this sