of its bein compelled, if it continue its course, to return to the point V from which it set out ; so also any portion of the oval curve (called an ellipse), produced by cutting a cylinder obliquely across. And if a single point be marked on the rim of a car- riage wheel, this point, as the wheel rolls along the road, will trace a curve in the air from one part of the road to another, which is called a cycloid, and to which the law of its existence appoints that it shall always follow a similar course, and be terminated by the level line on which the wheel rolls. All such curves are of inferior beauty : and the curves winch are incapable of being com- pletely drawn, because, as in the two cases above given, the law of their being supposes them to proceed for ever into space, are of a higher beauty. § 6. Thus, in the very first elements of form, a lesson is given us as to the true source of the nobleness and choosea- bleness of all things. The two classes of curves thus sternly separated from each other, may most properly be distinguished Fig. 5. as the "Mortal and Im- 36 LINES. mortal Curves ; " the one having an appointed term of existence, the other absolutely incomprehensible and endless, only to be seen or grasped during a certain moment of their course. And it is found univer- sally that the class to which the human mind is at- tached for its chief enjoyment are the Endless or Immor- tal lines. § 7. " Nay," but the reader answers, " what right have you to say that one class is more beautiful than the other % Suppose I like the finite curves best, who shall say which of us is right % " No one. It is simply a question of experience. You will not, I think, continue to like the finite curves best as you contemplate them carefully, and compare them with the others. And if you should do so, it then yet becomes a question to be decided by longer trial, or more widely canvassed opinion. And when we find on examination that every form which, by the consent of human kind, has been received as lovely, in vases, flowing ornaments, em- broideries, and all other things dependent on abstract line, is composed of these infinite curves, and that Nature uses them for every important contour, small or large, which she desires to recommend to human observance, we shall not, I think, doubt that preference of such lines is a sign of healthy taste, and true instinct. § 8. I am not sure, however, how far the delightf illness of such line, is owing, not merely to their expression of infinity, but also to that of restraint or moderation. Com- pare Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 9, where the sub- ject is entered into at some length. Certainly the beauty of such curvature is owing, in a considerable degree, to both expressions ; but when the line is sharply terminated, perhaps more to that of moderation than of infinity. For the most part, gentle or subdued sounds, and gentle or subdued colours, are more pleasing than either in their ut- LINES. 37 most force ; nevertheless, in all the noblest compositions, this utmost power is permitted, but only for a short time, or over a small space. Music must rise to its utmost loud- ness, and fall from it ; colour must be gradated to its ex- treme brightness, and descend from it ; and I believe that absolutely perfect treatment would, in either case, permit the intensest sound and purest colour only for a point or for a moment. Curvature is regulated by precisely the same laws. For the most part, delicate or slight curvature is more agree- able than violent or rapid curvature ; nevertheless, in the best compositions, violent curvature is permitted, but per- mitted only over small spaces in the curve. § 9. The right line is to the curve what monotony is to melody, and what unvaried colour is to gradated colour. And as often the sweetest music is so low and continuous as to approach a monotone; and as often the sweetest gradations so delicate and subdued as to approach to "flat- ness, so the finest curves are apt to hover about the right line, nearly coinciding with it for a long space of their curve ; never absolutely losing their own curvilinear character, but apparently every moment on the point of merging into the right line. When this is the case, the line generally returns into vigorous curvature at some part of its course, otherwise it is apt to be weak, or slightly rigid ; multitudes of other curves, not ap- proaching the right line so nearly, remain less vigor- ously bent in the rest of their course ; so that the quan- tity "x" of curvature is the same in both, though differently distributed. * Quantity of curvature is as measurable as quantity of any thing- else ; only observe that it depends on the nature of the line, not on its magnitude ; thus, in simple circular curvature, a b, Fig, 7, being the fourth of a large circle, and b c the half of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature in the entire line a c is three-fourths of that in any circle, — the same as the quantity in the line ef. 38 LINES. § 10. The modes in which Nature produces variable curves on a large scale are very numerous, but may gene- rally be resolved into the gra- dual increase or diminution of some given force. Thus, if a chain hangs between two points a and b, Fig. 6, the weight of chain sustained by any given link increases gradu- ally from the central link at c, which has only its own weight to sustain, to the link at b, which sustains, besides its own, the weight of all the links be- tween it and c. This increased weight is continually pulling the curve of the swinging chain more nearly straight as it ascends towards b ; and hence one of the most beauti- fully gradated natural curves Fig. 6. — called the catenary — of course assumed not by chains only, but by all flexible and elongated substances, suspended between two points. If the points of suspension be near each other, we have such as at d ; and if, as in nine cases out of ten will be the case, one point of suspension is lower than the other, a still more varied and beautiful curve is formed, as at e. Such curves constitute nearly the whole beauty of gene- ral contour in falling drapery, tendrils and festoons of weeds over rocks, and such other pendent objects.* * The catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if its di- rection does not alter with its length ; but it is capable of infinity, implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the points of suspen- sion. It entirely corresponds in its effect on the eye and mind to the LINES. 39 § 11. Again. If any object be cast into the air, the force with which it is cast dies gradually away, and its own weight brings it downwards ; at first slowly, then faster and faster every moment, in a curve which, as the line of fall necessarily nears the perpendicular, is continu- ally approximating to a straight line. This curve — called the parabola — is that of all projected or bounding objects. Tig. 7. § 12. Again. If a rod or stick of any kind gradually becomes more slender or more flexible, and is bent by any external force, the force will not only increase in effect as the rod becomes weaker, but the rod itself, once bent, will continually yield more willingly, and be more easily bent farther in the same direction, and will thus show a con- tinual increase of curvature from its thickest or most rigid part to its extremity. This kind of line is that as- sumed by boughs of trees under wind. § 13. Again. Whenever any vital force is impressed on any organic substance, so as to die gradually away as the substance extends, an infinite curve is commonly produced infinite curves. I do not know the exact nature of the apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty waterfall ; they are de- pendent on the gain in rapidity of descent by the central current, where its greater body is less arrested by the air ; and I apprehend, are cate- nary in character, though not in cause. 40 LINES. by its outline. Thus, in the budding of the leaf, already examined, the gradual dying away of the exhilaration of the younger ribs produces an infinite curve in the outline of the leaf, which sometimes fades imperceptibly into a right line, — sometimes is terminated sharply, by meeting the opposite curve at the point of the leaf. § 14. Nature, however, rarely condescends to use one curve only in any of her finer forms. She almost always unites two infinite ones, so as to form a reversed curve for each main line, and then modulates each of them into myriads of minor ones. In a single elm leaf, such as Fig. 4, Plate 8, she uses three such — one for the stalk, and one for each of the sides, — to regulate their general flow ; di- viding afterwards each of their broad lateral lines into some twenty less curves by the jags of the leaf, and then again into minor waves. Thus, in any complicated group of leaves whatever, the infinite curves are themselves al- most countless. In a single extremity of a magnolia spray, the uppermost figure in Plate 2, including only sixteen leaves, each leaf having some three to five distinct curves along its edge, the lines for separate study, includ- ing those of the stems, would be between sixty and eighty. In a single spring-shoot of laburnum, the lower figure in the same plate, I leave the reader to count them for him- self; all these, observe, being seen at one view only, and every change of position bringing into sight another equal- ly numerous set of curves. For instance, in Plate 3, is a group of four withered leaves, in four positions, giving, each, a beautiful and well composed group of curves, variable gradually into the next group as the branch is turned. § 15. The following Plate (4), representing a young shoot of independent ivy, just beginning to think it would like to get something to cling to, shows the way in which Nature brings subtle curvature into forms that at first LINES. 41 seem rigid. The stems of the young leaves look nearly straight, and the sides of the projecting points, or bastions, of the leaves themselves nearly so ; but on examination it Avill be found that there is not a stem nor a leaf-edge but is a portion of one inlinite curve, if not of two or three. The main line of the supporting stem is a very lovely one ; and the little half -opened leaves, in their thirteenth-century segmental simplicity (compare Fig. 9, Plate 8 in Yol. III.), singularly spirited and beautiful. It may, perhaps, in- terest the general reader to know that one of the infinite curves derives its name from its supposed resemblance to the climbing of ivy up a tree. § 16. I spoke just now of " well-composed. " curves, — I mean curves so arranged as to oppose and set each other off, and yet united by a common law ; for as the beauty of every curve depends on the unity of its several compo- nent lines, so the beauty of each group of curves depends on their submission to some general law. In forms which quickly attract the eye, the law which unites the curves is distinctly manifest ; but, in the richer compositions of ISature, cunningly concealed by delicate infractions of it ; — wilfulnesses they seem, and forgetfuln esses, which, if once the law be perceived, only increase our delight in it by showing that it is one of equity not of rigor, and allows, within certain limits, a kind of individual liberty. Thus the system of unison which regulates the magnolia shoot, in Plate 42, is formally expressed in Fig. 8. Every line has it^ origin in the point p, and the curves generally diminish in intensity towards the extremities of the leaves, one or two, however, again increasing their sweep near the points. In vulgar ornamentation, entirely rigid laws of line are always observed; and the common Greek honeysuckle and other such formalisms are attractive to uneducated eyes, owing to their manifest compliance with the first conditions of unity and symmetry, being to really noble 42 LrNES. ornamentation what the sing-song of a bad reader of poetry, laying regular emphasis on every required syllable of every foot, is to the varied, irregular, unexpected, inim- itable cadence of the voice of a person of sense and feeling reciting the same lines, — not in cognisant of the rhythm, but delicately bending it to the expression of passion, and the natural sequence of the thought. P Fig. 8. § 17. In mechanically drawn patterns of dress, Alham- bra and common Moorish ornament, Greek mouldings, common flamboyant traceries, common Corinthian and Ionic capitals, and such other work, lines of this declared kind (generally to be classed under the head of " doggrel LINES. 43 ornamentation'') may be seen in rich prof usion ; and they are necessarily the only kind of lines which can be felt or enjoyed by per- sons who have been educated without reference to natural forms ; their in- stincts being blunt, and their eyes actually incapable of perceiving the inflexion of noble curves. But the moment the perceptions have been refined by reference to natural form, the eye requires perpetual vari- ation and transgression of the formal law. Take the simplest possible con- dition of thirteenth-century scroll- work, Fig. 9. The law or cadence established is of a circling tendril, terminating in an ivy-leaf. In vul- gar design, the curves of the circling tendril would have been similar to each other, and might have been drawn by a machine, or by some mathematical formula. But in good design all imitation by machinery is impossible. No curve is like another for an instant ; no branch springs at an expected point. A cadence is observed, as in the re- turning clauses of a beautiful air in music ; but every clause has its own change, its own surprises. The enclos- ing form is here stiff and (nearly) straight-sided, in order to oppose the circular scroll-work ; but on looking close it will be found that each of its sides is a portion of an infinite curve, almost too delicate to be traced ; except the short lowest one, which is made quite straight, to oppose the rest. I give one more example from another leaf of the same manuscript, Fig. 10, merely to show the variety introduced by the old designers between page and page. And, in general, the reader may take it for a settled law that, 44 LINES. whatever can be done by machinery, or imitated by for- mula, is not worth doing or imitating at all. Pig. 10. § 18. The quantity of admissible transgression of law varies with the degree in which the ornamentation involves or admits imitation of nature. Thus, if these ivy leaves in Fig. 10 were completely drawn in light and shade, they LINES. 45 would not be properly connected with the more or less regular sequences of the scroll ; and in very subordinate ornament, something like complete symmetry may be admitted, as in bead mouldings, chequerings, &c. Also, the ways in which the transgression may be granted vary infinitely ; in the finest compositions it is perpetual, and yet so balanced and atoned for as always to bring about more beauty than if there had been no transgression. In a truly fine mountain or organic line, if it is looked at in detail, do one would believe in its being a continuous curve, or being subjected to any fixed law. It seems broken, and bending a thousand ways ; perfectly free and wild, and yielding to every impulse. But, after following with the eye three or four of its impulses, we shall begin to trace some strange order among them ; every added movement will make the ruling intent clearer ; and when the wdiole life of the line is revealed at last, it will be found to have been, throughout, as obedient to the true law of its course as the stars in their orbits. Thus much may suffice for our immediate purpose re- specting beautiful lines in general. 4 M. P., 257. CHAPTER V. COMPOSITION". Composition means, literally and simply, putting several things together, so as to make one thing out of them ; the nature and goodness of which they all have a share in pro- ducing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes together in certain relations ; a poet composes a poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order ; and a painter a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours in pleasant order. In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of composition. A paviour cannot be said to com- pose the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected with it. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the world.* It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or colours, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a well-com- posed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the least is as necessary as the greatest : no note, how- ever prolonged, is tedious ; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration : no note, however high, is * See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. viii. § 6 ; Office of Imagination in Composition, Modern Painters, vol. ii. 146. COMPOSITION. 47 tyrannous ; the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the others prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility : and the result is, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it, which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation 'from the others, it would in- stantly be deprived. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought en- hances the value of those which precede and follow it ; and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly re- cognize it. Much more in a great picture ; every line and colour is so arranged as to advantage the rest. IS^one are inessential, hxywever slight ; and none are independent, however for- cible. It is not enough that they truly represent natural objects ; but they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain harmonious groups : so that, for instance, the red chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but that it may affect, in a certain way pleasur- able to the eye, the pieces of green or blue in other parts of the picture ; and we ought to see that the work is mas- terly, merely by the positions and cpiantities of these patch- es of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it perfectly impossible to determine what the colours re- present: or to see whether the red is a chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the blue is smoke, sky, or water. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all wc do, of the great laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition in the arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and metre, and in simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that 48 COMPOSITION. power of composition in the fine arts should be an exclu- sive attribute of great intellect. All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or less, remember it : powers of reflection and investigation are also common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests only on questions of degree. A. has a better memory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of com- position is not given at all to more than one man in a thousand ; in its highest range, it does not occur above three or four times in a century. It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossi- ble to give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing : if it were possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of composition lies precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the operation of an indi- vidual mind of range and power exalted above others. But though no one can invent by rule, there are some simple laws of arrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will not enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than you could have done otherwise ; and by tracing them in the work of good composers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials. I shall briefly state the chief of these laws. COMPOSITION. 49 LAWS OF ARRANGEMENT. 1. The Law of Prmcipality.— The great object of composition being always to secure unity ; that is, to make out of many things one whole ; the first mode in which this can be effected is, by determining that one feature shall be more important than all the rest, and that the others shall group with it in subordinate positions. This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 11., is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading leaf ; but that at b is prettier, because it has a head or mas- ter-leaf ; and c more satisfac- tory still, because the subor- dination of the other members to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger or brighter than the other lights, or one figure more promi- nent than the other figures, or one mass of colour dominant over all the other masses ; and in general you will find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall be one li^lit on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above all others. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly concealed by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first traceable; and you will generally find they are vulgar pictures in which the law is striki/ngly manifest. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody ; for instance, in such phrases as this: 50 COMPOSITION". one note (here the upper o) rules the whole passage, and has the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to completely subordinated com- positions in painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated. But in such a phrase as this : *=2 -w— * it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The a in the last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of power running through the whole ; and such passages rarely weary. And this principle holds through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the grandest compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or Raphael's Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure ; and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more conspicuous as we gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting as possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner, and many figures more, occupy the centre of the picture, and first catch the eye ; little by little we are led away from them to a gleam of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the head which it shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining them to analyse one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from various works. I COMPOSITION. 51 sliall therefore take one of Turner's simplest ; which will allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate each law by it as we proceed. Figure 12. is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, Fig. 12. the town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or master feature is, of course, the tower on the bridge. It is kept from being too principal by an important group on each side of it ; the boats, on the right, and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more forcible in colour, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its mass, but so reduced by aerial perspective of colour that it cannot con- tend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly, to increase its pre- eminence. 52 COMPOSITION. 2. The Law of Repetition, — -Another important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of -sympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest, because most surprising, kind* of sympathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another / not in the way of halance or symmetry, but subordinate!)7, like a far-away and broken echo of it. Raphael makes one figure repeat another in motion or attitude. Prout lias in- sisted much on this law in all his writings on coriiposi- tion ; and I think it is even more authoritatively present in the minds of most great composers than the law of principality. It is quite curious to see the pains that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of colour; in the Pembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with a red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach, are two fish in precisely the same relative positions ; one red and one white. It is observable that he uses the artifice chiefiy in pictures where he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my -notice of the plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbours of England, I have already had occasion to dwell on this point ; and I extract in the note * one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication is employed to a singular extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this * " In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events ; that one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of another history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimi- larity and non- succession are results of interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way ; hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a cuckoo." COMPOSITION. 53 lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does not matter ; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it not for a little one which pretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be dis- cernible : it just takes off the attention from the artifice, helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which, however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.* Then there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is divided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has two figures in it ; while two figures are also sitting together on the great rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no answering form, has almost its facsimile in the bank on which the girl is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of the picture as any object in the wdiole series. All this is done to deepen the effect of repose. Symmetry or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical object, is of like things reflecting each other; it is not the balance of contrary natures (like that of day and night) but of like natures or like forms ; one side of a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water. * This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind. " Two lines must not mimic one another, one mass must not be equal to another."— 2 M. P., 140. 54 COMPOSITION. Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accu- rate. She takes the greatest care to secure some differ- ence between the corresponding things or parts of things ; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only per- mitted in animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror ; hold your arms in precisely the same position at each side, your head upright, your body straight ; divide your hair exactly in the middle, and get it as nearly as you can into exactly the same shape over each ear, and you will see the effect of accurate symmetry ; you will see, no less, how all grace and power in the human form result from the interference of motion and life with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its change- fulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type of symmetry as understood by modern architects. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power: almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, &c., will furnish you with notable instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino * in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have. 2 M. P., 72, sec. 4. In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to ex- press disciplined calmness. In bad compositions, as in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on the other ; but in good compositions, as in grace- ful statues, it is always easy, and sometimes hardly trace- able. In the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set in nearly equal balance ; the tower, as a central mass uniting both. See 2 M. P., 71. COMPOSITION. 55 3. The Law of Continuity. — Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by giving some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less similar. And this succession is most interesting when it is connected with some gradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succes- sion of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in distance ; so the succession of mountain prom- ontories one behind another, on the flanks of a valley ; so the succession of clouds, fading farther and farther to- wards the horizon ; each promontory and each cloud being of different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed order. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there is only repetition — monotony. It is the change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free, and able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them, and yet submitting to it. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset ; so delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a woodcut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 13, is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. The aim of the painter has been to give the in tensest expression of repose, together with the enchanted lulling, monotonous motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards the point in the hori- zon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in wind- ing currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges: just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two chil- 56 COMPOSITION. dren kiss and clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting ; but all this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm-waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea. Fig. 13. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustra- tion of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general illustration. It was simply that gradual suc- cession of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same principle wdiich led him always to seize on subjects in- cluding Ions: bridges wherever he could find them ; but especially, observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at the centre. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general laws of composi- tion, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I COMPOSITION. 57 may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the study of composition. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to lean a little on one side : they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves, and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good rivers have service- able deep places all along their banks, that ships can sail in ; but the wicked rivers go scoopingly irregularly un- der their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks ; and pools like wells, which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; — but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone- mason therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens through ; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood time, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the same depth, are 58 COMPOSITION". cheaper than one, and that by a great deal ; so that, where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many and low; as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that, he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they must be higher, or they will not stand ; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches running over the flat shore on the other ; usually a steep bank at the river-side next the large arch ; always, of course, a flat shore on the side of the small ones; and the bend of the river assuredly concave towards this Hat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank ; or, if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep end of the bridge. Now this kind of bridge, sympathising, as it does, with the spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a bridge ; and all endeavours to clo the thing in a grand engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous ; not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves, but because the mind perceives at once that there has been cost uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.* * The cost of art in getting a bridge level is always lost, for you must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pre- tending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo COMPOSITION. 59 "Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Tur- nerian bridge in Fig. 12 is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther interesting by having its main arcli crowned by a watch-tower. But as I want you to note especially what perhaps was not the case in the real bridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the arches diminish gradually, not one is regularly dimin- ished— they are all of different shapes and sizes : you can- not see this clearly in Fig. 12, but in the larger diagram, Fig. 14, over leaf, you will with ease. This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral currents near the shore are of course irregular in size, and a simple builder would naturally vary his arches accordingly ; and also, if the bottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition, that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each different, each obedient, and each in harmonious service. 4. The Lavj of Curvature. — There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of Turner's. Kot only does road ; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment. To this I answer : first, it is not more dan- gerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a useless rail ; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground ; and so my picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of the engi- neering mind. 60 COMPOSITION. it slope away unequally at its sides, but it slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a straight line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base of the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig. 14., and effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered grievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where the straight line is indispensable to their use or stability : and that when a complete system of straight lines, throughout the form, is necessary to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists, is in colour and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape of any crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily, and you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective of added colour, or other interfering elements of beauty. Well, as curves are more beautif ul than straight lines, it is necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, mass, or colour should be, if possible, in curves, rather than straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful con- tinuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment by the corks of a net as it is being drawn : nearly every person is more or less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now it is almost always possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of the net, are actually connected with each other, but — and this is a still more noble and interesting kind of continuity — among features which appear at first entirely separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 12., appear at first independent of each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. .15., the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and harmony among them. The reason of this is, that they 62 COMPOSITION. are all bounded by one grand curve, traced by the dotted line ; out of the seven towers, four precisely touch this curve, the others only falling back from it here and there to keep the eye from discovering it too easily. Fig. 15. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this kind : it is, in drawing large forest or mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand did ; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of ISTature in all her work to produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to sketch at all among the mountains ; if not, let him merely draw for himself, care- COMPOSITION. 63 fully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where they are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them. The steeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), are easily accessible to a Londoner ; and he will soon find not only how con- stant, but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful cur- vature is distinguished from ungraceful by two characters ; first, its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course ; * and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in degree at different parts of its course. Winkelnian's Ancient Art, p. 48. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves. A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line, from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that no part of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever. Thus, in Fig. 16., a is a bad curve, because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monotonous throughout ; but b is a good curve, because it continually changes its direction as it proceeds. * I cannot waste space here by reprinting- what I have said in other books : but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. xvii. ; and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8. 64 COMPOSITION. The first difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs consists in observance CD of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line b, as in Fig. 17., von can immediately feel the springiness of character dependent Fig-17- on the changeful ness of the curve. You may put leaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make a right tree-spray of it. For all tree boughs, large or small, as wTell as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it is a point of primal necessity that your eye should always seize and your hand trace it. Here are two more portions of good curves, with leaves put on them at the extremities in- stead of the flanks, Fig. 18. ; and two showing the arrange- ment of masses of foliage seen a little farther off, Fig. 19., which you may in like manner amuse yourself by turning into segments of cir- cles— you will see with what result. I hope, however, you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of tree boughs carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in their most complicated and lovely forms.* B. Isot only does every good curve vary in general * If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without hav- ing gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. p. 33., and examine the curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated nnder the heads A and B. COMPOSITION". 65 tendency, but it is modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the outlines of a tree trunk are never as at a* Fig. 20., but as at b. So also in waves, clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement of minor curvatures car- ried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however, this is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves out of small ones ; it is an in- crease in the quantity of the beau- tiful element, but not a change in its nature. 5. The Law of Radia tion. — AVe have hitherto been concerned only with the binding of our various objects into beautiful lines or pro- cessions. The next point we have to consider is, how we may unite these lines or processions them- selves, so as to make groups of them. Now, there are two kinds of har- monies of lines. One in which, moving more or less side by side, they variously, but evidently with consent, retire from or approacl l each other, intersect or oppose eacli othei in music, for different voices, thus approach and cross, fall and rise, in harmony ; so the waves of the sea, as they approach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but Fig. 20. currents of melody 66 COMPOSITION. with a great unity through, all ; and so various lines of composition often flow harmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But the most simple and perfect connexion of lines is by radiation ; that is, by their all springing from one point, or closing towards it : and this harmony is often, in Xature almost always, united with the other ; as the boughs of trees, though they intersect and play amongst each other irregularly, indicate by their gene- ral tendency their origin from one root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this radia- tion : it is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf ; but more beautifully in the complicated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is only a flat piece of radiation ; but the tree throws its branches on all sides, and even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beau- tiful, because varied by the freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has been ascertained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately the same at which the branches leave the great stem ; and thus each section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf, were it not for the interfering force CD of gravity on the masses of foliage. This force in pro- portion to their age, and the lateral leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as be- fore noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the more it droops (Fig. 17. p. 6-1.) ; besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which give a prettier and more com- plicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up the centre. Fig. 21. may thus be considered the simplest type of tree radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary ramification is unrep- COMPOSITION. 67 Fig. resented, for the sake of simplicity ; but if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two secondary branches to each main branch (as represented in the general branch structure shown at b, Fig. 18. p. 64), we shall have the form, 22. This I consider the perfect general type of tree struc- ture ; and it is curiously con- nected with certain forms zantine, and Gothic ornamentation, into discussion of which, however, we must not enter here. It will be observed, that both in Figures 21. and 22. all the branches so spring from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united radiation from the root r. This is by no means universally the case ; but if the branches do not bend towards a point in the root, they at least converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 23., the mathematical centre of cur- vature, a, is thus, in one case, on the ground at some dis- tance from the root, and in the other, near the top of the tree. Half, only, of each tree is given, for the sake of clearness : Fig. 24. gives both sides of another example, in which the origins of curvature are below the root. As the positions of such points may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most part in a spiral order round the tree, and at proportionate dis- tances, the systems of curvature which regulate the form of vegetation are quite infinite. Infinite is a word 68 COMPOSITION. V easily said, and easily written, and people do not always mean it when they say it ; in this case I do A mean it; the number of systems is incalcu- X lable, and even to furnish anything like a representative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds of figures such as Fig. 24* Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great relations of stem and branches. The forms of the branches them- selves are regulated by still more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate position between the form of the tree and of the leaf. f \| The leaf has a flat ramification ; the tree a I f completely rounded one ; the bough is aFig. 24? neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the two, in a half -flattened, half- rounded flake, closely resembling in shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir cone ; by com- bination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general resemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand ; but they may be more accu- rately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a very broad-headed and flat- tened boat applied by its keel to the end of a main branch,f as in Fig. 25., * The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these fig- ures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by com- passes. f I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely fac- similes of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my Fig. 25. COMPOSITION. GO the lines which its ribs will take, and the general con- tour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and below ; and from one side and another, will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and foreshort- ening of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig- 26. below, is an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of a healthy young oak ; and, if you compare it with Fig. 25., you will under- stand at once the action of the lines of leafage ; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly paral- lel to each other at the sides, while the* bough sends all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches nearest the root bend most back ; and, of course, throwing some always back as well as forwards ; the appearance of reversed action being much increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective. Fig. 25. shows the perspective of such a bouo-h as it is seen from be- low; Fig. 26. gives rudely the look it would have from above. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in the drawing of these branch flakes, as you see them in different directions and actions; now raised, now depressed; touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to show all the white under surfaces of the leaves shivering in light, meaning as I write — often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to some- thing else. This one is really a little too careless ; but it would take more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is. 70 COMPOSITION. as the bottom of a boat rises white with spray at the surge- crest; or drooping in quietness towards the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. S now- time, by the way,- is one of the best for practice in the placing of tree masses ; but you will only be able to under- stand them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. IS. p. 64. First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at a; thenVith five, as at b, and so on ; directing your whole attention to the expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like arrangements, which, in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal con- fused, partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of shade, or absolute blackness of mass required in those studies. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the wood. You see that in eveiy generally repre- sentative figure I have surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted line : such lines do indeed terminate every vegetable form ; and you see that they are themselves beautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the width or narrowness of the spaces they enclose, character- ize the species of tree or leaf, and express its free or for- mal action, its grace of youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit ; and mark- ing a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you must al- ready have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the great trees. You must have noticed, I COMPOSITION. 71 should think, that whenever a leaf is compound, — that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf, — those leaflets are not symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side towards the point of the great leaf, so as to ex- press their subordination to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they are not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf. A Fig. 27. Fig. 27., which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It is composed of a central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again composed of three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe, the minor one, a of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the minor h 1 of B is larger than its opposite lj 2. Again, each of these minor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, a of A, is symmetrically di- 72 COMPOSITION. vided, the b of B is unsym metrical, its largest side-lobe being lowest. Again b 2, the lobe c 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to b) is larger than c 2 ; and so also in h 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger than the other, and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass ; the lower leaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power, in the imme- diate presence of the greater or captain leaf ; and always expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary character. This law is carried oat even in single leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point of the spray, is always the smaller ; and a slightly different curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate leaf throughout the tree, is made to depend on its confession of its own lowliness and subjection. And now, if we bring together in one view the princi- ples we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great laws ; and that all perfect * vegetable form is appointed to express these four laws in noble balance of authority. 1. Support from one living root. 2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in the root, or in some stated connexion with it. 3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action * Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its natnre de- pendent, as in runners and climbers ; or which is susceptible of continual injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course, space here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to the student. COMPOSITION. 73 both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves ; or play- ing hither and thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided states of mind about their future life. 4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in its neighbourhood ; and to work with them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and eircumferent stateliness of the Avhole tree. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies of these laws ; you may, perhaps, how- ever, be a little puzzled to see the meeting of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human actions should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart motive ; the most beautiful systems of action taking place when this motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is clearly seen to proceed from it ; while also many beautiful secondary systems of action taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some beautiful sub- ordinate connexion with the central or life motive. The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally significative; and as you draw trees more and more in their various states of health and hardship, you will be every day more struck by the beauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for mankind to know ; * and 3-011 will see what this vegetation of the * There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves upon the ground ; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them, you 4 74 COMPOSITION. earth, which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the earth, — what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or spoken for us, not in frightful black letters, nor in dull sentences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may be ; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day. This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of composition, the most influeii- tial in producing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in pictures, it is constantly obej7ed by the great composers ; but, like the law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the point to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very often far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that, through each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form of a round or oval spot ; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of the ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they fall through any small aperture : but the openings be- tween leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun ; and how it may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the ray of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear with it His image. COMPOSITION. 75 concurrence, the value of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough. In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has de- termined that his system of curvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram Fig. 14. p. 61., compared with Fig. 12. p. 51., will show how this is done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable part of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a ledge in the bank ; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be missed. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its course by the rudder ; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of the figures, and leads ac- curately to the tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point ; and all are centralised by the long reflection which continues the vertical lines. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the rudder ; continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly beyond it,* but taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate shadows un- * In the smaller figure (12), it will be seen that this interruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge ; and this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily repre- sented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the curve it begins being indicated by the dashes only. 76 COMPOSITION. der the arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old times under the large arches ; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by the long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or the other, but Turner knows better ; he uses them as a foundation for his tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns a pil- lar ; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great composers have this same feeling about sus- taining their vertical masses : you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see, for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrowT under the great tower, in the sketch of St. Nicolas, at Prague, and the white group of figures under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg * ) ; and Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent instance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose Fig. 10., already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because, being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its being intentional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany. COMPOSITION. 77 bushes radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's head ; but their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy — by the way, note the re- markable instance in these of the use of darkest lines towards the light ; — all more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction and character, with these greater curves ; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law, which we must consider separately. 6. The Law of Contrast. — Of course the character of everything is best manifested by Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labour; sound, to be heard clearly, must rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness, dark- ness by light; and so on in all things. Eow in art every colour has an opponent colour, which, if brought near it, will relieve it more completely than any other ; so, also, every form and line may be made more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them ; a curved line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so on ; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given colour or form would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.* In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice vulgarises a picture. Great painters do not com- monly, or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They in- * If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's representing1 a coat of arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried round it in front ; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in opposing the rich folds of the dresa. 78 COMPOSITION. troduce it by stealth and with intermediate links of tender change ; allowing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.* Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 15., the main current of the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly straight across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines below, which at first sympathise with the oblique bar, then gradu- ally get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No passage, however intentionally monoto- nous, is ever introduced by a good artist without some slight counter current of this kind ; so much, indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skil- ful poet's versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere ; if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing ; and he purposely introduces the labouring or discordant verse, that the full ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm. f And * Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set behird dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's edge f " A prudent chief not always must display His powers in equal ranks and fair array, But with the occasion and the place comply, Conceal his force ; nay, seem sometimes to fly. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream." Essay , a ; b, 5, b, d ! * Very often, how- ever, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never saw a good illuminated border without one at least ; and no series of any kind is ever introduced by a great com- poser in a painting without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome, with the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hake well's Italy series : the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when otherwise, it would have been stiff and absurd. If you look back to Fig. 28. you will see, in the arrange- ment of the battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole top of the tower, though actu- ally three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat square and blank ; then the next two higher and richer, the tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant ; and the last battlement, there- fore, is a little higher than the first two, — a little lower than the second two, — and different in shape from either. Hide it with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements look. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being square, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not only by the element of curv- ature, in the ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of sharpness ; hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the projecting point of the roof. Also because the walls are thick and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength * I am describing from an MS. , circa 1300, of Gregory's Decretalia, in my own possession. 4* 82 COMPOSITION. with weakness ; therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting shadow some- where ; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass, necessary to the first by the law of repeti- tion. Hide this inferior angle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the law of sym- metry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in the feeling with which yon look at the battlements ; there is a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of radiation had any- thing to do with the matter : but if you take the extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a centre, and follow first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you continue it, to the point of the tower cor- nice ; follow the second curve, the top of the tiles of the wrall, and it will strike the top of the right-hand battle- ment ; then draw a curve from the highest point of the angle battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its dark echo ; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the npper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement ; and the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of sympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general flow of the curves from left to right. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But as you study longer, you will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in COMPOSITION. 83 every touch : that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind in twenty various ways at once ; and that there is as much difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great composers ruling his colours, and a common painter confused by them, as there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old lady carried off her feet by a mob. 7. The Law of Interchange. — Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces the unity of opposite things^ by giving to each a portion of the character of the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two masses of colour, all the way down — suppose blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal, partly on one division, partly on the other, you will find it pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue which comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of colour, since, in all ornamenta- tion whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of good design. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of con- trasts ; as that, after red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the other, red shall pass to blue's side and blue lo red's. This kind of alternation takes place simply in four-quartered shields ; in more subtle pieces of treatment, a little bit only of each colour is carried into the other, and they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of inten- tional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind , are produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as long as it comes against light sky, 84: COMPOSITION. and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade and colour, is so great, that if you only follow her closely, every one who looks at your drawing with atten- tion will think that you have been inventing the most artificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of shadow that could possibly be devised by human wit. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade : it seems, of all his principles of composition, to be the one he is most conscious of ; many others he obeys by instinct, but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares. The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can, some impress or imparted power, from the other. 8. The Law of Consistency. — Breadth. — It is to be re- membered, in the next place, that while contrast exhibits the characters of things, it very often neutralises or paralyses their power. A number of white things may be shown to be clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but if we want the full power of their gathered light, the black thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy which employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass. And, not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency value ; by change he is refreshed, and by perseverance strengthened. LXence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by aggregate force of colour or line, more than by contrasts of cither ; many noble pictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red, or grey, or COMPOSITION. 85 gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by slight and subtle use of contrast. Simi- larly as to form ; some compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sub- limity than those which are more mingled in their ele- ments. They tell a special tale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely please the eye. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the works of the greatest men ; their separate pic- tures have all separate aims. We have not, in each, grey colour set against sombre, and sharp forms against soft, and loud passages against low : but we have the bright picture, with its delicate sadness ; the sombre picture, with its single ray of relief ; the stern picture, with only one tender group of lines ; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank ; and so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its impressiveness. The princi- pal hearing of this lavj, however, is on the separate mass- es or divisions of a picture : the character of the whole composition may be broken or various, if we please, but there must certainly be a tendency to consistent assem- blage in its divisions. As an army may act on several points at once, but can only act effectually by having somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly by skirmishers ; so a picture may be various in its ten- dencies, but must be somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are always associating their colours in great groups; binding their forms together by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexteri- ties of expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large gathering of each hind of thing 86 COMPOSITION. into one place ; light being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and colour to colour. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights or false colours, it is absurd and monstrous ; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another all black or brown ; but not an easy matter to assemble all the circumstances which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown in another. Generally speak- ing, however, breadth will result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study : Nature is always broad ; and if you paint her colours in true relations, you will paint them in majestic masses. If you find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all probability, not only ill composed, but untrue. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of light and colour, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.* Still, it is never the mere scatter- ing, but the order discernible through this scattering, which is the real source of pleasure ; not the mere multi- tude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not unshepherded ; speaking of life and peace : the broken lights of a bad painter fall like hail- stones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving it to be wished they were also of dissolution. 9. The Law of Harmony. — This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition as of truth, but it * One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scat- tered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great part of their power to infinitude of division ; order being marked through this division. COMPOSITION. 87 must guide composition, and is properly, therefore, to be stated in this place. Good drawing is, as we have seen, an abstract of natural facts ; you cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the depth of colour in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler. If you paint all the colours proportion- ately paler, as if an equal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still obtain a har- monious, though not an equally forcible statement of natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much subdued, you have no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the observer, " Fancy all those colours a little deeper, and you will have the actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away, something is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of harmony. It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to darken the whole system of colours, than to make them paler. You remember, in your first studies of colour from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light Avhich were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. J3ut, in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put colour into them ; and then the other colours must be made darker, in some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately, though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints, you leave others undarkeued, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give the impression of truth. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the colors so much as to relieve the lights in their natural degree; you S3 COMPOSITION. would merely sink most of your colours, if you tried to do so, into a broad mass of blackness : but it is quite possible to lower tliem harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to show the light you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonised pictures this is done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards the lighter parts of it, without materi- ally lowering it in the very dark parts ; the tendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large masses of middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen the individual tints without dirty- ing or obscuring them. It is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over with grey or brown ; and easy to see the effect of the landscape, when its colours are thus universally polluted with black, by using the black convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying nature and degrading art which ever was put into an artist's hand.* For the thing required is not to darken pale yellow by mixing grey with it, but to deepen the pure yellow ; not to darken crimson by mixing black with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson : and thus the required effect could only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass of the colour of every object in your land- scape, and of every minor hue that made up those colours, and then could see the real landscape through this deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need ; and then you may paint as forcibly as you choose, but * I fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by consid- erable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art, must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument ; the French landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its perversion. COMPOSITION. 89 your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of painting.* Supposing those scales of colour, which I told von to prepare in order to show yon the relations of colour to grey, were quite accurately made, and numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a deeper toue in any given mass of colour, than to substitute for each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted, that is to say, if you want to deepen the whole two degrees, substituting for the yellow No. 5. the yellow No. 7., and for the red No. 9. the red No. 11., and so on: but the hues of any object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole matter clearly by taking a group of colours out of your scale, arranging them prettily, and then washing them all over with grey : that represents the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group of colours, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale ; and that will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the thing by working from Nature. The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white ; then give the sky a bold full blue, bringing them well out ; then paint the trunk and leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and brown as you see they will bear. After- wards proceed to more complicated studies, matching the * Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting-, in Modern Painters, vol iv. chap, iii. 90 COMPOSITION. colours carefully first by your old method ; then deepen- ing each colour with its own tint, and being careful, above all things, to keep truth of equal change when the colours are connected with each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more aspect and sense of har- mony are gained by the precision with which you observe the relation of colours in dark sides and light sides, and the influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added depth in independent colours. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most important of those which the artist has to regard. But there are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, accord- ing to its mode of production. There is even a harmony of touch. If you paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each divi- sion of the picture may be right separately, but they will not agree together : the whole will be effectless and value- less, out of harmony. Similarly, if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day, and another by a grey light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight, and both may be well toned, and have their relative shad- ows truly cast, neither will look like light : they will destroy each other's power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad and definable instances of discord- ance ; but there is an extent of harmony in all good work much too subtle for definition ; depending on the draughts- man's carrying everything he draws up to just the balan- cing and harmonious point, in finish, and colour, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and style of touch, all considered at once ; and never allowing himself to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing COMPOSITION. 91 them with any of Riehter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books lately published at Christmas, with all the German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is perfect in harmony. The pure and sim- ple effects of daylight which he gets by his thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivalled, as far as I know, by any other work executed with so few touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most remarkable in this quality. Eichter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character, with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy ; but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to trenchant white in another ; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local colour hardly felt anywhere. All German work is apt to he out of harmony, in consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its wilful refusals of fact ; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which dwells violently on par- ticular points, and makes all the lines of. thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electri- fied ; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant leopard, and as strong. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to me as capable of being illustrated or de- fined ; but there are multitudes of others which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which I never hope to define; and these the most impor- tant, and connected with the deepest powers of -the art. Among those which I hope to be able to explain when I have thought of them more, are the laws which relate to nobleness and ighobleness; that ignobleness especially which we commonly call " vulgarity," and which, in its 92 COMPOSITION. essence, is one of the most curious subjects of inquiry con- nected with human feeling. Among those which I never hope to explain, are chiefly laws of expression, and others bearing simply on simple matters ; but, for that very rea- son, more influential than any others. These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are ; it being just as impossible, I think, to explain why one succession of musical notes * shall be noble and pathetic, and such as might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why an- other succession is base and ridiculous, and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness. The best part of every great work is always inexplicable : it is good because it is good ; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven. But though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline which you generally give to your character, and this especially with regard to the choice of incidents ; a kind of composition in some sort easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colours, but in every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings. For instance, in the " Datur Hora Quieti," the last vi- gnette to Roger's Poems, the plough in the foreground has three purposes. The first purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it brighter by opposi- tion; but any dark object whatever would have done this. Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the ca- * In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned about ; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not : and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music. COMPOSITION. 93 dence of the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of hu- man labour closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the hand leans are brought most clearly into sight ; and they are the chief dark of the picture, be- cause the tillage of the ground is required of man as a punishment ; but they make the soft light of the setting sun brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design ; and yet their under current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace. Again, in the " Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have marked as most desirable for your posses- sion, the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the in- cident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's ad- vance just as surely as the abandoned plough told us of the ceased labour of the day. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of this kind as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the whole subject that the mind of a great composer is known. A single incident may be sug- gested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading a chapter. But the great composers so arrange all their designs that one incident illustrates an- ts o other, just as one colour relieves another. Perhaps the 94 COMPOSITION". " Heysham," of the Yorkshire series which, as to its local- it}7, may be considered a companion to the last drawing we have spoken of, the " Lancaster Sands," presents as in- teresting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling in this respect. The subject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of Morecambe Bay ; not in the com- mon sense a picturesque village : there are no pretty bow- windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the rustic doors, or quaint gables ; nothing but a single street of thatched and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line, the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly discern the houses from the fields and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a wooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in which a right of way lies through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is full of ruts, and winds clown a bad bit of hill between two broken banks of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few enclosures which surround the village; they can hardly be called gardens; but a decayed fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank ; and a clothes-line, with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows ; a very small haystack and pigstye being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumber- ing cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge wooden col- lars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house, with three chimneys and a dormer win- dow in its roof, and the roof is of stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt the cler- gyman's; there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from any other in the village ; this smoke is from COMPOSITION. 95 the lowest chimney at the back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire not having been long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the cottage onlv bv its low-arched belfrv, a little neater than one would expect in such a village ; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent ; * and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two fragments of a border war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into edges and furrows by the feet of the Tillage children. On the bank of moor, which forms the fore- ground, are a few cows, the carter's dog barking at a vix- enish one : the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round her waist ; she stands with her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty sti^ed petticoat under the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, barefooted, stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet) ; — whether boy or girl we are not sure ; it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trowsers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to keep the sun out of our eyes when we are "looking for strayed cows among the moorland hoi- lows, and helps us at present to watch (holding the bon- net's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow to proceed * uPuseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing- was made ; but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ec- clesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the principal elements of Puseyism," — I use this word regret- fully, no other existing which will serve for it, — had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long before. 96 COMPOSITION. without any interference. A little to the right the hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has. just taken her apronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thiu, and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks ; we must glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry it safe- ly to the hay-cart without dropping any. Beyond the vil- lage is a rocky hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone emerging here and there, with pleas- ant tnrf on their brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss, stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seaward; perhaps one of the village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it there, that his mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand in long curved lines, slowly ; shadows of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating — miles away; but no sail is visible, not one fisherboat on the beach, not one dark speck on the qniet horizon. Beyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy light on all their crags. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there is in this composition ; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the impression of wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks ; but peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sancti- fied by the pure mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between days of toil and nights of innocence. All noble composition of this kind can be reached only COMPOSITION. 97 by instinct : yon cannot set yourself to arrange such a sub- ject; you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously invent it. And your power of discerning what is best in expression, among natural subjects, depends wholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind ; above all, on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If you go down into Cum- berland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and explore the hills with merry companions, however much you may enjoy your tour or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much as one pictorial sub- ject rightly ; you will not see into the depth of any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's journeys — ten or twelve miles a day — taking a week from some starting-place sixty or seventy miles away : sleep at the pretty little wayside inns, or the rough village ones ; then take the hills as they tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart guides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything which it is the ordinary traveller's duty to see, or pride to do. Never force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humour ; but never force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of anything better : and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world will unfold themselves to yon in still increasing fulness of pas- sionate power; and your difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose subjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and general power of mind : for it is not so much by the consideration you give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers of thought, that the 98 COMPOSITION. character of your composition will be determined. Sim- plicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colours and affected forms. Habits of patient comparison and accu- rate judgment will make your art precious, as they will make your actions wise ; and every increase of noble en- thusiasm in your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon the works of your hands. Elements of Drawing, 167-220. 10. The Law of Selv. — In true composition everything not only helps everything else a little, but helps with its utmost power. Every atom is in full and kindly energy. Not a line, nor speck of colour, but is doing its very best. The extent to which this law is carried in truly right and noble work is wholly incomprehensible to the ordinary observer, and no true account of it would be believed. JSTo one can explain how the notes of a Mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of Titian's drapery, produce their essential effect on each other. 5 M. P., part viii., ch. 1, § 2. See this law of help illustrated with great subtility in the composition of " The Loire Side " (plate 73, 5 M. P.). Hide with your finger the little ring on the stone, and you will find the river has stopped flowing. That ring is to repeat the curved lines of the river bank, which express its current, and bring the feeling of them down to us. The least thing helps to express the motive of the picture, ■ — which is not only repose, but the indolent repose of an out wearied people, not caring much what becomes of them. The road covered with litter, the crockery left outside the cottage to dry in the sun after being washed up, the black vine trellis pointing to the massive building in the dis- tance— these and other accessories help to unite the compo- sition and express its idea. 5 M. P., part viii., ch. 2, § 4. COMPOSITION. 99 The editor adds the following laws of grouping, collect- ed from his author and others, and in some particulars already anticipated, but important to be seen by the stu- dent as a system of rules and principles. 11. Laws of Grouping. — Grouping is the arrangement of figures or objects in natural or pleasing positions. It is observable in nature, that in a concourse of people, they form themselves into different companies according to ages, conditions, or inclinations, and these divisions are called groups. There is reason to believe that Zeuxis, who nourished 400 years b. c, and who simplified composition and im- proved colouring, was the first to teach the true method of grouping ; at least, from the descriptions by Pausanias, it would evidently seem that in all pictures anterior to this age, the figures were ranged in lines of parallel perspec- tive, without depth or distance, and without any principal group on which the interest might centre, even so late as Panenas, the brother of Phidias, 450 b. c. The different distances were represented by the very inartificial and ungracious means of placing the figures in rows one above another. Effective linear grouping, however, was not known until the revived knowledge, extended and applied, of linear perspective by Verrochio and his pupil, Da Vinci, in the fifteenth century. The Principal Laws of Groups. — (1) The group must grow out of the subject. (2) The group must contain all that distinguishes it from other subjects, and omit nothing that is character- istic and exclusively its own. (3) The group must admit nothing that is superfluous or commonplace. (4) Each figure must have its own individuality. (5) Each group must have a principal figure as a centre of interest. As an exception to this rule P. Veronese, in 100 COMPOSITION. his picture of the Marriage of Cana, puts Christ at the re- mote end of the table, in no prominence whatever, his ob- ject being to display the figures and splendid dresses of the Venetian nobility, rather than illustrate a fact in sacred history. (6) The eye of the spectator must be led to the prin- cipal figure by its receiving an emphasis or focus of light and colour. Veronese again departs from rule in his picture of "Perseus and Andromeda," by putting An- dromeda, the chief figure, in shadow. Note. — Where numerous figures are huddled together without the focus of a chief figure, there is massing but no grouping. (7) Every group must have an emphasis or focus of shadow. (8) Every group must have a true lineal perspective. Even when the group is in the horizontal form, as in Da Vinci's "Last Supper," there is a horizontal perspective. 12. Number of Figures in Groups. — The figures of the group must be neither too numerous nor too crowded ; but a number that would appear a crowd and a confusion in one picture might be indispensable to another. Sir Joshua Reynolds supposes that Paul Veronese, who was fond of brilliant assemblies, would say that the number of figures in an effective group should not be less than forty. Annibale Carracci said that no more than twelve could be included with advantage. Sophocles never ad- mitted more than three figures on the stage at once. The number must be determined by the subject, and left to the judgment of the painter. David's picture of the " Coronation of Napoleon " has 210 personages, 80 of whom are full length. Veronese's "Marriage at Cana" has 160 figures, life size. Tintoretto's " Paradise " has 500 figures. It is evident, therefore, that there can be no rule as to numbers of figures admissible in a group. COMPOSITION. 101 13. Principal and Subordinate Groups. — (1) If the figures be numerous, it is usual, if not necessary, to divide them into principal and subordinate or accessory groups. (2) Between the divisions of a group, one of which, as we have said, must be a principal group as a focus from which the composition is to be developed, and upon which the whole picture is to be constructed, there must be unity of sentiment, action, and locality. (3) Group must balance group. 14. The Attitudes of Figures. — (1) The various atti- tudes of the body must be carefully observed. When one side of the body bends in, the other will bend out. The lines of the body should be balanced. If one hand and arm hang down, the other ought to be raised. If one arm goes to the right, the other will naturally and generally go to the left. But formality, stiffness, or posturings, ought to be carefully avoided, as indicating crude and pedantic composition. (2) Leslie says that in a group of several figures, one must always present its back to the spectator. This is unavoidable in circular groups, where the spectator is supposed not to be a party, but to stand outside the circle. (3) Attitudes and actions are often repeated by the figures of a group. In Raphael's picture of " Ananias and Sapphira" there are seven figures in a group on one side, and seven in a group on the other, and seven in the middle ; and no one, except Ananias and Sapphira, performs an action that is not repeated, though varied. 15. The Form of the Group. — According to the direc- tion into which the principal lines of a picture or group fall, the composition is distinguished into angular, circular, and horizontal. (1) Angular Grouping.— -a. The diagonal line, the sim- 102 COMPOSITION. plest form of angular composition, is exceedingly well adapted for the representation of perspective, especially, when, for greater range of* effect, the distance is placed towards one side of the picture. b. The pyramidal line is the one most approved, espe- cially by Hogarth, for the effectiveness of a group. The Laocoon is that form. c. The diamond or lozenge shape is also well adapted to groups of four or five figures. (2) Circular Grouping. — This was Raphael's favourite form. It is the picturesque form and adapted to grand subjects. In some, the figures are arranged on the line of an ellipse, nearly closing up in front of the spectator, who is supposed to stand on the outside. In others, the eye of the spectator is led into the depth of the group, arranged in a semicircle, in front and as a part of which the spec- tator is supposed to stand. In sacred groups this semi- circular arrangement seemed to bring the spectator into its immediate presence. It is said of P. Veronese, that where he introduced land- scape backgrounds into his pictures, that trees are lightly but masterly sketched in, and the other accessories are ar- ranged in a way so as not to intrude on the centre group. In his grandest compositions, in which he loved to intro- duce numerous figures and horses, and in the clouds above not unfrequently the apotheosis of the blessed, the whole is arranged in grand and powerful groups. Some of these groups are so fine that their full merit can hardly be felt or appreciated at once, almost every head and every figure being a study in itself. Rarely do we meet with any crude or unsightly figures in the works of this great painter ; be- sides, he had an agreeable way of arranging his large com- positions, contrary to the general rule, so as not to allow all thought or attention to be directed towards the princi- pal or speaking figures ; thus the eye is never fatigued by COMPOSITION. 103 dwelling on one point, but is refreshed by glancing from one point to another, and is thus able to enjoy those por- tions of the composition, which, while accessory in some degree to the story, are yet sufficiently independent to be considered pictures in themselves. Some of Raphael's groups, as in the " School of Athens," have too little interior unity ; and some, as in the " Trans- figuration " and picture of " Ananias," are too formal, almost pedantic. Ruskin says that in Tintoretto's picture of " Paradise," the grouping is so intricate, at the upper part, it is not easy to distinguish one figure from another, but that the whole number could. not be below 500. The whole com- position is divided into concentric zones, represented one above another like the stories of a cupola, round the fig- ures of Christ and the Madonna at the central and high- est point. Between each zone or belt of the nearer figures, the white distances of heaven are seen filled with floating spirits. (3) Horizontal Grouping is distinguished as the form in which the great Da Vinci arranged the Apostles in his picture of the " Supper." Our Saviour sits in the middle of the table, and on either side are two subordinate groups, of three Apostles each. ISTo one ever criticised the suit- ableness of the form to the subject, and this suitableness is the test of its artistic truth. However, as to the form of groups, Fuseli remarks in his 5th sect.: " Various are the shapes in which composi- tion embodies its subject, and presents it to our eye. The cone or pyramid, the globe, the grape, flame, and stream, % the circle and its segment lend their figure to elevate, con- centrate, round, diffuse themselves, or undulate in its masses." CHAPTER VI. OF TRUTH OF TONE. As I have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters have never yet been equalled ; and as this is the first, and nearly the last, concession I shall have to make to them, I wish it at once to be thoroughly under- stood how far it extends. I understand two things by the word " tone : " — first, the exact relief and relation of objects against and to each other in substance and darkness, as they are nearer or more dis- tant, and the perfect relation of the shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture, whether that be sky, water, or anything else. Secondly, the exact relation of the colours of the shadows to the colours of the lights, so that they • may be at once felt to be merely different degrees of the same light ; and the accurate relation among the illumi- nated parts themselves, with respect to the degree in which they are- influenced by the colour of the light itself, whether warm or cold ; so that the whole of the picture (or, where several tones are united, those parts of it which are under each,) may be felt to be in one climate under one hind of light, and in one hind of atmosphere ; this being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of each colour laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual colour of the object represented, and that it is raised to its apparent pitch by illumination. A very bright brown, for instance, out of sunshine, may be precisely of the same shade of colour as a very dead or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different OF TRUTH OF TONE. 105 in quality y and that quality by which the illuminated dead colour would be felt in nature different from the unilluminated bright one, is what artists are perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense about, under the name of ''tone." The want of tone in pictures is caused by objects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not by illumination, and by the consequent want of sensation of the raising of their hues by light. The first of these meanings of the word " tone " is liable to be confounded with what is commonly called "aerial perspective." But aerial perspective is the expression of space, by any means whatsoever, sharpness of edge, vividness of colour, etc., assisted by greater pitch of shadow, and requires only that objects should be detached from each other, by degrees of intensity in pro- portion to their distance, without requiring that^ the difference between the farthest and nearest should be in positive quantity the same that nature has put. But what I have called " tone " requires that there should be the same sum of difference, as well as -the same division of differences. Now the finely-toned pictures of the old masters are, in this respect, some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves below her key ; the dark objects in the mid- dle distance having precisely the same relation to the light of the skv which they have in nature, but the light being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow deepened in the same degree. I have often been struck, when looking at a camera-obscura on a dark day, with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the finest pictures of the old masters ; all the foliage coming dark against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but here and there the isolated light of a silvery stem or an unusually illumined cluster of leafage. Now if this could be done consistently, and all the 5* 106 OF TRUTH OF TONE. notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, it would be right and necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade. Her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light whatever is reflected to the eye ; ours are black surfaces from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light. Here we are' then, with white paper for our highest light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and vacuity for her gloom. It is evident that she can well afford to throw her material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it — all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. But if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our scale at once ; and what in the world are we to do then % Where are all our intermediate distances to come from ? — how are we to express the aerial relations among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, whose most distant boughs are already almost black ? — how are we to come up from this to the foreground, and when we have done so, how are we to express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as we can make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and clear and black, among its lighted surfaces? It cannot but be evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from OF TRUTH OF TONE. 107 one distance to another, we give the same quantity of dif- ference in pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. And this, accordingly, was the means by which the old masters obtained their (truth ?) of tone. They chose those steps of distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable — that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills — and they gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade with exquisite accuracy of imitation. Their means were then exhausted, and they were obliged to leave their trees flat masses of mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths of space in every individual part of their picture by the thousand. But this they did not care for; it saved them trouble ; they reached their grand end, imi- tative effect ; they thrust home just at the places where the common and careless eye looks for imitation, and they attained the broadest and most faithful appearance of truth of tone which art can exhibit. But they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless when they should seize a thousand. And is it indeed worthy of being called a truth, when we have a vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our language are adequate, instead of giving all its parts abridged in the order of their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three ? Kay, the very truth to which the rest are sacri- ficed is rendered falsehood by their absence, the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other. Turner starts from the beginning with a totally differ- ent principle. lie boldly takes pure white (and justly, 108 OF TEUTH OF TONE. for it is the sign of the most intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lampblack for his deepest shade ; and between these he makes every degree of shade indicative of a separate degree of distance,* giving each step of approach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would have in nature, but a difference bearing the same propor- tion to that which his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of nature's shade ; so that an object half way between his horizon and his foreground, will be exactly in half tint of force, and every minute division of inter- mediate space will have just its proportionate share of the lesser sum, and no more. Hence where the old masters expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred ; and where they said furlongs, he says leagues. Which of these modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth, I think I may safely leave the reader to decide for himself. He will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is inconsistent with real truth ; for the very means by which the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it. Take, for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced — the work of a really great and * Of course I am. not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but of that quantity of depth of shade by which, cceteris paribus, a near object will exceed a distant one. For the truth of the systems of Tur- ner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide Chap. IX. pp# 194-200. OF TRUTH OF TONE. 109 intellectual mind, the quiet Nicholas Poussin, in our own National Gallery, with the traveller washing his feet. The first idea we receive from this picture is, that it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. Not so. It is full noon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal, — (for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not lose itself half way down, and if it were not lat- eral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.) Now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under noon- day sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. The only truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly sacrificed. So much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. Or take, as a still more glaring instance, No. 260 in the Dulwich Gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force, or any marking whatsoever of distance by colour, or any other means, between* them and the foreground. Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his mate- rials in the Mercury and Argus. He has here his light actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects against it would be far more justifiable than in Poussin's case. But this dark relief is used in its full force only with the nearest leaves of the nearest group of foliage 110 OF TRUTH OF TONE. overhanging the foreground from the left : and between these and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or four yards separate j distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist and light are shown ; while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. It is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in nature ; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at hand. And it cannot but be evident to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective. Compare again the last vignette in Rogers's Poems, the " Datur Hora Quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the trees, is kept pale and full of graduation ; even the bridge where it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it, until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigor- ous local black of the plough throws the whole picture into distance and sunshine. I do not know anything in art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing for united intensity of light and repose. Observe, I am. not at present speaking of the beauty or desirableness of the system of the old masters ; it may be sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more ; but all I am concerned with at present is, that it is not true / while Turner's is the closest and most studied approach to truth of which the materials of art admit. It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of OF TRUTH OF TONE. Ill the subject that I admitted inferiority iu our great mod- ern master to Claude or Poussin, but with reference to the second and more usual meaning of the word "tone" — the exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and more espe- cially that precious quality of each colour laid on, which makes it appear a quiet colour illuminated, not a bright colour in shade. But I allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings of Turner, not to his drawings. I could select from among the works named in Chap. IX. of this section, pieces of tone absolutely faultless and per- fect, from the coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. And the difference between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly all the paintings (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to account for, but on the supposition that there is some- thing in the material which modern artists in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels Turner him- self to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and more important qualities. The total failures of Callcott, whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shiver- ing winter or brown paint, the misfortune of Landseer with his evening sky in 1842, the frigidity of Stanfield, and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent power and admirable science of Etty are unable entirely to conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the want of knowledge of means, rather than of the absence of aim, in modern artists as a body. Yet, with respect to Turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings (the Fall of Carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time when he was producing the most exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent works (such, for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in 112 OF TRUTH OF TONE. the Slaver) which directly contradict it, and which prove to its that where he now errs in tone, (as in the Cicero's Villa,) it is less owing to want of power to reach it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. I shall therefore glance at the particular modes in which Turner manages his tone in his present Academy pictures; the early ones must be given up at once. Place a genuine untouched Claude beside the Crossing the Brook, and the difference in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in an instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool and transparent qualities of Claude would have been here desirable, and in their place, and appear to have been aimed at. The foreground of the Building of Carthage, and the greater part of the architecture of the Fall, are equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them with genuine passages of Claude's sunshine. There is a very grand and simple piece of tone in the possession of J. Allnutt, Esq., a sunset behind willows, but even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its extreme distance. Isot so with the recent Academy pic- tures ; many of their passages are absolutely faultless ; all are refined and marvellous, and with the exception of the Cicero's Villa, we shall find few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either present us with per- fect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is neces- sarily sacrificed. If we glance at the requirements of nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why and how it is sacrificed. Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colours with fidelity ; or colo ured, and conse- quently modifying these local tints, with its own. But the power of pure white light to exhibit local colour is strangely variable. The morning light of about nine or ten is usually very pure ; but the difference of its effect on OF TRUTH OF TONE. 113 different days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable. Every one knows how capriciously the colours of a fine opal vary from day to day, and how rare the lights are which bring them fully out. Now the expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it alters no colour, brings every colour up to the highest possible pitch and key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of finely-toned pictures by the great colourists as opposed to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless of colour, are content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light. Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far more of feeling than of proof, for any colour is possible under such lights ; it is meagreness and feebleness only which are to be avoided ; and these are rather matters of sensation than of reasoning. But it is yet easy enough to prove by what exaggerated and false means the pictures most celebrated for this quality are endowed with their richness and solemnity of colour. In the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian, it is difficult to imag- ine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape ; — impossible, not from its vivid- ness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity of colour ; it is too dark and blue at the same time ; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to be ten miles off) from the robe of Ariadne close to the spec- tator. Yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant — make it in the slightest degree to resemble the truth of nature's colour — and all the tone of the picture, all its intensity and splendour, will vanish on the instant. So again, in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of colour, the Europa in the Dulwich Gallery ; the blue of the dark 114 OF TRUTH OF TONE. promontory on the left is thoroughly absurd and impossi- ble, and the warm tones of the clouds equally so, unless it were sunset; but the blue especially, because it is nearer than several points of land which are equally in shadow, and yet are rendered in warm gray. But the whole value and tone of the picture would be destroyed if this blue were altered. Now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always given by Turner as is compatible with truth of aerial effect ; but he will not sacrifice the higher truths of his landscape to mere pitch of colour as Titian does. He infinitely prefers having the power of giving extension of space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep melo- dies of tone ; he feels too much the incapacity of art, with its feeble means of light, to give the abundance of nature's gradations ; and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest expression of light, that even pure yellow may give him one more step in the scale of shade, he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of effect to the old masters of tone, (who always used a golden highest light,) but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential truths. For, though we all know how much more like light, in the abstract, a finely-toned warm hue will be to the feelings than white, yet it is utterly impossible to mark the same number of gradations between such a sobered high light and the deepest shadow, which we can between this and white ; and as these gradations are absolutely necessary to give the facts of form and distance, which, as we have above shown, are more important than any truths of tone,* Turner sacrifices the richness of his picture to its completeness — the manner of the statement to its matter. And not only is he right in doing this for the sake of * More important, observe, as matters of truth or fact. It may often chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important of the two ; but with this we have here no concern. ' OF TRUTH OF TONE. 115 space, but he is right also in the abstract question of colour ; for as we observed above (p. 112,) it is only the white light — the perfect ud modified group of rays — which will bring out local colour perfectly ; and if the picture, there- fore, is to be complete in its system of colour, that is, if it is to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it must have white for its highest light, otherwise the purity of one of them at least will be impossible. And this leads us to notice the second and more frequent quality of light, (which is assumed if we make our highest representation of it yellow,) the positive hue, namely, which it may itself possess, of course modifying whatever local tints it exhib- its, and thereby rendering certain colours necessary, and certain colours impossible. Under the direct yellow light of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure blue are both impossible ; because the purest whites and blues that nature could produce would be turned in some degree into gold or green by it ; and when the sun is within half a degree of the horizon, if the sky be clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, still more over- whelming in its effect on local colour. I have seen the pale fresh green of spring vegetation in the gardens of Venice, on the Lido side, turned pure russet, or between that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of this kind, every particle of green colour being absolutely annihilated. And so under all coloured lights, (and there are few, from dawn to twilight, which are not slightly tinted by some accident of atmosphere,) there is a change of local colour, which, when in a picture it is so exactly proportioned that we feel at once both what the local colours are in them- selves, and what is the colour and strength of the light upon them, gives us truth of tone. For expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of Cuyp, which have never been equalled in art. But I much doubt if 116 OF TRUTH OF TONE. there be a single bright Cuyp in the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in tone. I have not seen many fine pictures of his, which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some principal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the picture ; and, what is worse, with little distinction, between its own illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether out of sunshine, the colour of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight. It is possible that the original colour may have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may have been villanously repainted : but I am the rather disposed to believe them genuine, because even throughout the best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of the same kind of solecism in other colours — greens for instance — as in the steep bank on the right of the largest picture in the Dulwich Gallery; and browns, as in the lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible and painful contrast with the one standing beside it, the flank of the standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, and the reposing one laid in with as dead, opaque, and lifeless brown as ever came raw from a novice's pallet. And again, in that marked 83, while the figures on the right are walking in the most precious light, and those just beyond them in the distance leave a furlong or two of pure visible sunbeams between us and them, the cows in the centre are entirely deprived, poor things, of both light and air. And these failing parts, though they often escape the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that I question if there be many Cuyps in which vivid colours occur, which will not lose their effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough to rest on the right parts without in- OF TltUTH OF TONE. 117 eluding the whole. Take, for instance, the large one in our National Gallery, seen from the opposite door, where the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial grays indicated through them. Now, there is no instance in the works of Turner of anything so faithful and imitative of sunshine as the best parts of Cuyp; but at the same time, there is not a single vestige of the same kind of solecism. It is true, that in his fondness for colour, Turner is in the habit of allowing excessively cold fragments in his warmest pictures ; but these are never, observe, warm colours with no light upon them, useless as contrasts while they are discords in the tone ; but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially removed from the general influence, and exquisitely valu- able as colour, though, with all deference be it spoken, I think them sometimes slightly destructive of what would otherwise be perfect tone. For instance, the two blue and white stripes on the drifting flag of the Slave Ship, are, I think, the. least degree too purely cool. I think both the blue and white would be impossible under such a light ; and in the same way the white parts of the dress of the Napoleon interfered by their coolness with the perfectly managed warmth of all the rest of the picture. But both these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly impossible to say what tones may be assumed even by the warmest light re- flected from a cool surface ; so that we cannot actually convict these parts of falsehood, and though we should have liked the tone of the picture better had they been slightly warmer, we cannot but like the colour of the pic- ture better with them as they are ; while Cuyp's failing portions are not only evidently and demonstrably false, being in direct light, but are as disagreeable in colour as false in tone, and injurious to everything near them. And 118 OF TRUTH OF TONE. the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of the tones of Turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all his pictures at any distance. We approach only to follow the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it ; while many even of the best pictures of Claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The smallest of the three seaports in the National Gallery is valuable and right in tone when we are close to it ; but ten yards off, it is all brick-dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue. The comparison of Turner with Cuyp and Claude may sound strange in most ears ; but this is chiefly because we are not in the habit of analyzing and dwelling upon those difficult and daring passages of the modern master which do not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth, owing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more separate tones in the same composition. In this also he strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every 200 feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower ones, these from the rest of the land- scape, and in all probability, some part of the horizon from the rest. And when nature allows this in a high degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July evening, but rather with the magnificence and variety of associated col- our, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. Now in Turner's power of associat- ing cold with warm light, no one has ever approached, or even ventured into the same field with him. The old OF TRUTH OF TONE. 119 masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. They gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold; but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their victory. Whether it was in them impotence or judgment, it is not for me to decide. I have only to point to the daring of Turner in this respect, as something to which art affords no mat- ter of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt is, in itself, superiority. Take the evening effect with the Temeraire. That picture will not, at the first glance, de- ceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in it more than sunlight, because under the blaz- ing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold, deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form, l m. p. 138. CHAPTEE TIL OF TUENEEIAN LIGHT. § 1. Haying seen the grounds (4 M. P., 15) on which to explain and justify Turner's choice of facts, we pro- ceed to examine finally those modes of representing them introduced by him ; — modes so utterly at variance with the received doctrines on the subject of art, as to cause his works to be regarded with contempt, or severe blame, by all reputed judges, at the period of their first appearance. And, chiefly, I must confirm and farther illustrate the general statements made respecting light and shade in the chapters on Truth of Tone, and on Infinity, deduced from the great fact (p. 106, chapter on Truth of Tone) that " nature surpasses us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper." I found that this part of the book was not well understood, because people in general have no idea how much the sun does sur- pass white paper. In order to know this practically, let the reader take a piece of pure white drawing-paper, and place it in the position in which a drawing is usually seen. This is, properly, upright (all drawings being supposed to be made on vertical planes), as a picture is seen on a room wall. Also, the usual place in which paintings or draw- ings are seen is at some distance from a window, with a gentle side light* falling upon them, front lights being un- favorable to nearly all drawing. Therefore the highest * Light from above is the same thing with reference to our present inquiry. OF TUENERIAN LIGIIT. 121 light an artist can ordinarily command for his work is that of white paint, or paper, under a gentle side light. But if we wished to get as much light as possible, and to place the artist under the most favorable circumstances, we should take the drawing near the window. Put therefore your white paper upright, and take it to the window. Let a c, c d, be two sides of your d room, with a window at b b. Under ordinary circumstances your picture would be hung at e, or in some such position on the wall c d. First, therefore, put your paper upright at and then bring it gradually to the window, in the successive positions g, and (opening the ' window) finally at p. You will notice that as you come nearer the window the light gradually increases on the paper ; so that in the position atj[?it is far better lighted than it was at e. If, however, the sun actually falls upon it at j?,- the experiment is unfair, for the picture is not meant to be seen in sunshine, and your object is to com- pare pure white paper, as ordinarily used, with sunshine. So either take a time when the sun does not shine at all, or does not'shine in the window where the experiment is to be tried ; or else keep the paper so far within the win- dow that the sun may not touch it. Then the experiment is perfectly fair, and you will find that you have the paper at p in full, serene, pictorial light, of the best kind, and highest attainable power. § 2. Now, leaning a little over the window sill, bring the edge of the paper at p against the sky, rather low down on the horizon (I suppose you choose a fine day for the experiment, that the sun is high, and the sky clear blue, down to the horizon). The moment you bring your 6 122 OF TUENEEIAN LIGHT. white paper against the sky you will be startled to find this bright white paper suddenly appear in shade. You Will draw it back, thinking you have changed its position. But no ; the paper is not in shade. It is as bright as ever it was ; brighter than under ordinary circumstances it ever can be. But, behold, the blue sky of the horizon is far brighter. The one is indeed blue, and the other white, but the white is darkest* and by a great deal. And you will, though perhaps not for the first time in your life, perceive that though black is not easily proved to be white, white may, under certain circumstances, be very nearly proved black, or at all events brown. § 3. When this fact is first shown to them, the general feeling with most people is, that, by being brought against the sky, the white paper is somehow or other brought "into shade." But this is not so ; the paper remains exactly as it was ; it is only compared with an actually brighter hue, and looks darker by comparison. The circumstances are precisely like those which affect our sensations of heat and cold. If, when by chance we have one hand warm, and another cold, we feel, with each hand, water warmed to an intermediate decree, we shall first declare the water to be cold, and then to be warm ; but the water has a definite heat wholly independent of our sensations, and accurately ascertainable by a thermometer. So it is with light and shade. Looking from the bright sky to the white paper, we affirm the white paper to be " in shade," — that is, it produces on us a sensation of darkness, by comparison. But the hue of the paper, and that of the sky, are just as fixed as temperatures are; and the sky is actually a brighter thing than white paper, by a certain number of degrees of light, scientifically determinable. In the same * For which reason, I said in the Appendix to the third volume, that the expression " finite realization of infinity " was a considerably less rational one than " black realization of white." OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT. 123 way, every other colour, or force of colour, is a fixed thing;, not dependent on sensation, but numerically representable with as much exactitude as a degree of heat by a thermom- eter. And of these hues, that of open sky is one not pro- ducible by human art. The sky is not blue colour merely, — it is blue fire, and cannot be painted. § 4. Next, observe, this blue fire has in it white fire ; that is, it has white clouds, as much brighter than itself as it is brighter than the white paper. So, then, above this azure light, we have another equally exalted step of white light. Supposing the value of the light of the pure white paper represented by the number 10, then that of the blue sky will be (approximately) about 20, and of the white clouds 30. But look at the white clouds carefully, and it will be seen they are not all of the same white ; parts of them are quite grey compared with other parts, and they are as full of passages of light and shade as if they were of solid earth. Nevertheless, their most deeply shaded part is that already so much lighter than the blue sky, which has brought us up to our number 30, and all these high lights of white are some 10 degrees above that, or, to white paper, as 40 to 10. And now if you look from the blue sky and white clouds towards the sun, you will find that this cloud white, which is four times as white as white paper, is quite dark and lightless compared with those silver clouds that burn nearer the sun itself, which you cannot gaze upon, — an infinite of brightness. How will you estimate that ? And yet to express all this, we have but our poor white paper after all. We must not talk too proudly of our " truths " of art ; I am afraid we shall have to let a good deal of black fallacy into it, at the best. § 5. Well, of the sun, and of the silver clouds, we will not talk for the present. But this principal fact we have 124 OF TURNERIAN LIGHT. learned by our experiment with the white paper, that, taken all in all, the calm sky, with such light and shade as are in it, is brighter than the earth ; brighter them the whitest thing on eai'th which has not, at the moment of compari- son, heaven's own direct light on it. "Which fact it is gene- rally one of the first objects of noble painters to render. I have already marked one part of their aim in doing so, namely, the expression of infinity ; but the opposing of heavenly light to earth-darkness is another most important one ; and of all ways of rendering a picture generally im- pressive, this is the simplest and surest. Make the sky calm and luminous, and raise against it dark trees, moun- tains, or towers, or any other substantial or terrestrial thing, in bold outline, and the mind accepts the assertion of this great and solemn truth with thankfulness. § 6. But this may be done either nobly or basely, as any other solemn truth may be asserted. It may be spoken with true feeling of all that it means ; or it may be declared, as a Turk declares that " God is great," when he means only that he himself is lazy. The " heaven is bright," of many vulgar painters, has precisely the same amount of signification ; it means that they know nothing — will do nothing — are without thought — with- out care — without passion. They will not walk the earth, nor watch the ways of it, nor gather the flowers of it. They will sit in the shade, and only assert that very perceptible, long-ascertained fact, " heaven is bright." And as it may be asserted basely, so it may be accepted basely. Many of our capacities for receiving noblest emotion are abused in mere idleness, for pleasure's sake, and people take the excitement of a solemn sensa- tion as they do that of a strong drink. Thus the aban- doned court of Louis XIV. had on fast days its sacred concerts, doubtless entering in some degree into the reli- gious expression of the music, and thus idle and frivolous OF TUENERIAN LIGHT. 125 women at the present day will weep at an oratorio. So the snblimest effects of landscape may be sought through mere indolence; and even those who are not ignorant, or dull, judge often erroneously of such effects of art, be- cause their very openness to all pleasant and sacred associa- tion instantly colours whatever they see, so that, give them but the feeblest shadow of a thing they love, they are in- stantly touched by it to the heart, and mistake their own pleasurable feeling for the result of the painter's power. Thus when, by spotting and splashing, such a painter as Constable reminds them somewhat of wet grass and green leaves, forthwith they fancy themselves in all the happi- ness of a meadow walk ; and when G-aspar Poussin throws out his yellow horizon with black hills, forthwith they are touched as by the solemnity of a real Italian twilight, al- together forgetting that wet grass and twilight do not con- stitute the universe ; and prevented by their joy at being pleasantly cool, or gravely warm, from seeking any of those more precious truths which cannot be caught by momen- tary sensation, but must be thoughtfully pursued. § 7. I say " more precious," for the simple fact that the sky is brighter than the earth is not a precious truth un- less the earth itself be first understood. Despise the earth, or slander it ; fix your eyes on its gloom, and forget its loveliness ; and we do not thank you for your languid or despairing perception of brightness in heaven. But rise np actively on the earth, — learn what there is in it, know its colour and form, and the full measure and make of it, and if after that you can say " heaven is bright," it will be a precious truth, but not till then. Giovanni Bellini knows the earth well, paints it to the full, and to the smallest fig-leaf and falling flower, — blue hill and white- walled city, — glittering- robe and golden hair; to each he will give its lustre and loveliness ; and then, so far as with his poor human lips he may declare it, far beyond all 126 OF TURNERIAN LIGHT. these, he proclaims that " heaven is bright." But Gaspar, and such other landscapists, painting all Nature's flowery ground as one barrenness, and all her fair foliage as one blackness, and all her exquisite forms as one bluntness ; when, in this sluggard gloom and sullen treachery of heart, they mutter their miserable attestation to what others had long ago discerned for them, — the sky's brightness, — we do not thank them ; or thank them only in so far as, even in uttering this last remnant of truth, they are more com- mendable than those who have sunk from apathy to athe- ism, and declare, in their dark and hopeless backgrounds, that heaven is not bright. § 8. Let us next ascertain what are the colours of the earth itself. A mountain five or six miles off, in a sunny summer morning in Switzerland, will commonly present itself in some such pitch of dark force, as related to the sky, as that shown in Fig. 4. Plate 25, while the sky itself wull still, if there are white clouds in it, tell as a clear dark, throwing out those white clouds in vigorous relief of light; yet, conduct the experiment of the white paper as already described, and you will, in all probability, find that the darkest part of the mountain — its most vigorous nook of almost black-looking shadow — is whiter than the paper. The figure given represents the apparent colour * of the top of the Aiguille Bouchard (the mountain wdiich is seen from the village of Chamouni, on the other side of the Glacier des Bois), distant, by Forbes's map, a furlong or two less than four miles in a direct line from the point of observation. The observation was made on a warm sunny morning, about eleven o'clock, the sky clear blue ; , the mountain seen against it, its shadows grey purple, and * The colour, but not the form. I wanted the contour of the top of the Br even for reference in another place, and have therefore given it instead of that of the Bouchard, but in the proper depth of tint. OF TUJRNERIAN LIGHT. 127 its sunlit parts greenish. Then the darkest part of the mountain was lighter than pure white paper, held upright in full light at the window,. parallel to the direction in which the light entered. And it will thus generally he found impossible to represent, in any of its true colours, scenery distant more than two or three miles, in full day- light. The deepest shadows are whiter than white paper. § 9. As, however, we pass to nearer objects, true repre- sentation gradually becomes possible ; — to what degree is always of course ascertainable accurately by the same mode of experiment. Bring the edge of the paper against the thing to be drawn, and on that edge — as precisely as a lady would match the colours of two pieces of a dress — .match the colour of the landscape (with a little opacpie white mixed in the tints you use, so as to render it easy to lighten or darken them). Take care not to imitate the tint as you believe it to be, but accurately as it is; so that the coloured edge of the paper shall not be dis- cernible from the colour of the landscape. You will then find (if before inexperienced) that shadows of trees, which you thought were dark green or black, are pale violets and purples ; that lights, which you thought were green, are intensely yellow, brown, or golden, and most of them far too bright to be matched at all. AYhen you have got all the irnitable hues truly matched, sketch the masses of the landscape out completely in those true and ascer- tained colours ; and you will find, to your amazement, that you have painted it in the colours of Turner, — in those very colours which perhaps you have been laughing at all your life, — the fact being that he, and he alone, of all men, ever pai?ited Nature in her own colours. § 10. " Well, but," you will answer, impatiently, " how is it, if they are the true colours, that they look so un- natural?" Because they are not shown in true contrast to the sky, 128 OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT. and to other high lights. Nature paints her shadows in j)ale purple, and then raises her lights of heaven and sunshine to such height that the pale purple becomes, by comparison, a vigorous dark* But poor Turner has no sun at his command to oppose his pale colours. He fol- lows Nature submissively as far as he can; puts pale purple where she does, bright gold where she does ; and then when, on the summit of the slope of light, she opens her wings and quits the earth altogether, burning into in- effable sunshine, what can he do but sit helpless, stretching his hands towards her in calm consent, as she leaves him and mocks at him ! § 11. " Well," but you will farther ask, " is this right or wise? ought not the contrast between the masses be given, rather than the actual hues of a few parts of them, when the others are inimitable ? " Yes, if this were possible, it ought to be done ; but the true contrasts can never be given. The whole question is simply whether you will be false at one side of the scale or at the other, — that is, whether you will lose yourself in light or in darkness. This necessity is easily expressible in numbers. Suppose the utmost light you wish to imi- tate is that of serene, feebly lighted, clouds in ordinary sky (not sun or stars, which it is, of course, impossible de- ceptively to imitate in painting by any artifice). Then, suppose the degrees of shadow between those clouds and Nature's utmost darkness accurately measured, and divided into a hundred degrees (darkness being zero). Next we measure our own scale, calling our utmost possible black, zero ; f and we shall be able to keep parallel with Nature, perhaps up to as far as her 10 degrees ; all above that being whiter than our white paper. Well, with our power * Scarlet Shadows, 5 M. T., 333. f Even here we shall be defeated by Nature, her utmost darkness being deeper than ours. OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT. 129 of contrast between zero and 40, we have to imitate her contrasts between zero and 100. Now, if we want true contrasts, we can first set our 40 to represent her 100, our 20 for her 80, and our zero for her 60 ; everything below her 60 being lost in blackness. This is with certain modi- fications, Rembrandt's system. Or, secondly, we can put zero for her zero, 20 for her 20, and 40 for her 40 ; every- thing above 40 being lost in whiteness,. This is, with cer- tain modifications, Paul Veronese's system. Or, finally, we can. put our zero for her zero, and our 40 for her 100 ; our 20 for her 50, our 30 for her 75, and our ten for her 25, proportioning the intermediate contrasts accordingly. This is, with certain modifications, Turner's system ; * the modifications, in each case, being the adoption, to a cer- tain extent, of either of the other systems. Thus, Turner inclines to Paul Veronese ; liking, as far as possible, to get his hues perfectly true up to a certain point, — that is to say, to let his zero stand for Nature's zero, and his 10 for her 10, and his 20 for her 20, and then to expand towards the light by quick but cunning steps, putting 27 for 50, 30 for 70, and reserving some force still for the last 90 to 100. So Pembrandt modifies his system on the other side, putting his 40 for 100, his 30 for 90, his 20 for 80; then going subtly downwards, 10 for 50, 5 for 30; nearly everything between 30 and zero being lost in gloom, yet so as still to reserve his zero for zero. The systems expressed in tabular form will stand thus : — Nature. Rembrandt. Turner. Veronese. 0 0 0 0 10 1 10 10 20 3 20 20 * When the clouds are brilliantly lighted, it may rather be, as stated above, in the proportion of 100 to 40. I take the number 100 as more calculable. 6* 130 OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT. 30 5 24 30 40 7 26 32 50 10 27 34 60 13 28 36 70 17 30 37 80 20 32 38 90 30 36 39 100 40 40 40 § 12. Now it is evident that in Rembrandt's system, while the contrasts are not more right than with Veronese, the colours are all wrong, from beginning to end. With Tur- ner and Veronese, Nature's 10 is their 10, and Nature's 20 their 20 ; enabling them to give pure truth up to a certain point. But with Rembrandt not one colour is ab- solutely true, from one side of the scale to the other ; only the contrasts are true at the top of the scale. Of course, this supposes Rembrandt's system applied to a subject which shall try it to the utmost, such as landscape. Rem- brandt generally chose subjects in which the real coluors were very nearly imitable, — as single heads with dark backgrounds, in which Nature's highest light was little above his own ; her 40 being then truly representable by his 40, his picture became nearly an absolute truth. But his system is only right when applied to such subjects : clearly, when we have the full scale of natural light to deal with, Turner's and Veronese's convey the greatest sum of truth. But not the most complete deception, for people are so much more easily and instinctively impressed by force of light than truth of colour, that they instantly miss the relative power of the sky, and the upper tones ; and all the true local colouring looks strange to them, separated from its adjuncts of high light ; whereas, give them the true contrast of light, and they will not ob- serve the false local colour. Thus all Gaspar Poussin's OF TURNERIAN LIGHT. 131 and Salvator's pictures, and all effects obtained by leaving liigli lights in the midst of exaggerated darkness, catch the eye, and are received for true, while the pure truth of Veronese and Turner is rejected as unnatural ; only not so much in Veronese's case as in Turner's, because Vero- nese confines himself to more imitable things, as draperies, figures, and architecture, in which his exquisite truth, at the bottom of the scale tells on the eye at once ; but Tur- ner works a good deal also (see the table) at the top of the natural scale, dealing with effects of sunlight and other phases of the upper colours, more or less inimitable, and betraying therefore, more or less, the artifices used to ex- press them. It will be observed, also, that in order to reserve some force for the top of iris scale, Turner is obliged to miss his gradations chiefly in middle tints (see the table), where the feebleness is sure to be felt. His principal point for missing the midmost gradations is al- most always between the earth and sky ; he draws the earth truly as far as he can, to the horizon ; then the sky as far as he can, with his 30 to 40 part of the scale. They run together at the horizon ; and the spectator complains that there is no distinction between earth and sky, or that the earth does not look solid enough. § 13. In the upper portions of the three j)illars 5, 6, 7, Plate 25, are typically represented these three conditions of light and shade, characteristic, 5, of Rembrandt, 6, of Turner, and 7, of Veronese. The pillar to be drawn is supposed, in all the three cases, white ; Rembrandt repre- sents it as white on its highest light; and, getting the true gradations between this highest light and extreme dark, is reduced to his zero, or black, for the dark side of the white object. This first pillar also represents the system of Leo- nardo da Vinci. In the room of the Louvre appropriated to Italian drawings is a study of a piece of drapery by Leonardo. Its lights are touched with the finest white 132 OF TUENERIAN LIGHT. chalk, and its shadows wrought, through exquisite grada- tions, to utter blackness. The pillar 6 is drawn on the system of Turner; the high point of light is still distinct: but even the darkest part of the shaft is kept pale, and the gradations which give the roundness are wrought out with the utmost possible delicacy. The third shaft is drawn on Veronese's system. The light, though still focused, is more diffused than with Turner ; and a slight flatness re- sults from the determination that the fact of the shaft's being lohite shall be discerned more clearly even than that it is round ; and that its darkest part shall still be capable of brilliant relief, as a white mass, from other ob- jects round it. § 14. This resolution, on Veronese's part, is owing to the profound respect for the colours of objects which neces- sarily influenced him, as the colourist at once the most brilliant and the most tender of all painters of the elder schools ; and it is necessary for us briefly to note the way in which this greater or less respect for local colour influ- ences the system of the three painters in light and shade. Take the whitest piece of note-paper you can find, put a blot of ink upon it, carry it into the sunshine, and hold it fully fronting the sunshine, so as to make the paper look as dazzling as possible, but not to let the wet blot of ink shine. You will then find the ink look intensely black, — • blacker, in fact, than anywhere else, owing to its vigorous contrast with the dazzling paper. Remove the paper from the sunshine. The ink will not look so black. Carry the paper gradually into the darkest part of the room, and the contrast will as gradually ap- pear to diminish ; and, of course, in darkness, the distinc- tion between the black and the white vanishes. Wet ink is as perfect a representative as is by any means attainable of a perfectly dark colour ; that is, of one which absorbs all the light that falls on it; and the nature of such OF TUKNKKIAN LIGHT. 133 a colour is best understood by considering it as a piece of portable night. Now, of course, the higher you raise the daylight about this bit of night, the more vigorous is the contrast between the two. And, therefore, as a general rule, the higher you raise the light on any object with a pattern or stain upon it, the more distinctly that pattern or stain is seen. But observe : the distinction between the full black of ink, and full white of paper, is the utmost reach of light and dark possible to art. Therefore, if this contrast is to be represented truly, no deeper black can ever be given in any shadow than that offered at once, as local colour, in a full black pattern, on the highest light. And, where colour is the principal object of the picture, that colour must, at all events, be as right as possible where it is best seen, i.e. in the lights. Hence the principle of Paul Veronese, and of all the great Venetian colourists, is to use full black for full black in high light, letting the shadow shift for itself as best it may ; and sometimes even putting the local black a little darker in light than shadow, in order to give the more vigorous contrast noted above. Let the pillars in Plate 25 be supposed to have a black mosaic pattern on the lower part of their shafts. Paul Veronese's general practice will be, as at 7, having marked the rounding of the shaft as well as he can in the white parts, to paint the pattern with one even black over all, reinforcing it, if at all, a little in the light. § 15. Repeat the experiment on the note-paper with a red spot of carmine instead of ink. You will now find that the contrast in the sunshine appears about the same as in the shade — the red and white rising and falling together, and dying away together into the darkness. The fact, however, is, that the contrast does actually for some time increase towards the light; for in utter dark- ness the distinction is not visible — the red cannot be dis- 134 OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT. tinguished from the white ; admit a little light, and the contrast is feebly discernible ; admit more, it is distinctly discernible. But you cannot increase the contrast beyond a certain point. From that point the red and white for some time rise very nearly equally in light, or fall together very nearly equally in shade ; but the contrast will begin to diminish in very high lights, for strong sun- light has a tendency to exhibit particles of dust, or any sparkling texture in the local colour, and then to diminish its power ; so that in order to see local colour well, a cer- tain degree of shadow is necessary : for instance, a very delicate complexion is not well seen in the sun ; and the veins of a marble pillar, or the colours of a picture, can only be properly seen in comparative shade. § 16. I will not entangle the reader in the very subtle and curious variations of the laws in this matter. The simple fact which is necessary for him to observe is, that the paler and purer the colour, the more the great Yenetian colourists will reinforce it in the shadow, and allow it to fall or rise in sympathy with the light ; and those especially whose object it is to represent sunshine, nearly always reinforce their local colours somewhat in the shadows, and keep them both fainter and feebler in the light, so that they thus approach a condition of universal glow, the full colour being used for the shadow, and a del- icate and somewhat subdued hue of it for the light. And this to the eye is the loveliest possible condition of colour. Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a rose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will find, first, that red is, in a deli- cately gradated state, the loveliest of all pure colours ; and secondly, that in the rose there is no shadow, except what is composed of colour. All its shadows are fuller in colour than its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective power of its leaves. OF TUlvNERIAN LIGHT. 135 The second shaft, 6, in which the local colour is paler towards the tight, and reinforced in the shadow, will therefore represent the Venetian system with respect to paler colours, and the system, for the most part, even with respect to darker colours, of painters who attempt to render effects of strong sunlight. Generally, therefore, it repre- sents the practice of Turner. The first shaft, 5, exhibits the disadvantage of the practice of Rembrandt and Leonardo, in that they cannot show the local colour on the dark side, since, however energetic, it must at last sink into their exaggerated darkness. ' § 17. JSTow, from all the preceding inquiry, the reader must perceive more and more distinctly the great truth, that all forms of right art consist in a certain choice made between various classes of truths, a few only being repre- sented, and others necessarily excluded ; and that the ex- cellence of each style depends first on its consistency with itself, — the perfect fidelity ', as far as possible, to the truths it has chosen • and secondly, on the breadth of its harmo- ny, or number of truths it has been able to reconcile, and the consciousness with which the truths refused are acknowledged, even though they may not be represented. A great artist is j ust like a wise and hospitable man with a small house : the large companies of truths, like guests, are waiting his invitation ; he wisely chooses from among this crowd the guests who will be happiest with each other, mak- ing those whom he receives thoroughly comfortable, and kindly remembering even those whom he excludes ; while the foolish host, trying to receive all, leaves a large part of his company on the staircase, without even knowing who is there, and destroys, by inconsistent fellowship, the pleasure of those who gain entrance. § 18. But even those hosts who choose well will be farther distinguished from each other by their choice of nobler or inferior companies ; and we find the greatest 136 OF TUENEKIAN LIGHT. artists mainly divided into two groups, — those who paint principally with respect to local colour,, headed by Paul Veronese, Titian, and Turner ; and those who paint prin- cipally with reference to light and shade irrespective of colour, headed by Leonardo da Yinci, Rembrandt, and Ra- phael. The noblest members of each of these classes intro- duce the element proper to the other class, in a subordinate way. Paul Veronese introduces a subordinate light and shade, and Leonardo introduces a subordinate local colour. The main difference is, that with Leonardo, Rembrandt, and Raphael, vast masses of the picture are lost in compara- tively colourless (dark, grey, or brown) shadow; these painters beginning with the lights, and going down to blackness; but with Veronese, Titian, and Turner, the whole picture is like the rose, — glowing with colour in the shadows, and rising into paler and more delicate hues, or masses of whiteness, in the lights, they having begun with the shadows, and gone up to whiteness. § 19. The colourists have in this respect one dis- advantage, and three advantages. The disadvantage is, that between their less violent hues, it is not possible to draw all the forms which can be represented by the exaggerated shadow of the chiaroscurists, and therefore a slight tendency to flatness is always characteristic of the greater colourists, as opposed to Leonardo or Rembrandt. When the form of some single object is to be given, and its subtleties are to be rendered to the utmost, the Leonard- esque manner of drawing is often very noble. It is generally adopted by Albert Durer in his engravings, and is very useful, when employed by a thorough master, in many kinds of engraving ; * but it is an utterly false method of study, as we shall see presently. * It is often extremely difficult to distinguish properly between the Leonardesque manner, in which local colour is denied altogether, and the Turneresque, in which local colour at its highest point in the picture OF TURNERIAN LIGHT. 137 § 20. Of the three advantages possessed by the colourists over the cliiaroscurists, the first is, that they have in the greater portions of their pictures absolute truth, as shown above, § 12, while the cliiaroscurists have no absolute truth anywhere. With the colourists the shadows are right; the U '(j i hi )s untrue: but with the cJiiaruscu/'ists lights and shadows are both untrue The second advantage is, that also the relations of colour are broader and vaster with the colourists than the cliiaroscurists. Take, for example, that piece of drapery studied by Leonardo, in the Louvre, with white lights and black shadows. Ask yourself, first, whether the real drapery was black or white. If white, then its high lights are rightly white ; but its folds being black, it could not as a mass be distinguished from the black or dark objects in its neighborhood. But the fact is, that a white cloth or handkerchief always is distin- guished in daylight, as a ivhole white thing, from all that is coloured about it : we see at once that there is a white piece of stuff, and a red, or green, or grey one near it, as the case may be: and this relation of the white object to other objects not white, Leonardo has wholly deprived himself of the power of expressing ; while, if the cloth were black or dark, much more has he erred by making its lio'hts white. In either case, he has missed the large relation of mass to mass, for the sake of the small one of is merged in whiteness. Thus, Albert Durer's noble '"Melancholia" is entirely Leonardesque ; the leaves on her head, her flesh, her wings, her dress, the wolf, the wooden ball, and the rainbow, being all equally white on the high lights. But my drawing of leaves, facing page 125, Vol. III. , is Turneresque ; because, though I leave pure white to re- present the pale green of leaves and grass in high light, I give definite increase of darkness to four of the bramble leaves, which, in reality, were purple, and leave a dark withered stalk nearly black, though it is in light, where it crosses the leaf in the centre. These distinctions could only be properly explained by a lengthy series of examples ; which I hope to give some day or other, but have not space for here. 138 OF TUKNEEIAN LIGHT. fold to fold. And this is more or less the case with all . chiaroscurists ; with all painters, that is to say, who en- deavour in their studies of objects to get rid of the idea of colour, and give the abstract shade. They invariably exaggerate the shadows, not with respect to the thing itself, but with respect to all around it ; and they ex- aggerate the lights also, by leaving pure white for the high light of what in reality is grey, rose-coloured, or, in some way, not white. § 21. This method of study, being peculiarly character- istic of the Roman and Florentine schools, and associated with very accurate knowledge of form and expression, has gradually got to be thought by a large body of artists the grand way of study ; an idea which has been fostered all the more because it was an unnatural way, and therefore thought to be a philosophical one. Almost the first idea of a child, or of a simple person looking at anything, is, that it is a red, or a black, or a green, or a white thing. Nay, say the artists ; that is an unphilosophical and bar- barous view of the matter. Red and white are mere vulgar appearances ; look farther into the matter, and you will see such and such wonderful other appearances. Abstract those, they are the heroic, ejfic, historic, and generally eligible appearances. And acting on this grand principle, they draw flesh white, leaves white, ground white, everything white in the light, and everything black in the shade — and think themselves wise. But, the longer I live, the more ground I see to hold in high honour a certain sort of childishness or innocent susceptibility. Generally speaking, I find that when we first look at a subject, we get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths about it: as we look longer, our vanity, and false reasoning, and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong opinions ; but as we look longer still, we gradually return to our first impressions, only with a full understanding of their OF TtJKNEBIAN LIGHT. 139 mystical and innermost reasons ; and of much beyond and beside them, not then known to us, now added (partly as a foundation, partly as a corollary) to what at first we felt or saw. It is thus eminently in this matter of colour. Lay your hand over the page of this book, — any child or simple person looking at the hand and book, would perceive, as the main fact of the matter, that a brownish pink thing- was laid over a white one. The grand artist comes and tells you that your hand is not pink, and your paper is not white. He shades your fingers and shades your book, and makes you see all manner of starting veins, and projecting muscles, and black hollows, where before you saw nothing but paper and fingers. But go a little farther, and you will get more innocent again ; you will find that, when "science has done its worst, two and two still make four;" and that the main and most important facts about your hand, so seen, are, after all, that it has four fingers and a thumb — showing as brownish pink things on white paper. § 22. I have also been more and more convinced, the more I think of it, that in general pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes. All the other passions do occa- sional good, but whenever pride puts in its word, every- thing goes wrong, and what it might really be desirable to do, quietly and innocently, it is mortally dangerous to do, proudly. Thus, while it is very often good for the artist to make studies of things, for the sake of knowing their forms, with their high lights all white, the moment he does this in a haughty way, and thinks himself drawing in the great style, because he leaves high lights white, it is all over with him; and half the degradation of art in modern times has been owing to endeavours, much fostered by the metaphysical Germans, to see things without colour, as if colour were a vulgar thing, the result being, in most students, that they end by not being able to see anything at all ; whereas the true and perfect way of studying any 140 OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT. object is simply to look what its colour is in high light, and put that safely down, if possible ; or, if you are making a chiaroscuro study, to take the grey answering to that colour, and cover the whole object at once with that grey, firmly resolving that no part of it shall be brighter than that; then look for the darkest part of it, and if, as is probable, its darkest part be still a great deal lighter than black, or than other things about it, assume a given shade, as dark as, with due reference to other things, you can have it, but no darker. Mark that for your extreme dark on the object, and between those limits get as much drawing as you can, by subtlety of gradation. That will tax your powers of drawing indeed ; and you will find this, which seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the pseudo-scientific abstractions that ever were invented. § 23. Nor can it long be doubted that it is also the most -impressive way to others ; for the third great advan- tage possessed by the coloitrists is, that the delightfulness of their picture, its sacredness, and general nobleness, are increased exactly in proportion to the quantity of light and of lovely colour they can introduce in the shadows* as opposed to the black and grey of the chiaroscurists. I have already insisted upon the fact of the sacredness of colour, and its necessary connection with all pure and noble feel- ing. What we have seen of the use of colour by the poets will help to confirm this truth ; but perhaps I have not yet enough insisted on the simplest and readiest to hand of all proofs, — the way, namely, in which Grod has employed colour in His creation as the unvarying accompaniment of all that is purest, most innocent, and most precious ; while for things precious only in material uses, or dangerous, * Shadows are colourless, except from reflected light. —5 M. P., 333, note. OF TURNERIAN LIGHT. 141 common colours are reserved. Consider for a little while what sort of a world it would be if all flowers were grey, all leaves black, and the sky brown. Imagine that, as completely as may be, and consider whether you would think the world any whit more sacred for being thus trans- figured into the hues of the shadows in Raphael's Trans- figuration. Then observe how constantly innocent things are bright in colour ; look at a dove's neck, and compare it with the grey back of a viper ; I have often heard talk of brilliantly coloured serpents ; and I suppose there are such, — as there are gay poisons, like the foxglove and kalmia — types of deceit ; but all the venomous serpents I have really seen are grey, brick-red, or brown, variously mot- tled ; and the most awful serpent I have seen, the Egyptian asp, is precisely of the colour of gravel, or only a little greyer. So, again, the crocodile and alligator are grey, but the innocent lizard green and beautiful. I do not mean that the rule is invariable, otherwise it would be more convincing than the lessons of the natural universe are in- tended ever to be ; there are beautiful colours on the leo- pard and tiger, and in the berries of the nightshade ; and there is nothing very notable in brilliancy of colour either in sheep or cattle (though, by the way, the velvet of a brown bull's hide in the sun, or the tawny white of the Italian oxen, is, to my mind, lovelier than any leopard's or tiger's skin) : but take a wider view of nature, and com- pare generally rainbows, sunrises, roses, violets, butterflies, birds, gold-fish, rubies, opals, and corals, with alligators, hippopotami, lions, wolves, bears, swine, sharks, slugs, bones, fungi,* fogs, and corrupting, stinging, destroying things in general, and you will feel then how the question * It is notable, however, that nearly all the poisonous agarics are scarlet or speckled, and wholesome ones brown or grey, as if to show us that things rising out of darkness and decay are always most deadly when they are well drest. 142 OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT. stands between the colpurists and chiaroscurists, — which of them have nature and life on their side, and which have sin and death. § 24. Finally : the ascertainment of the sanctity of colour is not left to human sagacity. It is distinctly stated in Scripture. I have before alluded to the sacred chord of colour (blue, purple, and scarlet, with white and gold) as appointed in the Tabernacle ; this chord is the fixed base of all colouring with the workmen of every great age ; the purple and scarlet will be found constantly em- ployed by noble painters, in various unison, to the exclusion in general of pure crimson ; — it is the harmony described by Herodotus as used in the battlements of Ecbatana, and the invariable base of all beautiful missal-painting ; the mistake continually made b}^ modern restorers, in sup- posing the purple to be a faded crimson, and substituting full crimson for it, being instantly fatal to the whole work, as, indeed, the slightest modification of any hue in a per- fect colour-harmony must always be.* In this chord the scarlet is the powerful colour, and is on the whole the most perfect representation of abstract colour which exists ; blue being in a certain degree associated with shade, yellow with light, and scarlet, as absolute colour, standing alone. Accordingly, we find it used, together with cedar wood, hyssop, and running water, as an emblem of purification, in Leviticus xiv. 4, and other places, and so used not merely as the representative of the colour of blood, since it was also to be dipped in the actual blood of a living bird. So that the cedar wood for its perfume, the hyssop for its searchingness, the water for its cleansing, and the scarlet for its kindling or enlightening, are all * Hence the intense absurdity of endeavouring to "restore " the colour of ancient buildings by the hands of ignorant colourists, as at the Crystal Palace. OF TURNEEIAN LIGHT. 143 used as tokens of sanctification ; * and it cannot l>e with any force alleged, in opposition to this definite appoint- ment, that scarlet is used incidentally to illustrate the stain of sin, — " though thy sins be as scarlet," — any more than it could be received as a diminution of the authority for using snow- whiteness as a type of purity, that Gehazi's leprosy is described as being as "white as snow." An in- cidental image has no authoritative meaning, but a stated ceremonial appointment has ; besides, we have the reversed image given distinctly in Prov. xxxi.: "She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet? And, again: "Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights." So, also, the arraying of the mystic Babylon in purple and scarlet may be interpreted exactly as we choose ; either, by those who think colour sensual, as an image of earthly pomp and guilt, or, by those who think it sacred, as an image of assumed or pretended sanc- tity. It is possible the two meanings may be blended, and the idea may be that the purple and fine linen of Dives are worn in hypocritical semblance of the purple and fine linen of the high priest, being, nevertheless, themselves, in all cases typical of all beauty and purity. I hope, how- ever, to be able some day to enter farther into these ques- tions with respect to the art of illumination ; meantime, the facts bearing on our immediate subject may be briefly recapitulated. All men, completely organized and justly tempered, enjoy colour; it is meant for the perpetual comfort and delight of the human heart ; it is richly be- stowed on the highest works of creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them ; being associated with life in the human body, with light in the sky, with purity * The redeemed Rahab bound for a sign a scarlet thread in the win- dow. Compare Canticles iv. 3. 144 OF TURNEKTAN LIGHT. and hardness in the earth, — death, night, and pollution of all kinds being colourless. And although if form and colour be brought into complete opposition,* so that it should be put to us as a matter of stern choice whether we should have a work of art all of form, without colour (as an Albert Durer's engraving), or all of colour, without form (as an imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond all comparison the more precious of the two ; and in ex- plaining the essence of objects, form is essential, and col- our more or less accidental; yet if colour be introduced at all, it is necessary that, whatever else may be wrong, that should be right; just as, though the music of a song may not be so essential to its influence as the meaning of the words, yet if the music be given at all, it most be right, or its discord will spoil the words ; and it would be better, of the two, that the words should be indistinct, than the notes false. Hence, as I have said elsewhere, the business of a painter is to paint. If he can colour, he is a painter, * The inconsistency between perfections of colour and form, which I have had to insist npon in other places, is exactly like that between ar- ticulation and harmony. We cannot have the richest harmony with the sharpest and most audible articulation of words: yet good singers will articulate clearly ; and the perfect study of the science of music will conduct to a fine articulation ; but the study of pronunciation will not conduct to, nor involve, that of harmony. So, also, though, as said farther on, subtle expression can be got without colour, perfect expression never can ; for the colour of the face is a part of its expres- sion. How often has that scene between Francesca di Rimini and her lover been vainly attempted by sculptors, simply because they did not observe that the main note of expression in it was in the fair sheet- lightning— fading and flaming through the cloud of passion ! Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse Quella lettura, e scolorocci il vise And, of course, in landscape, colour is the principal source of expression. Take one melancholy chord from the close of Crabbe's Patron: " Cold grew the foggy mom ; the dajr was brief, Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf. OF TUKNERIAN LIGHT. 145 though he can do nothing else ; if he cannot colour, he is no painter, though he may do everything else. But it is, in fact, impossible, if he can colour, but that he should be able to do more ; for a faithful study of colour will always give power over form, though the most intense study of form will give no power over colour. The man who can see all the greys, and reds, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether ; but the man who has only studied its roundness, may not see its purples and greys, and if he does not, will never get it to look like a peach ; so that great power over colour is always a sign of large general art-intellect. Expression of the most subtle kind can be often reached by the slight studies of caricaturists ; * sometimes elaborated by the toil of the dull, and sometimes by the sentiment of the feeble ; but to* colour well recpiires real talent and earnest study, and to colour perfectly is the rarest and most precious j^ower an artist can possess. Every other gift may be er- roneously cultivated, but this will guide to all healthy, natural, and forcible truth ; the student may be led into folly by philosophers, and into falsehood by purists ; but he is always safe if he holds the hand of a colourist. 4. M. P., Ch. iii. The dew dwelt ever on the herb ; the woods Roared with strong blasts ; with mighty showers, the floods : All green was vanished, save of pine and yew That still displayed their melancholy hue ; Save the green holly, with its berries red, * And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread." * See Appendix I. Modern Grotesque. 4 M. P. , p. 32-52. 7 CHAPTEE VIII. I. — COLOUR ITS IMPORTANCE. 1st. Abstract colour is of far less importance than ab- stract form, that is to say, if it could rest in our choice whether we would carve like Phidias (supposing Phidias had never used colour), or arrange the colour of a shawl like Indians, there is no question as to which power we ought to choose. The difference of rank is vast; there is no way of estimating or measuring it. So, again, if it rest in our clioice whether we will be great in invention of form, to be expressed only by light and shade, as Durer, or great in invention and application of colour, caring only for ungainly form, as Bassano, there is still no question. Try to be Durer, of the two. So again, if we have to give an account or description of any- thing— if it be an object of high interest — its form will be always what we should first tell. Neither leopard spots . nor partridge's signify primarily in describing either beast or bird. But teeth and feathers do. 2. Secondly. Though colour is of less importance than form, if you introduce it at all, it must be right. People often speak of the Poman school as if it were greater than the Venetian, because its colour is '''sub- ordinate." Its colour is not subordinate. It is bad. If you paint coloured objects, you must either paint them rightly or wrongly. There is no other choice. You may introduce as little colour as you choose — a mere tint of rose in a chalk drawing, for instance ; or pale hues generally — as Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. All such IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR. 147 work implies feebleness or imperfection, but not neces- sarily error. But if you paint with full colour, as Raphael and Leonardo, you must either be true or false. If true, you will paint like a Venetian. If false, your form, su- premely beautiful, may draw the attention of the spectator from the false colour, or induce him to pardon it — and, if ill- taught, even to like it ; but your picture is none the greater for that. Had Leonardo and Raphael coloured like Giorgione, their work would have been greater, not less, than it is now. 3. To colour perfectly is the rarest and most precious (technical) power an artist can possess. There have been only seven supreme colourists among the true painters whose works exist (namely, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Correggio, Reynolds, and Turner) ; but the names of great designers, including sculptors, architects, and metal-workers, are multitudinous. Also, if you can colour perfectly, you are sure to be able to do everything else if you like. There never yet was colourist who could not draw ; but faculty of perceiving form may exist alone. I believe, however, it will be found ultimately that the perfect gifts of colour aud form always go together. Titian's form is nobler than Durer's, and more subtle ; nor have I any doubt but that Phidias could have painted as nobly as he carved. But when the powers are not su- preme, the wisest men usually neglect the colour-gift, and clevelope that of form. (See post, 168.) It may be noted that Turner's colour is founded more on Correggio and Bassano than on the central Venetians ; it involves a more tender and constant reference to light and shade than that of Veronese ; and a more sparkling and gem-like lustre than that of Titian. I dislike using a technical word which has been disgraced by affectation, but there is no other word to signify what I mean in say- ing that Turner's colour has, to the full, Correggio's " mor- 148 turner's truth of colour. bidezza," including also, in due place, conditions of mosaic effect, like that of the colours in an Indian design, un- accomplished by any previous master in painting ; and a fantasy of inventive arrangement corresponding to that of Beethoven in music. In its concurrence with and ex- pression of texture or construction of surfaces (as their bloom, lustre, or intricacy) it stands unrivalled — no still- life painting by any other master can stand for an instant beside Turner's, when his work is of life-size, as in his numerous studies of birds and their plumage. This " mor- bidezza'' of colour is associated, precisely as it was in Correggio, with an exquisite sensibility to fineness and in- tricacy of curvature : curvature being to lines what grada- tion is to colours. This subject, also, is too difficult and too little regarded by the public, to be entered upon here, but it must be observed that this quality of Turner's de- sign, the one which of all is best expressible by engraving, has of all been least expressed, owing to the constant re- duction or change of proportion in the plates. 4. Colour is the purifying or sanctifying element of material beauty. If so, how less important than form ? Because, on form depends existence ; on colour, only purity. Under the Levitical law, neither scarlet nor hyssop could purify the deformed. So, under all natural law, there must be rightly shaped members first ; then sanctifying colour and fire in them. Nevertheless, there are several great difficulties and oppositions of aspect in this matter, which I must try to reconcile now clearly and finally. As colour is the type of Love, it resembles it in all its modes of operation ; and in practical work of human hands, it sustains changes of worthiness precisely like those of human sexual love. That love, when true, faithful, well-fixed, is eminently the sanctifying element of human life : without it, the soul IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR. 149 cannot reach its fullest height of holiness. But if shallow, faithless, misdirected, it is also one of the strongest cor- rupting and degrading elements of life. Between these base and lofty states of Love are the loveless states ; some cold and horrible ; others chaste, childish, or ascetic, bearing to careless thinkers the sem- blance of purity higher than that of Love. So it is with the type of Love — colour. Followed rash- ly, coarsely, untruly, for the mere pleasure of it, with no reverence, it becomes a temptation, and leads to cor- ruption. Followed faithfully, wTith intense but rever- ent passion, it is the holiest of all aspects of material things. Between these two modes of pursuing it, come two modes of refusing it — one, dark and sensual ; the other, statuesque and grave, having great aspect of nobleness. Thus we have, first, the coarse love of colour, as a vul- gar person's choice of gaudy hues in dress. Then, again, we have the base disdain of colour, of which I have spoken at length elsewhere. Thus we have the lofty disdain of colour, as in Durer's and Raphael's drawing: finally, the severest and passionate following of it, in Giorgione and Titian. 5. Colour is, more than all elements of art, the reward of veracity of purpose. This point respecting it I have not noticed before, and it is highly curious. We have just seen that in giving an account of. anything for its own sake, the most important points are those of form. Never- theless, the form of the object is its own attribute ; special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an ac- count of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But its colour is partly its own, partly shared with other things round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved in the colour it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify that colour, is to misrepresent and break the 150 IMPORTANCE OF COLOUR. harmony of the day ; also, by what colour it bears, this single object is altering hues all round it : reflecting its Own into them, displaying them by opposition, softening them by repetition ; one falsehood in colour in one place implies a thousand in the neighbourhood. Hence, there are peculiar penalties attached to falsehood in colour, and peculiar rewards granted to veracity in it. Form may be attained in perfectness by painters who, in their course of study, are continually altering or idealizing it ; but only the sternest fidelity will reach colouring. Idealize or alter in that, and you are lost. Whether you alter by abasing, or exaggerating, — by glare or by decline, one fate is for you — ruin. Violate truth wilfully in the slightest partic- ular, or, at least, get into the habit of violating it, and all kinds of failure and error will surround and haunt you to your fall. Therefore, also, as long as you are working with form only, you may amuse yourself with fancies ; but colour is sacred — in that you must keep to facts. Hence the ap- parent anomaly that the only schools of colour are the schools of Realism. The men who care for form only, may drift about in dreams of Spiritualism ; but a colour- ist must keep to substance. The greater his power in colour enchantment, the more stern and constant will be his common sense. Fuseli may wander wildly among gray spectra, but Reynolds and Gainsborough must stay in broad daylight, with pure humanity. Yelasquez, the greatest colourist, is the most accurate portrait painter of Spain ; Holbein, the most accurate portrait painter, is the only colourist of Germany ; and even Tintoret had to sac- rifice some of the highest qualities of his colour before he could give way to the flights of wayward though mighty imagination, in which his mind rises or declines from the royal calm of Titian. 51. P. , 333 note. COLOUR-SCIENCE. 151 n. COLOUR-SCIENCE. A. — Colours classified: 1. The Primary colours are, red, yellow and blue. 2. The Secondary or complementary colours are, green, purple and orange. B. — Colours modified, as by 1. Scales : as scales of red, scales of yellow, etc. 2. Tones : which are scales modified in a. Tints : any colour modified by white ; b. Shades : any colour modified by black. 3. Hues : one colour modified by any other. C. — Colours characterized : 1. Warm or advancing colour : red, yellow. 2. Cold or receding colour : blue, green, violet. D. — Colours Harmonized : 1. Harmony of Analogy — a. Of scale, produced by the simultaneous view of different tones of the same scale, more or less approx- imate. b. Of hues, produced by the simultaneous view of tones of the same or nearly of the same depth, belong- ing to neighbouring scales. c. Of a dominant coloured light, produced by the simultaneous view of various colours assorted after the law of contrast, but one of them predominating, as would result from the view of these colours through a slightly coloured glass. 2. Harmony of Contrast — a. Of scale, produced by the simultaneous view of two very distant tones of the same scale. b. Of hues, produced by the simultaneous view of tones of different depths, belonging to neighbouring scales. c. Of colours, produced by the simultaneous view 152 COLOUK-AET. of colours belonging to very distant scales, assorted accord- ing to the law of contrast. This contrast of scale may be augmented by depth of adjacent tones. d. Harmony of Simultaneous Contrast, being that of different adjacent colours seen at the same time. e. Harmony of Successive Contrasts — This delu- sion takes place when but one colour is before the eye at the same moment. When wearied of this colour, the eye seeks to rest itself by seeing the secondary or comple- mentary of the colour present ; as when the eye has wea- ried of red, and turns from it, it sees not red but green, the complementary of red, and so of the other colours. f Harmony of Mixed Contrasts — This is an op- tical effect of mixing upon the vision two colours seen suc- cessively ; for instance, look with one eye for a time upon red and then turn it upon blue, and the vision mixes the red and blue and creates the impression of purple. In simultaneous contrasts the effect is a modification of one coloicr %i])on another when seen in the same act of vision. In successive contrasts but one colour is present, and the effect is in the eye and not in the colour. In mixed con- trasts one or more colours are present and seen successively, and the effect is also in the eye and not in the colour. Re- member the difference. See also Harmony of Colours, as mentioned in this chapter under " General Tone of Colour," clause 6. III. COLOUR-AKT. Colour- art may be considered under several heads — 1. Truth of colouring requires that colours should be combined and arranged according to the laws of nature as revealed by the prism and considered above. 2. Ideality 'of colouring • if colour is not idealized it is mere paint, and cannot harmonize with the ideal charac ter of an ideal picture ; in other words, colour must sym- pathize with the subject and the sentiment. COLOUR- ART. 153 3. Force of colouring is not obtrusive colouring, but effective colouring ; as principal colour on the principal figure ; bright or advancing colours for advanced objects ; and receding colours for receding objects ; subdued colours for less important objects. The distinct blue and red in the draperies of the Roman and Florentine schools, though destitute of the harmony produced by a variety of broken and transparent colours, yet possess the effect of grandeur required, and strike the eye with more force than if they were harmonized by a greater number of tints. But only great masters have succeeded in such force of colouring ; in the hands of feebler powers it would be raw and harsh. 4. Balance of colour. In nature we find the same colours dispersed everywhere. Take, for instance, a field of flow- ers. No mass of colour is in a spot by itself ; but all are in- termingled, which produces a balance of colour. If colour is ^introduced but once in a picture, it appears like a spot and unsupported on the canvas ; and, again, in the repe- tition it must be slightly varied in form, tint, or hue ; as, for instance, a rose in a bunch of flowers may be balanced by a pink azalia, or one purple flow^er by another differ- ing in form and hue. Perfect harmony of colouring re- quires a careful observance of this law of nature in all composition. If the subject requires a gay and brilliant tone, the life and vivacity of contrast, the colours intro- duced to secure that effect must be duly balanced by those that are harmonious, else the eye will become sated. On this point no definite rule can be given. If there is too much contrast the picture will be spotty and harsh ; if too little, where decided colours are introduced, it will be mo- notonous. In the arrangement of colours much is gained bv varying the forms of objects. In nature, according to the prism, colours are balanced by three parts of yellow to five of red and eight of blue; the sixteen parts making white light. Also in the complementaries and primaries, 154 COLOUK-AKT. five of red balance eleven of green ; three of yellow, thir^ teen of purple ; eight of blue, eight of orange ; and so of all other combinations of colour. 5. Gradation of colour. Look for gradation spaces in nature. a. In Nature. The sky is the largest and most beautiful ; watch it at twilight after the sun is down, and try to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a piece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the window of one or two feet square. It is amazing how slight the differences of tint are by which, through infinite delicacy of grada- tion, nature can express form. Compare the gradated colours of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply-drawn veining of old age. Gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and colour, that the eye refuses in art to understand anything which appears without it, while on the other hand nearly all the gradations in nature are so subtle, and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal or do anything more than suggest the idea of them. In proportion to the space over which gradation extends, and to its invisible subtilty, is its grandeur, and in proportion to its narrow limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity. In Correggio it is morbid in spite of its refinement of execution, because the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most observable and characteristic part of the picture ; whereas, natural gradation is forever escaping observation to that degree that the greater number of artists in working from nature see it not. 2 M. P., 40, §§ 16, 17. C0L0T7E-AET. 155 b. How can this gradation ~be effected f Whenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure that how- ever large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. JVb colour exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not see this, it is the fault of your inexperience : you will see it in due time, if you practise enough. But in general you may see it at once. In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray must be gradated by the roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side ; similarly the shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you will do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to pro- duce), you must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than another, and get an even gradation between the two depths. This is very like laying down a formal law or recipe for you ; but you will find it ia merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of colour, but it is so supremely improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking yourself invariably, when you are going to copy a tint, — not "Is that gra- dated?" but " Which way is it gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of colour may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch ; for it is not merely because the natural fact is so, that your colour should be gradated ; the preciousness and pleasantness of the colour itself depends more on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to colours just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beau- 156 COLOUR ART. tifiil by the pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types, expressing the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul itself. What the differ- ence is in mere beauty between a gradated and ungradated colour, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of rose- colour on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The victorious beauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and quantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers being either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf ; or less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed. c. Colours change in gradation. But observe, it is not enough in general that colour should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another. Generally colour changes as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least follow that the darkest spot should be the purest ; still less so that the lightest should be the purest. Yery often the two gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from pale- ness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to dulness, but there will almost always be both of them, however reconciled ; and you must never be satisfied with a piece of colour until you have got both : that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot ; and must be gradated from that into less pure blue — grayish blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue, over all the rest of the space it occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways : either, while the colour is wet, mix with it the colour which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more and a little more ; or else, when the colour is quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another colour over it, leaving COLOUR-ART. 157 only a point of the first tint visible ; or else, lay the sub- duing tints on in small touches, as in the exercise of tint- ing the chess-board. Of each of these methods I have something to tell you separately: but that is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of introducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper with colour, without securing a gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat un- gradated : and you will find in practice, that brilliancy of hue, and vigour of light, and even the aspect of transpa- rency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character alone ; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from equality of colour than from nature of colour. Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust : but though you had the red of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep the masses of those colours unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth. d. Three processes of gradation. Next note the three processes by which gradation and other characters are to be obtained : A. Mixing while the colour is wet. You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you. lay them on : but the separate masses are to be laid, when colours distinctly oppose each other 158 COLOUR-ART. at a given limit ; the hues to be mixed, when they palpi- tate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It is better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint the dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light, gradually one into the other ; and, after being laid separately on, will need some farther touching to harmonize them : but they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk; and it is easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas it often happens that the whole beauty of two colours will depend on the one being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it: blue and green often do so in water ; blue and gray, or purple and scarlet, in sky ; in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and truthful results may be obtained by laying one colour into the other while wet, judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with the brush in some- what thicker consistence of wet body-colour ; only observe, never mix in this way two mixtures ; let the colour you lay into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint. B. Laying one colour over another. If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is quite dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark colour first, and strike a little blue or white body-colour lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by mixing the colour and the blue or white. In very perfect painting, artifices of this kind are continually used ; but I wTould not have you trust much to them : they are apt to make you think too much of quality of colour. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead colours, simply laid on, only observe alwa}Ts this, that the less colour you do the work with, the better it will always COLOTJR-AKT. 159 be : * so that if you have laid a red colour, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red, but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus pro- duce the required purple ; and if you want a green hue over a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a little yellow, and so on, always bringing the under colour into service as far as you possibly can. If, however, the colour beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must either remove the required parts of the under colour daintily first with your knife, or with water ; or else, lay solid white over it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with the upper colour. This is better, in general, than laying the upper colour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a transparent colour, you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ochre, than to mix the sienna and white ; though, of course, the process is longer and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then mix the warm colour thick at once, and so use it : and this is often necessary for delicate grasses, and such other fine threads of light in foreground work. * If colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have many more good paiuters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black, PruKsian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for students. I don't say this jestingly ; I believe such a tax would do more to advance real art than a great many schools of design. 160 COLOUR-ART. C. Breaking one colour in small points through or over another. This is the most important of all processes in good modern* oil and water-colour painting, but yon need not hope to attain very great skill in it. To do it well is very laborious, and requires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage in noting the following points : (a) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rip- pled water, or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of rather dry colour, with other colours afterwards put cunningly into the interstices. The more you practise this, when the subject evidently calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher quali- ties of colour. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of separate colours to the utmost possible refinement ; using atoms of colour in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up minute inter- stices of this kind, that if you want the colour you fill them with to . show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point of it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the colour over the whole interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces ; but they show brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them. (b) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed por- tions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost colour in rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons : the first, that the play of the two colours together is pleasant to the eye ; the second, that much expression of form may be got by wise adrain- * I say modern, because Titian' s quiet way of blending colours, which, is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist. The best colour we reach is got by stippling ; but this is not quite right. COLOUR-ART. 161 istration of the upper dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or -broken crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose ; in clouds they may indi- cate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the cloud masses ; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-colour drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colours, or retouching the lower one with fine darker drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages of delicate atmospheric light. (c) When you have time, practise the 'production of MIXED TINTS by INTERLACED TOUCHES of the PURE COLOURS out of which they are formed, and use the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers ; not painting the flower completely, but laying the ground colour of one petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision : a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c, numbered with proper refer- ence to their position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like ; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced colour, otherwise you will never get their richness or bloom. You will find, first, the universality of the law of gradation much insisted upon ; secondly, that Nature is economical of her fine colours. You would think, by the way she paints, that her colours cost her something enormous: she will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal 162 COLOUR-ART. all is subdued, even in the showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close, only dusty gray., or green, or purple, or every colour in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the centre of it. And so with all her colours. Sometimes I have really thought her miserliness intolerable : in a gen- tian, for instance, the way she economises her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad. 6. Next, respecting general tone of colour. I said, just now, that, for the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments ; but if you mean to be a colourist, you must lay a tax on them yourself when you begin to use true colour ; that is to say, you must use them little, and make of them much. There is no better test of your colour tones being good, than your having made the white in your picture precious, and the black conspicuous. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering or brilliant ; it is easy to scratch white sea- gulls out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew ; but, when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely delicious — tender as well as bright — like inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed, in milk. The eye ought to seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be ; and to feel it as a space of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the colours. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need it, and by keeping the white itself sub- dued by gray, except at a few points of chief lustre. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. How- ever small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eya, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some colour — never black, nor approaching black, they should be evi- COLOUR-ART. 163 dently and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them ; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold ; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator should notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and the white which it relieves. Of all the great colourists Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than most other peo- ples crimson. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make valuable ; you must give rare worth to every colour you use ; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be continually passing one into the other, being all evidently companions in the same gay world ; while the white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue, and }^our blue into green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should, however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colours ; and this especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work, and giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine colouring, like fine drawing, is delicate / and so delicate that if, at last, you see the colour you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of colour which individually are too pale to be seen ; and if there is one atom of any colour in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts it. Notice also, that nearly all good compound colours are 164 COLOUR-ART. odd colours. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's .work ten minutes before you know what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you feel that it is red ; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it ; presently after- wards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your colour too warm or too cold — no colour in the box will seem to have any affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single touch with a single colour. Thirdly, as to the choice and harmony of colours in general, if you cannot choose and harmonize them by in- stinct, you will never do it at all. If you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you may find plenty given in treatises upon colouring, to illustrate the laws of harmony ; and if you want to colour beautifully, colour as best pleases yourself at quiet times, not so as to catch the eye, nor to look as if it were clever or difficult to colour in that way, but so that the colour may be pleasant to you when you are happy, or thoughtful. Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much at simple flowers — dog-roses, wood hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather, and such like — as Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any sci- entific person tells you that two colours are " discordant," make a note of the two colours, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant ; the two colours which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other ! — a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for colours, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and COLOUR- ART. 165 blue, yellow and neutral grey, and the like ; and how she strikes these colour-concords for general tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones ; and you will gradually come to like what she does, and hnd out new and beautiful chords of colour in her work every day. If you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right : or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If colour does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; de- pend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who fed colour, whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper. You will find, also, your power of colouring depend much on your state of health and right balance of mind ; when you are fatigued or ill you will not see colours well, and when you are ill tempered you will not choose them well : thus, though not infallibly a test of character in individuals, colour power is a great sign of mental health in nations ; when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their colouring always gets dull.* You must also take great care not to be misled by af- fected talk about colour from people who have not the gift of it : numbers are eager and voluble about it whc probably never in all their lives received one genuine col- our-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than strawberries and plums. Fourthly, take care also never to be misled into any idea that colour can help or display form / colour f always disguises form, aud is meant to do so. * The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a pre- valent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying- heap of vegetables ; this colour is accurately indicative of decline or paralysis in missal-painting. f That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The gradations 166 COLOUR-ART. Fifthly \ it is a favourite dogma among modem writers on colour that "warm colours" (reds and yellows) "ap- proach" or express nearness, and "cold colours" (blue and grey) " retire " or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colours, as such, are absolutely inexpressive re- specting distance. It is their quality (as depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in cer- tain objects, blue is a sign of distance; but that is not because blue is a retiring colour, but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue : but blue is no more, on this account, a "retiring colour," than brown is a retiring colour, because, when stones are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie the browner they look ; or than yellow is a retiring colour, because, when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw forms perfectly (see Modem Painters, vol. iv., chap. iii. at the end) ; but all notions of explaining form by superimposed colour, as in architectural mouldings, are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is prettier, because it is striped, but it does not look a bit rounder ; and a cheek is prettier because it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were not. Colour may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as in grounding a bas-relief, but it always di- minishes the appearance of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colours are of equal depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch more than the red one. COLOUR-ART. 167 look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance : they express them only under the peculiar circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, signs of nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if you put the orange a great way off, its colour will not look so bright ; but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get the colour of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance, because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray. It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less express distance, -and a powerful or dark colour nearness ; but even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far away ; the rose colour of sunset on suoav is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the dis- tance ; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sun- streak, six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint ; while the dis- tance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole fore- ground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hope- less and absurd to expect any help from laws of " aerial perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never alter a colour because it won't look in its right place. Put the colour strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint, though close to you. Why should you 168 COLOURISTS. suppose that Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from another ? She certainly intends you always to enjoy her colouring, but she does not wish you always to measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance in " aerial perspective." There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some claims to be considered a constant one : namel v, that dulness and heaviness of colour are more or less indicative of nearness. All distant colour is pure colour : it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled ; for the air and light coming between us and any earthy or imperfect colour, purify or harmonise it ; hence a bad colourist is peculiarly incapable of ex- pressing distance. I do not of course mean that you are to use bad colours in your foreground by way of making it come forward ; but only that a failure in colour, there, will not put it out of its place ; while a failure in colour in the distance will at once do away with its remoteness : your dull-coloured foreground will still be a foreground, though ill-painted ; but your ill-painted distance will not be merely a dull distance, — it will be no distance at all. Elements of Drawing-, 151-165. [As to the art of colouring1, see further on page 295, § 16 etc.] IV. COLOURISTS. 1. The colourists as to shadows. The colourists painted masses or projecting spaces, and, aiming always at colour, perceived from the first and held to the last the fact that shadows, though of course darker than the lights with reference to which they are shadows, are not therefore necessarily less vigorous colours, but perhaps more vigorous. Some of the most beautiful blues and purples in nature, for instance, are those of moun- COLOURISTS. 169 tains in shadow against amber sky ; and the darkness of the hollow in the centre of a wild rose is one glow of orange fire, owing to the quantity of its yellow sta- mens. Well, the Venetians always saw this, and all great colourists see it, and are thus separated from the non- col our ists or schools of mere chiaroscuro, not by difference in style merely, but by being right while the others are wronff. It is an absolute fact that shadows are as much colours as lights are ; and whoever represents them by, merely, the subdued or darkened tint of the light, repre- sents them falsely. I particularly want you to observe that this is no matter of taste, but fact. If you are espe- cially sober-minded, you may indeed choose sober colours where Venetians would have chosen gay ones ; that is a matter of taste : you may think it proper for a hero to wear a dress without, patterns on it, rather than an embroidered one ; that is similarly a matter of taste, but though you may also think it would be dignified for a hero's limbs to be all black, or brown, on the shaded side of them, yet, if you are using colour at all, you cannot so have him to your mind, except by falsehood ; he never, under any circumstances, could be entirely black or brown on one side of him. 2. The colourists as to light. In this, then, the Venetians are separate from other schools by rightness, and they are so to their last days. Venetian painting is in this matter always right. But also, in their early days, the colourists are separated from other schools by their contentment with tranquil cheerful- ness of light / by their never wanting to be dazzled. Kone of their lights are flashing or blinding; they are soft, winning, precious; lights of pearl, not of lime : only, you know, on this condition they cannot have sunshine : their day is the day of Paradise ; they need no candle, neither 170 COLOURISTS. light of the sim, in their cities ; and everything is seen clear, as through crystal, far or near. This holds to the end of the fifteenth century. Then they begin to see that this, beautiful as it may be, is still a make-believe light ; that we clo not live in the inside of a pearl; but in an atmosphere through, which a burning sun shines thwartedly, and over which a sorrowful night must far prevail. And then the chiaroscurists succeed in persuading them of the fact that there is mystery in the day as in the night, and show them how constantly to see truly, is to see dimly. And also they teach them the brilliancy of light, and the degree in which it is raised from the darkness ; and, instead of their sweet and pearly peace, tempt them to look for the strength of name and coruscation of lightning, and flash of sunshine on armor and on points of spears. The noble painters take the lesson nobly, alike for gloom or flame. Titian with deliberate strength, Tintoret with stormy passion, read it, side by side. Titian deepens the hues of his Assumption, as of his Entombment, into a solemn twilight ; Tintoret involves his earth in coils of volcanic cloud, and withdraws, through circle flaming above circle, the distant light of Paradise. Both of them, becoming naturalist and human, add the veracity of Hol- bein's intense portraiture to the glow and the dignity they had themselves inherited from the Masters of Peace : at the same moment another, as strong as they, and in pure felicity of art-faculty, even greater than they, but trained in a lower school, — Yelasquez, — produced the miracles of colour and shadow-painting, which made Rey- nolds say of him, 'What wre all do with labor, he does with ease ; ' and one more, Correggio, uniting the sensual element of the Greek schools with their gloom, and their light with their beauty, and all these with the Lombardic colour, became, as since I think it has been admitted turner's truth of color. 171 without question, the captain of the painter's art as such. Other men have nobler or more numerous gifts, but as a painter, master of the art of laying colour so as to be lovely, Correggio is alone. (See ante, 147.) Lectures on Art , 7. v. — turner's truth of colour. 1. There is, in the first room of the National Gallery, a landscape attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called some- times Arieia, sometimes Le or La Riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue printers. Whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient Aricia, now La Kiccia, close to Albano, T will not take upon me to determine, seeing that most of the towns of these old masters are quite as like one place as another; but, at any. rate, it is a town on a hill, wooded with two-and -thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and possessing about the same number of leaves each. These bushes are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which of course would in nature have been cool and grey beside the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scien- tifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick red, the only thing like colour in the picture. The fore- ground is a piece of road, which in order to make allow- ance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vege- tation usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green grey, and the truth of the picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown. 2. Not long ago, I was slowly descending this very bit of carriage road, the first turn after you leave Albano, not a little impeded by the worthy successors of the ancient 172 turner's truth op colour. prototypes of Veiento.* It had been wild weather when I left Home, and all across the Campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the Claudian aqueduct, lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. But as I climbed the long slope of the Alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of Albano and graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flush- ing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The noon- day sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration, Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like, the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sun- beam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thou- sand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak Avind lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet- * " Csecus adulator — Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes, Blandaque devexas jactaret basia rhedse." turner's truth of colour. 173 lightning opens in a cloud at sunset ; the motionless masses of dark rock — dark though unshed with scarlet lichen, — casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them rilling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all — the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed re- pose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea. 3. Tell me who is likest this, Poussin or Turner? Not in his most daring and dazzling efforts could Turner himself come near it ; but you could not at the time have thought or remembered the work of any other man as having the remotest hue or resemblance of what you saw. Nor am I speaking of what is uncommon or unnatural ; there is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit colour which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our arti- ficial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living col- our ; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can reach ; but in addition to this, nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sun- light which trebles their brilliancy ; while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, works still with what" is actually a grey shadow compared to the force of nature's colour. Take a blade of grass and a scarlet flower, and place them so as to receive sunlight beside the brightest canvas that ever left Turner's easel, and the pic- ture will be extinguished. So far from out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere vividness of colour goes, one- half reach her; — but does he use this brilliancy of colour on objects to which it does not properly belong? Let us 174 turner's trutpi of colour. compare his works in this respect with a few instances from the old masters. 4. There is, on the left hand side of Salvator's Mercury and the Woodman in our National Gallery, something, without doubt intended for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible, which, though not particularly representative either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to be sym- bolical of rocks. Now no mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate colour. Salvator has painted it through- out without one instant of variation; but this, I suppose, is simplicity and generalization; — let it pass: but what. is the colour ? Pure sky blue, without one grain of grey, or any modifying hue whatsoever; — the same brush which had just given the bluest parts of the sky, has been more loaded at the same part of the pallet, and the whole moun- tain thrown in with unmitigated ultra-marine. Now moun- tains only can become pure blue when there is so much air between us and them that they become mere flat, dark shades, every detail being totally lost : they become blue when they become air, and not till then. Consequently this part of Salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as colour is concerned, broad, bold falsehood — the direct as- sertion of direct impossibility. In the whole range of Turner's works, recent or of old date, you will not find an instance of anything near enough to have details visible, painted in sky blue. Wherever Turner gives blue, there he gives atmosphere ; it is air, not object. Blue he gives to his sea ; so does nature ; — blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme distance ; so does nature ; — blue he gives to the misty shadows and turner's truth of colour. 175 hollows of his hills ; so does nature : but blue he gives not, where detail and illumined surface are visible ; as he comes into light and character, so he breaks into warmth and varied hue ; nor is there in one of his works, and I speak of the Academy pictures especially, one touch of cold colour which is not to be accounted for, and proved right and full of meaning. I do not say that Salvator's distance is not . artist-like ; both in that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances of Titian above alluded to, and in hundreds of others of equal boldness of exaggeration, I can take delight, and perhaps should be sorry to see them other than they are ; but it is somewhat singular to hear people talking of Turner's ex- quisite care and watchfulness in colour as false, while they receive such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction with the most generous and simple credulity. 5. Again, in the upper sky of the .picture of Xicolas Poussin, before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine clear olive-green, about the same tint as the brightest parts of the trees beneath them. They cannot have altered, (or else the trees must have been painted in grey,) for the hue is harmonious and well united with the rest of the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of the sky are still fresh and pure. Xow a green sky in open and illumined distance is very frequent, and very beautiful ; but rich olive-green clouds, as far as I am acquainted with nature, are a piece of colour in which she is not apt to in- dulge. You will be puzzled to show me such a thing in the recent works of Turner." Again, take any important group of trees, I do not care whose— Claude's, Salvator's, or Poussin's — with lateral light (that in the Marriage of * There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colourist than his power of using greens in strange places without their being felt as sueh, or at least than a constant preference of green grey to purple grey. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would have been perfectly 176 turner's truth of colour. Isaac and Rebecca, or Gaspar's Sacrifice of Isaac, for in- stance :) Can it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun % I know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the distances ; but they are nothing of the kind — they are noon and morning effects with full lateral light. Be so kind as to match the colour of a leaf in the sun (the dark- est you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched colour and set it beside one of these groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk about the truth of colour of the old masters ! And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidel- ity of impression be brought forward here. I have noth- ing whatever to do with this at present. I am not talking about what is sublime, but about what is true. People attack Turner on this ground ; — they never speak of beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature and truth, and let them support their own favorite masters on the same grounds. Perhaps I may have the very deepest ven- eration for the feeling of the old masters, but I must not let it influence me now— my business is to match colours, not to talk sentiment. Neither let it be -said that I am going too much into details, and that general truths may be obtained by local falsehood. Truth is only to be measured by close comparison of actual facts ; we may talk forever about it in generals, and prove nothing. We agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the rest of the picture to have thrown it into grey. It is only because the lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the same colour as the clouds, that the cloud colour becomes false. There is a fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned grey by the opposi- tion of warm colour, in Turner's Devonport with the Dockyards. turner's truth of colour. 177 cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or that person, but we can very well tell what is false and what is not, and if it produce on our senses the effect of truth, that only demonstrates their imperfection and inac- curacy, and need of cultivation. Turner's colour is glar- ing to one person's sensations, and beautiful to another's. This proves nothing. Poussin's colour is right to one, soot to another. This proves nothing. There is no means of arriving at any conclusion but close comparison of both with the known and demonstrable hues of nature, and this comparison will invariably turn Claude or Poussin into blackness, and even Turner into grey. Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the ob- jects of a real landscape, yet a window with that landscape seen through it, will invariably appear a broad space of light as compared with the shade of the room walls ; and this single circumstance may prove to us both the intensi- ty and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the ne- cessity if a picture is to be truthful in effect of colour, that it should tell as a broad space of graduated illumina- tion— not, as do those of the old masters, as a patchwork of black shades. Their works are nature in mourning weeds, — oi)S' ev rfklw KaOapco TeOpafi/juevoc, aX)C vrrb crvfjL/nL- ryel oino; in and out will not disturb them. For they are praying, which in many a hand- somer and highlier-furbished edifice might, perhaps, not be so assuredly the case. § 7. Lastly : \Vhat kind of people have we on this winding road ? Three indolent ones, leaning on the wall to look over into the gliding water ; and a matron with her market panniers, by her figure, not a fast rider. The road, besides, is bad, and seems unsafe for trotting, and she has passed, without disturbing the cat, who sits com- fortably on the block of wood in the middle of it. | 3. Next to this piece of quietness, let us glance at a composition in which the motive is one of tumult : that of the Fall of Schaffhausen. It is engraved in the Keep- sake. I have etched in Plate 6, at the top, the chief lines of its composition,* in which the first great purpose is to give swing enough to the water. The line of fall is * These etchings of compositions are all reversed, for they are merely sketches on the steel, and I cannot sketch easily except straight from the drawing-, and without reversing-. The looking-glass plagues me with cross lights. As examples of composition, it does not the least matter which way they are turned ; and the reader may see this Schaff- hausen subject from the right side of the Rhine, by holding the book before a glass. The rude indications of the figures in the Loire subject are nearly facsimiles of Turner's. 234: THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. straight and monotonous in reality. Turner wants to get the great concave sweep and rush of the river well felt, in spite of the unbroken form. The column of spray, rocks, mills, and bank, all radiate like a plume, sweeping round together in grand curves to the left, where the group of figures, hurried about the ferry-boat, rises like-a-dash of spray ; they also radiating : so as to form one perfectly connected cluster, with the two gens-d'armes and the mill- stones ; the millstones at the bottom being the root of it ; the two soldiers laid right and left to sustain the branch of figures beyond, balanced just as a tree bough would be. § 9. One of the gens-d'armes is flirting with a young lady in a round cap and full sleeves, under pretence of wanting her to show him what she has in her bandbox. The motive of which flirtation is, so far as Turner is con- cerned in it, primarily the bandbox : this and the mill- stones below, give him a series of concave lines, which, concentrated by the recumbent soldiers, intensify the hol- low sweep of the fall, precisely as the ring on the stone does the Loire eddies. These curves are carried out on the right by the small plate of eggs, laid to be washed at the spring ; and, all these concave lines being a little too quiet and recumbent, the staggering casks are set ~ on the left, and the ill-balanced milk-pail on the right, to give a general feeling of things being rolled over and over. The things which are to give this sense of rolling are dark, in order to hint at the way in which the cataract rolls boulders of rock ; while the forms which are to give the sense of its sweeping force are white. The little spring, splashing out of its pine-trough, is to give contrast with the power of the fall, — while it carries out the gene- ral sense of splashing water. § 10. This spring exists on the spot, and so does every- thing else in the picture ; but the combinations are wholly arbitrary ; it being Turner's fixed principle to collect out THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. 235 of any scene, whatever was characteristic, and put it to- gether just as he liked. The changes made in this in- stance are highly curious. The mills have no resemblance whatever to the real group as seen from this spot ; for there is a vulgar and formal dwelling-house in front of them. But if you climb the rock behind them, you find they form on that side a towering cluster, which Turner has put with little modification into the drawing. TThat he has done to the mills, he has done with still greater audacity to the central rock. Seen from this spot, it shows, in reality, its greatest breadth, and is heavy and uninteresting ; but on the Lauffen side, exposes its con- sumed base, worn away by the rush of water, which Tur- ner resolving to show, serenely draws the rock as it ap- pears from the other side of the Rhine, and brings that view of it over to this side. I have etched the bit with the rock a little larger below ; and if the reader knows the spot, he will see that this piece of the drawing, re- versed in the etching, is almost a bona fide unreversed study of the fall from the Lauffen side.* Finally, the castle of Lauffen itself, being, when seen from this spot, too much foreshortened to show its extent, Turner walks a quarter of a mile lower clown the river, draws the castle accurately there, brings it back with him, and puts it in all its extent, where he chooses to have it, beyond the rocks. I tried to copy and engrave this piece of the drawing of its real size, merely to show the forms of the trees, drifted back by the breeze from the fall, and wet with its spray ; but in the endeavour to facsimile the touches, great part of their grace and ease has been lost ; still, Plate 7 may, if * With the exception of the jagged ledge rising out of the foam be- low, which comes from the north side, and is admirable in its expression of the position of the limestone-beds, wbich, rising from below the drift gravel of Constance, are the real cause of the fall of Schaffhausen. 230 THE MOTIVE OP LANDSCAPE. compared with the same piece in the Keepsake engraving, at least show that the original drawing has not yet been rendered with completeness. §11. These two examples may sufficiently serve to show the mode in which minor details, both in form and spirit, are used by Turner to aid his main motives ; of course I cannot, in the space of this volume, go on examining sub- jects at this length, even if I had time to etch them; but every design of Turner's would be equally instructive, examined in a similar manner. Thus far, however, we have only seen the help of the parts to the whole : we must give yet a little attention to the mode of combining the smallest details. I am always led away, in spite of myself, from my proper subject here, invention formal, or the merely pleasant placing of lines and masses, into the emotional results of such arrangement. The chief reason of this is that the emotional power can be explained ; but the per- fection of formative arrangement, as I said, cannot be ex- plained, any more than that of melody in music. An instance or two of it, however, may be given. The Form and Group. (See Chapter on Grouping.) § 12. Much fine formative arrangement depends on a more or less elliptical or pear-shaped balance of the group, obtained by arranging the principal members of it on two opposite curves, and either centralizing it by some powerful feature at the base, centre, or summit ; or else clasping it together by some conspicuous point or knot. A very small object will often do this satisfactorily. If you can get the complete series of Lefebre's engrav- ings from Titian and Veronese, they will be quite enough to teach you, in their dumb way, everything that is teach- able of composition ; at all events, try to get the Madonna, THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. 237 with St. Peter and St. George under the two great pillars; the Madonna and Child, with mitred bishop on her left, and St. Andrew on her right ; and Veronese's Triumph of Venice. The first of these Plates unites two formative symmetries ; that of the two pillars, clasped by the square altar-cloth below and cloud above, catches the eye first ; but the main group is the fivefold one rising to the left, crowned by the Madonna. St. Francis and St. Peter form its two wings, and the kneeling portrait figures, its base. It is clasped at the bottom by the key of St. Peter, which points straight at the Madonna's head, and is laid on the steps solely for this purpose ; the curved lines, which en- close the group, meet also in her face ; and the straight line of light, on the cloak of the nearest senator, points at her also. If you have Turner's Liber Studiorum, turn to the Lauffenburg, and compare the figure group there : a fivefold chain, one standing figure, central ; two recum- bent, for wings; two half -recumbent, for bases; and a cluster of weeds to clasp. Then turn to Lefebre's Europa (there are two in the series — I mean the one with the two tree trunks over her head)! It is a wonderful ninefold group. Europa central ; two stooping figures, each sur- mounted by a standing one, for wings; a cupid on one side, and dog on the other, for bases; a cupid and trunk of tree, on each side, to terminate above ; and a garland for clasp. § 13. Fig. 4, page 238, will serve to show the mode in which similar arrangements are carried into the smallest detail. It is magnified four times from a cluster of leaves in the foreground of the " Isis " (Liber Studiorum). Figs. 5 and 6, page 230, show the arrangement of the two groups composing it ; the lower is purely symmetrical, with tref oiled centre and broad masses for wincrs : the uppermost is a sweeping continuous curve, symmetrical, but foreshortened. Both are clasped by arrow-shaped leaves. The two whole groups themselves are. in turn, 238 THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. members of another larger group, composing the entire foreground, and consisting of broad dock-leaves, with minor clusters on the right and left, of which these form the chief portion on the right side. Fig. 4. § 14c. Unless every leaf, and every visible point or object, however small, forms a part of some harmony of this kind (these symmetrical conditions being only the most THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. 239 simple and obvious), it has no business in the picture. It is the necessary connection of all the forms and colors, down Fig. 6. to the last touch, which constitutes great or inventive work, separated from all common work by a.n impassable gulf. 240 THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. By diligently copying the etchings of the Liber Studi- orum, the reader may, however, easily attain the percep- tion of the existence of these relations, and be prepared to understand Turner's more elaborate composition. It would take many figures to disentangle and explain the arrangements merely of the leaf cluster, Fig. 78, facing page 104; but that there is a system, and that every leaf has a fixed value and place in it, can hardly but be felt at a glance. It is curious that, in spite of all the constant talking of " composition " which goes on among art students, true composition is just the last thing which appears to be per- ceived. One would have thought that in this group, at least the value of the central black leaf would have been seen, of which the principal function is to point towards, and continue, the line of bank above. See Plate 62. But a glance at the published Plate in the England series will show that no idea of the composition had occurred to the engraver's mind. He thought any leaves would do, and supplied them from his own repertory of hack vegetation. § 15. I would willingly enlarge farther on this subject ■ — it is a favorite one with me ; but the figures recpiired for any exhaustive treatment of it would form a separate volume. All that I can do is to indicate, as these ex- amples do sufficiently, the vast field open to the student's analysis if he cares to pursue the subject; and to mark for the general reader these two strong conclusions: — that nothing in great work is ever either fortuitous or conten- tious. It is not fortuitous ; that is to say, not left to fortune. The " must do it by a kind of felicity " of Bacon is true ; it is true also that an accident is often suggestive to an inventor. Turner himself said, " I never lose an accident." But it is this not losing it, this taking things out of the hands of Fortune, and putting them into those of force THE MOTIVE OF LANDSCAPE. 241 and foresight, which attest the master. Chance may sometimes help, and sometimes provoke, a success ; but must never rule, and rarely allure. And, lastly, nothing must be contentions. Art has many uses and many pleasantnesses ; but of all its services, none are hio;her than its setting forth, bv a visible and enduring image, the nature of all true authority and freedom ; — Authority which defines and directs the action of benevo- lent law ; and Freedom which consists in deep and soft consent of individual* helpfulness. 5 M. P., 175. * "Individual," that is to say, distinct and separate in character, though joined in purpose. I might have enlarged on this head, but that all I should care to say has been already said admirably by Mr. J. S. Mill in his Essay on Liberty. 11 CHAPTEE IT. SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 1 assume that you are now enabled to draw with fair success, either rounded and simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves ; provided only these masses or complexities will stay quiet for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to baffle your patience. But if we are, now to go out to the fields, and to draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy their heaps or clefts ; the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence ; and instead of the small clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point, embarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its foam. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imita- tion becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it is possible ; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive ; and you must give more and more effort daily SKETCHING. 243 to the observance of characteristic points, and the attain- ment of concise methods. 1. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons. First, that it is always accessible as a study ; and secondly, that its modes of growth present simple ex- amples of the importance of leading or governing lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize all, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form. I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive of the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up ; and secondly, how it is now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it. In a tree they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its childhood ; how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it ; where and when kind trees have sheltered it ; and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it bent ; what winds torment it most ; what boughs of it be- have best, and bear most fruit ; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the water or va- pour is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore, or counterwave, or melting sunshine. ISTow remem- ber, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always, whether in life or in art, know- ing the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed ; your wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so — the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away. Try always whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate, and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines ; 244 SKETCHING. see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16. (p. 89.) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the- brow of a crag at Sestri, near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their first bud- ding by the great rude root, and spring out in every di- rection round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again ; some of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of grow- ing upright, if they can ; and this struggle of theirs to re- cover their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence their future destiny, and deter- mine if they are to be crabbed, forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea ; or if they are to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy green. Those, then, are their fateful lines ; see that you give that spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their chief beauty is in these. 2. So in trees in general and bushes, large or small, you will notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at c, Fig. 7., is common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them a certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches, which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and a path to take which fills a definite place, and each terminates all its minor branches at its outer extremity, SKETCHING. 245 so as to form a great outer curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for each species ; that is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as Fig. 7., but ah c Fig. 7. as h, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor divisions right out to the bounding curve ; not bat that smaller branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its child branches well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small, take its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the type of each separate bough is again not a, but Fig. 8. ; Fig. 8. approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to a rounded surface ; therefore, beware of getting into a careless habit of drawing boughs with suc- cessive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging to the other, as in Fig. 9. If you look at the tree-boughs in any painting of Wilson's, you will see this structure, and nearly every other that is to be avoided, in their intensest 246 SKETCHING. types. You will also notice that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it had been pressed and dried. Most people, in drawing pines, seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two Fig. 9. sides of the trunk, instead of all round it ; always, there- fore, take more pains in trying to draw the boughs of trees that grow towards you, than those that go off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the fore- shortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in draw- ing them to observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in its position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or shelter some- thing. If vou take a looking-glass, and hold vour hand before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if you were going to support the base of some great bowl, larger than you could easily hold, and sketch your hand as you see it in the glass, with the points of the fingers towards you, it will materially help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their hands ; and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such other spreading trees. Fig. 10. will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which these and other such facts can be rapidly ex- pressed ; if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to SKETCHING. 247 Fig. 10. 248 SKETCHING. find how the touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the ground : note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little mound on the left.* It is facsimiled from an etching of Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in foliage, or any- thing else to which you wish to direct attention, may be intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by the figure of the farmer with his stick ; and the rounded bushes on the bank are made to look more rounded, because their line is continued in one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These figures are placed entirely with this ob- ject, as we shall see more fully hereafter when we come to talk about composition ; but, if you please, we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the " Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth : indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles of composition somewhat awkwardly. 3. ow, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty * It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill." SKETCHING. 249 irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good draughts- man will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where it lies long and feeds the moss ; and he will be careful, however few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd gradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in perspective, partly, perhaps, dimin- ished on purpose (they are so in most English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always the di- rection of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the earth and cuts it into hollows ; and, generally, in any bank, or height worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides. The figure 10. will give you some idea of the way in which such facts may be expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people always turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the roots of the trees ? Xow, I want you in your first sketches from nature to aim exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts of form ; using the pen — not now the steel, but the quill — firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a single touch, — " That leaf is the main one, that bough is the guiding one, and this touch, so long, so broad, means that part of it," — point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never let your hand run away with you, or get into any habit or method of touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from one 11* 250 SKETCHING. end of it to the other, without a tremor ; if you want a shaking and broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a musician's finger shakes or stops on a note : only remember this, that there is no general way of doing any thing ; no recipe can be given you for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing ; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid ; fresh or dry ; lustrous or dull : look at it, and try to draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody " told you to do grass." So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus sabre, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystal- lised like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf : look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to " do a stone." 4. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thorough- ly, and that you can render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of Turner's or Durer's work,* you must add a simple but equally careful light and shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as complete as possible: for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if you have the means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber Studiorum ; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note below, f If you cannot obtain, * I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer in their strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner, f The following are the most desirable plates : Grande Chartreuse. Pembury Mill. .ZEsacus and Hesperie. Little Devil's Bridge. Cephalus and Procris. River Wye {not Wye and Severn). SKETCHING. 251 or even borrow for a little while, any of these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you presently) ; but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it accurately ; to which end put the print against the window, and trace slowly with the greatest care every black line ; retrace this on smooth drawing-paper ; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the right side, not making a line which is too curved or too straight already in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over it. And in doing this, never work after you are* tired, nor to " get the thing done," for if it Source of Arveron. Holy Island. Ben Arthur. Clyde. Watermill. Lauffenbourg. Hindhead Hill. Blair Athol. Hedging and Ditching. Alps from G-renoble. Dumblane Abbey. Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, Morpeth. trees, and castle on the right. ) Calais Pier. If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable, except only the twelve following, which are quite useless : 1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above. 2. Interior of church. 3. Scene with bridge, and trees above ; figures on left, one playing a pipe . 4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine. 5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen through them. 6. Fifth Plague of Egypt. 7. Tenth Plague of Egypt. 8. Rivaulx Abbey. 9. Wye and Severn. 10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on the left. 11. Martello Towers. 12. Calm. It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original 252 SKETCHING. is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and inattentive labour . of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they need : you cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this etched outline by you, in order to study at your ease the way in which Turner uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow ; * it is only in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this. Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this etching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush, and any brown colour that matches* that of the etching's ; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very careful one : only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Durnblane were not etched by Turner ; and the etchings of those three are not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how Turner, apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either con- quered or brought into use the bad etching by his marvellous engraving. The Durnblane was, however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beauti- fully engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series ; and next to it, are the unpublished etchings of .the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that of the aqueduct. Figure 10., above, is part of another fine un- published etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." .Of the published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, iEsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern ; the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are also very desirable. * You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on. SKETCHING. 253 plate;* working it with the point of the brush as deli- cately as if you were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper, till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject carelessly done. Xot that in drawing after- wards from nature, you are to be obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having fully accom- plished the drawing something rightly, you will thence- forward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which it would have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work, xsothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials seem to favour you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it, and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have them. Show the camel's-hair, and the colour in it, that no bending nor blotting are of any use to escape your will ; that the touch and the shade shall finally be right, if it cost you a year's toil; and from that hour of corrective conviction, said camel's-hair will bend itself to all your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you cannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a photographf of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a village, or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy any part of it you like, in this * The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can be specified. f You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a Liber print as well. 254 SKETCHING. same brown colour, working, as I have just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, how- ever ; first, there are portions in every photograph too deli- cately done for you at present to be at all able to copy ; and secondly, there are portions always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher. Both these characters will be advantageous to you for future study, after you have gained experience, but they are a little against you in early attempts at tinting ; still, you must fight through the difficulty, and get the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or grey, like those of the photograph. 5. Now observe ; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like photography, without any obscurity or exag- gerated darkness ; and as long as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete re- sults in tints merely, requires both long time and consum- mate skill; and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over or under them, get more ex- pression of facts than you could reach in any other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with the most subtle natural effects ; for the firm etching gets at the expression of complicated details as leaves, masonry, textures of ground, &c, while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist or cloud. Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this principle, the touches of the pen being useful, also to give a look of transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by great finish of SKETCHING. 255 tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photo- graphs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes, and other societies organized with a view to public in- struction, will not fail to possess themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students of drawing in the vicinity ; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show the unison of tint with pen etching, and the " St. Catherine," lately photographed by Thurston Thompson, from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre, to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk separately, or colour separately, may be seen by the poor- est student in any cheap illustrated book, or in shop win- dows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot gen- erally see but by some especial enquiry, and in some out of the way places he could not find a single example of it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make the matter out alone, thus : Take a small and simple photograph ; allow yourself half an hour to express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid colour instead of ink, out- lining its buildings or trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or grey, and tint it over, getting now the 256 SKETCHING. finer gradations of the photograph ; and finally, taking out the higher lights with penknife or blotting-paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two. Practise in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour, sometimes two or three hours ; in each case drawing the whole subject in full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you will do well to repeat fre- quently, whether you can get prints and drawings as well as photographs, or not. 6. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in your power of working from nature on all subjects that interest you, which you should do in four different ways. First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with grey or brown colour of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelli- gibly in light and shade , make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time to a Dureresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to }7ou interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot under- stand, try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, SKETCHING. 257 and make a nearer memorandum ; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means that sort of tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpreta- tion of your own work. If you have time, however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your Dureresque and your near memoranda ; for if your light and shade drawing be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or disguised. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of grey, which will fix the penciL While this fixing colour is wet, take out the higher lights with the dry brush ; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is to be white. I do not like studies on grey paper so well ; for you can get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-colour white, unless you are consummately skilful. There is no objection to your making your Du- reresque memoranda on grey or yellow paper, and touch- ing or relieving them with white ; only, do not depend much on your white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake. Thirdly. Wlien you have neither time for careful study nor for Dureresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do ;ls much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision ; laying more 258 SKETCHING. colour again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the colour off here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, dry- ing it off with your sponge, &c. Then, when the colour is in, take your pen and mark the outline characters vig- orously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky, &c. ; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you ; for although the endeavour to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable ; there are a velocity and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for }tou to study occasionally for speed and decision, while your con- tinual course of practice is such as to ensure your retain- ing an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempt- ing; and you will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished study, nor a Dureresque one, may yet become of singular value in consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows ; for it happens often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important element than the SKETCHING. 259 substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 11., seen within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement Fig. 11. of timbers to which the shadows are owing is perceptible ; but at half a mile's distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen ; and a good painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and the a crossed bars, of pure grey ; wholly without indication of their cause, as in Fig. 12. a / and if we saw it at still greater distances, it would appear, as in Fig. 12. b and c, di- i minishing at last to a strange, unin- telligible, spider-like spot of grey on the light hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his dis- tances, continually reduces his ob- jects to these shadow abstracts ; c and the singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly > Fig. 12. 260 SKETCHING. to this thorough, accuracy and intense meaning of the sha- dow abstracts. Studies of this kind are easily made when you are in haste, with an F. or HB. pencil : it requires some hard- ness of the point to ensure your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle ; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the gradation of the other ; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which the best of the detail de- pends, getting gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady use of the pen, or brush, and colour, whenever time admits of it ; keeping only a small memorandum- book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities : but never being without this. 7. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to draw from nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods of treating some of them ; for one of by no means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar instinct, common as far as I have noticed, to all beginners, to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene. There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a beginner will dash at ; or, if not these, it will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture, SKETCHING. 2G1 and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of beginners, the following general warnings may be useful : 1. Do not draw things that you love, on accoitnt of their associations / or at least do not draw them because you love them; but merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron railings, gravel Avalks, greenhouses and cpiick- set hedges ; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavour to make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the draw- ing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have to care about is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlour or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw anything that is there, for practice ; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet : be sure that is for practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend bv drawing her room. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am addressing you as a beginner— & time may come when your work will be precious to everybody ; but be resolute not to give it away till you know that it is worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a couple of cakes of colour and a piece of Bristol board : those materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you had spread the one over the other. The main reason for this rule is, however, that its ob- 262 SKETCHING. servance will much protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings pretty. 2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished ; especial- ly if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in your way ; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do not shine. 3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy -looking things as much as pos- sible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide : in general, everything that you think very ugly, will be good for you to draw. 4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen through another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before your chosen cottage, or be- tween you and the turn of the river ; its near branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this ; and though, when the tree is there, you must not imaginably cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network ; that is, rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a thin tree in front of it ; rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems. 5. Avoid as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle line. SKETCHING. 2G3 Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that the subject overmasters you. It is much bet- ter that it should, than that you should think you had entirely mastered it. But, at first, and even for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable fail- ure ; which, nevertheless, will not be without some whole- some result. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all hanks are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places wrhere the ground is broken to the river s edges, with decayed posts, or roots of trees ; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, &c. Xearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides ; better in form and colour than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study : a not very thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up it spar- ingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric porticos. Any old English village, or cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely ; much more a French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss landscape is to French ; in some respects, the French is incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity 264 SKETCHING. and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines. In drawing villages, take great pains with the gar- dens ; a rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses : you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by anything in purer thoughts. Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your neigh- bourhood, and study them ripple by ripple. Village churches in England are not often good sub- jects ; there is a peculiar meanness about most of them, and awkwardness of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and cathe- drals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathe- dral in England from which it is possible to obtain one subject for an impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring vergerism about them. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local colour. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching among hills ; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant hills will be comparatively easy. When you have practised for a little time from such of these subjects as may be accessible to you, you will cer- tainly find difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a master's help : these difficulties will vary according to the character of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all ; and it would make this too large a book if I answered all that I can anticipate; you must be content to work on, in good hope SKETCHING. 265 that nature will, in her own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on your own part will make some difficulties disappear ; and that others will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this subject without a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are somewhat advanced in power ; and these remarks may, I think, be conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing of vegetation, water, and skies. 8. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said enough about trees already ; yet if you have done as you were bid, and tried to draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by this time to hear a little more of them. You will also recol- lect that we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing them for your- self, before I troubled you with the most subtle consider- ations as to method in drawing them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have found out two principal things, universal facts, about leaves j namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law of radiation, already referred to ; * and the second, that this divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. I must now press both these facts on your attention a little farther. You may perhaps have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with the passages referring to them in Modem Painters, in which they are highly * See thp eloaing letter in this volume. 12 266 SKETCHING. praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only works by a modern draughtsman which express in any wise the energy of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character, obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame, Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. Rut you must not take even Hard- ing for a model, though you may use his works for occa- sional reference ; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons on Trees," it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works, because their great influence on young students renders it desirable that their real character should be thoroughly understood. You will find, first, in the title-page of the Lessons on Trees, a pretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and in a very interesting arrange- ment of lines. Plate 1. is not quite worthy of Mr. Hard- ing, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think everything depends on black dots ; still the main lines are good, and very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2., we come to the point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil that he may practise from them till his hand gets into the habit of arranging lines freely in a similar manner ; and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be universal in application ; " all outlines expressive of foliage," he says, " are but modifications of them." They consist of groups of lines, * Bogue, Fleet Street. If you are not acquainted with Harding's works (an unlikely supposition, considering' their popularity), and can- not meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will enable you to understand all that is needful for our purposes. SKETCHING. 267 more or less resembling our Fig. 13. ; and the characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner ends to a common centre ; " that " their ends ter- minate in [are enclosed byj ovoid curves ; " and that " the outer ends are most emphatic." Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and en- ^\ closure, the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in ^/^^ ^ ft ^ a very interesting way, our con- ^ elusions respecting foliage compo- sition. The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear ; for the line at one end of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other ; but ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass ; and, as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as any mere habit of touch can express. But, unfortunately, there is another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation, which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that the radiat- ing tendency shall be carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one than h in Fig 9. p. 71., nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 14. ; but in either of them, even 268 SKETCHING. Fig. 14. the general reader, unpractised in any of the previously recommended exer- cises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed witli the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones : and if he takes the pen and tries to copy either of these ex- amples, he will find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it ; but that he must either draw it slowly, or give it up. And (which makes the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to you, or seeing a piece of near foli- age against the sky, you may draw the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf here, and an edge there ; some of the surfaces will be confused by glitter, and some spotted with sha.de ; and if you look carefully through this confusion for the edges or dark steins which you really can see, and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9. nor Fig. 14., but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as Fig. 15 * Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expres- sion of these three laws that all good drawing of landscape * I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a woodcut. SKETCHING. 260 co?isists. There is, first, the organic unity ; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism, or concurrent action, Fig. 15. which rales the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds, and waves ; secondly \ the individual liberty of the members subjected to these laws of unity ; and, lastly, the mystery under which the separate character of each is more or less concealed. I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling- organic law. This is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks ; he cannot see the lines of action or growth ; he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiv- ing the sweeps of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly ; and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen, or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of government ; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of their authority rather than in its denial. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual charac- ter and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones ; for if the men of inferior genius ever expressed law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individ- 270 SKETCHING. uality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of trie sweep of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Grains- borough, in his landscape, has great feeling for masses of form and harmony of colour ; but in the detail gives noth- ing but meaningless touches ; not even so much as the species of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible. Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are essential to masterly work, the individuality is the more essential, and the more difficult of attainment ; and, therefore, that attainment separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones. It is the more essential, because, in these matters of beauti- ful arrangement in visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no com- mon affection : but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment ; a society in which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than himself ; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than himself ; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be relieved ; no man reverence another, since by none he could be instructed ; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would walk as in a frightful dream, seeing spectres of himself, in everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness. Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some great gathering law: the law is needful to them SKETCH I XG. 271 for their perfection and their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life. And here it may be noted in passing, that if you enjoy the pursuit of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning them, you may always accu- rately ascertain what are the noble characters in^a piece of painting, by merely considering what are the noble cha- racters of man in his association with his fellows. TVnat grace of manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversations of men ; rjrecisely that relative degree of advantage or harm there is/in them as elements of picto- rial composition. "What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve human souls ; that power, pre- cisely in the same relative degree, play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life, simplicity of custom, and balance of authority ; precisely that kind of goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its color, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too far. They cannot be pushed too far ; they are so precise and complete, that the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no moral virtue, which has not its precise prototype in the art of painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness and quietness, feeble- ness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, 272 SKETCHING. and all other such habits, and every conceivable modifica- tion and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and colour; and not merely these definable vices and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king, to the innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the investigation of the higher branches of composi- tion, matters which it would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost noblenesses of art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest at- tention, and the most noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends, whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves. 'Now you will be able to understand, among other mat- ters, wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is ex- cellent in so far as it fondly observes, wTith more truth than any other work of the kind, the great laws of growth and action in trees : it fails — and observe, not in a minor, but in a principal point — because it cannot rightly render any one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to a hand which has contracted a habit of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf, and stops, and says calmly — That leaf is of such and such a character ; I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend. This pro- cess may be as quick as lightning when the master is SKETCHING. 273 great — one of the sons of the giants ; or it may be slow and timid : but the process is always gone through ; no touch or form is ever added to another by a good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when the hand has got into a habit, leaf Xo. 1. necessi- tates leaf No. 2. ; you cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth ; or rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however pain- fully ; make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders ; otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;* and you may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory : but you must never copy it, other- wise your progress will be at once arrested. The utmost you can ever hope to do, would be a sketch in Harding's manner, but of far inferior dexterity ; for he has given his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what truly great work was, or what Nature was ; but by the earnest and complete study of facts, yon will gradually come to understand the one and love the other more and more, whether yon can draw well yourself or not. Lastly, I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above stated, that of mystery ; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and * His lithographic sketches, those, for instance, in the Park and the Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the more ambitious engravings in his Principles and Practice of Art. There are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work. 12* 274 SKETCHING. under various conditions of obscurity.* This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first, Subordi- nation / secondly, Individuality / lastly, and this not the least essential character, Incomprehensibility / a perpet- ual lesson in every serrated point and shining vein which escape or deceive our sight among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand, a closer and more loving watch- fulness would show to be full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been completely reached by any except Turner; posed light and shade which renders the etchings of the * On this law you will do well, if you can get access to it, to look at the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters. Fig. 16. nor can you hope to reach it at all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try always when you are sketching any object with a view to comple- tion in light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see definitely; prepar- ing for the after devel- opment of the forms by chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future ar- rangement of superim- SKETCHING. 275 Liber Studio-rum so inestimable as examples and so peculiar. The character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains that Turner has taken. Thus the ^Fsacus and ITesperie was wrought out with the greatest possible care ; and the principal branch on the near tree is etched as in Fig. 16. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead of a master's ; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls into its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity results. Xay even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 17. is sufficiently characteristic of the man- ner of the old woodcuts after Titian ; in which, you see, the leaves are too much of one shape, like bunches of fruit ; and the boughs too completely seen, besides being some- what soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the ■ Fig. 17> want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat con- ventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses ; and their excpiisite delineation of the foreground, kept their conventionalism from degeneracy : but in the drawing of the Caracci and other derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and sinks grad- ually into scrawled work, like. Fig. 18., about the worst which it is possible to get into the habit of using, though 276 SKETCHING. an ignorant person might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore better than Fig. 16. Note, also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a bough is wrongly drawn, because it .looks contracted unnaturally somewhere, as in Fig. 16., just above the foliage. Very often the muscular action which is to be expressed by the line, runs into the middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that place may be dimly seen, or not at all ; and it is then only by the future shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its dis- appearance, will be indicated. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In the minds of our ordinary water-colour artists, a distant tree seems only to be conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving cool colour to the landscape, but differing nowise, in texture, from the blots of other shapes, which these painters use to express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have Fig. is. drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of colour, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture, partly pass- ing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all charac- ters to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching SKETCHING. 277 or roughening the surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife passed lightly over this careful drawing, will do a good deal ; but you must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness in the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and more or less effacing and confusing the ed«;es. You must invent, according to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted to express its texture ; but always keep this character of softness in your mind, and in your scope of aim ; for in most landscapes it is the intention of nature that the ten- derness and transparent infinitude of her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most distinct opposi- tion to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or buildings. 9. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of representing water, of which important fea- ture of landscape I have hardly said anything yet. Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conven- tional lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose. a. But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, dis- turbing them here and there as you see the breeze or cur- rent disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate drawing as the picture above the pool ; except only that if there be the least mo- tion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain 278 SKETCHING. decisive, and the oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness. b. A few close studies will soon teach yon this : the only thing yon need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true ; the whole value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if you are dis- satisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy : if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect. "When you are taking pains,, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be ; but when you are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical lines. The actual construction of a calm elonga- ted reflection is with horizontal lines : but it is often im- possible to draw the descending shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch ; and it is best always when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when yon are not, to use the vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflec- tions become shaken, and must be drawn with bold modu- latory descending lines. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of any other lines in Na- ture. It will not be detected by the general observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective of a building ;* but every intelligent * The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of SKETCHING. 279 spectator will feel the difference between a rightly drawn bend of shore or shingle, and a false one. Absolutely right, in difficult river perspectives seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and ob- serve, there is no rule for them. To develope the curve mathematically would require a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river, the shape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore ; and even with these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could solve but approximative^. The instinct of the eye can do it ; nothing else. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it ; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this : Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy- turvy. Then, whatever you can see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed. If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflec- tions ; moving them about, and watching how their reflec- tions alter, and chiefly how their reflected colours and shades differ from their own colours and shades, by being brought into other oppositions. This difference in chiaro- scuro is a more important character in water painting than mere difference in form. G. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you buildings is of little consequence ; but he will find it so ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface. 280 SKETCHING. will see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continu- ally modifying the reflections ; and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it, min- gling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the water. Do not be frightened at the complexity ; but, on the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything that you see, and dis- tinguishing each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction, so that if the general structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it ; then the reflection of the part of the stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which ; and wherever the reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best, and vice versa. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the water, and of any dust or motes that may be float- ing on it : but whether you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye. The more you look down into the water, the better you see ob- jects through it: the more you look along it, the eye be- ing low, the more you- see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the colour of a given space of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head ; and thus the colours with which water is painted are an indi- cation of the position of the spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the shores. The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain SKETCHING. 281 streams is when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the visi- ble colours between those of the stones and that of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple, obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely. d. All this seems complicated enough already ; but if there be a strong colour in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are doubly involved ; for the darker reflections now become of the colour of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther, the colour of the water itself is of three kinds : one, seen on the surface, is a kind of milky bloom : the next is seen where the waves let light through them, at their edges ; and the third, shown as a change of colour on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or violet- coloured bloom on its surface, and will be made pure em- erald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. I tell you this that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence, and study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.* Not but that * It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water, so as to make the liquid definitely blue ; fill a large white basin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it ; walnut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc. Then study the effects or the reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions of the floating objects, as tbey appear through the blue liquid ; noting especially how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, yo_i see the reflections clearly ; and how, as you raise your head, you los j the reflections, and see the submerged stems clearly. 282 SKETCHING. much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what you mean by them, as yon will see by many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the National Gallery ; but you must have painted water many and many a day — yes, and all day long — before you can hope to do anything like those. 10. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before pass- ing to the clouds, I say nothing special about ground. But there is too much to be said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume of Modern Painters ; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully Plate 21., which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will givTe you as much help as you need in the linear expression of ground- surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour ; and much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on which they fall. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject ;— that the clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, are always beautifully arranged. You can- not be sure of this in any other features of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene especi- ally depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord quarries ; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer ploughs or builds upon. But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke, SKETCHING. 283 and mix them with poison, cannot be quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore gloriously arranged ; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united influence of every cloud within its compass : they all move and burn together in a mar- vellous harmony ; not a cloud of them is out of its ajD- pointed place, or fails of its part in the choir : and if you are not able to recollect (which in the case of a compli- cated sky it is impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all ; for the clouds will not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before another. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds ; marking, by any shorthand or sym- bolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory ; giving afterwards such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its general asj)ect ; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a single cloud ; sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite steady enough to let you mark out its prin- cipal masses; and one or two white or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in drawing them, practise occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will teach you better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordi- nary artists have always fallen into one of two faults ; either, in rounding the clouds, they make them as solid 284 SKETCHING. and hard-edged as a heap of stones tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as solid as flour-sacks ; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist ; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word ; they are not more drifted into form than they are carved into form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapour beyond certain limits ; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is, that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms, especially consid- ering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the force of light in clouds being wholly unattain- able by art ; so that if we put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides. Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and there ; one of the chief uses of doing this will be not so much the memorandum so obtained as the lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud- outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really is ; and when drawn it will al- ways look hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square, however often you alter it, mere- ly passing from the one fault to the other and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean be- SKETCHING. 285 tween roundness and squareness in all its coils or battle- ments. I speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined ; — they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and may be drawn with decision. "When you have thus accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light and shade, just as care- fully as you do that of other things, looking exclusively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in the " Ben Arthur," " Source of Arveron," and " Calais Pier," are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes to Rogers's Poems fur- nish as many examples as you need. If you have any real talent for drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the fields and hills ; and be assured that the more quietly and single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the whole, will your progress be. El. Drawing, 91-134. CHAPTER Y. PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING-. § 1. Among the several characteristics of great treatment which have been alluded to without being enlarged upon, one will be found several times named ; — reserve. It is necessary for our present purpose that we should understand this quality more distinctly. I mean by it the power which a great painter exercises over himself in fix- ing certain limits, either of force, of color, or of quantity of work ; — limits which he will not transgress in any part of his picture, even though here and there a painful sense of incomplction may exist, under the fixed conditions, and might tempt an inferior workman to infringe them. The nature of this reserve we must understand in order that we may also determine the nature of true completion or perfectness, which is the end of composition. § 2. For perfectness, properly so called, means harmony. The word signifies, literally, the doing our work thorough- ly. It does not mean carrying it up to any constant and established degree of finish, but carrying the whole of it up to a degree determined upon. In a chalk or pencil sketch by a great master, it will often be found that the deepest shades are feeble tints of pale grey ; the outlines nearly invisible, and the forms brought out by a ghostly delicacy of touch, which, on looking close to the paper, will be indistinguishable from its general texture. A single line of ink, occurring anywhere in such a drawing, would of course destroy it ; placed in the darkness of a mouth or nostril, it would turn the expression into a cari- PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 287 cature ; on a cheek or brow it would be simply a blot. Yet let the blot remain, and let the master work up to it with lines of similar force ; and the drawing which was before perfect, in terms of pencil, will become, under his . hand, perfect in terms of ink ; and what was before a scratch on the cheek will become a necessary and beautiful part of its gradation. All great work is thus reduced under certain conditions, and its right to be called complete depends on its fulfil- ment of them, not on the nature of the conditions chosen. Habitually, indeed, we call a coloured work which is satis- factory to us, finished, and a chalk drawing unfinished ; but in the mind of the master, all his work is, according to the sense in which you use the word, equally perfect or imperfect. Perfect, if you regard its purpose and limita- tion ; imperfect, if you compare it with the natural stand- ard. In what appears to you consummate, the master has assigned to himself terms of shortcoming, and marked with a sad severity the point up to which he will permit himself to contend with nature. Were it not for his acceptance of such restraint, he could neither cpiit his work, nor endure it. He could not quit it, for he would always perceive more that might be done ; he could not endure it, because all doing ended only in more elaborate deficiency. § 3. But we are apt to forget, in modern clays, that the reserve of a man who is not putting forth half his strength is different in manner and dignity from the effort of one who can do no more. Charmed, and justly charmed, by the harmonious sketches of great painters, and by the grandeur of their acquiescence in the point of pause, we have put ourselves to produce sketches as an end instead of a means, and thought to imitate the painter's scornful restraint of his own power, by a scornful rejection of the things beyond ours. For many reasons, therefore, it be- 288 PEJRFECTNE S S IN SKETCHING. comes desirable to understand precisely and finally what a good painter means by completion. § 4. The sketches of true painters may be classed under the following heads : — I. Experimental. — In which they are assisting an im- perfect conception of a subject by trying the look of it on paper in different ways. By the greatest men this kind of sketch is hardly ever made ; they conceive their subjects distinctly at once, and their sketch is not to try them, but to fasten them down. Raphael's form the only important exception — and the numerous examples of experimental work by him are evi- dence of his composition being technical rather than imaginative. I have never seen a drawing of the kind by any great Venetian. Among the nineteen thousand sketches by Turner — which I arranged in the National Gallery — there was, to the best of my recollection, not one. In several instances the work, after being carried forward a certain length, had been abandoned and begun again with another view; sometimes also two or more modes of treatment had been set side by side with a view to choice. But there were always two distinct imaginations contend- ing for realization — not experimental modifications of one. § 5. II. Determinant. — The fastening down of an idea in the simplest terms, in order that it may not be disturbed or confused by after work. Nearly all the great com- posers do this, methodically, before beginning a painting. Such sketches are usually in a high degree resolute and compressive ; the best of them outlined or marked calmly with the pen, and deliberately washed with color, indicat- ing the places of the principal lights. Fine drawings of this class never show any hurry or PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 289 confusion. They are the expression of concluded opera- tions of mind, are drawn slowly, and are not so much sketches, as maps. § 6. III. Commemorative. — Containing records of facts which the master required. These in their most elaborate form are " studies," or drawings, from Nature, of parts needed in the composition, often highly finished in the part which is to be introduced. In this form, however, they never occur by the greatest imaginative masters. For by a truly great inventor everything is invented ; no atom of the work is unmodified by his mind ; and no study from nature, however beautiful, could be introduced by him into his design without change; it would not tit with the rest. Finished studies for introduction are therefore chiefly by Leonardo and Raphael, both technical designers rather than imaginative ones. Commemorative sketches, by great masters, are generally hasty, merely to put them in mind of motives of invention, or they are shorthand memoranda of things with which they do not care to trouble their memory ; or, finally, accurate notes of things which they must not modify by invention, as local detail, costume, and such like. You may find perfectly accurate drawings of coats of arms, portions of dresses, pieces of architecture, and so on, by all the great men ; but you will not find elaborate studies of bits of their pictures. § 7. When the sketch is made merely as a memorandum, it is impossible to say how little, or what kind of drawing, may be sufficient for the purpose. It is of course likely to be hasty from its very nature, and unless the exact pur- pose be understood, it may be as unintelligible as a piece of shorthand writing. For instance, in the corner of a sheet of sketches made at sea, among those of Turner, at the National Gallery, occurs this one, Fig. 19. I suppose 290 PEBFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. most persons would not see much use in it. It neverthe- less was probably one of the most important sketches made in Turner's life,, fixing for ever in his mind certain facts respecting the sunrise from a clear sea-horizon. Having o Fig. 19. myself watched such sunrise, occasionally, I perceive this sketch to mean as follows : — (Half circle at the top.) When the sun was only half out of the sea, the horizon was sharply traced across its disk, and red streaks of vapor crossed the lower part of it. PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 291 (Horseshoe underneath.) When the sun had risen so far as to show three-quarters of its diameter, its light became so great as to conceal the sea-horizon, consuming it away in descending rays. (Smaller horseshoe below.) When on the point of de- taching itself from the horizon, the sun still consumed away the line of the sea, and looked as if pulled down by it. (Broken oval.) Having risen about a fourth of its diameter above the horizon, the sea-line reappeared ; but the risen orb was flattened by refraction into an oval. (Broken circle.) Having risen a little farther above the sea-line, the sun, at last, got itself round, and all right, with sparkling reflection on the waves just below the sea- line. This memorandum is for its purpose entirely perfect and efficient, though the sun is not drawn carefully round, but with a dash of the pencil ; but there is no affected or desired slightness. Could it have been drawn round as instantaneously, it would have been. The purpose is throughout determined ; there is no scrawling, as in vul- gar sketching. "x" § 8. Again, Fig. 20 is a facsimile of one of Turner's " memoranda," of a complete subject, f Lausanne, from the road to Fribourg. This example is entirely characteristic of his usual draw- ings from nature, which unite two characters, being both * The word in the uppermost note, to the right of the sun, is "red ; " the others, " yellow," " purple," "cold" light grey. He always noted the colours of the skies in this way. f It is not so good a facsimile as those I have given from Durer, for the original sketch is in light pencil ; and the thickening and delicate emphasis of the lines, on which nearly all the beauty of the drawing depended, cannot be expressed in the woodcut, though marked by a double line as well as I could. But the figure will answer its purpose well enough in showing Turner's mode of sketching. 292 PERFECTNESS TN SKETCHING. PEKFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 293 commemorative and determinant: — Commemorative, in so far as they note certain facts about the place : determi- nant, in that they record an impression received from the place there and then, together with the principal arrange- ment of the composition in which it was afterwards to be recorded. In this mode of sketching, Turner differs from all other men whose work I have studied. lie never draws accurately on the spot, with the intention of modi- fying or composing afterwards from the materials; but instantly modifies as he draws, placing his memoranda where they are to be ultimately used, and taking exactly what he wants, not a fragment or line more. § 9. This sketch has been made in the afternoon. He had been impressed as he walked up the hill, by the van- ishing of the lake in the golden horizon, without end of waters, and by the opposition of the pinnacled castle and cathedral to its level breadth. That must be drawn ! and from this spot, wdiere all the buildings are set well together. But it lucklessly happens that, though the buildings come just where he wants them in situation, they don't in height. For the castle (the square mass on the right) is in reality higher than the cathedral, and would block out the end of the lake. Down it goes instantly a hundred feet, that we may see the lake over it ; without the smallest regard for the military position of Lausanne. § 10. Next : The last low spire on the left is in truth concealed behind the nearer bank, the town running far down the hill (and climbing another hill) in that direction. But the group of spires, without it, would not be rich enough to give a proper impression of Lausanne, as a spiry place. Turner quietly sends to fetch the church from round the corner, places it where he likes, and indi- cates its distance only by aerial perspective (much greater in the pencil drawing than in the woodcut). § 11. But again : Not only the spire of the lower 294 PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING-. church, hut the peak of the Rochers d'Enfer (that highest in the distance) would in reality be out of sight; it is much farther round to the left. This would never do either ; for without it, we should have no idea that Lau- sanne was opposite the mountains, nor should we have a nice sloping line to lead us into the distance. With the same unblushing tranquillity of mind in which he had ordered up the church, Turner sends also to fetch the Rochers d'Enfer ; and puts them also where he chooses, to crown the slope of distant hill, which, as every traveller knows, in its decline to the west, is one of the most notable features of the view from Lausanne. § 12. These modifications, easily traceable in the large features of the design, are carried out with equal audacity and precision in every part of it. Every one of those confused lines on the right indicates something that is really there, only everything is shifted and sorted into the exact places that Turner chose. The group of dark objects near us at the foot of the bank is a cluster of mills, which, when the picture was completed, were to be the blackest things in it, and to throw back the castle, and the golden horizon ; while the rounded touches at the bottom, under the castle, indicate a row of trees, which follow a brook coming out of the ravine behind us ; and were going to be made very round indeed in the picture (to oppose the spiky and angular masses of castle) and very consecutive, in order to form another conducting line into the distance. § 13. These motives, or motives like them, might per- haps be guessed on looking at the sketch. But no one without going to the spot would understand the meaning of the vertical lines in the left-hand lowest corner. They are a " memorandum " of the artificial vertical- ness of a low sandstone cliff, which has been cut down there to give space for a bit of garden belonging to a PEEFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 295 public-house beneath, from which garden a path leads along the ravine to the Lausanne rifle ground. The value of these vertical lines in repeating those of the cathedral is very great ; it would be greater still in the completed picture, increasing the sense of looking down from a height, and giving grasp of, and power over, the whole scene. § 14. Throughout the sketch, as in all that Turner made, the observing and combining intellect acts in the same man- ner. Not a line is lost, nor a moment of time ; and though the pencil flics, and the whole thing is literally done as fast as a piece of shorthand writing, it is to the full as purpose- ful and compressed, so that while there are indeed dashes of the pencil which are unintentional, they are only unin- tentional as the form of a letter is, in fast writing, not from Avant of intention, but from the accident of haste. § 15. I know not if the reader can understand, — I my- self cannot, though I see it to be demonstrable, — the simultaneous occurrence of idea which produces such a drawing as this : the grasp of the whole, from the laying of the first line, which induces continual modifications of all that is done, out of respect to parts not done yet. ~Nq line is ever changed or effaced ; no experiment made ; but every touch is placed with reference to all that are to succeed, as to all that have gone before ; every addition takes its part, as the stones in an arch of a bridge ; the last touch locks the arch. Remove that keystone, or remove any other of the stones of the vault, and the whole will fall. § 16. I repeat — the powder of mind which accomplishes this, is yet wholly inexplicable to me, as it was when first I defined it in the chapter on imagination associative, in the second volume. But the grandeur of the power im- presses me daily more and more; and, in quitting this subject, lot mo assert finally, in clearest and strongest terms, that no painting is of any true imaginative perfect- ness at all, unless it has been thus conceived. 296 PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. One sign of its being thus conceived may be always found in the straightforwardness of its work. There are continual disputes among artists as to . the best way of doing things, which may nearly all be resolved into con- fessions of indetermi nation. If you know precisely what you want, you will not feel much hesitation in setting about it ; and a picture may be painted almost any way, so only that it can be a straight way.. Give a true painter a ground of black, white, scarlet, or green, and out of it he will bring what you choose. From the black, bright- ness ; from the white, sadness ; from the scarlet, cool- ness ; from the green, glow : he will make anything out of anything, but in each case his method will be pure, direct, perfect, the shortest and simplest possible. You will find him, moreover, indifferent as to succession of process. Ask him to begin at the bottom of the picture instead of the top, — to finish two square inches of it with- out touching the rest, or to lay a separate ground for every part before finishing any ; — it is all the same to him ! What he will do if left to himself, depends on mechanical convenience, and on the time at his disposal. If he has a large brush in his hand, and plenty of one colour ground, he may lay as much as is wanted of that colour, at once, in every part of the picture where it is to occur ; and if any is left, perhaps walk to another canvas, and lay the rest of it where it will be wanted on that. If, on the contrary, he has a small brush in his hand, and is in- terested in a particular spot of the picture, he will, per- haps, not stir from it till that bit is finished. But the ab- solutely best, or centrally, and entirely right way of painting is as follows : — § 17. A light ground, white, red, yellow, or grey, not brown, or black. On that an entirely accurate, and firm black outline of the whole picture, in its principal masses. The outline to be exquisitely correct as far as it reaches, PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. 297 but not to include small details ; the use of it being to limit the masses of first colour. The ground-colours then to be laid firmly, each on its own proper part of the picture, as inlaid work in a mosaic table, meeting each other truly at the edges : as much of each being laid as will get itself into the state which the artist requires it to be in for his second painting, by the time he comes to it. On this first colour, the second colours and subordinate masses laid in due order, now, of course, necessarily without previous outline, and all small detail reserved to the last, the brace- let being not touched, nor indicated in the last, till the arm is finished."" § 18. This is, as far as it can be expressed in few words, the right, or Venetian way of painting ; but it is incapa- ble of absolute definition, for it depends on the scale, the material, and the nature of the object represented, koto much a great painter will do with his first colour ; or how many after processes he will use. Yery often the first colour, richly blended and worked into, is also the last ; sometimes it wants a glaze only to modify it ; sometimes an entirely different colour above it. Turner's storm- blues, for instance, were produced by a black ground, with opaque blue, mixed with white, struck over it.f The amount of detail given in the first colour will also depend * Thus, in the Holy Family of Titian, lately purchased for the Na- tional Gallery, the piece of St. Catherine's dress over her shoulders is ** painted on the under dress, after that was dry. All its value would have been lost, had the slightest tint or trace of it been given previously. This picture, I think, and certainly many of Tintoret's, are painted on dark grounds ; but this is to save time, and with some loss to the future brightness of the colour. f In cleaning the "Hero and Leander," now in the National collec- tion, these upper glazes were taken off, and only the black ground left. I remember the picture when its distance was of the most exquisite blue. I have no doubt the "Fire at Sea" has had its distance de- stroyed in the same manner. 13* 298 PERFECTNESS IN SKETCHING. on convenience. For instance, if a jewel fastens a fold of dress, a Venetian will lay probably a piece of the jewel colour in its place at the time he draws the fold ; but if the jewel falls upon the dress, he will paint the folds only in the ground colour, and the jewel afterwards. For in the first case his hand must pause, at any rate, where the fold is fastened ; so that he may as well mark the colour of the gem : but he would have to check his hand in the - sweep with which he drew the drapery, if he painted a jewel that fell upon it with the first colour. So far, how- ever, as he can possibly use the under colour, he will, in whatever he has to superimpose. There is a pretty little instance of such economical work in the painting of the pearls on the breast of the elder princess, in our best Paul Veronese (Family of Darius). The lowest is about the size of a small hazel-nut, and falls on her rose-red dress. Any other but a Venetian would have put a complete piece of white paint over the dress, for the whole pearl, and painted into that the colours of the stone. But Vero- nese knows beforehand that all the dark side of the pearl will reflect the red of the dress. He will not put white over the red, only to put red over the white again. He leaves the actual dress for the dark side of the pearl, and with two small separate touches, one white, another brown, places its high light- and shadow. This he does with per- fect care and calm ; but in two decisive seconds. There is #no dash, nor display, nor hurry, nor error. The exactly right thing is done in the exactly right place, and not one atom of colour, nor moment of time spent vainly. Look close at the two touches, — you wonder what they mean. Retire six feet from the picture — the pearl is there ! § 19. The degree in which the ground colours are ex- tended over his picture, as he works, is to a great painter absolutely indifferent. It is all the same to him whether he grounds a head, and finishes it at once to the shoulders, PERFECTNESS EN SKETCHING. 299 leaving all round it white; or whether he grounds the whole picture. His harmony, paint as he will, never can be complete till the last touch is given ; so long as it remains incomplete, he does not care how little of it is suggested, or how many notes are missing. All is wrong till all is right ; and he must be able to bear the all- wron guess till his work is done, or he cannot paint at all. His mode of treatment will, therefore, depend on the nature of his sub- ject; as is beautifully shown in the water-colour sketches by Turner in the National Gallery. His general system was to complete inch by inch; leaving the paper quite white all round, especially if the work was to be delicate. The most excpiisite drawings left unfinished in the col- lection— those at Rome and Naples — are thus outlined accurately on pure white paper, begun in the middle of the sheet, and worked out to the side, finishing as he proceeds. If, however, any united effect of light or colour is to embrace a large part of the subject, he will lay it in with a broad wash over the whole paper at once ; then paint into it using it as a ground, and modifying it in the pure Venetian maimer. His oil pictures were laid roughly with ground colours, and painted into with such rapid skill, that the artists who used to see him finishino; at the Academy sometimes suspected him of having the picture finished underneath the colors he showed, and removing, instead of adding, as they watched. § 20. But, whatever the means used may be, the certainty and directness of them imply absolute grasp of the whole subject, and without this grasp there is no good painting. This, finally, let me declare, without cpialification — that partial conception is no conception. The whole picture must be imagined, or none of it is. And this grasp of the whole implies very strange and sublime equalities of mind. It is not possible, unless the feelings are completely under control ; the least excitement or passion will disturb the 300 PBEFEOTNESS IN SKETCHING. measured equity of power ; a painter needs to be as cool as a general ; and as little moved or subdued by his sense ,pf pleasure, as a soldier by the sense of pain. Nothing good can be done without intense feeling ; but it must be feeling so crushed that the work is set about with mechan- ical steadiness, absolutely untroubled, as a surgeon — not without pity, but conquering it and putting it aside — begins an operation. Until the feelings can give strength enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong enough. If you cannot leave your picture at any moment ; — cannot turn from it and go on with another, while the colour is drying; — cannot work at any part of it you choose, with equal contentment — you have not firm enough grasp of it. § 21. It follows, also, that no vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant : — painting can only be done in calm of mind. Resolution is not enough to secure this ; it must be secured by dispo- sition as well. You may resolve to think of your picture only ; but, if you have been fretted before beginning, no manly, or clear grasp of it will be possible for you. JSTo forced calm is calm enough. Only honest calm, — natural calm. You might as well try by external pressure to smoothe a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of effort to secure the peace through which only you can reach imagination. That peace must come in its own time ; as the waters settle themselves into clearness as well as quietness ; you can no more filter your mind into purity than you can compress it into calmness ; you must keep it pure, if you would have it pure ; and throw no stones into it, if you would have it quiet. Great courage and self- command may, to a certain extent, give power of painting without the true calmness underneath; but never doing first-rate work. There is sufficient evidence of this, in PERFECTS ESS IN SKETCHING. 301 even what we know of great men, though of the greatest, we nearly always know the least (and that necessarily; they being very silent, and not much given to setting themselves forth to questioners ; apt to be contemptuously reserved, no less than unselfishly). But in such writings and sayings as we possess of theirs, we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. Rubens' letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Rey- nolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions ; so also Yelasquez, Titian, and Veronese. § 22. It is gratuitous to add that no shallow or petty per- son can paint. Mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. It is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, de- cision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which wTill form the imagination. § 23. And, lastly, no false person can paint. A person false at heart may, when it suits his purpose, seize a stray truth here and there ; but the relations of truth — its per- fectness— that which makes it wholesome truth, he can never perceive. As wholeness and wliolesomeness go to- gether, so also sight with sincerity ; it is only the constant desire of, and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects ; and fit them and knit them into the strength of sacred invention. Sacred, I call it deliberately ; for it is thus, in the most accurate senses, humble as well as helpful ; meek in its receiving, as magnificent in its disposing ; the name it bears being rightly given to invention formal, not because it forn is, but because it finds. For you cannot find a lie • you must make it for yourself. False things may be im- agined, and false things composed ; but only truth can be invented. Nature is never false. 5 M. P., 191. CHAPTER VI. OF THE FOREGROUND. I. R,och and Soil Foregrounds. — We have now to ob- serve the close characteristics of the rocks and soils. 1. There exists a marked distinction between those strati- fied rocks, whose beds are amorphous and without sub- division, as many limestones and sandstones, and those which are divided by lines of lamination, as all slates. The last kind of rock is the more frequent in nature, and forms the greater part of all hill scenery ; it has, how- ever, been successfully grappled with by few, even of the moderns, except Turner ; while there is no single ex- ample of any aim at it or thought of it among the ancients, whose foregrounds, as far as it is possible to guess at their intention through their concentrated errors, are chosen from among the tufa and travertin of the lower Apennines (the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of na- ture), and whose larger features of rock scenery, if we look at them with a predetermination to find in them a re- semblance of something, may be pronounced at least liker the mountain limestone than anything else. I shall glance, therefore, at the general characters of these materials first, in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of rock-drawing on which Salvator's reputation has been built. Of all foregrounds, one of loose stone is most difficult to draw. 4M. P., 303. 2. The massive limestones separate generally into irregu- lar blocks, tending to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds, and terminated by tolerably smooth planes. The weather, OF THE FOREGROUND. 303 acting on the edges of these blocks, rounds them off, but the frost, which, while it cannot penetrate nor split the body of the stone, acts energetically on the angles, splits off the rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh, and complicated edges. Hence the angles of such blocks are usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which the peculiar character of the rock is most distinctly seen ; the effect being increased in many limestones by the inter- position of two or three thinner beds between the large strata of which the block has been a part ; these thin lami- nae breaking easily, and supplying a number of fissures and lines of the edge of the detached mass. Thus, as a general principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it will he on the angle, and however even and smooth its great planes may he, it will usually break into variety where it turns a corner. In one of the most exquisite pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the foreground of the Napoleon in the Academy, 1842, this principle was beautifully exemplified in the complicated fractures of the upper angle just where it turned from the light, while the planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation they owed to the waves. It follows from this structure that the edges of all rock being partially truncated, first by large fractures, and then by the rounding of the fine edges of these by the weather, perpetually present convex transi- tions from the light to the dark side, the planes of the rock almost always swelling a little from the angle. 3. Now it will be found throughout the works of Salvator, that his most usual practice was to give a concave sweep of the brush for his first expression of the dark side, leav- ing the paint darkest towards the light; by which daring and original method of procedure he has succeeded in covering his foregrounds with forms which apru'oximate to those of drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, gf locks of hair, of waves, leaves, or anything, in short, flexible 304 OF THE FOREGROUND. or tough, but which of course are not only unlike, but directly contrary to the forms which nature has impressed on rocks.* And the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance whatever to rock structure from their frequent want of any meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be rep- resentative of shade. 4. Now, if there be any part of landscape in which nature developes her principles of light and shade more clearly than another, it is rock ; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions nearly parallel. Hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light sepa- rated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organi- zation and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires the most transparent colour, and the most delicate and scientific drawing. So far are the * I have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the angular character of rocks, — not because it was false, but because it was incom- plete, and I cannot explain it nor complete it without example. It is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of hardness through curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward structure, which form the true chacteristics of rock form : and Salvator, whom neither here or elsewhere I have abused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons and not of rocks ; and the differeuce between rock curvature and other curvature I cannot explain verbally, but I hope to do it hereafter by illustration ; and, at present, let the reader study the rock- drawing of the Mont St. Gothard subject, in the Liber Studiorum, and compare it with any examples of Salvator to which he may happen to have access. All the account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and I only do not alter it because I first wish to give longer study to the subject. OF THE FOREGROUND. 305 works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this, that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in which the shadow can even be distinguished from the dark side — they scarcely seem to know the one to be darker than the other ; and the strokes of the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or conceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond the covering of the canvas. " A rock," the old masters appear to say to themselves, " is a great irregular, form- less, characterless lump ; but it must have shade upon it, and any grey marks will do for that shade." 5. Finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untra versed by delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only means by which the peculiar qua- lity in which rocks most differ from the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with which the rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appear- ance of fissure or splintering. Toughness and malleabil- ity appear to be the qualities whose expression is most aimed at ; sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility, tenu- ity, and occasionally transparenc}7. Take, for instance, the foreground of Salvator, in No. 220 of the Dulwich Gallery. There is, on the right-hand side of it, an object, which I never walk through the room without contem- plating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. I think there is reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very large stone, or for the trunk of a tree ; but any decision as to its being either one or the other of these must, I conceive, be the extreme of rashness. It melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably he conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure or colour ; but on the other side 306 OF THE FOREGROUND. it presents a series of concave curves, interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing Symbolical of rock. The forms which this substance, whatever it be, assumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the foreground of No. 159, where they are evidently meant for rock. 6. Let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful, scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works of Clarkson Stanfield. He is a man especially to be opposed to the old masters, because he usu- ally confines himself to the same rock subjects as they — the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary for- mation which arrange themselves more or less into broad and simple masses ; and in the rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. Nothing can surpass his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never confusing it with local colour, however richly his surface-texture may be given ; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as instructive as that of nature herself. I cannot point to any of his works as better or more characteristic than others ; but his Isehia, in the present British Institution, may be taken as a fair average example. The Botallack Mine, Cornwall, engraved in the Coast Scenery, gives us a rery finished and generic representation of rock, whose primal organization has been violentlj7 affected by external influences. We have the stratification and cleavage indi- cated at its base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive furrows caused by the descent of streams. But the exquisite drawing of the foreground is especially worthy of notice. No huge con- OF THE FOREGROUND. 307 cave sweeps of the brush, no daubing or splashing here. Every inch of it is brittle and splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most perfect, speaking light and shade, — we can stumble over the edges of them. The East Cliff, Hastings, is another very fine example, from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is varied and disguised. Observe how totally contrary every one of its lines is to the absurd- ities of Salvator. Stanfield's are all angular and straight, every apparent curve made up of right lines, while Salva- tor's are all sweeping and flourishing like so much pen- manship. Stanfield's lines pass away into delicate splin- tery fissures. Salvator's are broad daubs throughout. Not one of Stanfield's lines is like another. Every one of Salvator's mocks all the rest. All Stanfield's curves, where his universal angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into large sweeping forms, are convex. Salvator's are every one concave. 7. The foregrounds of J. D. Harding and rocks of his middle distances are also thoroughly admirable. He is not quite so various and undulating in his line as Stan- field, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local colour. But his work, in near passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock, is absolute perfection, excelling Stanfield in the per- fect freedom and facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true in every line without the least apparent effort. Stanfield's best works are laborious, but Harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant into lovely form. In colour also he incomparably surpasses Stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his grey. The rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and delicate weathered greys of Harding's rock, illustrated as 308 OF THE FOREGROUND. they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent shore the finest things, next to the work of Turner, in English foreground art. J. B. Pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses it clearly and forcibly ; but it is much to be regretted that this clever artist appears to be losing all sense of colour and is getting more and more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except with the previous determination to Pynize everything.* 8. Before passing to Turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock, which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. A steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features capable of giving * A passage which I happened to see in an Essay of Mr. Pyne's, in the Art-Union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist, suffi- ciently explains the cause of this decline. If Mr. Pyne will go to nature, as ah great men have done, and as all men who mean to be great must do, that is not merely to be helped, but to be taught by her ; and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them in the mouth, he will most assuredly find — and I say this in no unkind or depreciatory feeling, for I should say the same of all artists who are in the habit of only sketching nature, and not studying her — that her worst is better than his best. I am quite sure that if Mr. Pyne, or any other painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of subject, will go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for leaf, as far as may be, and even their smallest boughs, with as much care as if they were rivers, or an important map of a newly-surveyed country, he will find when he has brought them all home, that at least three out of the four are better than the best he ever invented. Compare Part III. Sect. I. Chap. III. § 12, 13 (the reference in the note ought to be Chap. XV. § 7.) OF THE FOREGROUND. 309 high gratification to a careful observer. It is almost a fae-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock ; it possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less rigid. It is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beauti- fully sharp in their chiselling. Where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from be- neath it, and accumulates above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping, curve at its sum- mit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark sha- dow ; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture ; and all these circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bear- ing witness to the symmetry into which the whole mass has been reduced. Where this operation has gone on long, and vegetation has assisted in softening outlines, we have oui* ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variet}^, but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as separate things, nor feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to another ; they are not repetitions of each 'other, but are different parts of one system. Each would be imperfect without the one next to it. 9. Now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show, in definite examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another wrong. The ground of Ten iers, for instance, in No. 139 in the Dulwich Gallery, 310 OF THE FOEEGEOTTND. is an example of all that is wrong. It is a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of fallen buildings. It has not one contour nor character of the soil of nature, and yet I can scarcely tell you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and are monotonous in their now, and are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with which the feel- ing of nature would have touched them, and are disunited ; so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pass from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a determined shadow. All is mere sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground colours, without a single indication of character by means of real shade. 10. Let not these points be deemed unimportant ; the truths of form in common ground are quite as valuable (let me anticipate myself for a moment), quite as beautiful, as any others which nature presents, and in lowland land- scape they present us with a species of line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any other way, — the alter- nately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery, which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value, contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we are compelled to give in vegetation. A really great artist dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of the most essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his composition. And be it remem- bered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it ; and that in the little bits which I fix upon for animad- OF THE FOREGROUND. 311 version, I am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the most characteristic examples of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one mass of contradictions and absurdities. 11. Nor do I myself see wherein the great difference lies between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of the finer truths, of which I am at present speaking. To han- dle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with ac- curacy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's practice will give any man ; but to trace among the grass and weeds those mysteries of inven- tion and combination, by which nature appeals to the intel- lect— to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself — to find even in all that appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evi- dence of the constant working of the Divine power " for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless — this, as it is the peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the Deity. 12. It would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if I were to point out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. It is not this man, nor that man, nor one school nor another ; all agree in entire repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of absurdity of what they substitute for them. Even Cuvp, who evidently saw and studied near nature, as an artist should do — not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature gave him, and thanking her for it — even he appears to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence, Btrews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones. 312 OF THE FOREGROUND. 13. Perhaps, however, the " beautiful foregrounds " of Claude afford the most remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. That of his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high single-arched bridge, in the National Gallery, is a pretty fair example of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. I will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water. I merely affirm that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without any ref- erence to nature whatever. In fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their sur- faces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct ; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it, are not only such as crumb- ling earth could never show or assume, but are main- tained through their whole progress ungraduated, un- changing, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. In fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent' struggle of a tyro to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he finds himself in- capable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. Claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and nearer : he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature ; and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round O, and making it look perpendicular. Much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant circumstances, may bj OF THE FOREGROOTD. 313 derived from instantlv dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity. Every school- girl's drawing, as soon as her mind had arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicu- lar water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying in- stances of this unfailing resource ; and this foreground of Claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which he has been reduced to it. . 14. And if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that of nature, I have only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in the foreground of Turner's Mercury and Argus, a case precisely similar to Claude's, of earthy crum- bling banks cut away by water. It will be found in this picture (and I am now describing nature's work and Turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is ex- pressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it, into the hollow beyond ; and thus the whole receding mass of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile, is made completely one — no part of it is separated from the rest for an instant — it is all united, and its modulations are members, not divisions of its mass. But those modu- lations are countless — heaving here, sinking there — now swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now breaking — giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master, precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as Claude gave to his foreground precisely the same qualities which we had before found in his hills, — infinite unity, in the one case, finite division in the other. 15. Let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with those of our great modern 14 314 OF THE FOREGROUND. master. The investigation of the excellence of Turner's drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between his work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object or subject may be ; and after once showing the general characters of the particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to point, in the works of Turner, to the same principles of infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon with reference to other subjects. 16. The Upper Fall of the Tees, Yorkshire, engraved in the England series, may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the work of Salvator. "We have, in the great face of rock which divides the two streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all along the precipice on the right. But we see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of joints dividing these hori- zontal strata ; and the exceeding smoothness and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused by a great separation of substance in the. direction of another more important line of joints, running in a direction across the river. Accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of the central cliff. Now, let me direct especial attention to the way in which Turner has marked over this general and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. Observe how the whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left* is brought into * In the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the extreme right. OF THE FOREGROUND. 315 one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle (compare 2.), breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its geological structure. Observe how every one of the separate blocks, into which it divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to the weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. Observe how exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and undulating of running water ; and how gradually they become steeper as they descend, until they are torn down into the face of the precipice. Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the fea- tures of the human face ; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. So here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the greatest proximity of the rounded mass ; and from this every shade becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the confusion of debris accumulated in its channel. In fact, the great quality about Turner's drawings which more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us; 316 OF THE FOREGROUND. for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts ; so that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we should after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit. With this drawing before him, a geolo- gist could give a lecture upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and future states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting wet with the spray. He would tell you, at once, that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had once formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the figure is sitting on the heap of debris ; and that when it was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left, its bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. He would tell you that the foreground had also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently then the channel of a side stream. He would tell you that the fall was then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed ; and that the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin which its increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the water. But neither he nor I could tell you with what exquisite and finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of this is confirmed and carried out. 17. With this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground of the Llanthony. These latter OF THE FOREGROUND. 317 are not divided by joints, but into thin horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. And here we have an instance of an exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and local action. We have seen that the action of water over any surface universally, whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, in- duces convexity of form. But when we have rocks in situ as here, exposed at their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular space for itself (as we saw on a large scale with the high water- fall), and we have a concave curve interrupting the general contours of the rock. And thus Turner (while every edge of his masses is rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is convex) has inter- rupted the great contours of his strata with concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against the exposed edges of the beds. Nothing could more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist is regu- lated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and space with new evidence of knowl- edge, and fresh manifestation of thought. 18. The Lower Fall of the Tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rocks, as the upper fall has of horizontal ; but we pass rather to observe, in detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general mass. The blocks of stone which form the foreground of the Ulles water are, I believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of rocks which have been sub- 318 OF THE FOREGKOTJND. jected to violent aqueous action. Their surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depres- sion, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this chiselling of the surface depends. And with all this, every block of them has individual charac- ter, dependent on the expression of the angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the water-worn surface. And what is done here in the most important part of the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by Turner with lavish and over- whelming power, in the accumulated debris of a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for in- stance, in the Junction of the Greta and Tees, where he has choked the torrent bed with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and carelessness of nature herself ; and yet every separate block is a study (and has evidently been drawn from nature), chiselled and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief mem- ber of a separate subject; yet without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repeti- tion of a single line. I consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception, applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and almost countlessly divided system j about the most wonderful, as well as the most characteristic passages of Turner's foregrounds. It is done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. The articulation of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have already spoken of at so great length, the Upper Fall of the Tees, might serve us for a day's study, if we were to OF THE FOREGROUND. 319 go into it part by part ; bat it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil ; we can only repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken unity, and tell yon to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by Claude, on flat and equal edges. You cannot find a single edge in Turner's work ; you are everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these — you cannot tell how — never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall. 19. Finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of Penmaen llawr. may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil modelled by descending rain ; and may serve to show us how exquisite in character are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise enough, not to scorn the study of them. The higher the mind, it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or unimportant ; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by ob- serving how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiae of nature. Greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. He who can take no interest in what is small, will take false interest in what is great ; he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain ridiculous. 20. It is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works of Turner, that we can become at all com- petent to enjoy the combination of all, in such works as the Mercury and Argus, or Bay of Baise, in which the mind is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring 320 OF THE FOKEGEOUND. of the master's knowledge. Often as I have paused be- fore these noble works, I never felt on returning to them as if I had ever seen them before ; for their abundance is so deep and various that the mind, according to its own temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of truths rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene ; and detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the whole picture in a different light at every return to it. And this effect is especially caused by the management of the foreground; for the more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus examined and known ; but the foregrounds of Turner are so united in all their parts that the eye can- not take them by divisions, but is guided from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally differ- ent in aspect, according to the direction in which it ap- proaches them, and approaching them in a different direc- tion, and viewing them as a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new point. 21. One lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed, — that the work of the Great Spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects, — that the Divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth ; and that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the day-star. 1 M. P., 305. II. The botanical Foregrounds of the Ancients. — The great masters of Italy, a1 most without exception, and Titian perhaps more than any other (for he had the highest OF THE FOREGROUND. 321 knowledge of landscape), are in the constant habit of ren- dering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity ; witness the " Bacchus and Ariadne," in which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose ; every stamen of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy. The fore- grounds of Raffaelie's two cartoons — " The Miraculous Draught of the Fishes " and " The Charge to Peter " — are covered with plants of the common sea-colewort, of which the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the patience of any other artist, but have ap- peared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labour to the great mind of Kaffaelle. Pref. 2d Ed. 1 M. P., xxvii. 14* CHAPTER TIL BACKGROUNDS. 1. Conventional or Mediaeval Backgrounds are of a very formal kind. The painters took an infinite delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining them completely ; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near, and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be medita- tive, or a place of saintly seclusion. But the whole of it always — flowers, brooks, castles, clouds, and rocks — subor- dinate to the figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than that of explaining their adventures and occupations. 2. Before the idea of Landscape had been thus far de- veloped, the representations of the background had been purely typical; the objects which had to be shown in order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly out- lined, usually on a pure golden or chequered background, not on sky. The change from the golden background (char- acteristic of the finest thirteenth-century work) and the coloured chequer (which in like manner belongs to the finest fourteenth) to the blue sky, gradated to the horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth century, and is the crisis of change in the spirit of mediaeval art. Strictly speaking, we might divide the art of Christian times into two great masses — Symbolic or conventional, and Imitative, the sym- bolic reaching from the earliest periods down to the close of the fourteenth century, and the imitative from that BACKGROUNDS. 823 close to the present time ; and, then, the most important circumstance indicative of the culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change from chequered back- ground to sky background. The uppermost figure, Plate I. (frontispiece), representing the tree of knowledge, taken from a somewhat late thirteenth-century manuscript, will at once illustrate the mode of introducing the chequer background. 3. The moment sky is introduced (and it is curious how perfectly it is done at once, many manuscripts presenting in alternate pages chequered backgrounds and deep blue skies exquisitely gradated to the horizon) the moment the sky is introduced, the spirit of art becomes ever more changed, and gradually it proposes imitation instead of symbolism, more and more as an end. 3 M. P., 209. II. Imitative Backgrounds. — It will be remembered that our mediaeval landscape was in a state of severe formality, and perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. I will now rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation. 1. The formalized conception of scenery remained little altered until the time of Raphael, being only better exe- cuted as the knowledge of art advanced ; that is to say, though the trees were still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal figures, their colour and relief on the sky were exquisitely imitated, and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the most tender care and studious botanical accuracy. The better the subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd they became : a back- ground wrought in Chinese confusion of towers and rivers was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for the sake of its pleasant colour; but it appealed somewhat too far to imaginative indulgence when Ghirlandajo drew an exquisite perspective view of Venice and her lagoons 324 BACKGROUNDS. behind an Adoration of the Magi ;* and the impossibly small boats which might be pardoned in a mere illumina- tion, representing the miraculous draught of fishes, became, whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably absurd in Raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event. 2. A certain charm, however, attached itself to many forms of this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as I have endeavoured to explain already in the last chapter of the second volume, §§ 9 to 12 ; noting, however, there, that it was in nowise to be made a subject of imitation ; a cob elusion which I have since seen more and more ground for holding finally. The longer I think over the subject, the more I perceive that the pleasure we take in such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with our habit of regarding the New Testament as a beautiful poem, instead of a statement of plain facts. He who believes thoroughly that the events are true will expect, and ought to expect, real olive copse behind real Madonna, and no sentimental absurdities in either. 3. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take (when I say we, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar false- hood, and how far from its peculiar truth. For as it falls into certain errors more boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than subsequent work. No engrav- ings, that I know, render the backgrounds of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have, therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizii, at Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work with the best care I could ; the * The picture is in the Uffizii of Florence. BACKGROUNDS. 325 engraver, Mr. Armytage, has admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere, which partly veils the distance. Now I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker than threads ; or that the outlines of the distant hills should ap- proximate so closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china pat- tern. I know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the traceable resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fesole ; from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of ramification are true and beautiful ; and from the expression of continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And although all lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Eubens, I do not think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp and Eubens's landscape is truer ^ but because it is coarser and more vulgar in asso- Fig. 21. 326 BACKGROUNDS. ciated idea than Raphael's ; and I think it possible that the true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's with- out giving offence to any one. 4. Take a somewhat more definite instance. The rock in Fig. 21, on p. 325, is one put by Ghirlandajo into the back- ground of his Baptism of Christ. I have no doubt Ghirlan- dajo's own rocks and trees are better, in several respects, than those here represented, since I have copied them from one of Lasinio's execrable engravings ; still, the harsh out- line, and generally stiff and uninventf ul blankness of the design are true enough, and characteristic of all rock-paint- ing of the period. In the plate opposite I have etched* the outline of a fragment of one of Turner's cliffs, out of his drawing of Bolton Abbey ; and it does not seem to me that, supposing them properly introduced in the composi- tion, the substitution of the soft natural lines for the hard unnatural ones would make Ghirlandajo' s background one whit less sacred. 5. But be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would have it, that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased together, so that we do not find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures become irreligious and feelingless ; and hence we associate necessarily the perfect landscape with want of feeling. The first great innovator was either Masaccio or Filippino Lippi : their works are so confused together in the Chapel of the Carmine, that I know not to whom I may attribute, — or whether, without being imme- diately quarrelled with, and contradicted, I may attribute to anybody, — the landscape background of the fresco of the Tribute Money. But that background, with one or * This etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next volume ; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in the water, than I should have made it, if intended to be complete as it is. 9. The Shores of Wharfe. BACKGROUNDS. 327 two other fragments in the same chapel, is far in advance of all other work I have seen of the period, in expression of the rounded contours and large slopes of hills, and the association of their summits with the clouds. The opposite engraving will give some better idea of its character than can be gained from the outlines commonly published ; though the dark spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and shade. I shall have occa- sion to speak with greater speciality of this background in examining the forms of hills ; meantime, it is only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history of pic- torial progress, for Masaccio died too young to carry out his purposes ; and the men around him were too ignorant of landscape to understand or take advantage of the little he had done. Raphael, though he borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems to have been influenced by his landscape, and retains either, as in Plate 8, the upright formalities of Perugino; or, by way of being natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly formless, as in the backgrounds of the Charge to Peter and Draught of Fishes ; and thenceforward the Tuscan and Roman schools grew more and more artificial, and lost themselves finally under round-headed niches and Corinthian porticos. 6. It needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains and of the sea to brace the hearts of men to the develop- ment of the true landscape schools. I sketched by chance one evening the line of the Apennines from the ramparts of Parma, and I have put the rough note of it, and the sky that was over it, in Plate 11, and next to this (Plate 12) a moment of sunset, behind the Euganean hills at Venice. They have some interest here as types of the kind of scenes which were daily set before the eyes of Correggio and Titian, and of the sweet free spaces of sky through which 328 BACKGROUNDS. rose and fell, to them, the coloured rays of the morning and evening. 7. And they are connected, also, with the forms of land- scape adopted by the Lombardic masters, in a very curious way. We noticed that the Flemings, educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be always contented with the scenery it supplied ; and we should naturally have expected that Titian and Correggio, living in the midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain of Lombardy, would also have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in such level scenery, associated,- of course, with the sub- limity of the far-away Apennine, Euganean, or Alp. But not a whit. The plains of mulberry and maize, of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded, never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity ; and both of them, in all their important landscapes, bury them- selves in wild wood ; Correggio delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures ; and Titian, whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the narrow glens and forests of Cadore. 8. Of the vegetation introduced by both, I shall have to speak at length in the course of the chapters on Foliage ; meantime I give, in Plate 13, one of Titian's slightest bits of background, from one of the frescoes in the little chapel behind St. Antonio, at Padua, which may be com- pared more conveniently than any of his more elaborate landscapes with the purist work from Raphael. For in both these examples the trees are equally slender and delicate, only the formality of mediaeval art is, by Titian, entirely abandoned, and the old conception of the aspen grove and meadow done away with for ever. We are now far from cities : the painter takes true delight in the desert ; the trees grow wild and free ; the sky also has lost its peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely BACKGROUNDS. 329 impendent upon earth, and somewhat threatening, through its solemn light. 9. Although, however, this example is characteristic of Titian in its wildness, it is not so in its looseness. It is only in the distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in a hurry, that Titian is vague : in all his near and studied work he completes every detail with scrupu- lous care. The next Plate, 14, a background of Tintoret's, from his picture of the Entombment at Parma, is more entirely characteristic of the Venetians. Some mistakes made in the reduction of my drawing during the course of engraving have cramped the curves of the boughs and leaves, of which I will give the true outline further on ; meantime the subject, which is that described in § 16 of the chapter on Penetrative Imagination, Yol. II., will just as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the Vene- tian love of gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail. Every leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn ; but observe how the blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at expression of faultless- ness and felicity has been withdrawn , as contrary to the laws of the existent world. 10. From this great Venetian school of landscape Tur- ner received much important teaching — almost the only healthy teaching which he owed to preceding art. The designs of the Liber Stucliorum are founded first on nature, but in many cases modified by forced imitation of Claude, and fond imitation of Titian. All the worst and feeblest studies in the book — as the pastoral with the nymph playing the tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through trees, and with the flock of goats on the walled road — owe the principal part of their imbecilities to Claude ; another group (Solway Moss, Peat Bog, Lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial influence, straight from nature; and the finest 330 BACKGROUNDS. works in the book— the Grande Chartreuse, Rizpah, Jason, Cephalus, and one or two more — are strongly under the influence of Titian. II. The Yenetian school of landscape expired with Tintoret, in the year 1594; and. the sixteenth century closed, like a grave, over the great art of the world. There is no entirely sincere or great art in the seven- teenth century. Rubens and Rembrandt are its two greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affec- tations of their age. The influence of the Venetians hardly extended to them ; the tower of the Titianesque art fell southwards ; and on the dust of its ruins grew various art-weeds, such as Domenichino and the Carraccis. Their landscape, which may in few words be accurately defined as " Scum of Titian," possesses no single merit, nor any ground for the forgiveness of demerit ; they are to be named only as the link through which the Venetian influence came dimly down to Claude and Salvator. 3 M. P., 319-324: III. 1. Light Backgrounds. — I think if there be any one grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the pro- ductions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light and dark background, of heaven light, or of object light. For I know not any truly great painter of any time who manifests not the most intense pleasure in the luminous space of his backgrounds, or whoever sacrifices this plea- sure where the nature of his subject admits of its attain- ment, as on the other hand I know not that the habitual use of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever been co-existent with pure or high feeling, and, except in the case of Rembrandt (and then under peculiar circum- stances only), with any high power of intellect. It is however necessary carefully to observe the following modifications of this broad principle. BACKGROUNDS. 331 2. The absolute necessity, for such indeed I consider it, is of no more than such a mere luminous distant point as may give to the feelings a species of escape from all the finite objects about them. There is a spectral etching of Rembrandt, a presentation of Christ in the Temple, where the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out of the gloom, holding a crosier. Behind it there is a subdued window light seen in the opening between two columns, without which the impressiveness of the whole subject would, I think, be incalculably brought down. I cannot tell whether I am at present allowing too much weight to my own fancies and predilections, but without so much escape into the outer air and open heaven as this, I can take permanent pleasure in no picture. 3. And I think I am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all artists. The painter of portrait is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the arm-chair ; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above ; — escape, hope, infinity, by whatever conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of Rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armour or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward ; and however narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only that the clouds 332 BACKGROUNDS. open for us at its close. Neither will any amount of beauty in nearer form make us content to stay with it, so long as we are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so cold or so hurtful but that we may look upon it with kindness, so only that it rise against the infinite hope of light beyond. The reader can follow out the analogies of this unassisted. 4. But although this narrow portal of escape be all that is absolutely necessary, I think that the dignity of the painting increases with the extent and amount of the ex- pression. With the earlier and mightier painters of Italy, the practice is commonly to leave their distance of pure and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall interfere with or draw the attention from the interest of the figures, and of such purity, that, especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. I do not mean to say that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. They did it, I think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest men ; they did what they loved and felt ; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives ; and I look to' them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for sympathy, not for admiration. 5. And so we find the same simple and sweet treatment, the open sky, the tender, unpretending, horizontal Avhite clouds, the far winding and abundant landscape, in Giotto, Taddeo, Gaddi, Laurati, Angelico, Benozzo, Ghirlandajo, Francia, Perugino, and the young Paffaelle, the first symptom of conventionality appearing in Perugino, who. though with intense feeling of light and colour he carried BACKGROUNDS. 333 the glory of his luminous distance far beyond all his pre- decessors, began at the same time to use a somewhat morbid relief of his figures against the upper sky. Thus in the Assumption of the Florentine Academy, in that of l'Annunziata ; and of the Gallery of Bologna, in all which pictures the lower portions are incomparably the finest, owing to the light distance behind the heads. Raffaelle, in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the Madonna del Cardellino, the chamber wall of the Madonna della Sediola, and the brown wainscot of the Baldacchino. Yet it is curious to observe how much of the dignity even of his later pictures depends on such portions as the green light of the lake, and sky behind the rocks, in the St. John of the Tribune, and how the re- painted distortion of the Madonna dell' Impannata, is redeemed into something like elevated character, merely by the light of the linen window from which it takes its name. 6. That which by the Florentines was done in pure sim- plicity of heart, was done by the Yenetians with intense love of the colour and splendour of the sky itself, even to the frequent sacrificing of their subject to the passion of its distance. In Carpaccio, John Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Yeronese, and Tintoret, the preciousness of the luminous sky, so far as it might be at all consistent with their subject, is nearly constant ; abandoned altogether in portraiture only, seldom even there, and never with advantage. Titian and Yeronese, who had less exalted feeling than the others, affording a few instances of ex- ception, the latter overpowering his silvery distances with foreground splendour, the other sometimes sacrificing them to a luscious fulness of colour, as in the Flagellation in the Louvre, by a comparison of which with the unequalled majesty of the Entombment, opposite, the whole power 334 BACKGROUNDS. and applicability of the general principle may at once be tested. 7. But of the value of this mode of treatment there is a farther and more convincing proof than its adoption either by the innocence of the Florentine or the ardour of the Venetian, namely, that when retained or imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among the weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms of Gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of Salvator, it yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart, upon the lips of the senseless and the pro- fane.* Now, although I doubt not that the general value of this treatment will be acknowledged by all lovers of art, it is not certain that the point to prove which I have brought it forward, will be as readily conceded, namely, the * In one of the smaller rooms of the Pitti palace, over the door, is a temptation of St. Anthony, by Salvator, wherein such power as the artist possessed is fully manifested, with little, comparatively, that is offensive. It is a vigorous and ghastly thought, in that kind of horror which is dependent on scenic effect, perhaps unrivalled, and I shall have , occasion to refer to it again in speaking of the powers of imagination. : I allude to it here, because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable instance of the power of light at present under discussion. It is formed with flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on these openings. Close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the spectre will be awful no longer. It owes to the light of the distance both its size and its spirituality. The time would fail me if I were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let not the artist trust to such morbid and conventional use of it as may be seen in the common blue and yellow effectism of the present day. Of the value of modera- tion and simplicity in the use of this, as of all other sources of pleasur- able emotion, I shall presently have occasion to speak farther. J.p 13. Early Naturalism BACKGROUNDS. 335 inherent power of all representations of infinity over the human heart / for there are, indeed, countless associations of pure and religious kind, which combine with each other to enhance the impression, when presented in this partic- ular form, whose power I neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same Divine point and have reference to heavenly hopes ; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joy fulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of them. 2M.P.,41. 8. Historical painters, accustomed to treat their back- grounds slightly and boldly, and feeling that any ap- proach to completeness of detail therein injures their pictures by interfering with its principal subject, naturally lose sight of the peculiar and intrinsic beauty of subordi- nate things. Compare the background of Sir Joshua's "Holy Family" with that of Xicolo Poussin's " Nursing of Jupiter." The first, owing to all neglect of botanical detail, has lost every atom of ideal character, and reminds us of an English fashionable flower-garden ; Poussin's, in which every vine-leaf is drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a tree group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which, in its pure and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time. As to the backgrounds of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, see Lecture 3d, on Architecture and Paint- ing, delivered at Edinburgh, Xov. 1853,, page 123. CHAPTER VIII. DISTANCE. Distance and Outline. — In Turner's distances two facts are invariably given — transparency or filminess of mass, and excessive sharpness of edge. Sharpness of edge is the unfailing characteristic of distance. When the eye is really directed to the distance, melting lines are characteristic only of thick mist and vapour between us and the object, not of the removal of the object. If a thing has character upon its outline, as a tree for instance, or a mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us the sharper the outline of the whole mass will become, though the details will become confused. A tree fifty yards from us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the leaves and interstices have some effect on the eye. But put it ten miles off against the sky, its outline will be so sharp that you cannot tell it from a rock. So in a mountain h've or six miles off, bushes, and heather, and roughness of knotty ground and rock, have still some effect on the eye, and by becoming confused and mingled soften the outline. But let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will be as sharp as a knife. Let it, as in case of the Alps, be seventy or eighty miles off, and though it has become so faint that the morning mist is not so transparent, its out- line will be beyond all imitation for sharpness. Thus, then, the character of extreme distance is always exces- sive sharpness of edge. If you soften your outline, you either put mist between you and the object, and in doing so diminish your distance, for it is impossible you should see so far through mist as through clear air ; or if you DISTANCE. 337 keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object close to the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if aerial colours, excessive blues, &c, be retained, represent an impossibility. Claude in his best expression of distance uses pure blue as ever came from the pallet, laid on thick; you cannot see through it, there is not the slightest vestige of transparency or nlminess about it, and its edge is soft and blunt. Hence if it be meant for near hills, the blue is impossible, and the want of details impossible in the clear atmosphere indicated through the whole picture. If it be meant for extreme distance the blunt edge is impos- sible, and the opacity is impossible. I do not know a single distance of the Italian school to which the observa- tion is not applicable, except, perhaps, one or two of Nicholas Poussin. In Turner's pictures, observe the ex- cessive sharpness of all the edges, almost amounting to lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one decisive edge, in the foreground. Such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks and extreme distance of all hills, as far as the form of the rocks themselves, and the aerial appearances espe- cially belonging to them alone, are concerned. (For colour in distance, see p. 361.) 15 CHAPTER IX. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS : EIEST AS DEPENDENT ON THE EOCUS OF THE EYE.* 1. I haye noticed the distinction between real aerial per- spective, and that overcharged contrast of light and shade by which the old masters obtained their deceptive effect ; and I show ed that, though inferior to them in the precise quality or tone of aerial colour, our great modern master is altogether more truthful in the expression of the propor- tionate relation of all his distances to one another. I am now about to examine those modes of expressing space, both in nature and art by far the most important, which are dependent, not on the relative hues of objects, but on the drawing of them : by far the most important, I say, because the most constant and certain ; for nature herself is not always aerial. Local effects are frequent which in- terrupt and violate the laws of aerial tone, and induce strange deception in our ideas of distance. I have often seen the summit of a snowy mountain look nearer than its base, owing to the perfect clearness of the upper air. But the drawing of objects, that is to say, the degree in * I am more than ever convinced of the truth of the position ad- vanced in the 8th paragraph ; nor can I at present assign any other cause, than that here given, for what is there asserted ; and yet I can- not but think that I have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which we insensibly make in the focus of the eye : and that the real justification of Turner's practice, with respect to some of his foregrounds, is to be elsewhere sought. I leave the subject, there- fore, to the reader's consideration. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. which their details and parts are distinct or confused is an unfailing and certain criterion of their distance ; and if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have genuine truth of space, in spite of many errors in aerial tone ; while, if this be neglected, all space will be de- stroyed, whatever dexterity of tint may be employed to conceal the defective drawing. 2. First, then, it is to he noticed, that the eye, like any other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey a distinct image of ohjects at different distances; so that it is totally impossible to see distinctly, at the same mo- ment, ttco objects, one of which is much farther off than another. Of this, any one may convince himself in an in- stant. Look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get a clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while your eye is fixed on them, perceive anything but the most indistinct and shadowy images of whatever objects may be visible beyond. But fix your eyes on those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though they are just beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, that frame will only be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure interruption to whatever is perceived beyond it. A little attention di- rected to this fact will convince every one of its univer- sality, and prove beyond dispute that objects at unequal distances cannot be seen together, not from the interven- tion of air or mist, but from the impossibility of the rays proceeding from both converging to the same focus, so that the whole . impression, either of one or the other, must necessarily be confused, indistinct, and inadequate. 3. But, be it observed (and I have only to request that whatever I say may be tested by immediate experiment) the difference of focus necessary is greatest within the first five hundred yards, and therefore, though it is totally im- possible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and one a quarter of a mile beyond it, at the same moment, it is per- 340 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. fectly possible to see one a quarter of a mile off, and oiig rive miles beyond it, at the same moment. The conse- quence of this is, practically, that in a real .landscape, we can see the whole of what would he called the middle dis- tance and distance together, with facility and clearness : but while we do so we can see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of lines and colours ; and that if on the contrary, we look at any fore- ground object, so as to receive a distinct impression of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder and mystery. 4. And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is anything, our distance must be nothing, and vice versa / for if we represent our near and distant objects as giving both at once that distinct image to the eye, which we receive in nature from each, when we look at them separately ; * and if we distinguish them from each other only by the air-tone, and indistinctness dependent on positive distance, we violate one of the most essential principles of nature ; we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen * This incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its incapa- bility to comprehend a large portion of lateral space at once. We indeed can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the objects be- side it being- confused and indistinct ; but we need pay no attention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as we can of the landscape without turning the eye, and hence any slurring or con- fusing of one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not founded on any truth of nature, but is an expedient of the artist — and often an ex- cellent and desirable one — to make the eye rest where he wishes it. But as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near upon the canvas as that expressive of a near one, both are seen distinctly and with the same focus of the eye, and hence an immediate contradiction of nature results, unless one or other be given with an artificial and increased in- distinctness, expressive of the appearance peculiar to the unadapted focus. On the other hand, it must be noted that the greater part of the effect above described is consequent not on variation of focus, but on the different angle at which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes, when both are directed towards the distance. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 341 by two separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had represented four sides of a cubic object vis- ible together. 5. ]STow, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old school, as far as I remember, ever paid the slight- est attention. Finishing their foregrounds clearly and sharply, and with vigorous impression on the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with equal attention to what they could see of its details — they gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it is fully and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, though masters of aerial tone, though employing every expedient that art could supply to conceal the intersection of lines, though caricaturing the force and shadow of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they never succeeded in truly representing space. 6. Turner introditced a neio era in landscape art, by shoiving that the foreground might be sunk for the dis- tance, and that it was possible to express immediate proximity to the spectator, without giving anything like completeness to the forms of the near objects. This is not done by slurred or soft lines, observe (alicays the sign of vice in art), but by a decisive imperfection, a firm, but partial assertion of form, which the eye feels to be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, or cling to, nor entirely understand, and from tvhich it is driven away of necessity, to those parts of distance on which it is intended to repose. And this principle, originated by Turner, though fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with judgment and success by several less powerful ar- tists of the English school. Some six years ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of Copley Fielding were very in- structive in this respect. Not a line in them was made out, not a single object clearly distinguishable. Wet broad 342 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. sweeps of the brash, sparkling, careless, and accidental as nature herself, always truthful as far as they went, imply- ing knowledge, though not expressing it, suggested every- thing, while they represented nothing. But far off into the mountain distance came the sharp edge and the deli- cate form ; the whole intention and execution of the pic- ture being guided and exerted where the great impression of space and size was to be given. The spectator was compelled to go forward into the waste of hills — there, where the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk and wander — he could not stumble and hesitate over the near rocks^ nor stop to botanize on the first inches of his path." And the impression of these pictures was always great and enduring, as it was simple and truthful. I do not know anything in art which has expressed more com- pletely the force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes. And it is a farther illustration f of the principle we are insisting upon, that where, as in some of his later works, he has bestowed more labour on the foreground, the picture has lost both in space and sublimity. And among artists in general, who are either not aware of the princi- ple, or fear to act upon it (for it requires no small cour- age, as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that indis- tinctness and mystery which they have been accustomed to consider as characteristic of distance), the foreground is not only felt, as every landscape painter will confess, to be the most embarrassing and unmanageable part of the pic- ture, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will go * There is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what was before asserted respecting- the necessity of botanical fidelity — where the foreground is the object of attention. Compare Part II. Sect. I. Chap. VII. § 10: — " To paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly." f Hardly. It would have been so only had the recently finished fore- grounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant ; they are pain- ful, I believe, not from their finish, but their falseness. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 343 near to destroy the effect of the rest of the composition. Thus Callcott's Trent is severely injured by the harsh group of foreground figures ; and Stanfield very rarely gets through an Academy picture without destroying much of its space, by too much determination of near form ; while Harding constantly sacrifices his distance, and compels the spectator to dwell on the foreground al- together, though indeed, with such foregrounds as he gives us, we are most happy so to do. 7. But it is in Turner only that we see a bold and deci- sive choice of the distance and middle distance, as his great object of attention ; and by him only that the fore- ground is united and adapted to it, not by any want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by the most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of just so much of even the minutest forms as the eye can see when its focus is not adapted to them. And herein is another reason for the vigour and wholeness of the effect of Turner's works at any distance ; while those of almost all other artists are sure to lose space as soon as we lose sight of the details. 8. And now we see the reason for the singular, and to the ignorant in art, the offensive execution of Turner's figures. I do not mean to assert that there is any reason whatso- ever for had drawing (though in landscape it matters ex- ceedingly little) ; but there is both reason and necessity for that want of drawing which gives even the nearest figures round balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet ; for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding from the utmost distance, and some partial impression from all the distances, it should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and features of near figures than Turner gives. And how ab- solutely necessary to the faithful representation of space 344: DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. this indecision really is, might be proved with the utmost ease by any one who had veneration enough for the artist to sacrifice one of his pictures to his fame ; who would take some one of his works in which the figures were most incomplete, and have them painted in by any of our delicate and first-rate figure-painters, absolutely preserv- ing every colour and shade of Turner's group, so as not to lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes for the pink spots, and feet for the white ones. Let the pic- ture be so exhibited in the Academy, and even novices in art would feel at a glance that its truth of space was gone, that every one of its beauties and harmonies had under- gone decomposition, that it was now a grammatical sole- cism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the. eye and offend the mind. CHAPTER X. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS : SECONDLY, AS ITS APPEAR- ANCE IS DEPENDENT ON THE POWER OF THE EYE. 1. In the last chapter, we have seen how in distinctness of individual distances becomes necessary in order to ex- press the adaptation of the eye to one or other of thern ; we have now to examine that kind of indistinctness which is dependent on real retirement of the object even when the focus of the eye is fully concentrated upon it. The first kind of indecision is that which belongs to all objects which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off : the second is that consequent upon the want of power in the eye to receive a clear image of objects at a great dis- tance from it, however attentively it may regard them. Draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle, each about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and blacken them so that their forms may be very distinct ; place your paper against the wall at the end of the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance according as you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. You will come to a point where, though you can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square and which the circle. 2. Now this takes place of course with every object in a landscape, in proportion to its distance and size. The definite forms of the leaves of a tree, however sharply and separately they may appear to come against the sky, are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the form of everything becomes confused before we finally lose 15" 346 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. sight of it. Now if the character of an object, say the front of a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it, as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc. ; these lesser details, as the object falls into distance, become confused and undecided, each of them losing their definite forms, but all being perfectly visible as something, a white or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but yet so seen that we cannot tell what they are. As the distance increases, the confusion becomes greater, until at last the whole front of the house becomes merely a flat, pale space, in which, however, there is still observable a kind of richness and checkering, caused by the details in it, which, though totally merged and lost in the mass, have still an influence on the texture of that mass ; until at last the whole house itself becomes a mere light or dark spot which we can plainly see, but cannot tell what it is, nor distinguish it from a stone or any other object. 3. Now what I particularly wish to insist upon is the state of vision in which all the details of an object are seen, and yet seen in such confusion and disorder that we can- not in the least tell what they are, or what they mean. It is not mist between us and the object, still less is it shade, still less is it want of character ; it is a confusion, a mys- tery, an interfering of undecided lines with each other, not a diminution of their number ; window and door, architrave and frieze, all are there : it is no cold and va- cant mass, it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see a sino-le form so as to know what it is. Ob- serve your friend's face as he is coming up to you ; first it is nothing more than a white spot ; now it is a face, but you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots ; yon see a confusion of lines, a something which you know from experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you can- not tell how it is so. Now he is nearer, and you can see DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 347 the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they are not blank spots neither ; there is detail in them ; you cannot see the lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet you see more than mere spots ; it is a mouth and an eye, and there is light and sparkle and expression in them, but nothing distinct. Now he is nearer still, and you can see that he is like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he is or not : there is a vagueness and indecision of line still. Now you are sure, but even yet there are a thousand things in his face, which have their effect in inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see so as to know what they are. 4. Changes like these, and states of vision corresponding to them, take place with each and all of the objects of na- ture, and two great principles of truth are deducible from their observation. First, place an object as close to the eye as you ldxe, there is always something in it which you cannot see, except in the hinted and mysterious man- ner above described. You can see the texture of a piece of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which compose it, though they are all felt, and have each of them influence on the eye. Secondly, place an object as ear from the eye as you like, and until it becomes itself a mere spot, there is always something in it which you can see, though only in the hinted manner above described. Its shadows and lines and local colours are not lost sight of as it retires ; they get "mixed and indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a difference always per- ceivable between an object possessing such details and a flat or vacant space. The grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are so far discernible that there will be a marked difference between its appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. And thus nature is never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always abundant / you always see something, but you never see all. And thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which 348 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. God has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye, — a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness comprehensible ; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever exhaustless. And hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see everything, or in which we can see nothing, is false. .Nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing. 5. Now, I would not wish for any more illustrative or marked examples of the total contradiction of these two great principles, than the landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body : — the Dutch masters furnishing the cases of seeing everything, and the Italians of seeing nothing. The rule with both is indeed the same, differ- ently applied. " You shall see the bricks in the wall, and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead flat ; but the Dutch give you the bricks, and the Italians the flat." Nature's rule being the precise reverse — " You shall never be able to count the bricks, but you shall never see a dead space." 6. Take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really great landscape of Poussin (great in feeling at least) marked 260 in the Dulwich Gallery. The houses are dead square masses with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. There is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. How differently would nature have treated us. She would have let us see the Indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the Virgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 340 Roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the mat blinds. All would have been there ; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a con- fusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minute- ness, and filling every atom and part of space with mys- tery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life. 7. Again, take the distant city on the right bank of the river in Claude's Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, in the National Gallery. I have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few ; and I have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion ; but I do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress entirely composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and abso- lutely aoreein£ in the number of battlements. I have, indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such an one in the first page of a spelling-book when I was four years old ; but, somehow or other, the dignity and per- fection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be increased in value by the frontis- piece. Without, however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in Claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details. Claude has permitted us to see every battle- ment, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are. Nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have known from experience was indicative of 350 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. battlements, but which we might as well have thought of creating as of counting. Claude has given you the walls below in one dead void of uniform grey. There is nothing to be seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in it ; it is grey paint or grey shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. Kature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling casements — all would have been there — none, indeed, seen as such, none comprehen- sible or like themselves, but all visible ; little shadows, and sparkles, and scratches, making that whole sjjace of colour a transparent, palpitating, various infinity. 8. Or take one of Poussin's extreme distances, such as that in the Sacrifice of Isaac. It is luminous, retiring, deli- cate and perfect in tone, and is quite complete enough to deceive and delight the careless eye to which all distances are alike ; nay, it is perfect and masterly, and absolutely right if we consider it as a sketch, — as a first plan of a distance, afterwards to be carried out in detail. But we must remember that all these alternate spaces of grey and gold are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it — not its substance, but its light and shade. They are just what nature would cast over it, and write upon it with every cloud, but which she would cast in play, and without carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible import- ance. All her work and her attention would be given to bring out from underneath this, and through this, the forms and the material character which this can only be valuable to illustrate, not to conceal. Every one of those broad spaces she would linger over in protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons in every hairsbreadth of it, and DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 351 pouring her fulness of invention into it, until the mind lost itself in following her, — now fringing the dark edge of the shadow with a tufted line of level forest — now losing it for an instant in a breath of mist — then breaking it with the white gleaming angle of a narrow brook — then dwelling upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation, over the other side of which she would carry you down into a dusty space of soft, crowded light, with the hedges, and the paths, and the sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled together in one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery — sparkling and melting, and passing away into the sky, without one line of distinct- ness, or one instant of vacancy. 9. Xow it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow all this — he cannot come up to the same degree and order of infinity — but he can give us a lesser kind of infinity. He has not one-thousandth part of the space to occupy which nature has ; but he can, at least, leave no part of that space vacant and unprofitable. If nature carries out her minutiae over miles, he has no excuse for generalizing in inches. And if he will only give us all he can, if he will give us a fulness as complete and as mysterious as nature's, we will pardon him for its being the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean. But we will not pardon him, if, because he has not the mile to occupy, he will not occupy the inch, and because he has fewer means at his command, will leave half of those in his power un ex- erted. Still less will we pardon him for mistaking the sport of nature for her labour, and for following her only in her hour of rest, without observing how she has worked for it. After spending centuries in raising the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling the moun- tain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with playful sunbeam and flying cloud ; but the painter must go through the same labour, or he must not have the 352 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. same recreation. Let him chisel his rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then Ave will allow him his freaks of light and shade, and thank him for them ; but we will not be put off with the play before the lesson — with the adjunct instead of the essence — with the illus- tration instead of the fact. 10. I am somewhat anticipating my subject here, be- cause I can scarcely help answering the objections which I know must arise in the minds of most readers, espe- cially of those who are partially artistical, respecting " generalization," " breadth," " effect," etc. It were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explain- ing what it means ; and that we had more constant reference made to the principle which I can only re-mem- ber having seen once clearly explained and insisted on, that breadth is not vacancy. Generalization is unity, not destruction of parts / and composition is not anni- hilation, hut arrangement of materials. The bkeadtu which unites the truths of nature with her harmonies is meritorious and beautiful • but the breadth which annihilates those truths by the million is not painting nature, but painting over her. AnxL so the masses which result from right concords and relations of details are sublime and impressive ; but the masses which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible and pain- full And Ave shall sIioav, in folloAving parts of the work, that distances like those of Poussin are mere mean- ingless tricks of clever execution, which, Avhen once dis- covered, the artist may repeat over and over again, Avith * Of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. An artist may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark, and do us a kindness ; but he must not generalize the details of a champaign, in which there is a history of creation. The full discussion of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 353 mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both to himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern of furniture. Be this as it may, however (for we cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here), the fal- sity and imperfection of such distances admit of no dispute. Beautiful and ideal they may be ; true they are not : and in the same way we might go through every part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of grass staring defiance to the mystery of nature, or that you have dead spaces of absolute vacuity, equally deter- mined in their denial of her fulness. And even if we ever find (as here and there, in their better pictures, we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing colour, or mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious atmos- phere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to the eye, are suggestive of nothing, — they are characterless, — they have none of the peculiar expressiveness and mean- ing by which nature maintains the variety and interest even of what she most conceals. She always tells a story, however hintedly and vaguely ; each of her touches is different from all the others ; and we feel with every one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it cannot be anything y while even the most dexterous distances of the old masters pretend to secresy without having anything to conceal, and are ambiguous, not from the concentration of meaning, but from the want of it. 11. And now, take up one of Turner's distances, it mat- ters not which, or of what kind, — drawing or painting, small or great, done thirty years ago, or for last year's Acad- emy, as you like ; say that of the Mercury and Argus, and look if every fact which I have just been pointing out in nature be not carried out in it. Abundant, beyond 354 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various, beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, there is yet not one atom in its whole extent and mass which does not suggest more than it represents ; nor does it suggest vaguely, but in such a manner as to prove that the conception of each individual inch of that distance is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a separate picture fully worked out : but yet, clearly and fully as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or see ; just so much as would enable a spectator of expe- rience and knowledge to understand almost every minute fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unprac- tised and careless eye, just what a distance of nature's own would appear, an unintelligible mass. Isot one line out of the millions there is without meaning, yet there is not one which is not effected and disguised by the dazzle and indecision of distance. Ivo form is made out, and yet no form is unknown. 12. Perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better to be understood by observing the distant character of rich architecture than of any other object. Go to the top of Highgate Hill on a clear summer morniug at five o'clock, and look at Westminster Abbey. You will re- ceive an impression of a building enriched with multi- tudinous vertical lines. Try to distinguish one of those lines all the way down from the one next to it : You can- not. Try to count them : You cannot. Try to make out the beginning or end of any one of them : You cannot. Look at it generally, and it is all symmetry and arrange- ment. Look at it in its parts, and it is all inextricable confusion. Am not I, at this moment, describing a piece of Turner's drawing, with the same words by which I describe nature ? And what would one of the old masters have done with such a building as this in his distance ? DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 355 Either lie would only have given the shadows of the but- tresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots for the windows ; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had attempted to render some of the detail, it would have been done by distinct lines, — would have been broad caricature of the delicate building, felt at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. His most successful effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one line of carving on its eco- nomic sides. Turner, and Turner only, would follow and render on the canvas that mystery of decided line, — that distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which, examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat, which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.* 13. Xor is this mode of representation true only with respect to distances. Every object, however near the eye, has something about it wdiich you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance even into every part and portion of wmat we suppose ourselves to see most dis- tinctly. Stand in the Piazza di St. Marco, at Yenice, as close to the church as you can, without losing sight of the top of it. Look at the capitals of the columns on the second story. You see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all over. Tell me their patterns : You cannot. Tell me the direction of a single line in them : You can- not. Yet you see a multitude of lines, and you have so much feeling of a certain tendency and arrangement in those lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are beauti- * Vide, for illustration, Fontainebleau, in the Illustrations to Scott ; Vignette at opening of Human Life, in Rogers's Poems ; Venice, in the Italy ; Chateau de Bloia ; the Rouen, and Pont Neuf, Paris, in the Rivers of France. The distances of all the Academy pictures of Ven- ice, especially the Shylock, are most instructive. 356 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. fill, and that they are all different from each other. But I defy you to make out one single line in any one of them. 14. JSTow go to Canaietto's painting of this church, in the Palazzo Manfrini, taken from the very spot on which you stood. How much has he represented of all this ? A black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a yellow one above it for the light. There is not a vestige nor indication of carving or decoration of any sort or kind. Very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of the design with delicate clearness and precision, but with no uncertainty or mystery about them ; which mystery being removed, all space and size are de- stroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not of a building. But in the capital lying on the foreground in Turner's Daphne hunting with Leucippus, we have the perfect truth. ~Not one jag of the acanthus leaves is ab- solutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel in an instant that all are there. And so it will invariably be found through every portion of detail in his late and most perfect works. 15. But if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish merely in the more delicate instances of architectural decoration, how much more in the ceaseless and incom- parable decoration of nature? The detail of a single weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. Every leaf and stalk has a design and tracery upon it, — every knot of grass an intricacy of shade which the labour of years could never imitate, and which, if such labour could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. That which is nearness for the bank is distance for its details ; and however near it may \>% DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 357 the greater part of those details are still a beautiful in- comprehensibility.* 16. Hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size is dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from, exceeding fulness. We destroy both space and size, either by the vacancy, which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinctness, which gives us a false one. The distance of Poussin, having no indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five ; we can- not tell — we have no measure, and in consequence, no vivid impression. But a middle distance of Iiobbima's involves a contradiction in terms ; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail. * It is to be remembered, however, that these truths present them- selves in all probability under very different phases to individuals of different powers of vision. Many artists who appear to generalize rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavouring to render the ap- pearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. Others may be led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. Works which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be always seen at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range from the painter's. Another circumstance to which I ought above to have alluded is the scale of the picture ; for there are different degrees of generalization, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to every scale : the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on features of the life size, and the leaves which Tintoret may articulate on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by Turner on one of four by three. Another circumstance of some importance is the assumed distance of the foreground ; many landscape painters seem to think their nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always at least its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by figures or any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. With Claude al- most always ; with Turner often, as in the Daphne and Leucippus, this breadth is forty or fifty yards ; and as the nearest foreground object must then be at least that distance removed, and may be much more, it is evident that no completion of close detail is in such cases allow- able (see here another proof of Claude's erroneous practice) ; with 358 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 17. A single dusty roll of Turner's bruskis more truly expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. What Sir J. Eeynolds says of the misplaced labour of his Roman acquaintance on separate leaves of foliage, and the certainty he ex- presses that a man who attended to general character would in five minutes produce a more faithful representa- tion of a tree than the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus perfectly true and well founded; but this is not because details are undesirable, but because they are best given by swift execution, and because, individually, they cannot be given at all. 18. But it should be observed (though we shall be better Titian and Tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground is rarely more than five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five or six yards distant are entirely detailed. None of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all cases. I ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of . Turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, have been luminous twilights; and that the uncertainty of twilight is there- fore added to that of general distance. In the evenings of the south it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the reflected light of the western sky continue, even for the space of half an hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in colour, and almost as bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon begins to cast a shadow : but in spite of this brilliancy of colour all the de- tails become ghostly and ill-defined. This is a favourite moment of Turner's, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom, but by un- certainty of detail. I have never seen the effect of clear twilight thoroughly rendered by art ; that effect in which all details are lost, while intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in which nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not darkness, far less mist, that is the cause of concealment. Turner's efforts at rendering this effect (as the Wilderness of Engedi, Assos, Chateau de Blois, Caer- laverock, and others innumerable), have always some slight appearance of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details ; but it remains to be shown that any closer approximation to the effect is possible. DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. 359 able to insist upon this point in futufe) that much of harm and error has arisen from the supposition and as- sertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the same principles of execution are entirely applicable to landscape, which are right for the figure. The artist who falls into extreme detail in drawing the human form is apt to become disgusting rather than pleasing. It is more agreeable that the general outline and soft hues of flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and lines of intersection. And even the most rapid and gen- eralizing expression of the human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and rigidly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of what is agreeable or impres- sive. But the exclusively generalizing landscape painter omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject, — omits thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, everything, indeed, which can furnish him with variety or expression. A distance in Lincolnshire, or in Lombardy, might both be generalized into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in Poussin ; but whatever there is of beauty or character in either depends altogether on our understanding the details, and feeling the difference between the morasses and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry trees of the other. And so in every part of the subject. I have no hesitation in asserting that it is impossible to go too fine, or think too much about details in landscape, so that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed ; but that it is equally impossible to render anything like the fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and in which Turner only has followed her. 19. We have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of nature as can be investigated without much knowledge of what is beautiful. Questions of arrangement, massing, and generalization, I prefer leaving untouched, until we 360 DISTANCE AND INDISTINCTNESS. know something about details, and something about what is beautiful. All that is desirable, even in these mere ' technical and artificial points, is based upon truths and habits of nature ; but we cannot understand those truths until we are acquainted with the specific forms and minor details which they affect, or out of which they arise. CHAPTEE XL DISTANCE AND THE COLOUR OF A PAINTING. Incidentally to this question of the effect of distance upon outline and distinction of objects, we may here notice the effect of distance upon the colouring of a pic- ture as referred to the position of the observer. 1. Yery curious effects are produced upon cdl paint- ings by the distance of the eye from them. One of these is the giving a certain softness to all colours, so that hues which would look coarse or bald, if seen near, may some- times safely be left, and are left, by the great workmen in their large works, to be corrected by the kind of bloom which the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them. I say, " sometimes," because this optical effect is a very subtle one, and seems to take place chiefly on certain colours, dead fresco colours especially ; also the practice of the great workmen is very different, and seems much to be regulated by the time at their disposal. Tintoret's pic- ture of Paradise, with 500 figures in it, adapted to a sup- posed distance of from fifty to a hundred feet, is yet colour- ed so tenderly that the nearer it is approached the better it looks ; nor is it at all certain that the colour which is wrong near, will look right a little way off, or even a great way off ; I have never seen any of our Academy portraits made to look like Titians by being hung above the line ; still, distance does produce a definite effect on pictorial colour, and in general an improving one. It also deepens the relative power of all strokes and sha- dows. A touch of shade which, seen near, is all but invisi- ble, and, as far as effect on the picture is concerned, cpiite 10 362 DISTANCE AND COLOUR. powerless, will be found, a little way off, to tell as a definite shadow, and to have a notable result on all that is near it ; and so markedly is this the case, that in all fine and first-rate drawing there are many passages in which if we see the touches we are putting on, we are doing too much ; they must be put on by the feeling of the hand only, and have their effect on the eye when seen in uni- son, a little way off. This seems strange ; but I believe the reason of it is, that, seen at some distance, the parts of the touch oi" touches are gathered together, and their rela- te o ' tions truly shown ; while seen near they are scattered and confused. On a large scale, and in common things, the phenomenon is of constant occurrence ; the " dirt bands" on a glacier, for instance, are not to be counted on the glacier itself, and yet their appearance is truly stated by Professor Forbes to be u one of great import- ance, though from the two circumstances of being best seen at a distance, or considerable height, and in a feeble or slanting light, it had very naturally been overlooked both by myself and others, like what are called blind paths over moors, visible at a distance, but lost when we stand upon them." * 2. Not only, however, does this take place in a picture very notably, so that a group of touches will tell as a compact and intelligible mass, a little way off, though confused when seen near ; but also a dark touch gains at a little distance in apparent darkness, a light touch in apparent light, and a coloured touch in apparent colour, to a degree inconceivable by an unpractised person ; so that literally, a good painter is obliged, working near his picture, to do in everything only about half of what he wants, the rest being done by the distance. And if the effect, at such distance, is to be of confusion, then sorae- * Travels through the Alps, chap. viii. DISTANCE AND COLOUR. 363 times, seen near, the work mast be a confusion worse con- founded, almost utterly unintelligible ; hence the amaze- ment and blank wonder of the public at some of the finest passages of Turner, which look like a mere mean- ingless and disorderly work of chance, but, rightly under- stood, are preparations for a given result, like the most subtle moves of a game of chess, of which no bystander can for a long time see the intention, but which are, in dim, underhand, wonderful way, bringing out their fore- seen and inevitable result. 3. And, be it observed, no other means would have brought out that result. Every distance and size of "picture has its own proper method of work '• the artist will necessarily vary that method somewhat according to circumstances and expectations : he may sometimes finish in a way fitted for close observation, to please his patron, or catch the public eye ; and sometimes be tempted into such finish by his zeal, or betrayed into it by forgetful- ness, as I think Tintoret has been, slightly, in his Para- dise, above mentioned. But there never yet was a picture thoroughly effective at ct distance, which did not look more or less unintelligible near. Things which in distant effect are folds of dress, seen near are only two or three grains of golden colour set there apparently by chance ; what far off is a solid limb, near is a grey shade with a misty outline, so broken that it is not easy to find its boundary ; and what far off may perhaps be a man's face, near, is only a piece of thin brown colour, enclosed by a single flowing wave of a brush loaded with white, while three brown touches across one edge of it, ten feet away, become a mouth and eyes. The more subtle the power of the artist, the more curious the difference will be between the apparent means and the effect produced ; and one of the most sublime feelings connected with art consists in the perception of this very strangeness, and in 364 DISTANCE AND COLOUR. a sympathy with, the foreseeing and foreordaining power jof the artist. In Turner, Tintoret, and Paul Yeronese, the intenseness of perception, first, as to what is to be done, and then, of the means of doing it, is so colossal that I always feel in the presence of their pictures just as other people would in that of a supernatural being. Common talkers use the word " magic " of a great paint- er's power without knowing what they mean by it. They mean a great truth. That power is magical ; so magical, that, well understood, no enchanter's work could be more miraculous or more appalling • and though I am not often kept from saying things by timidity, I should be afraid of offending the reader, if I were to define to him accurately the kind and the degree of awe with which I have stood before Tintoret's Adoration of the Magi, at Yenice, and Yeronese's Marriage in Cana, in the Louvre. 41. P. , 61. PART II. SCULPTURE. SCULPTURE. COMPILED CHIEFLY FROM RUSKIN's ARATRA PENTELICI. 1 . — DEFLATION. The word " sculpture," though in ultimate accuracy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard sub- stances by cutting away portions of the mass, in broad definition must be held to signify the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended shape , whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed ; whether we carve a granite mountain or a piece of boxwood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, axe, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse ; — whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture. 2. SCULPTURE AND NATIONAL LIFE. Hitherto the energy of growth in any people may be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art, namely, for sculpture or for the drama, which is living or speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both. Of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passionate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in the people ; while fine sculpture, requiring always sub- mission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being 368 SCULPTURE. in early and active progress. There is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, weak, or in decadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is always base. Aratra Pentelici, 29. 3. — ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES OE SCULPTURE. a. Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface. Whatever the modu- lated masses may represent, the primary condition is that they shall be beautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. b. It is difficult at first to feel this order and beauty of surface apart from imitation. It is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain abstract beauty of surface, rendered definite by increase and decline of light, whether he imitates anything or not. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoy- ment of such a. piece of art entirely depends, is one of the aesthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time and education. It belongs only to the highly-trained na- tions ; and, among them, to their most strictly and refined classes, though the germs of it are found, as part of their innate power, in every people capable of art. It has for the most part vanished at present from the English mind, in consequence of an eager desire for excitement, and for the kind of splendour that exhibits wealth careless of dignity. The order and harmony which, in his enthusias- tic account of the Theatre of Epidaurus, Pausanias in- sists on before beauty, can only be recognized by stern order and harmony in our daily lives ; and the perception of them is as little to be compelled, or taught suddenly, as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of dra- matic incident which regulate poetic sculpture. SCULPTURE. 3C9 4. THE INSTINCTS OF SCULPTURE. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider the passions or instincts of its subjects. a. The Instinct of Mimicry. The graphic arts begin in merely mimetic efforts or the making of toys. They proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. b. The Instinct of Idolatry. The second great condition for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess., in addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct ; the desire to see as sub- stantial the powers that are unseen, and bring those near that are afar off, and to possess and cherish those that are strange. To make, in some way, tangible and visible the nature of the gods — to illustrate and explain it by sym- bols ; to bring the immortals out of the recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates ; to bring back the dead from darkness and make them Lares. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion has been altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan re- ligions art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. The personality was never doubted ; it was visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of men sought, instead of an abstract idea. As no nation ever attained real greatness during periods in which it was subject to any condition of idolatry, so no nation has ever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching and maintaining a passionate imagination of a spiritual state higher than that of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and per- sonal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. 370 SCULPTURE. But I must now beg your close attention, because I have to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you unless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of art which cannot be overrated. When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Stras- bourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, would suppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sit- ting in the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delight- ful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg, but never for a moment supposed to he Strasbourg. Similarly, they might have taken pleasure in a statue representing a river instead of a city — the Phine or the Garonne, suppose — and have been touched with strong emo- tion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant that the statue was the river. Put if you get nothing more in the depth of the na- tional mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and idolizing instincts, there may be still no progress pos- sible for the arts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative caprice of design. You must have not only the idolizing instinct, but an r)6os which chooses the right thing to idolize. Else you will get states of art like those in China or India, non-progressive, and in great part diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence of foolish terror or foolish admiration. So that a third condition, completing and confirming both the others, must exist in order to the development of the creative power. c. The Instinct of Discipline. This third condition is that the heart of the nation shall he set on the discovery of just and equal law, and shall he from day to day devel- oping that law more perfectly. SCULPTURE. 371 The Greek school of sculpture was formed during and in consequence of the national effort to discover the nature of justice; the Tuscan, during and in consequence of the national effort to discover the nature of justification. Now, when a nation with mimetic instinct and imagina- tive longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the dis- covery of Ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision and truth into all its manual acts ; and the physical prog- ress of sculpture, as in the Greek so in the Tuscan school, consists in gradually limiting what was before indefinite, in verifying what was inaccurate, and in humanizing what was monstrous. I might perhaps content you by showing these external phenomena, and by dwelling simply on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculp- tured images, the mimicked bones to come together, bone to his bone ; and the flesh to come upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful of clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it was intended for a human form at all ; — by slow degrees, and added touch to touch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth, — at last the Aphrodite of Melos stands before you a perfect woman. But all that search for physical accuracy is merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seeking for truth in the inner soul. Observe farther : the increasing truth in representation is co-relative with increasing beauty in the thing to be rep- resented. The pursuit of justice, which regulates the imitative effort, regulates also the development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind ; and their culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at the moment when truth becomes the most lovely. And then ideal sculpture may safely go into portraiture. These, then, are the three great passions which are con- cerned in true sculpture. I cannot find better, or at least 372 SCULPTURE. more easily remembered, names for them than u the In- stincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, and Discipline," meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome restraint in all acts and works of life. Now, of these there is no ques- tion but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question whether the yearning for Idolatry (the desire of companionship with images) is right. 5. — COMPOSITION OF GREEK SCULPTURE. a. Likeness. All second-rate artists will tell you that the object of fine art is not resemblance, but some kind of abstraction more refined than reality. But the object of the great Eesemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble, and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived. It is the function of good landscape to set the scene before you in its reality, to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying and the streams foam- ing. It is the function of the best sculptor — the true Daedalus — to make stillness look like breathing, and marble look like flesh. A. P., 103. Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a man's face as like a man's face as it can. The greatest masters of all greatest schools — Phidias, Donatello, Velasquez, or Sir J. Reynolds — all tried to make human creatures as like human creatures as they could. Look at the foot of Cor- reggio's Venus in the Xational Gallery. He made the foot as like a foot as he could. In Turner's drawing of " Ivy Bridge " you will find the water in it like real water, and the ducks like real ducks. Queen of the Air, 166. h. RigJttness. What are the merits of this Greek art which make it so exemplary ? Not that it is beautiful, but SCULPTURE. 373 that it is Right. All that it desires to do it does, and all that it does it does well. Its laws of self-restraint are marvellous. It is contented to do a simple thing-, with only one or two qualities, restrictedly desired, and suf- ficiently attained. There is entire masterhood of its busi- ness up to the required point. A Greek does not reach after other people's strength, nor outreach his own. He never tries to paint before he can draw ; he never tries to lay on flesh where there are no bones. Those are his first merits — sincere and innocent purpose, strong common sense and principle, and all the strength that comes of these, and all the grace that follows on that strength. c. Masses. Greek art is always exemplary in disposi- tion of masses, which is a thing that in modern days students rarely look for, artists not enough, and the public never. But whatever else Greek work may fail of, you may be always sure its masses are well placed, and their placing has been the object of most subtle care. For example: among Greek coins yet preserved is one of the town Camarina, inscribed with the name of the town, and the figure of Hercules, having the face of a man and the skin of the lion's head. You can't read the name, though you know Greek, without pains — the coin could tell its own story — but what did above all things matter was that no letter of the word should curve in a wrong place with respect to the outline of the head, and divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually diminishing size, continuing from the lion's paw, round the neck, up to the forehead, and answering a decorative purpose as completely as the curls of the mane opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or displace one without mischief; they are almost as even in reticula- tion as a piece of basket work, but each has a different SCULPTURE. form and due relation to the rest, and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will find that, whatever time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite into their places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury. But another question here arises. Granted that these tresses may be finely placed, still they are not like a lion's mane. If the face is to be like the face of man, why is not the lion's mane to be like a lion's mane % Simply be- cause fringes and jags would spoil the surface of the coin, and though they might be cut they could not be stamped by a die. So the Greek uses his common sense, wastes no time, loses no skill, and says to you, "Here are beautifully set tresses, which I have carefully designed, and easily stamped. Enjoy them; if you cannot understand that they mean a lion's mane, heaven mend your wits." The sum, then, of Greek art work is well-founded know- ledge, simple and right aims, thorough mastery of handi- craft, splendid invention of arrangement, and unerring common sense in treatment. The reason that Greek art so often disappoints people is that indiscriminate and un- informed laudation leads them to look in it for something that is not there, such as the Greek ideal of beauty ; whereas the Greek race was not at all one of exalted beauty, hut only of general and healthy completeness of form. There is not a single instance of a very beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek art. You may take the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty of the central Greek type. She has tranquil, regular, and lofty features ; but could not hold her own for a moment against the beauty of a simple English girl of pure race and kind heart. Queen of the Air, 169. This is more extensively considered in the chapter on " Schools of Sculpture." SCULPTURE. 375 d. Drapery. It is a rule that nothing must be repre- sented by sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help to enforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armour may be made to do this by great sculptors, and are continually so used by the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and Florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of dra- pery in this respect : an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture ; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion / but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or soul. Donatello and Michael An- gelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic chivalry, ennoble armour in- the same way ; but base sculptors carve drapery and armour for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture ; — for instance, in painting the branch of a tree you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them ; they are unessential to the tree's life — he must give the flow and bending of the branch only. A. P., 94. In " The Seven Lamps of Architecture," ch. iv., § xi., E-uskin says : Drapery, as such, is always ignoble ; it be- comes a subject of interest only by the colour it bears, and the impression it receives from some foreign form or force. All noble draperies, either in painting or sculpture, have, so far as they are anything more than necessities, one of two great functions ; they are the exponents of motion and of gravitation. They are the most valuable means of ex- pressing past as well as present motion in the figure, and 376 SCULPTURE. they are almost the only means of indicating to the eye the force of gravity which resists such motion. The Greeks used drapery in sculpture for the most part as an ugly ne- cessity, but availed themselves of it gladly in all represen- tation of action, exaggerating the arrangements of it which express lightness in the material, and follow gesture in the person. The Christian sculptors, caring little for the body, or disliking it, and depending exclusively on the coun- tenance, received drapery at first contentedly as a veil, but soon perceived a capacity of expression in it which the Greek had not seen, or had despised. The principal ele- ment of this expression was the entire removal of agitation from what was so pre-eminently capable of being agitated. It fell from their human forms plumb down, sweeping the ground heavily, and concealing the feet ; while the Greek drapery was blown away from the thigh. The thick and coarse stuffs of the monkish dresses, so absolutely opposed to the thin and gauzy web of antique material, suggested simplicity of division as well as weight of fall. There was no crushing nor subdividing them. And thus the dra- pery began to represent the spirit of repose, as it before had of motion, repose saintly and severe. The wind had no power upon the garment, as the passion none upon the soul ; and the motion of the figure only bent into a softer > line the stillness of the falling veil, followed by it, like a slow cloud, by dropping rain ; only in links of lighter un- dulation it followed the dances of the angels. Thus treated, drapery is indeed noble ; but it is as an ex- ponent of other and higher things. As that of gravitation it has especial majesty, being literally the only means we have of fully representing this mysterious natural force of the earth (for falling water is less passive and less defined in its lines). So, again, in sails it is beautiful because it receives the forms of solid curved surface, and expresses the force of another invisible element. But drapery trust- SCULPTURE. 377 ed to its own merits, and given for its own sake — drapery like that of Carlo Dolce and the Carraccio — is always base. e. Accessories inadmissible. Every accessory in paint- ing is valuable, but not one can be admitted in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. It is the Greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture be assured is right. For instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem by Edward Frere, a cottage interior. Every accessory in the painting is of value — the fireside, the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. The poor little girl was more in- teresting to Edward Frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, and wore those clumsy shoes and old red cap and patched gown. May we sculpture her so ? ~No. We may sculpture her naked if we like, but not in rags. But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give her a pretty frock with ribands and flounces to it, and put her in marble in that ? No. We may put her simplest peasant dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble ; anything finer than that would be more dishonourable in the eyes of the Athenians than rags. If she were a French princess you might carve her embroidered robe and dia- dem ; if she were Joan of Arc you might carve her ar- mour, if she has it on. It is not the honourableness or beauty of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. A. P., 96. f. Grouping* Much fine formative arrangement de- pends on a more or less elliptical or pear-shaped balance of the group, obtained by arranging the principal members of it on two opposite curves, and either centralizing it by some powerful feature at the base, centre, or summit, or else clasp- ing it together by some conspicuous point or knot. A very smajl object will often do this satisfactorily. 5 m. P. 181. * See Laws of Grouping, page 99. 378 SCULPTURE, g. Lines. — 1. Lines of Motive. We must remember that a great composition always has a leading emotional purpose, technically called its motive, to which all its lines and forms have some relation. Undulating, and a majority of angular lines, for instance, are expressive of action, and would be false in effect if the motive of the composition was one of repose. Horizontal and some angular lines are expressive of rest and strength ; and would destroy a design whose purpose was to express disquiet and fee- bleness. It is therefore necessary to ascertain the motive before descending to detail. 5 M. P., 175. 2. Truth of Lines. The difference in the accuracy of the lines of the Torso of the Vatican (the Maestro of M. Angelo) from those in one of M. Angelo's finest works, could, perhaps, scarcely be appreciated by any eye or feel- ing undisciplined by the most perfect and practical ana- tomical knowledge. It rests on points of such traceless and refined delicacy, that though we feel them in the result, we cannot follow them in the details, yet they are such and so great as to place the Torso alone in art solitary and supreme ; while the finest of M. Angelo's works, considered with respect to truth alone, are said to be on a level with antiques of the second class, under the Apollo and the Venus, that is, two classes or grades below the Torso. But suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing the most entire appreciation of the excellence, were to sit down, pen in hand, to try to tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each line consisted. Could any words that he could use make us feel the hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends ? or end in anything more than the bare assertion of the inferiority of this line to that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanations could ever illustrate to us? He might as well endeavour to ex- plain to us by words some taste or other subject of sense SCULPTURE. 379 of which we had no experience. And so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy, which none but a cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to ex- press which, all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. Two lines are laid on canvas or cut on stone ; one is right and another wrong. There is no difference between them appreciable by the compasses — none appre- ciable by the ordinary eye — none which can be pointed out if it is not seen. One person feels it, another does not ; but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be communicated to the other. That feeling and that sight have been the reward of years of labour. l M. p., 404. 3. Lines of Beauty and Grace. That all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will, I believe, be at once allowed ; but that which there will be more need especially to prove is the subtilty and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. I believe that except in crystals, in certain mountain forms, admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrasts (as in the slope of debris), in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic develop- ments, there are no lines or surfaces of nature without curvature. Right lines are often suggested which are not actual. For the most part the eye is fed on natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow. 2 M. P., 45. All curves, however, are not equally beautiful, and their differences of beauty depend on the different proportions borne to each other by those infinitely small right lines of which they may be conceived as composed. When these lines are equal and contain equal angles, there can be no unity of sequence in them. The resulting curve, 380 SCULPTURE. the circle, is therefore the least beautiful of all curves. The simplest of the beautiful curves are the conic and the various spirals; but it is as rash as it is diffi- cult to endeavour to trace any ground of superiority or inferiority among the infinite number of the higher curves. 2 M. P., 59. 4. Lines of Repose. Hence I think that there is no desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of repose in external signs, and what I cautiously said respecting in- finity, I say fearlessly respecting repose, that no work of art can be great without it, and that all art is great in pro- portion to the appearance of it. It is the most unfailing test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion, nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not, and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work is the majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. Without regard to other qualities, we may look to this for our evi- dence, and by the search for this alone we may be led to the rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is good and great, for the paths of wisdom are all peace. We shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world horizon, Phidias, Michael AngelOj and Dante ; and then, separated from their great religious thrones only by less fulness and earnestness of Faith, Homer, and Shakspeare ; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspira- tion vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured insanities of modern times. There is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away SCULPTURE. 3S1 by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence of thought, forced expression, evil choice of subject, over-accumulation of materials, whether in paint- ing or literature, the shallow and unreflecting nothingness of the English schools of art, the strained and disgusting horrors of the French, the distorted feverishness of the German : — pretence, over-decoration, over-division of parts in architecture, and again in music, in acting, in dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of greatness or meanness entirely dependent on this single quality of repose. Particular instances are at present both needless and cannot but be inadequate ; needless, because I suppose that every reader, however limited his experience of art, can supply many for himself, and inadequate, because no number of them could illustrate the full extent of the in- fluence of the expression. I believe, however, that by comparing the disgusting convulsions of the Laocoon with the Elgin Theseus, we may obtain a general idea of the effect of the influence, as shown by its absence in one, and presence in the other, of two works which, as far as artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure parallel, not that I believe, even in this respect, the Laocoon justifiably comparable with the Theseus. I suppose that no group has exercised so pernicious an influence on art as this, a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of execu- tion and accumulation of technical knowledge."* * I would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the Laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of 31. Angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar (the Plague of the Fiery Serpents), but of which the choice was justified both by the place which the event holds in the typical system he had to arrange, and by the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation ; sources of sublimity entirely wanting to the slaughter of the Dardan priest. It is good to see how his gigantic in- 382 SCULPTURE. In Christian art, it would be well to compare the feel- ing of the finer among the altar tombs of the middle ages, with any monumental works after Michael Angelo, perhaps more especially with works of Roubilliac or Canova. In the Cathedral of Lucca, near the entrance door of the north transept, there is a monument of Jacopo delta Quercia's to Ilaria di Caretto, the wife of Paolo Guinigi. tellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling- hand of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are held up even in their venomed coldness to the cross ; and though irrel- evant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. For whatever knowl- edge of the human frame there may be in the Laocoon, there is certainly none of the habits of serpents. The fixing of the snake's head in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature as it is poor in composition of line. A large serpent never wants to bite, it wants to hold, it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extrem- ities, or throat, it seizes once and forever, and that before it coils, fol- lowing up the seizure with the twist of its body round the victim, as invisibly swift as the twist of a whip lash round any hard object it may strike, and then it holds fast, never moving the jaws or the body ; if its prey has any power of struggling left, it throws round another coil, without quitting the hold with the jaws; if Laocoon had had to do with real serpents, instead of pieces of tape with heads to them, he would have been held still, and not allowed to throw his arms or legs about. It is most instructive to observe the accuracy of Michael Angelo in the rendering of these circumstances ; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine -folds. Note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably overlooked by the sculptor of the Laocoon, as well as by Virgil — in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the Florentine's conception, and would have been better hinted by Virgil than that sickening distri- bution of venom on the garlands. In fact, Virgil has missed both of truth and impressiveness every way — the "morsu depascitur" is un- natural butchery — the "perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness — the SCULPTURE. 3S3 I name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other examples of the same period, but as furnishing an instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rude- ness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.* She is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet, not on the side, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive im- itation of pressure. It is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken for one. The hair is bound in a flat braid over " clamores liorrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the remarks on this statue in Sir Charles Bell's Essay on Expression (third edition, p. 192), where he has most wisely and uncontrovertibly deprived the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind, and shown its common and coarse intent of mere bodily exertion and agony, while he has confirmed Payne Knight's just condemnation of the passage in Virgil. If the reader wishes to see the opposite or imaginative view of the subject, let him compare Wihkelmann ; and Schiller, Letters on iEsthetic Culture. * Whenever, in monumental work, the sculptor reaches a deceptive appearance of life or death, or of concomitant details, he has gone too far. The statue should be felt for such, not look like a dead or sleep- ing body ; it should not convey the impression of a corpse, nor of sick and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble image of death or weariness. So the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armour nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these : a certain rude- ness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. Not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly Gothic types, but lines so few and grand as to appeal to the imagination only, and always to stop short of realization. There is a monument put up lately by a modern Italian sculptor in one of the side cnapels of Santa Croce, the face fine and the execution dexterous. But it looks as if the per- son had been restless all night, and the artist admitted to a faithful study of the disturbed bedclothes in the morning. 384 SCULPTURE. the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet, there is that about them which forbids breath, something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both. The hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are laid at length 1123011 the body, and the hands cross as they fall. The feet are hidden by the drapery, and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their tenderness. If any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb, could see, through his tears, one of the vain and unkind encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and heartless days, feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he would, I believe, receive such a lesson of love as no cold- ness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence dis- obey. 2 M. P. 67. h. Of Symmetry and Proportion. In all perfectly beautiful objects there is found the opposition of one part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained ; in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the excep- tion in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head), but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less per- fect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency to- wards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. In things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be be held with pleasure. Hence the necessity of what artists require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural in- SCULPTURE. 385 vention. Absolute equality is not required, still less ab- solute similarity. A mass of subdued colour may be balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and • latent line overpowered by a short and conspicuous one. The only error against which it is necessary to guard the reader with respect to symmetry is the confounding it with proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have been used as synonymous. Sym- metry is the opposition of equal quantities to each other. Proportion the connection of unequal quantities with each other. The property of a tree in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. Its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. In the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion. Vitruvius, presenting the proportions observed in Gre- cian statues, says : " Nature in the composition of the human frame has so ordained that naturally and ordinarily there should be such a proportion that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead or roots of the hair, should be one tenth part of the whole stature ; while the same proportion is preserved in the hand measured from the bend of the wrist to the tip of the middle finger. If the distance from the chin to the roots of the hair be divided into three parts, one of these terminates at the nostrils, the other at the eyebrows. The foot is a sixth of the stature ; the cubit, or distance from the elbow to the tip of the mid- dle finger, and also the breadth of the chest is a fourth. In the female figure the height is about one tenth less than in the male. The Apollo Belvidere is a little more than seven heads high, and the foot on which he stands is two and one fifth inches longer than his head. Albert Durer makes his figures eight heads tall, and the length of the foot one sixth of their height. The shape of the Venus is uncommonly slender. Her height is within a 386 SCULPTURE. fraction of five feet, and not more than seven and a half heads. Whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to its expression of the Aristotelian tWr???, that is to say of abstract justice, I leave the reader to deter- mine ; I only assert respecting it, that it is necessary to the dignity of every form, and that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty compara- tively ineffectual : though on the other hand it is to be observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a quality itself ; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind, unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. A form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many Elizabethan ornaments, and yet not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, hut bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry ; as in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for the plan and ground of ornamental designs ; so also it is ob- servable that foliage in which the leaves are concentric- ally grouped, as in the chestnuts and many shrubs — rho- dodendrons for instance — (whence the perfect beauty of the Alpine rose) — is f ar nobler in its effect than any other, so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and frequently occurs in the landscape of Tintoret and Titian, beside which all other landscape grandeur vanishes ; and even in the meanest things the rule holds, as in the ka- leidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given to forms alto- gether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal opposition ; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganiza- tion of sin, so that the seeking of them and submission to them is always marked in minds that have been sub-. SCULPTURE. 387 jected to high moral discipline, constant in all the great religions painters, to the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less timed and tranquil feeling. Equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of the picture, if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a corre- sponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath and above are arranged in like order. The Raffaelle at Blenheim, the Madonna di St. Sisto, the St. Cicilia, and all the works of Perugino, Francia, and John Bellini present some such form, and the balance at least is preserved even in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping, as always by Giotto ; and by Ghirlandajo in the introduc- tion of his chorus-like side figures, and by Tintoret most eminently in his noblest work, the Crucifixion, where not only the grouping but the arrangement of light is abso- lutely symmetrical. Where there is no symmetry, the effects of passion and violence are increased, and many very sublime pictures derive their sublimity from the want of it, but they lose proportionally in the diviner quality of beauty. In landscape the same sense of sym~ metry is preserved, as we shall presently see, even to artificialness, by the greatest men, and it is one of the principal sources of deficient feeling in the landscapes of the present day, that the symmetry of nature is sacrificed to irregular pictnresqueness. 2 M. P., 71. i. Unity. To the perfection in the beauty in lines, or colours, or forms, or masses, or multitudes, the appear- ance of some species of unity is, in the most determined sense of the word, essential. First, there is suhjectional unity, or the unity of differ- ent and separate things subjected to one and the same influence, as of the clouds driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents — and this of the unity of the sea waves, and this of the bending and 388 SCULPTURE. undulation of the forest masses ; and in creatures capable of will, it is the unity of will or of inspiration. Second, there is the unity of origin, which is of things, arising from one spring and source, as the unity of broth- erhood in man ; and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of beams of light. Third, there is the unity of sequence, as that of things that form links in chains, steps in ascent, and stages in journeys; and this in matter is the unity of communicated force from object to object, the beauty of continuous lines, and the orderly succession of motions and times. Fourth, there is the unity of membership, or essential unity, which is unity of things, separately imperfect, into a perfect whole. This is harmony. But this unity cannot exist between things similar to each other. Two or more equal or like things cannot be members one of another, nor can they form one or a whole thing. Two they must remain, both in nature and in our conception, so long as they remain alike, unless they are united by a third, different from both. Thus : the arms, which are alike each other, remain two arms in our conception : they could not be united by a third arm ; they must be united by something which is not an arm, and which, imperfect without them as they without it, shall form one perfect body ; nor is unity even thus ac- complished without a difference and opposition of direc- tion in the setting on of like members. 2 M/P., 51. j. Variety. Hence out of the necessity of unity arises that of variety. Its principle in our nature is the love of change and the power of contrast. But it is not variety as such, and in its highest degree, that is beautiful. A patched garment of many colours is not so agreeable as one of a single and continuous hue. A forest of all man- SCULPTURE. 389 ner of trees is poor, compared to a mass of trees of one species. Therefore it is only harmonious and chordal variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity that is rightly agreeable. 21. P., 52. h. Harmony. Harmony consists neither in likeness nor difference of parts, but only in that particular imperfec- tion in each of the harmonizing parts which can only be supplied by its fellow part. The several parts must make one complete whole. If one of them be perfect by itself, the other will be an excrescence. Both must be faulty when separate, and each corrected by the presence of the other. If the artist can accomplish this, the result will be beautiful : it will be a whole, an organized body, with dependent members; — he is an inventor. If not, let his separate features be as beautiful, as apposite, or as resem- blant as they may, they form no whole ; they are two mem- bers glued together. He is only a carpenter and joiner. I. Exaggeration. As exaggeration is the vice of all bad artists, and may be constantly resorted to without any warrant of imagination, it is necessary to note strictly the admissible limits. A colossal statue is necessarily no more an exaggera- tion of what it represents than a miniature is a diminu- tion. It need not be a representation of a giant, but a representation, on a large scale, of a man ; only it is to be observed, that as any plane intersecting a cone of rays between us and the object must receive an image smaller than the object, a small image is rationally and completely expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one. Hence I think that all statues above the Elgin standard, or that of Michael Angelo's Night and Morning, are, in a measure, taken by the eye for representations of giants, and I think them always disagreeable. The amount of 390 SCTTLPTTTEE. exaggeration admitted by Michael Angelo is valuable be- cause it separates the emblematic from the human form, and gives greater freedom to the lines of the frame. For notice of his scientific system of increase of size reference is made to Sir Charles Bell's remarks on the statues of the Medici Chapel ; but there is one circumstance which Sir Charles has not noticed — the extremities are exceedingly small in proportion to the limbs, by which means there is an expression given of strength and activity greater than in the ordinary human type, which appears to me to be an allowance for that alteration in proportion necessitated by the increase of size ; not but that Michael Angelo always makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest comparatively in his largest works. Such adaptations are not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral ; for as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation, we may expand the form as far as we choose, only let careful distinction be made between the size of the thing represented and the scale of the representation. The can- vas on which Fuseli has stretched his Satan in the schools of the Royal Academy is a mere concession to inability. He might have made him look more gigantic in one of a foot square. 2 M. P., 204. m. Anatomy. Such muscular development as is neces- sary to the perfect beauty of the body is to be rendered ; but that which is necessary to strength, or which appears to have been the result of laborious exercise, is inad- missible. No herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrad- ing the spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and sinew ; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on nor developed by exertion. Generally it is well to conceal anatomical development as far as may ; even Michael Angelo's anatomy interferes with his divinity. How far it is possible to subdue or SCULPTURE. 391 generalize the naked form I venture not to affirm, but I believe it is best to conceal it, as far as may , not with draperies light and undulating, that fall in with and ex- hibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and lin- ear, such as were constantly employed before the time of Raffaelle. I recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike or childlike and unspiritualized ; even Fra Bartolemeo's might with advantage be spared from the pictures at Lucca, and, in the hands of inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants ; those of Domenichio, in the Madonna del Rosario, and Martyrdom of St. Agnes, are peculiarly off ensive studies of bare-legged children, howling and kicking in volumes of smoke. Confusion seems to exist in the minds of subse- quent painters between Angels and Cupids. n. Bas-relief. The art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on flatness of surface. If nothing - more were needed than to make first the cast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to flat sur- face;— if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple, all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, and pin it to the wall : any ordinary trained sculptor, or even a mechanical workman, could produce a bas-relief ; but the business is to carve a round thing out of a, flat thing ; — to carve an apple out of a biscuit ; — to conquer as a subtle Florentine has conquered his mar- ble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded ; and carve Madonna and Child, roll- ing clouds, flying angels, and space of heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch thick where it is the thickest. The design in solid sculpture involves considerations of Weight in mass, 392 SCULPTURE. 4. Balance, Perspective and opposition, Projecting forms, Restraint of those which mnst not project, such as none but the greatest masters have ever com- pletely solved, and these not always. The schools of good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide themselves into four entirely distinct groups : 1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many- places, absolutely flat ; and the expression depends greatly on the lines of its outer contour, and on the fine incisions within them. 2d. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. The formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of course, severest obedience to this law. 3d. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted so as to throw out the forms against a background of shadows. 4th. Full Relief The statue completely solid in form, and unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected locally with some definite part of the building, so as to be still dependent on the shadow of its background and di- rection of protective line. The laws of sight and distance determine the proper depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed ; then observe what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster of problems will be offered us. You might at first imagine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of your subject be, suppose a foot, and the depth of your bas- relief an inch, then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it would be carved, you might SCULPTURE. imagine, at the depth of half an inch, and so the whole thing mechanically reduced to a scale. But not a bit of it. Here is a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses ; your whole subject, therefore, has the depth of two horses, side by side, say six or eight feet,, your bas-relief has, on the scale, say the depth of the third of an inch: Now, if you gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile awaj from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. The Greek has made the near leg of the off horse project much beyond the off leg of the near horse, and has put nearly the whole depth and power of his re- lief into the breast of the off horse, thus giving a most effective treatment to his perspective, projections and shadows. A. P., 149. 6. THE SCHOOLS OE SCULPTURE. The conditions necessary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the his- tory of the world, and then for a short time; nor for a short time only, but also in narroio districts, namely, in the valleys and Islands of Ionian Greece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apennine crests and the sea. I All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in the fifth century before Christ, and by Flor- ence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and the best of them are derivative : these two are consummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are both of equal rank, as essentially original and indepen- dent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, borrowed much from it; but it would have existed just ae strongly — and, perhaps, in some respects more nobly — 17* 394 SCULPTURE. had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set to each of these mightiest of the nations was, in- deed, practically the same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks found Phoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. The Italians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and had to make them human. The original power in the one case is easily traced ; in the other it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. But we mistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence the laws of design; she taught her, in reality, only the duty of truth. You remember that I told you the highest art could do no more than rightly represent the human form. This is the simple test, then, of a perfect school, — that it has represented the human form so that it is impossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, has been accomplished twice only : once in Athens, once in Florence. And so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and pjerfectly moidded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the face insuperably ; but I believe there is no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, by com- mand of his religion, it became his pride to despise, and his safety to mortify. The general course of your study here renders it de- sirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of Greek sculpture ; but I cannot lay these before you without giving undue prominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless I pre- SCULPTURE. 395 viously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, excellence of Christian art. In this and the last lecture of the present course," I shall endeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparison afterwards ; and not answering, observe, at present, for any generalization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and more qualified statements. And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indiffer- ently of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselves the same objects as sculp- ture. And this, indeed, Florentine, as opposed to Vene- tian painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century, nearly always did. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplest kind — engravings, or, at least, linear drawings both ; one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representing the same goddess — Aphrodite. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, to the best period of Greek art. The second is from one of the series of engravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, in 14S5, out of which I chose your first practical exercise — the sceptre of Apollo. I cannot, howrever, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for I am obliged to set the restricted type of the * The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do not choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in fuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the Sixth Lecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of the pub- lished course on Florentine Sculpture. 396 SCULPTURE. Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks beside the universal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, and sea ; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek, and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both characteristic. The Greek Terms Urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waters symbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand ; but the Italian Aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and only half risen ; her limbs are still in the sea, her merely animal strength fill- ing the waters with their life ; but her body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky ; her hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. The Terms Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men, has power only over lawful and domestic love ; therefore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly : her feet delicately sandalled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her forehead ; and though, because there's such a quantity of it, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she has fastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendant jewels at the border; and a very small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round the neck, and no more. On the contrary, the Aphrodite of the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked ; and her long hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. 1. These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because the artists are thinking of separate "powers / they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next to indicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of mind. SCULPTURE. 397 First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is because a Greek thought no one could possibly love any but pretty people ; but an Italian thought that love could give dignity to the meanest form that it in- habited, and light to the poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will not condescend to be pretty. Secondly. In the Greek Yenus the breasts are broad and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical profile ; — (you are allowed on purpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton) ; — also the right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of the front of the right limb and knee ; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering one, the seed vessel prominent. These sioris all mean that her essential function is child- o bearing. On the contrary, in the Italian Yenus the breasts are so small as to be scarcely traceable ; the body strong and almost masculine in its angles ; the arms meagre and un- attractive, and she lays a decorative garlaud of flowers on the earth. These siorts mean that the Italian thought of love as the strength of an eternal spirit, forever helpful ; and forever crowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor harvest, and bloom where there is neither death nor birth. Thirdly. The* Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straightforward. Xot one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. The Italian xVphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied ; the Italian incapable of rest ; she has had no thought nor care for herself ; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the Greeks ; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with 398 SCULPTURE. the sea, or clinging to her body ; only the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the early Christian pictures of Pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon the heads of Angelico's seraphim. There are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. This binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight course of one great system of art method, from that Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh Century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era — nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which it does in compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her' shoulders comes from the Athena of Corinth ; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the charac- teristic difference in every conception of *the schools, the Greek never representing expression, the Italian primarily seeking it; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the conception of love ; from the tranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, ac- cepting its immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an infinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine in jealousy, crying, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave." 2. The vast issues dependent on this change in the concep- tion of the ruling passion of the human soul, I will en- deavour to show you on a future occasion : in my present SCULPTURE. 399 lecture, I shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions from Floren- tine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or despair. These great differences are mainly the following. 3. A Greek never expresses momentary passion ; a Florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill. When you are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at the casts from the statues in the pedi- ment of the Temple of Minerva at JEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date ;— about 600 B.C., cer- tainly before 580 — of the purest kind ; and you have the representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the .zEacidse at Troy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt whatever to represent expression in the features, none to give complexity of action or ges- ture ; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visible tem- porary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defence ; several kneeling to draw their bows. But all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same smile. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. You are startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointed out to you as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you could distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana from Juno by her being slender. That is very true ; but those are general distinctions of class, not spe- cial distinctions of personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician — between a matron and a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the 400 SCULPTURE. simple-hearted hero from the subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl-goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. There is no personal character in true Greek art : — abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue and vice, — yes : but there is no individuality ; and the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones ; though a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the Italian is in his canon of it, — " old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal Furies." " But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give ideal beauty ? " So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have just set before you \ Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful % Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren and Arethusa have well-formed and regu- lar features ; but I am quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice you will think neither reach even the average standard of pretty English girls. The Yenus Urania suggests at first the idea of a very charming per- son, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. And remember, these are chosen examples ; the best I can find of art current in Greece at the great time ; and if even I were to take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one of them excels the Yenus of Melos ; and she, as I have already asserted, in The Queen of the Air, p. 169, has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simpli- city. You need only look at two or three vases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained but unattemtpted ; and SCULPTURE. 401 finally, — and this yon may accept as a conclusive proof of Greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty — there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beanty in infancy, or early childhood. And as the Greek strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was — Right. He rules over the arts to this day, and will for- ever, because he sought not first for beauty, not first for passion, or for invention, but for tightness / striving to display, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course, every nation's character is con- nected with that of others surrounding or preceding it ; and in the best Greek work you will find some things that are still false or fanciful ; but whatever in it is false or fanciful is not the Greek part of it — it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, or Pelasgian }3art. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity : — Eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them with two ; — Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drew them with men's ; and out of all fallacy, dis- proportion and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth. 4. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which encumbered our thoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect to the art of the world. That relation is strangely duplicate; for on one side Greek art is the root of all simplicity y and on the other, of all complexity. a. On one side, 1 say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you were for some prolonged period to study Greek sculp- ture exclusively in the Elgin Room of the British Museum, and were then suddenly transported to the Hotel de Cluny, 402 SCULPTURE. or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workman ship, you would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toys of the rest of mankind. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain and mean decoration — all weak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire of their living soul. Distinctively from other races, as I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisement to what was untrue. So far as this is found in any other school hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the Greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning of the myth of Daedalus as the giver of motion to statues. The literal change from the binding together of the feet to their separation, and the other modifications of action which took place, either in progressive skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides), these literal changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life. The figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs sepa- rate enough ; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at Branchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, the work of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life. In this aspect of it, then, I say, it is the simplest and nakedest of lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. h. As the simplest, so also it is the most complex of human art. I told you in my fifth Lecture, showing you the spotty picture of Yelasquez, that an essential Greek SCULPTURE. 403 character is a liking for things that are daqypled. And you cannot but have noticed how often and how preva- lently the idea which gave its name to the Porch of Polygnotus, " arod TroucCkr) " — the Painted Porch — occurs to the Greeks as connected with the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you find that, next to perfumes, pretty ladies and dice, you must have in it " iroiKikia^ which, observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound — ■ the " ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's " iroacCkoi vfjivoi " — runs through the compass of all Greek art-descrip- tion ; and if, instead of studying that art among marines, yon were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, your im- pression of it would be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and cheqneredness, " ev dyyeccv 'Epfcecnv iraynroiKikoi^ ;" and of the artist's delighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spotted things ; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimit- edly. Indeed, they hold it complimentary even to a trout to call him a " spotty." Do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which Pausanias says were spot- ted, so that they were like thrushes, and which, the Arca- dians told him, could speak ? In this last iroitciXia, how- ever, they disappointed him. " I, indeed, saw some of them caught," he says, " but I did not hear any of them speak, though I waited beside the river till sunset." 5. The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous ; " variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of 404 SCULPTURE. giistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel ; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof — quartering of the Christian shield, — rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture ; in fine, all enlarge- ment, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the Pisan Chapel of the Thorn. Kot that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as many as we do ourselves, nearly ; — he died of his mistakes at last — as we shall die of them ; but so far he was sep- arated from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations— so far as he was Greek — it was by his rightness. He lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. He became Grceculus esuriens, little, and hungry, and every man's errand-boy, by his ini- quity, and his competition, and his love of tajk. But his Grsecism was. in having done, at least at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, use- ful, and eternally true ; and, as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible to man. A. P., Sixth Lecture. PART III. ARCHITECTURE. AEOHITEOTUEE. CHAPTER I. GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. All European architecture, bad and good, old and new, is derived from Greece, through Rome, and coloured and perfected from the East. The history of architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes and direc- tions of this derivation. Understand this once for all : if you hold fast this great connecting clue, you may string all the types of the successive architectural inventions upon it like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian 'orders are the roots, the one of all the Romanesque, massy-capital- ed buildings — Norman, Lombard, Bizantine, and what else you can name of the kind ; and the Corinthian of all Goth- ic, Early English, French, German, and Tuscan. Now observe : these old Greeks gave the shaft ; Rome gave the arch ; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and the arch, the framework and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japheth ; the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem. There is high probability that the Greek received his shaft system from Egypt ;* but I do not care to keep this earlier derivation in the mind of the reader. It is only necessary that he should be able to refer to a fixed point of origin, when the form of the shaft was first perfected. But it may be incidentally observed, that if the Greeks did indeed receive their Doric from Egypt, then the three families of the East have each contributed their * See Plate 1, page 413*. 408 GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. part to its noblest architecture : and Ham, the servant of the others, furnishes the sustaining or bearing member, the shaft ; Japheth the arch ; Shem the spiritualisation of both. I have said that the two orders, Doric and Corinthian, are the roots of all European architecture. You have, per- haps, heard of five orders ; but there are only two real orders ; aud there never can be any more till doomsday. On one of these orders the ornament is convex : those are the Doric, Norman, and whatever else you can recollect of the kind. On the other, the ornament is concave ; those are Corinthian, Early English, Decorated, and what else you recollect of that kind. The transitional form, in which the ornamental line is straight, is the centre or root of both. All other orders are varieties of those, or phan- tasms and grotesques altogether indefinite in number and species. This Greek architecture, then, with its two orders, was clumsily copied and varied by the Romans with no par- ticular result, until they begun to bring the arch into ex- tensive practical service ; except only that the Doric capital was spoiled in endeavours to mend it, and the Corinthian much varied and enriched with fanciful, and often very beautiful imagery. And in this state of things came Christianity : seized upon the arch as her own ; decorated, and delighted in it ; invented a new Doric capital to replace the spoiled Roman one ; and all over the Roman empire set to work, with such materials as were nearest at hand, to express and adorn herself as best she could. This Roman Christian architecture is the exact expression of the time, very fervid and beautiful, — but very imperfect ; in many respects ignorant, and yet radiant with a strong, child-like light of the imagination, which flames up under Constantine, illumes all the shores of the Bosphorus and the Egean and the Adriatic sea, and then gradually, GENERAL HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. 409 as the people give themselves up to idolatry, becomes corpse-like. The architecture sinks into a settled form — a strange, gilded, and embalmed repose: it, with the religion it expressed ; and so would have remained forever — does remain, where its languor has been undisturbed. But rough wakening was ordained for it. This Christian art of the declining empire is divided into two great branches, Western and Eastern ; one cen- tred at Home, the other at Bizantium, of which the one is the early Christian Romanesque, properly so called, and the other, carried, to higher imaginative perfection by Greek workmen, is distinguished from it as the Bizantine. But I wish the reader, for the present, to class these two branches of art together in his mind, they being, in points of main importance, the same ; that is to say, both of them a true continuance and sequence of the art of old Rome itself, flowing uninterruptedly down from the fountain-head, and entrusted always to the best workmen who could be found — Latins in Italy and Greeks in Greece ; and thus both branches may be ranged under the general term of Christian Romanesque, an architec- ture which had lost the refinement of Pagan art in the degradation of the empire, but which was elevated by Christianity to higher aims, and by the fancy of the Greek workmen endowed with brighter forms. 1 S. V., 14, § xvii.-xxi. 18 CHAPTER II. THE VALUE OF LAWS OF ARCHITECTURE. All written or writable law respecting the arts is for the childish and ignorant : in the beginning of teaching, it is possible to say that this or that must or must not be done ; and laws of colour and shade may be taught, as laws of harmony are to the young scholar in music. But the moment a man begins to be anything deserving the name of an artist, all this teachable law has become a matter of course with him; and, if, thenceforth, he boast himself anywise in the law, or pretends that he lives and works by it, it is a sure sign that he is merely tithing cummin, and that there is no true art or religion in him. For the true artist has that inspiration in him which is above all law, or rather, which is continually working out such magnifi- cent and perfect obedience to supreme law, as can in no- wise be rendered by line and rule. There are more laws perceived and fulfilled in the single stroke of a great wrorkman, than could be written in a volume. His science is inexpressibly subtle, directly taught him by his Maker, not in anywise communicable or imitable. Neither can any written or definitely observable laws enable us to do anything great. It is possible, by measuring and adminis- tering quantities of colour, to paint a room wall so that it shall not hurt the eye; but there are no laws by observing which we can become Titians. It is possible so to measure and administer syllables, as to construct harmonious verse ; but there are no laws by which we can write Iliads. Out of the poem or the picture, once produced, men may elicit laws by the volume, and study them with advantage to THE VALUE OF LAWS OF ARCHITECTURE. 411 the better understanding of the existing poem or picture ; but no more write or paint another, than by discovering the laws of vegetation they can make a tree to grow. And therefore, wheresoever we find the system or formality of rules much dwelt upon, and spoken of as anything else than a help for children, there we may be sure that noble art is not even understood, far less reached. And thus it was with all the common and public mind in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The greater men, indeed, broke through the thorn hedges; and, though much time was lost by the learned among them in writing Latin verses and anagrams, and arranging the framework of quaint sonnets and dexterous syllogisms, still they tore their way through the sapless thicket by force of intellect or of piety ; for it was not possible that, either hi literature or in painting, rules could be received by any strong mind, so as materially to interfere with its originality; so that in spite of the rules of the drama we had Shakespeare, and in spite of the rules of art we had Tintoret — both of them, to this day, doing perpetual violence to the vulgar scholar- ship and dim-eyed proprieties of the multitude. (3 S. Y., 1067.) And yet, I am very sure that no reader who has given attention to what I have written in the former volumes of the " Stones of Venice," more especially to the tendency of the last chapter of the " Seven Lamps," will suppose me to underrate the importance or dispute the authority of law. But art law must be written on the heart, otherwise its only use can be to guide the simple or restrain the lawless and vicious. 3 S. v., 105, § lxxxvii. CHAPTER III. THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. Though in poetry and painting, as wo have seen, original minds were a law unto themselves, in architecture it was not so ; for that was the art of the multitude, and was affected by all their errors ; and the great men who entered its field, like Michael Angelo, found expression for all the best part of their minds in sculpture, and made the archi- tecture merely its shell. So the simpletons and sophists had their way with it : and the reader can have no conception of the inanities and puerilities of the writers, who, with the help of Yitruvius, re-established its " five orders," de- termined the proportions of each, and gave the various receipts for sublimity and beauty which have thence- forward been followed to this day. 3 S. V., 108. Now there are three good architectures in the world, and there never can be more, correspondent to these three simple ways of covering in a space, which is the original function of all architectures. And those three architect- ures are pure exactly in proportion to the simplicity and directness with which they express the condition of roof- ing on which they are founded. They have many inter- esting varieties, according to their scale, manner of deco- ration, and character of the nations by whom they are practised ; but all their varieties are finally referable to the three great heads — ■ Fig. 1. . ox rue J^vriieu. [ I /V^Sj //\\ -Romanesque. n n n n ff n tectum of the B A. Greeh. Architecture of the Lintel. Archi- tecture of the Round Arch. C. Gothic. Architecture of the Gable. THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. 413 All the architects in the world will never discover any other way of bridging a space than these three, the lintel, the round arch, the gable ; they may vary the curve of the arch, or curve the sides of the gable or break them down ; but in doing this they are merely modifying or subdivid- ing, not adding to the generic form. The three name's, Greek, Romanesque, and Gothic, are indeed inaccurate when used in this vast sense, because they imply national limitations ; but the three architect- ures may nevertheless not unfitly receive their names from those nations by whom they were carried to the highest per- fections. We may thus briefly state their existing varieties. A. Greeh : Lintel Architecture. — Its simplest style is Stonehenge ; its most refined, the Parthenon ; its noblest, the Temple of Karnak. In the hands of the Egyptian, it is sublime ; in those of the Greek, pure ; in those of the Roman, rich ; and in those of the Renaissance Builders, effeminate. 2 S. V., 236, 7. JV. B. — As Mr. Ruskin nowhere formally presents these " orders," the Editor deems it well to mention, briefly, the characteristics claimed for them by Yitruvius. There are three primary Greek orders, viz. : The Doric, The Ionic, The Corinthian. Two more were added by the Romans, viz. : The Tuscan, a modification of the Doric, and The Composite, a modification of the Corinthian. An order consists of "1. A Base, % A Column, 3. An Entablature. The separate parts of which are given in the annexed Plate 1. 414 THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. THE GREEK ORDERS. 1. The Doric was the oldest and simplest of the Greek orders. The shafts of the columns are fluted by twenty flutes, not quite a semicircle in depth, and separated by sharp edges, called arrises, and not by a flat fillet. It had no base, as used by the Greeks. The height of a Doric column is usually from seven to eight times its diameter at its bottom. The frieze always has the triglyph. Plate 2. 2. The Ionic is lighter than the Doric, with shafts usually though not always fluted, with a fillet between the flu tii] gs. . The total height of the column ought not to exceed nine times its diameter at its base, if it has one. The base was added by the Romans. The Ionic capital is distinguished by its spiral line, in imitation, Yitruvius says (see 1 S. V., Appendix), of a woman's hair curled. Plate 3. 3. The Corinthian, the lightest and most elegant of the three orders, has a fluted column, nine or ten times as high as the diameter of its base. Its capital is its distinguish- ing feature. It is said that Callimachus, the architect, saw, at a grave, a basket of toys with a flat tile on top, around wmich grew acanthus leaves, which, reaching the tile, fell over in graceful curves. He at once made it the design of the Corinthian capital. The Corinthian capital is beautiful because it expands under the abacus just as nature would have expanded it, and because it looks as if the leaves had one root, though that root is unseen. Plate 4. 4. The Composite, first used by the Romans, was a com- position of the Ionic scroll or volutes, with the acanthus leaves of the Corinthian. The height of its column is the same as that of the Corinthian. Plate 5. 414^ 33t~. .66--- "&o" 44-" .to:. 39 [-35 r 30 29' _ .. _ _ 7 : : LALALAULALA 35 29'M. -2-8 - - TJBLlLlMtr 4 4 f| fw g g fg g K» H» fttf T — Y-^ 7 4Uf ::ra:t::*? Plate 4. — Roman Corintihan Order. THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. 415 5. The Tuscan^ a variety of the Doric, was founded by the Romans for the basement of buildings, and is thus dis- tinguished for its massiveness and strength. Its column is seldom higher than from five-and-a-half to seven times its diameter at the bottom. Plate 6. In the Doric temple the influence of the triglyph and cornice is rather in their simplicity and severity than in any beauty. The fluting of the column, I doubt not, was the Greek symbol of the bark of the tree. The beauty in it is felt to be of a low order. All the beauty it had was dependant on the precision of its ovolo, a natural curve of the most frequent occurrence. B. Romanesque : Round-arch Architecture. — Xever thoroughly developed until Christian times. It falls into two great branches, Eastern and Western, or 1. Bizantine, 2. Lombardic, changing respectively in process of time, with certain helps from each other, into 1. Arabian Gothic. 2. Teutonic Gothic. Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo of Pisa ; its most perfect Bizantine type (I believe) is St. Mark's at Venice. Its highest glory is, that it has no corruption. It perishes in giving birth to another architecture as noble as itself. 2 S. V., 237 ; see also S. L., 86. C. Gothic : Architecture of the Gable. 1. GENERAL DISTINCTIONS. This is the daughter of the Romanesque ; and, like the Romanesque, divided into two great branches, Eastern and Western, or 1. Pure Gothic, 2. Arabian Gothic, 416 THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. of which the latter is called Gothic only because it has many Gothic forms, pointed arches, vaults, etc., but its spirit remains Bizantine, more especially in the form of the roof-mash. Observe the distinction between 1. The roof, seen from below. 2. The roof-mask, seen from above. [By roof, Ruskiii means the first thing that bridges space, whether lintel or arch, round or pointed.] In the Greek, the Western Romanesque, and the Western Gothic, the roof-mask is the gable ; in the Eastern Romanesque and Eastern Gothic it is the dome. The three groups, in the hands of the Western builders, may be thus simply represented : rig. 2. a, Greek, a flat or hor- izontal roof, and a low gable or roof -mask; b, Western Romanesque, a round arch for a roof and a low gable for a 0 g p roof- mask ; c, Western or true Gothic, a pointed arch for a roof proper and a sharp gable for a roof-mask. Eow, observe, first, that the relation of the roof -mask to the roof proper, in the Greek type, forms XhvX pediment, which gives its most striking character to the temple, and is the principal recipient of its sculptured decoration. See Doric Temple, Plate 2 (opposite). The relation of these lines, therefore, is just as important in the Greek as in the Gothic schools. Secondly, observe the steepness in the Romanesque and Gothic gables. This is not an unimportant distinction, nor an undecided one. The Romanesque gable does not pass gradually into the more elevated form; there is a great gulf between the two ; the whole effect of South- ern architecture being dependant on the use of the flat A THE SCHOOLS OF ARCHITECTURE. 417 Fig. gable, and all Northern upon that of the acute. I need not dwell here upon the difference between the lines of an Italian village or the flat tops of most Italian towers, and the most peaked gables and spires of the North, at- taining their most fantastic development, I believe, in Belgium ; but it may be well to state the law of separa- tion, namely, that a Gothic gable must have all its angles aetcte, and the Romanesque one must have the upper one obtuse ; or, to give a simple practical rule, take any gable, a or b (Fig. XIII., 2 S. V., 239), and strike a semicircle on its base ; if its top rises above, as at b, it is Gothic ; if it falls below it, a Romanesque one ; but the & best forms in each group are those whi ch are distinct- ly steep or distinctly low. In the figure, f is the aver- age of Romanesque slope, and g of Gothic. But although we do not find a transition from one school into the other in the slope of the gables, there is Fig. 4. I a o g

(Fr. Dubuffe Historical Painter. Fr. Dufresnoy, Charles Alphonso Painter. Amor. Dunlap, William Historical Painter 1766 Ger. Durer, Albert (and author) Pa., Eng., Sc., db Arch.. 1471 1528 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 475 NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED. And Salvator, v. 244-254 ; deficiency in perception of the beau- tiful, iv. 320 ; education of, v. 240-249 ; mind of, how shown, v. 29'J ; decision of, iv. 76, ii. 221 ; tree-drawing, v. 71 ; finish of, iii. 43, 128 ; gloomily minute, i. 88 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; draw- ing of crests, iv. 211 ; love of sea, v. 248. Pictures referred to — Dragon of the Apocalypse, iv. 211 ; Fall of Lucifer, iv. 197 ; The Cannon, v. 248 ; Knight and Death, iii. 97, 102, v. 249, 252 ; Melancholia, iv. 45, iii. 100, v. 252, 253 ; Root of Apple-tree in Adam and Eve, iii. 120, v. 71 ; St. Hubert, v. 104, 248 ; St. Je- rome, v. 248. Ger. Eberhardt Sculptor. Eng. Eginton, Francis (restorer of the art of painting on glass) Painter 1737 1805 Eng. Etty, William Historical Painter 1787 1849 Richness and play of colour of, ii. 199 ; Morning Prayer, ii. 223 ; Still Life, ii. 223 ; St. John, ii. 223. Gr. Eupompus (founder of school at Sicyon) . . Painter. Dutch. Eyck, John Van (said to have invented painting in oil) Painter 1370 1441 Deficiency in perception of the beautiful, iv. 326. Fielding, Copley 1787 1855 Faithful rendering of nature, i. 96 ; feeling in the drawing of inferior mountains, i. 303 ; foliage of, i. 401 ; water of, i. 343 ; moorland foreground, i. 185 ; use of crude colour, i. 96 ; love of mist, iv. 72 ; rainclouds of, i. 245 ; sea of, i. 346 ; truth of, i. 245. Picture referred to — Bolton Abbey, i. 98. Eng. Flaxman, John Sculptor 1755 1826 Alpine stones, iv. 302 ; Pool of Envy (in his Dante), iv. 301. Francia, Francesco 1450 1518 Architecture of the Renaissance style, i. 101 ; finish of, iii. 126; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42 ; Madonnas of, ii. 219 ; Nativ- ity, iii. 49. Swiss. Fuseli, Henry (resided in England) Painter 1741 1825 Gaddi, Taddeo 1300 1352 Treatment of the open sky, ii. 42. X Eng. Gainsborough, Thomas Landscape Painter 1727 178S Colour of, i. 91 ; execution of, i. xx. preface ; aerial distances of, i. 91 ; imperfect treatment of details, i. 81. Ital. Ghiberti, Laurence, a Florentine Sculptor 1378 1455 Leaf moulding and bas-reliefs of, v. 38. Eng. Gibson • Sculptor. Ital. Giordani, Luke (The Proteus of painting). Pa inter 1629 1704 Ghirlandajo 1449 1498 Architecture of the Renaissance style, i. 101 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119; reality of conception, iii. 59; rocks of, iii. 245, 321 ; symmetrical arrangement of pictures, ii. 73 ; treatment of the open sky, ii, 42 ; quaintness of landscape, iii. 329 ; garlanded backgrounds of, v. 97. Pictures referred to,— Adoration of the Magi, iii. 319 ; Baptism of Christ, iii. 321 ; Pisa, iv. 1. Ital. Giorgione, Barbarelli Painter 1477 1511 Boyhood of. v. 801-309; perfect intellect of, v. 300: landscape of. i. 85 ; luminous sky of, ii. 42 ; modesty of, ii. 122, 123 ; one of the few who has painted leaves, v. 38 ; frescoes of, v. 299, 354 ; sacrifice of form to colour by, ii. 198 ; two figures, or the Fondaco do' Tedeschi, i. 108 ; one of the seven supreme colour- ists, v. 335 (note). Ital. Giotto (one of the earliest modern) Painter, Sculp, &, Arch. .1276 1336 Cramped by traditional treatment, ii. 175 ; decoration of, ii. 214; influence of hills- upon, iv. 860 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 1*19; landscape Of, ii. 212; power in detail, iii. 59; reality of conception, iii. 59; symmetrical arrangement in pic- tures, ii. 72 ; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42 ; unison of ex- pressional and pictorial power in detail, iii. 80 ; use of mountain distances, iv. 347. Pictures referred to — Baptism of Christ, ii. 172; Charity, iii. 101 ; Crucifixion and Arena frescoes, ii. 127; Sacrifice for the Fri«des, i. 86. 476 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. Fr. Fr. Fr. Ital. Amer. Ital. Ital. Giraldon, Francis Sculptor : 1630 Girodet — Trioson, Aime Louis Painter. 1767 Gougon, John ("The French Phidias"). .Sculptor. Gozzoli, Benozzo 1408 Landscape of, ii. .212; love of simple domestic incident, iii. 29; reality of conception, iii. 59 ; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42. Greenough, Horatio Sculptor 1805 Guercino (real name Francis Barbieri).. . . Painter. 1590 Hagar, ii. 128. Guido Beni (excelled in beauty of expres- sion and grace) Painter 1574 Sensuality, ii. 124, 134 ; use of base models for portraiture, ii. 119. Picture — Susannah and the Elders, ii. 124. DIED. 1715 1824 1572 1478 1852 1606 1642 Harding, J. D 1798 Aspen, drawing of, iv. 75 ; execution of, i. 176, 397, iv. 75 ; chiaroscuro of, i. 176. 400 ; distance of, i. 186 ; foliage, i. 382, 397 ; trees of, v. 66 (note), i. 382 ; rocks of, i. 309 ; water of, i. 345. Pictures referred to — Chamonni, i. 282 ; Sunrise on the Swiss Alps, i. 99. Eng. Harlow, George Henry Painter 1787 Eng. Haydon, B. B Historical Painter 1786 Eng. Heath, Charles Engraver Flem. Hemling 1450 Finish of, iii. 126. Eng. Hilton. William Historical Painter 1786 Flem. Hobbema, Mynderhout Landscape Painter 1611 Niggling of, v. 39, 40 ; distances of, i. 199 ; failures of, i. 195, 393 ; landscape in Dulwich Gallery, v. 39. Eng. Hogarth, William Painter. 1697 Swiss. Holbein, Hans Portrait & Historical Pa. ,1498 Best northern art represented by, v. 221, 245 ; the most accu- rate portrait painter, v. 338 ; Dance of Death, iii. 97 ; glorious severity of, ii. 122 ; cared not for flowers, v. 97. Ger. Hollar, Wenceslaus (executed 2400 plates). Engraver 1607 Dutch. Hooghe, De Painter 1643 Quiet painting of, v. 297. Flem. Honthorst, Gerard (called Gherarda dal Notte) Painter 1592 Dutch. Houbraken, Jacob (600 portraits) Engraver 1698 Fr. Houdon (executed statue of Franklin). . . Sculptor 1746 Fr. Houel, John (Picturesque Travels, &c.) . .Painter & Engraver 1736 Hunt, Holman Painter Finish of, i. 410 (note). Pictures referred to — Awakened Con- science, iii. 93: Claudio and Isabella, iii. 28; Light of the World, iii. 30, 41, 59, 78, 340, iv. 58 (note) ; Christ in the Tem- ple, v. 364. Hunt, William 1790 Anecdote of, iii. 90 ; Farmer's Girl, iii. 85 ; foliage of, i. 401 ; great ideality in treatment of still life, ii. 199. Dutch. Huysum, John Van (flowers and fruit) Painter 1682 Amer. Inman, Henry Portrait & Landsc. Pa. .1801 Eng. Flem. Ital. Swiss. Ger. Jones, Inigo Architect. . Jordaens, Jacob Painter. . . Julio, Romano Painter & ..1572 1595 rchitect 1492 1863 1819 1846 1849 Kauffman, M. A. Angelica C. (in Eng- land) Poetical Painter 1747 Kneller, Sir Godfrey (resided in Eng\and)Painler 1648 1839 1699 1764 1564 1677 1708 1660 1780 1828 1813 1864 1749 1846 1652 1670 1546 1807 1723 Eng. Landseer, Edwin Animal & Historical Pa . 1873 More a natural historian than a painter, ii. 198 (note) ; animal painting of, v. 272 ; Dog of, ii. 198 ; Old Cover Hack, deficiency of colour, ii. 222 : Itandom Shot, ii. 222 ; Shepherd's Chief Mourner, i. 9, 30 : Ladies' Pets, imperfect grass drawing, v. 105 ; Low Life, v. 281. Dutch. Lairesse, Gerard (excelled in expedition).. Painter & Engraver 1640 1711 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NATION, Fr. Fr. Ger. Fr. Eng. Amer. Fr. Ital. Eng. Gr. Amer. Ital. Flem. Ger. Ital. Ger. Fr. Swiss. Eng. Span. Eng. Eng. Eng. Eng. Dutch. Dutch. Eng. NAME AND PROFESSION. Landon, C. P. (more eminent as an author of works on the fine arts) Painter. Laurati .1-282 ii. 12. . Portrait & Hist. Painter. 1769 1019 1(348 1617 1794 1810 1494 1400 1803 324 Treatment of the ope Lawrence, Sir Thomas. . . Satan of, ii. 204. Lewis, John Climax of water-colour drawing, i. 35 ; success in seizing Span- ish character, i. 121. Lebrun, Charles (painter to Louis XIY.). .Painter Lely, Sir Peter (painter to Charles II. of England) Painter Le Sieur, Eustace (the French Raphael) . . Painter Leslie, C. R Painter Leutze, Emmanuel Leyden, Lucas, Dammesz Painter & Engraver Linnell Cumuli of, i. 141 (note). Picture referred to — Eve of the Del- uge, ii. 221. Lippi. Filippino Heads of,"ii. 215 ; Tribute Money, iii. 322. Liverseege, Henr y Painter Lysippus (made 600 statues) Sculptor f. b. c. Malbone, Edward G Miniature Painter 1777 Mantegna, Andrea - Painter 1431 Pamting of stones by, iv. 296 ; decoration of, ii. 215. Masaccio Painter 1402 Painting of vital truth from vital present, iii. 94: introduction of portraiture into pictures, ii. 119 ; mountain scenery of. i. 93, iv. 293 : Deliverance of Peter, ii. 217 ; Tribute Money, i. 83, 93, iii. 322.' Matsys, Quintin Painter 1460 Mayer Sculptor. Mazzuolo. Francis (inventor of etching). . .Painter 1503 Memmi, Simone 1285 Abstract of the Duomo at Florence, at Santa Maria Novella, i. 101 : introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119. Mengs, Anthony R. (the Raphael of Ger- many) Painter 1729 Mumard, Peter Painter 1610 Millais Huguenot, iii. 93. Mind, Gottfried Painter 1768 Mino da Fiesole Trutn and tenderness of, ii. 181 ; two statues by. ii. 197. Moreland. George Painter • 1764 Mulready 1796 Pictures by— The Butt, perfect colour, ii. 221 ; Burchell and So- phia, ii. 221 ; Choosing of the Wedding Gown, ii. 221 : Gravel Pit, ii. 222. Murillo, Bartholomew S Painter 1613 Painting of, ii. 82. .Historical Painter 1785 Lr. Newton, Gilbert Stuart , Nesfield Treatment of water by, i. 344. Nollekins, Joseph Sculptor 1737 Northcote, James Painter 1746 Opie, John Painter 1761 Orcagna lS&ti Influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; intense solemnity and energy of. iii. 29: unison of expresaional and pictorial power in detail of, iii. 30: Inferao, ii. 127: Last Judgment, ii. 178, iii. 58: Ma- donna, ii. 197; Triumph of Death, iii. 59, 100. Ostade, Adrian Van (interiors) Familiar Life. Painter. . .1610 Otitade; Isaac (winter scenes) Painter 1617 Owen, William Painter. ................ 1769 1730 Pajou, Augustin Sculptc 478 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. Ital. Palladio, Andrew Architect 1518 Span. Palomino de Castro Y Velasco, A. A Painter. . . : .1653 Gr. Parrhasius, of Ephesus. Painter f. B. c. 420 Amer. Peale, Charles W Histor. & Portrait Pa. . . 1741 Fr. Perrault, Claudius (designed the Front of the Louvre) Architect 1613 Ital. Perugino, Peter (the master of Baphael) . . Painter 1446 Decoration of, ii. 214 ; finish of, ii. 82 ; formalities of, iii. 128, 322 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; landscape of, ii. 212 ; mountain dis- tances of, iv. 348 ; right use of gold by, i. 1U6 ; rationalism of, how affecting his works, v. 217 ; sea of, i. 342 ; expression of, inspiration by, ii. 218. Pictures referred to — Annunciation, ii. 43 ; Assumption of the Virgin, ii. 43 : Michael the Archangel, ii. 218 ; Nativity, iii. 49 ; Portrait of Himself, ii. 134 ; Queen- Vir- gin, iii. 52 ; St. Maddelena at Florence, i. 342. Petitot, John (excelled in enamel) Painter .1607 Phidias (the most famous of ancient sculp- tors) Sculptor b. c. 498: Picart, Bernard Engraver 1663 Pickersgill ^ Contest of Beauty, ii. 223. Pigalle, John Baptiste Sculptor 1714 Piles, Boger de (an author and painter). .Painter 1635 Pinturicchio i 1454 Finish of, ii. 82 : Madonnas of, ii. 219. Piranesi, John Baptiste (16 vols, folio) Engraver 1707 Pisellino, Filippo Bocks of, iii. 245. Polycletus (statue of Juno at Argos) Sculptor B. c. 430 Pordencne, Begillo da Painter 1584 Potter. Paul (unequalled in animal paint- ing) Painter 1625 Landscape, in Grosvenor Gallery, ii. 220 ; Landscape, No. 176, Dulwich Gallery, i. 3S6 : foliage of, compared with Hobbima*s and BuysdaeFs, v. 38 ; best Dutch painter of cattle, 269. Poussin, Gaspar (Dughet) landscape Painter 1613 Foliage of, i. 381-390; distance of, i. 199: narrowness of, con- trasted with vastness of nature, i. 176; mannerism of, i. 88.. ii. 44, iv. 36 : perception of moral truth, i. 75 : skies of, i. 224, 227 ; want of imagination, ii. 155 ; false sublimity, iv. 240. Pictures referred to — Chimborazo, i. 205 ; Destruction of Niobe's Chil- dren, in Dulwich Gallerv, i. 290 : Dido and ^Eneas, i. 254, 386, ii. 156 ; La Biccia. i. 381, 152, ii. 156 ; Mont Blanc, i. 205 ; Sac- rifice of Isaac, i. 192, 205, 227. ii. 156. Fr. Poussin. Nicholas (excelled in landscape painting) Painter 1594 And Claude, v. 255-262 ; principal master of classical landscape, v. 206, 261 ; peculiarities of, v. 262 ; compared with Claude and Titian, v. 262 ; characteristics of works by, v. 262 ; want of sen- sibility in, v. 262 ; landscape of, v. 262-263 : trees of, i. 395 ; landscape of, composed on right principles, i. 88, iii. 330, ii. 156. Pictures referred to — The Plague, v. 262 : Death of Polydectes, v. 262 : Triumph of David, v. 262 ; The Deluge, v. 262 ; Apollo, ii. 202 ; Deluge (Louvre), i. 341, iv. 239 ; Landscape, No. 260, Dulwich Gallery, i. 142: Landscape, No'. 212, Dulwich Gallery, i. 227 ; Phocion, i. 142, 155, 173, 254 ; Triumph of Flora, iii. 330. Amer. Powers, Hiram Sculptor 1805 Gr. Praxiteles Sculptor f. B. c. 350 Amer. Pratt, Matthew Painter 1734 Procaccini, Camillo Painter 1546 Picture referred to— Martyrdom (Milan), ii. 12S. \ Prout, Samuel Painter 1786 Master of noble picturesque, iv. 14 ; influence on modern art by works of, i. 100 : excellent composition and colour of, i. 110, 112; expression of the crumbling character of stone, i. 94, 110, 112. Pictures referred to— Brussels, ,i. Ill ; Cologne, i. Ill : Flemish Hotel de Ville, i. 113: Gothic Well at Batisbon. i. Ill : Italy and Switzerland, i. Ill ; Louvain, i. Ill ; Nuremberg, i. Ill ; Sion, i. Ill ; Sketches in Flanders and Germany, i. Ill ; Spire of Calais, iv. 14 ; Tours, i. 111. DIED. 1580 1720 1827 16S8 1524 Swiss. Gr. Fr. Fr. Fr. Ital. Gr. Ital. Dutch. Ital. 1631 c. 431 1733 1785 1709 1513 177i 1654 1675 1872 1S05 1626 1852 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 479 NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED. Fr. Prudhon, of Cluny rainier 1760 1823 Fr. Paget, Peter Sculp., Pa. dk Arch 1622 1094 Punch Instance of modern grotesque from, iv. 379. Pyne, J. B . Drawing of, i. 310. Gr. Pythagoras Sculptor. Ital. Raphael (real name Sanzio), a pre-emi- nent Painter 1483 1520 Chiaroscuro of, iv. 44: completion of detail by, i. 81, ih. 119; finish of, ii. 82 ; instances of leaf drawing by, v. #8 ; convention- alism of branches by, v. 41 : his hatred of fog, hi. 126, iv. 53 ; influence of hills upon. iv. 349 ; influenced by Masaccio, hi. 322 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures by, ii. 119 ; composition of, v. 193 : lofty disdain of colour in drawings of. v. 337 (note) ; landscape of, ii. 212 : mountain distance of. iv. 347 : subtle gra- dation of sky, ii. 45-48 ; symbolism of. iii. 100. Pictures referred to — Baldacehino, ii. 43 ; Charge to Peter, iii. 54, 322 : Draught of Fishes, i. preface, xxviii.. ii. 199 : Holy Family — Tribune of the Uffizii. iii. 320 : Madonna della Sediola, ii. 43. iii. 52 : Ma- donna dell' Impannata, ii. 43 ; Madonna del Cardcllino. ii. 43 ; Madonna di San Sisto, iii. 5S ; Massacre of the Innocents, ii. 128, 176 ; Michael the Archangel, ii. 11S : Moses at the Burning Bush. ii. 122 ; Nativity, iii. 347 : St. Catherine, i. preface, xxx., i. 34,' 136. ii. 97, 218 ; St. Cecilia, ii. 134, 213, iii. 16, 56 ; St. John of the Tribune, ii. 43 ; School of Athens, ih. 28 ; Trans- figuration, iii. 56 (note). Ital. Rembrandt, Paul Painter 1606 1674 Landscape cf, i. 189 ; chiaroscuro of. iii. 36, iv. 3S-45 ; etchings of , i. 399 ( note) ; vulgarity of, iii. 263. Pictures referred to — Presentation of Christ in the Temple, ii. 41 ; Spotted Shell, ii. 199 : Painting of himself and his wife, v. 267. Rethel, A Pictures referred to — Death the Avenger, hi. 102 ; Death the Friend, ih. 102. V Retsch Painter 1779 1859 Pictures referred to — Illustrations to Schiller's Fight of the Dragon, ii. 167. Eng. Reynolds, Sir Joshua Painter 1723 1792 Swiftest of painters, v. 203 ; influence of early life of, on paint- ing of, v. 304 ; lectures quoted, i. 7, 44, iii. 4 : tenderness of, iv. 63 (note). Picture referred to — Charitv, iii. 101. W Roberts, David . 1796 1864 Architectural drawing of, i. 115 ; drawings of the Holy Land. i. 116; hieroglyphics of the Egyptian temples, i. 117; Roslin Chapel, i. 117. Robson, G 1776 1&33 Mountain scenery of, i. 94, iii. 332. Fr. Roland, Philip L. (Homer in the Louvre) .Sculptor 1746 1816 Eng. Romney, George Painter 1734 1802 Ital. Rosa, Salvator (scenes of gloom) Painter 1614 1673 And Albert Durer, v. 244-254 ; landscape of, i. 385 ; characteris- tics of, v. 250, 299 ; how influenced by Calabrian scenery, v. 250 ; of what capable, v. 250 ; death, how regarded by, v. 251 ; con- trast between, and Angelico, v. 299; leaf branches of, com- pared with Durcr's, v. 72, 73: example of tree bough of, v. 49; education of, v. 249, 250 ; fallacies of contrast with early artic-ts, v. 52 : narrowness of, contrasted with freedom and vastness of nature, i. 70 ; perpetual seeking for horror and ugliness, ii. 12(5, 135, v. 50-71 ; skies of, i. 224, 227 : vicious execution of, i. 39, ii. 82; vigorous imagination of, ii. 156; vulgarity of, iii. 34, iii. 325, 263. Pictures referred to — Apollo and Sibyl, v. 75 : L'mnna Fragilita, v. 251 : Baptism of Christ, ii. 172 (note): Battles by, ii. 124; Diogenes, ii, 150: Finding of OEdipns, iii. 119, v. 70; Landscape, No. 220, Dulwioh C illery, i. 228, 237, 289, 307; Landscape, No. 159. Dulwich Gallery, i. 251: Sea-piece (Pitti Palace), i. 340; Peace burning the arms of War, i. 385; St. Jerome, ii. 150 ; Temptation of St. Anthony, ii. 44 (note); Mer- cury and the Woodman (National Gallery), i. 154. 480 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED. Eng. Rowlandson, Th. (caricature — Dr. Syntax, &c. ) Painter dk- Engraver 1756 1827 Flem. Rubens, Peter Paul, a celebrated Painter. . .'. 1577 164U And Cuyp, v. 264-275 ; colour of, i. 166 ; landscape of, i. 89, 217, iii. 187, 325 ; leaf drawing of, v. 38 : flowers of, v. 97 ; realistic temper of, iii. 101 ; symbolism of, iii. 100 ; treatment of light, ii. 40, i. 162 ; want of feeling for grace and mystery, iv. 14 ; cha- racteristics of, v. 266 ; religion of, v. 267 ; delight in martyr- doms, v. 206 ; painting of dogs and horses by, v. 272, 273 : de- scriptions of his own pictures by, v. 267 ; imitation of sunlight by, v. 331 (note) ; hunts by, v. 272. Pictures referred to— Ado- ration of the Magi, i. 37 ; Battle of the Amazons, v. 266 ; Land- scape, No. 175, Dulwich Gallery, iv. 15 : His Family, v. 267 ; Waggoner, iii. 118 ; Landscapes in Pitti Palace, i. 89 ; Sunset behind a Tournament, iii. 325. Runciman, Alexander Painter 1736 1785 Ruysdael, Jacob Landscape Painter 1636 1684 Pictures referred to — Punning and Falling Water, i. 321, 340 ; Sea-piece, i. 340. Ruysdael, Solomon Pointer 1616 1670 Rysbrach, John Michael (works in West- minster Abbey) Sculptor 1694 1770 Sanmicheli, Michael Architect 1434 1559 Sarto, Andrea del, see Vanucchi. Scamozzi, Vincent Architect 1550 1616 Schadow, Rudolf Sculptor 1786 1822 Schalken, Godfrey (candlelight scenes). ..Painter 1643 1706 Sehongauer, Martin : 1420 I486 Joy in ugliness, iv. 323 ; missal drawing of, iv. 323. Scopas Sculptor B.C. 460 B. c. 353 Sharp, William Engraver 1740 1824 Sherwin, John Keyse Engraver 1790 Smybert, John Painter. 1728 1751 Snyders, Francis (landscape and animal).. Painter 1579 1657 Painting of dogs by, v. 272. Soufflot, J. G. (church of St. Genevieve at Paris). . , Architect 1714 1 781 Spaendonck, Gerradvan (flower) Painter 1746 1S22 Spagnoletto 1589 1615 Vicious execution of, ii. 82. Stanfield, Clarkson 1793 1867 Architectural drawing of, i. 118 ; boats of, i. 119 ; chiaroscuro of, i. 277 ; clouds of, i. 221, 239 ; a realistic painter, i. 118, iv. 57 (note) ; knowledge and power of, i. 348. Pictures referred to — Amain, ii. 222 : Borromean Islands, with St. Gothard in the dis- tance, i. 278 ; Botallack Mine (coast scenery), i. 309 ; Brittany, near Dol, iv. 7 ; Castle of Ischia, i. 119 ; Doge's Palace at Ven- ice, i. 120 ; East Cliff, Hastings, i. 308 : Magra, ii. 223 ; Rocks of Suli, i. 302 ; Wreck on the Coast of Holland, i. 119. Strange, Robert Engraver 1721 1792 Strutt, Joseph (an author and painter) Painter 1749 1802 Stuart. James (author of the "Antiquities of Athens ») Architect 1713 1788 Stuart, Gilbert (pupil of Benjamin West). Portrait Painter 1756 1828 Sully, Thomas Painter 1783 Taylor, Frederick Drawings of, power of .^wift execution, i. 35, 253. Teniers, David, the elder (pupil of Rubens) PaiJiter 1582 1649 Teniers. David, the younger (pupil of Ru- bens) Painter 1610 1694 Scenery of, v. 268 ; painter of low subjects, v. 272. Pictures re- ferred to — Landscape, No. 139, Dulwich Gallery, i. 311. Thorwaldsen Sculptor 1772 1844 Timanthes (contemporary with Parrha- sius) Painter f . b. c. 420 Tintoretto (a Venetian — pupil of Titian). .Painter 1512 1594 Colouring of, iii. 43 ; Delicacy of, iii. 39 ; painting of vital truth from the vital present, iii. 93 ; use of concentrically-grouped Scotch. Dutch. Dutch. Eng. Ital. Ital. Ital. Ger. Dutch. Gr. Eng. Eng. Amer. Flem. Fr. Dutch. Scotch, Eng. Eng. Amer. Amer. Flem. Flem. Dan. Gr. Ital. ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 481 NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BOEN. DIED. leaves by, ii. 72 ; imagination, ii. 155, 15(5, 170, 17G ; inadequacy • of landscapes by, i. 77; influence of hills upon, iv. 250 ; inten- sity of imagination of, ii. 170, iv. 63 ; introduction of portrait- ure in pictures, ii. 11!); luminous sky of, ii. 42; modesty of, ii. 122 ; neglectful of flower-beauty, v. 97 ; mystery about tlie pen- cilling of, ii. 65 ; no sympathy with the humour of the world, iv. 13 ; painter of space, i. 85 ; realistic temper of, iii. 101 ; sacrifice of form to colour by, ii. 197 ; Brightness and earnest haste of, ii. 81 (note) ; 183 (note) ; symbolism of, iii. 100. Pictures referred to — Agony in the Garden, ii. 156 ; Adoration of the Magi, iii. 81, 126, iv. 68 ; Annunciation, ii. 161 : Baptism, ii. 200 ; Cain and Abel, i. 393 (note) ;■ Crucifixion, ii. 174, 180, iii. 72 ; v. 209, 235 ; Doge Loredano before the Madonna, ii. 200 ; Entombment, ii. 170, iii. 324 ; Pall of Adam, i. 79 (note) ; Flight into Egypt, ii. 156, 202 ; Golden Calf, ii. 200 ; Last Judgment, ii. 178 ; picture in Church of Madonna dell' Orto, i. 106 ; Massacre of the Inno- cents, ii. 129, 170, 180 ; Murder of Abel, i. 386 ; Paradise, i. 334, iv. 62, v. 235, 242 ; Plague of Piery Serpents, ii. 180 ; St. Prancis, ii. 203 ; Temptation, ii. 156, 184. Ital. Titian (the greatest painter of Venetian school) Painter 1480 1579 Tone of, i. 146 ; tree drawing of, i. 387 ; want of foreshortening, v. 77 ; bough drawing of, i. 387 ; good leaf drawing, v. 39 ; dis- tant branches of, v. 41 ; drawing of crests by, iv. 214 ; colour in the shadows of, iv. 45 ; mind of, v. 240, 241 ; imagination of, ii. 156 ; master of heroic landscape, v. 206 ; landscape of, i. 77, iii. 323 ; influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119 ; home of, v. 301, 302 ; modesty of, ii. 122 ; mystery about the pencilling of, iv. 59 ; partial want of sense of beauty of, ii. 134 ; prefers jewels and fans to flowers, v. 97 ; right conception of the human form, ii. 122, v. 241 ; sacrifice of form to colour by, ii. 198 ; colour of, v. 331, 334; stones of, iv. 298, 299 ; trees of, i. 387, ii. 72. Pictures referred to — Assump- tion, iv. 197 (note), v. 235, 242, 266, 329 ; Bacchus and Ariadne, i. 33, 146, iii. 127, v. 97 ; Death of Abel, i. 79 (note) ; Entomb- ment, iii. 126 ; Europa (Dulvvich Gallery), i. 146 ; Faith, i. 107 ; Holy Family, v. 199 (note) ; Madonna and Child, v. 181 ; Madon- na with St. Peter and St. George, v. 181 ; Flagellation, ii. 43 ; Magdalen (Pitti Palace), ii. 123, v. 240, 354 (note) ; Marriage of St. Catherine, i. 89 ; Portrait of Lavinia, v. 97 ; preface viii. ; Older Lavinia, preface viii. ; St. Francis receiving the Stigmata, i. 211 (note); St. Jerome, i. 85, ii. 156; St. John, ii. 119; San Pietro Martire, ii. 156, 202 ; Supper at Emmans, iii. 20, 126 ; Venus, iii. 65 ; Notomie, v. 354. Amer. Trumbull, John Historical Painter 1756 1843 Turner, William, of Oxford Mountain drawings, i. 301. Eng. Turner, Joseph Mallord William 1775 1851 Character of, v. 358-359, (note) 365 ; affection of, for humble scenery, iv. 243, 244 ; architectural drawing of, i. 107, 196 ; his notion of "Eris" or "Discord," v. 323, 324; admiration of, for Vandevelde, i. 324 ; boyhood of, v. 303-313 ; chiaroscuro of, i. 132, 141, 146, 278, 358, iv. 38-50 ; only painter of sun-colour, v. 331 ; painter of " the Rose and the Cankervvorm," v. 340 ; his subjection of colour to chiaroscuro, i. 108 ; colour of, i. 132, 149, 154, 157, 168, 166-168, ii. 198, iii. 242 (note), iv. 38 ; v. 335 (note) ; composition of, iv. 26, 302 ; curvature of, i. 123. 395, iii. 123 ; iv. 188, 280 ; tree drawing of, i. 388, v. 41, 70, 74, 77 ; drawing of banks by, iv. 287, 289 ; discovery of scarlet shadow by, v. 331, 333, 334 ; drawing of cliffs by, iv. 241 ; drawing of crests by, iv. 216, 218, 223 ; drawing of figures by, i. 186; drawing of reflections by, i. 149, 354, 350, 373, 374; drawing of leaves by, v. 41, 100 ; drawing of water by, i. 350, 3T6; exceeding refinement of truth in, i. 405; education of, iii. 316, v. 315 (note) ; execution of, v. 41 ; ruin of his pictures by decay of pigments, i. 133 (note) ; gradation of, i. 256 ; supe- riority of intellect in, i. 29 ; expression of weight in water by, i. 362, 871 ; expression of infinite redundance by, iv. 285; aspects, iii. 285, 313 ; first great landscape painter, iii. 285, v. 342 ; form sacrificed to colour, ii. 198; head of Pre-liaphaelitism, iv. 58; 21 482 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED, master of contemplative landscape, v. 207 ; work of, in first period, v. 314 ; infinity of, i. 236, 278 ; ii. 23?, 288, 294 ; influ- ence of Yorkshire scenery upon, i. 123, iv. 241, 291, 296, 302 ; his' love of stones and rocks, iii. 321, iv. 22 ; love of rounded hills, iv. 241 ; master of the science of aspects, iii. 313 ; mystery of, i. 195, 254, 407, iv. 32, 58, v. 41 ; painting of French and Swiss landscape by, i. 127 ; spirit of pines not entered into by, v. 86, 87 ; flowers not often painted by, v. 99 ; painting of distant ex- panses of water bv, i. 360 ; rendering of Italian character by, i. 127 ; skies of, .i. 135, 198, 232, 263 ; storm-clouds, how regarded by, v. 152 ; study of clouds by, i. 218, 232, 238, 246-257, v. 127 ; study of old masters by, iii. 330; sketches of, v. 195, 196, 350, £50 (note), v. preface, v. ATi. ; system of tone of, i. 141, 150, 358 ; treatment of foregrounds by, i. 314, v. 105 ; treatment of pictur- esque by, iv. 6-14 ; treatment of snow mountains by, iv. 236 ; memoranda of, v. 197, 198, 351 (note) ; topography of, iv. 15-32 ; unity of, i. 316 ; views of Italy by, i. 129 ; memory of, iv. 26, 29 ; ideal conception of, i. 377 ; endurance of ugliness by, v. 303, 304 ; inventive imagination of, dependent on mental vision and truth of impression, iv. 20-23, 302; lessons to be learnt from Liber Studiorum, v. 349, 350 ; life of, v. 357 ; death of, v. 367. Pictures referred to — iEsaeus and Hesperie, i. 389 ; Acro-Cor- inth, i. 218 ; Alnwick, i. 124, 265 ; Ancient Italy, i. 128 ; Apollo and Sibyl, v. 348 ; Arona with St. Gothard, i. 278 ; Assos, i. 198 (note); Avenue of Brienne, i. 175; Babylon, i. 232; Bam- borough, i. 369 ; Bay of Bala?, i. 129, 319, iii. 318, v. 1C6, 339 ; Bedford, i. 124 ; Ben Lomond, i. 254 ; Bethlehem, i. 239 ; Bin- gen, i. 264; Blenheim, i. 264; Bolton Abbey, i. 389, iii. 122, iv. 244 ; Bonneville in Savoy, i. 130 ; Boy of Egremont, i. 367 ; Buckfastleigh, i. 263, iv. 15 ; Building of Carthage, i. 29, 133, 145, 159, 167, iii. 318 ; Burning of Parliament House, i. 265 ; Caer- laverock, i. 198 (note), 260 ; Calais, i. 265 ; Calder Bridge, i. 130 ; Caldron Snout Pall, i. 264 ; Caligula's Bridge, i. 128 ; v. 348 ; Canale della Guidecca, i. 357 ; Carew Castle, i. 264; Carthages, the two, i. 128, v. 352 ; Castle Upnor, i. 263, 353 ; Chain Bridge over the Tees, i. 363, 389 ; Chateau de la Belle Gabrielle, i. 389, v. 66 ; Chateau of Prince Albert, i. 352 ; Cicero's Villa, i. 128, 133, 144, 145 ; Cliff from Bolton Abbey, iii. 321 ; Constance, i. £61 ; Corinth, i. 263 ; Coventry, i. 251, 264 : Cowes, i. 264, 357, £59 ; Crossing the Brook, i. 128, 167, 389 ; Daphne and Leucip- pus, i. 197, 198 (note), 289, 295, iv. 2S5, v. 106; Dartmouth (river scenery), i. 209 ; Dartmouth Cove (Southern Coast), i. 389 ; Dazio Grande, i. 367 ; Departure of Regulus, i. 128 ; Devonport, with the Dockyards, i. 156 (note), 356 ; Dragon of the Hesper- ides, iii. 101, v. 323-328 ; Drawing of the spot where Harold fell, ii. 196 ; Drawings of the Bivers of Prance, i. 126 ; Drawings of Swiss Scenery, i. 124 ; Drawing of the Chain of the Alps of the Superga above Turin, iii. 129 ; Drawing of Mount Pilate, iv. 223, 292, 293; Dudley, i. 169 (note), 265; Durham, i. 263, 389; Dunbar, i. 370 ; Dunstaffnage, i. 258. 281 ; Ely, i. 404 ; Eton College, i. 124; Fai'do, Pass of, iv. 20, 218; Fall of Carthage, i. 144, 167 ; Fall of Schaffhausen, v. 178, 353 (note) ; Flight into Egypt, i. 239 ; Fire at Sea, v. 200 (note) ; Folkestone, i. 239, 264 ; Fort Augustus, i. 300 ; Fountain of Fallacy, i. 128 ; Fowey Har- bour, i. 262, 370, v. 152 (note) ; Florence, i. 129 ; Glencoe, i. 281 ; Goldau (a recent drawing), i. 260 (note); Goldau, i. 362, iv. 307, 308, v. 353 (note) ; Golden Bongh, iv. 285 ; Gosport, i. 254 ; Great Yarmouth, i. 377 (note) ; Hannibal passing the Alps, i. 127 ; Hampton Court, i. 175 ; Hero and Leander, i. 128, 174, 239, 369, 403, v. 200 (note) ; Holy Isle, iii. 317 ; Illustration to the Anti- quary, 260; Inverarv, v. 70; Isola Bella, iii. 129; Ivy Bridge, i. 130; Jason, ii. 168, iii. 127; Juliet and her Nurse, i. 132, 134 (note), 265; Junction of the Greta and Tees, i. 367, iv. 303; Kenilworth, i. 264; Killie-Crankie, i. 366; Kilgarren, i. 124; Kirby Lonsdale Churchyard, i. 2(53, 389, iv. 14, 308; Lancaster Sands, i. 335; Land's End, i. 248 (note), 250, 347, 370, 372; Laueharne, i. 370 ; Llanberis, i. 91, 264, v. 336 (note) (English series) ; Llanthony Abbey, i. 124, 169 (note), 248, 317, 366; Long Ship's Lighthouse, i. 250 ; Lowestoft, i. 263, 347, 377 (note) ; Lucerne, iv. 223 ; " Male Bolge " (of the Splugen and St. Goth- ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 483 NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED. ard, iv. 308 ; Malvern, i. 264 ; Marly, i. 79, 393 ; Mercury and Argus, i. 142, 103, 1(59 (note), 195, 218, 314, 319, 366, v. 02 ; Modern Italy, i. 129, 169 (note), iv. 266 ; Morecambe Bay, i. 255 ; Mount Lebanon, i. 289 ; Murano, view of, i. 135 ; Napo- leon, i. 149, 158, 160, 167, 218, 264, 306, v. 128, 350 (note) ; Na- poleon at St. Helena, iv. 308; Narcissus and Echo, v. 315; Nemi, i. 264 : Nottingham, i. 264, 354, iv. 28 ; Oakhampton, i. 124, 254, 263, 394; Oberwesel, i. 264, 301; Orford, Suffolk, 1. 263; Ostend, i. 374; Palestrina, i. 129: Pas-de-Calais, i. 334, 374 ; Penmaen Mavvr, i. 319 ; Picture of the Deluge, i. 342 ; Pools of Solomon, i. 233, 264, v. 126 ; Port Ruysdael, i. 374 ; Py- ramid of Caius Cestins, i. 264 ; Python, v. 330, 332 ; Rape of Proserpine, i. 129; Rheinfels, v. 351 (note); Rhymer's Glen, i. 366 ; Richmond (Middlesex), i. 264 ; Richmond (Yorkshire), i. 258. iv. 15, v. 106 ; Rome from the Forum, i. 331, v. 353 ; Salis- bury, v. 154 ; Saltash, i. 264, 353 ; San Benedetto, looking to- ward Fusina, i. 357, 135, v. 128 ; Scarborough, iii. 125 ; Shores of Wharf e, iv. 244 : Shylock, i. 218, 263 ; Sketches in National Gallery, v. 175. 196; Sketches in Switzerland, i. 135; Slave Ship, i. 132, 134 (note), 144, 149, 167, 258, 2(54, ii. 292, iv. 308, v. 152, 353; Snowstorm, i. 127, 167, 347, v. 359 (note); St. Goth- ard, iv. 25. 2S6, 294 ; St. Herbert's Isle, i. 265 ; St. Michael's Mount, i. 258, 260 ; Stonehenge, i. 257, 264, v. 154 (English series) ; Study (Block of Gneiss at Chamouni), iii. 129 ; Study (Psestum), v. 155 ; Sun of Venice going to Sea, i. 135. 356 ; Swiss Fribourg, iii. 129; Tantallon Castle, i. 373: Tees (Upper ^ Fall of), i. 315, 319, 362, iv. 303 ; Tees (Lower Fall of), i. 317, 366 ; Temptation on the Mountain (Illustration to Milton), ii. 205 ; Temple of Jupiter, i. 128, iii. 317 ; Temple of Minerva, v. 155 ; Tenth Pla°rue of Egypt, i. 128, v. 311 (note), 315 ; The Old Temeraire, i. 132, iv. 308, v. 12S. 305 ; Tivoli, i. 129 ; Towers of Heve, i. 265 ; Trafalgar, v. 3 5 : Trematon Castle, i. 265 ; Ulles- water, i. 318, 353, iv. 303 ; Ulysses and Polypheme, iv. 303, v. 353 (note) ; various vignettes, i. 263 ; Venices, i. 107. 263, v. 353, 354 ; Walhalla, i. 134 (note) ; Wall Tower of a Swiss Town, iv. 68; Warwick, i. 264, 389; Waterloo, i. 25S, 265; Whitby, iii. 317; Wilderness of Engedi, i. 198 (note), 264; Winchelsea (Eng- lish series), i. 168 (note), 264 ; Windsor, from Eton, i. 124 ; Wy- cliffe, near Rokeby, iv. 303. Finden's Bible Series :— Babylon, i. 232; Bethlehem, i. 239; Mount' Lebanon, i. 2S9, v. 155 ; Sinai, v. 155 ; Pyramids of Egypt, i. 239 ; Pool of Solomon, i. 233, v. 126 ; Fifth Plague of Egypt, i. 128, v. 315. Illustrations to Campbell :— Hohenlinden, i. 263 : Second Vig- nette, i. 254 ; The Andes, i. 273 ; Vignette to the Beech- Tree's Petition, i. 174 ; Vignette to Last Man, i. 268. Illustrations to Rogers' " Italv : " — Amalfi, i. 235; Aosta, i. 273; Battle of Marengo, i. 269, 281; Farewell, i. 281; Lake of Albano, i. 264 ; Lake of Como, i. 234 ; Lake of Geneva, i. 235, 263 ; Lake of Lucerne, i. 259. 361 ; Perugia, i. 174 ; Piacenza, i. 264, 292; Passtum, i. 256, 264; Second Vignette, i. 260, 367; The Great St. Bernard, i. 260 ; Vignette to St. Maurice, i. 260, 361 (note), v. 136. Illustrations to Rogers' " Poems : " — Bridge of Sighs, i. 265 ; Datur Hora Quieti, i. 143, 264, v. 178 ; Garden opposite title-page, i, 174; Jacqueline, i, 273, ii. 205; Loch Lomond, i. 3(50; Rialto, i. 239, 265; Sunset behind Willows, i. 145; Sunrise, i. 209; Sun- rise on the Sea, i. 219, 259; the Alps at Daybreak, i. 220, 259, 2(53, 272; Vignette to Human Life, i. 263; Vignette to Slowly along the Evening Sky, i. 210 ; Vignette to the Second Part of Jacque- line, ii. 205; Villa of Galileo, i. 129; Voyage of Columbus, i. 239, 263, ii. 196. Illustrations to Scott :— Armstrong's Tower, i. 175 ; Chicfswood Cottage, i. 389; Derwentwater, i. 360 ; Drybur^h, 1.861; Dun- staffnage, i. 258, 281 ; Glencoe, i. 281, 289 ; Loch Archray, i. 281 ; 484 ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. BORN. DIED. Loch Coriskin, i. 249. 288, iv. 216 ; Loch Katrine, i. 289, 360 ; Melrose, i. 361 ; Skiddaw, i. 263, 300. Liber Studiorum : — iEsacus and Hesperie, i. 127, 394 (note), ii. 159 ; Ben Arthur, i. 123, iv. 302, 303 ; Blair Athol, i. 388 ; Cephalus and Procris, i. 388, 394 (note), ii. 157, 203, iii. 324, v. 350 ; Chartreuse, i. 125, 388. iii. 324 ; Chepstow, v. 350 ; Domes- tic subjects of L. S., i. 125 ; Dunstan borough, v. 350 ; Foliage of L. S., i. 126 ; Garden of Hesperides, iii. 317, v. 316 ; Gate of Win- chelsea Wall, v. 350 ; Raglan, v. 350 ; Rape of Europa, v. 350 ; Via Mala. v. 351 (note), iv. 254 ; Isis, v. 182, 183 ; Hedging and Ditching, i. 125, 388, v. 349 ; Jason, i. 128, ii. 166, 193, iii. 324 ; Juvenile Tricks, i. 388 ; Lauffenbourg, i. 125, iii. 324, v. 182 ; Little Devil's Bridge, i. 124, iv. 25 ; Llanberis, i. 255 ; Mer de Grlace, i. 123, 282, iv. 186 ; Mill near Grande Chartreuse, iv. 254, v. 349 ; Morpeth Tower, v. 350 ; Mont St. Gothard. i. 124, 307 (note) ; Peat Bog, iii. 324, v. 349 ; Rivaulx choir, v. 350 ; Rizpah, i. 127, iii. 324, iv. 14, v. 311, 350 ; Solway Moss, iii. 324 ; Source of Avernon, iv. 302, v. 86 ; Study of the Lock, iv. 7, v. 349 ; Young Anglers, v. 349 ; Water Mill, v. 349. Rivers of Prance, i. 126 : Amboise, i. 180, 264 : Amboise (the • Chateau), i. 180 ; Beaugency. i. 180 ; Blois, i. ISO ; Blois (Cha- teau de), i. 180, 198, 264 ; Caudebec, i. 264, 298, 361 ; Chateau Gaillard, i. 180 ; Clairmont, i. 264, 299 ; Confluence of the Seine and Marne, i. 359 ; Drawings oP, i. 127 ; Havre, i. 220 ; Honflear, i. 299 ; Jumieges, i. 247, 359 ; La Chaise de Gargantua, i. 359 ; Loire, i. 358; Mantes, i. 265; Mauves, i. 299; Montjan, i. 264; Orleans, i. 180 ; Quilleboeuf, i. 372, 166 ; Reitz, near Saumur, v. 168, 169 ; Rouen, i. 495, v. 127 ; Rouen, from St. Catherine's Hill, i. 237, 361 ; St. Denis, i. 260, 265 ; St. Julien, i. 181, 265 ; The Lantern of St. Cloud, i. 263 ; Troyes, i. 264 ; Tours, i. 181, 265 ; Vernon, i. 359. Yorkshire Series :— Aske Hall, i. 389, v. 75 ; Brignall Church, i. 389 ; Hardraw Pall, iv. 303 ; Ingleborough, iv. 216 ; Greta, iv. 131, 244 ; Junction of the Greta and Tees, i. 318, 367, iv. 303 ; Kirkby Lonsdale, i. 263, 389, iv. 14, 308 ; Richmond, i. 258, iv. 14, v. 41 ; Richmond Castle, iii. 236 ; Tees (Upper PaU of), i. 315, 31S, 362, iv. 303 ; Zurich, i. 362. Uccello, Paul 1349 1432 Battle of Sant' Egidio, National Gallery, v. 5, 296. TJwin 1783 1857 Vineyard Scene in the South of France, ii. 223. Eng. Vanbrugh, Sir John (Blenheim and Castle Howard) Architect 1672 1726 Dutch. Vandervelde, William (marine and battle) Painter 1610 1693 Dutch. Vandervelde, Adrian Landscape Pointer 1639 1672 Dutch. Vanderwerf, Adrian Historical Painter 1654 1718 Dutch. Vandervelde, the younger Painter 1633 1707 Reflection of, i. 353 ; waves of, iii. 831 ; Vessels Becalmed, No. 113, Dulwich Gallery, i. 336. Mem. Vandyke, Sir Anthony (the greatest of portrait painters) Portrait Painter 1598 1641 Plowers of, v. 97 ; delicacy of, v. 290 (note). Pictures — Portrait of King Charles' Children, v. 97 ; the Knight, v. 288 (note). Ital. Vannucchi, or And Ital. Van Vitelli, Louis, Ital. Vasari, George (a b Sic. Vasi, Joseph, a des: Span. Fr. Fr. Am. Ital. 5 M. P., 333 (note). 1488 1530 .Architect 1700 1773 Architect & Painter 1512 1574 1710 1782 1599 1660 1714 1789 Historical Painter. 1813 1844 1532 1588 Chiaroscuro of, iii. 36, iv. 39-45 ; colour in the shadows of, iv. 45 ; delicacy of, iii. 39 ; influence of hills upon, iv. 350 ; love of ALPHABETICAL LIST AND INDEX. 485 NATION. NAME AND PROFESSION. EOKN. DIED, physical beauty, iii. 34 ; mystery about the pencilling of, iv. 59 ; no sympathy with the tragedy and horror of the world, iv. 14 ; sincerity of manner, iii. 42 : symbolism of, iii. 100 ; treatment of the open sky, ii. 42 ; tree drawing of, v. 72 ; foreground of, v. 97 ; religion of, (love casting out fear), v. 235 ; animal painting, com- pared with Landseer's, ii. 198. Pictures — Entombment, ii. 43 ; Magdalen washing the feet of Christ, iii. 20, 31 ; Marriage in Cana, iii. 126, iv. 63, v. 208, 233, 235 ; two fresco figures at Ven- ice, i. 108 ; Supper at Emmaus, iii. 31, 62 ; Queen of Sheba, v. preface, vii. 238 ; Family of Veronese, v. 235-237 ; Holy Family, v. 239 ; Veronica, v. 239 ; Europa, v. 97, 182 ; Triumph of Ven- ice, v. 181 ; Family of Darius, National Gallery, v. 200. Ital. Verrochio, And'w (inventor of the method of taking the features in a plaster mould) Sculptor 1422 1488 Eng. Vertue, George (500 plates) Engraver 1884 1756 Ital. Vignola, James (Caprarola palace and St. Peter's) Architect 1507 1573 Ital. Vinci, Leonardo da Painter 1452 1519 Chiaroscuro of, iv. 45 (and note) ; completion of detail by, iii. 126 ; drapery of, iv. 46 ; finish of, ii. 82, iii. 267 ; hatred of fog, iv. 53 ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. 119 ; influence of hills upon, iv. 351 ; landscape of, i. 86 ; love of beauty, iii. 42 ; rocks of, iii. 245 ; system of contrast of masses, iv. 41. Pictures — Angel, ii. 173 ; Cenacolo, ii. 210 ; Holy Familv (Louvre), i. 86 ; Last Supper, iii. 28, 347 ; St. Anne, iv. 296, iii. 126. Gr. Vitruvius (temp. Augustus) Architect f. B. c. 30 Ital. Volpato, John Engraver 1733 1802 Fr. Vouet, Simon, founder of French school (temp. Charles I.) Painter 1582 1649 Fr. Wailly, Charles de Architect 1729 1798 Wallis Snow scenes of, i. 281 (note). Eng. Warren, Charles (perfecter of engraving Amer. West, Benjamin. . Engraver 1823 1738 1820 Familiar Life Painter. ..1785 1841 Landscape Painter 1713 1782 Engraver .1735 1785 1668 Eng. Wilson, Richard Eng. Woollet, William Dutch. Wouvermans, Philip Leaves of, v. 40 ; landscape of, v. 207 ; vulgarity of, v. 293, 297 ; contrast between, and Angelico, v. 298. Pictures referred to — Landscape, with hunting party, v. 293 ; Battle piece, with bridge, v. 295. Eng. Wren, Sir Christopher (St. Paul's, &c.). . .Architect 1632 1723 Eng. Wyatt, James (Pantheon, Kew Palace, hc,)Architect 1743 1813 Ital. Zablia, Nicholas Architect 1674 1750 Gr. Zeuxis, a celebrated ancient Painter b. c. 490 b. c. 400 Picture of Centaur, v. 273. Ger. Zincke Enamel Portrait Pa 1684 1767 Ital. Zuccaro, or Zucchero, Taddeo Painter 1 529 1 566 Ital. Zuccaro, or Zucchero, Frederigo Painter 1539 1610 Ital. ZuccareUi Painter. 1710 1788 4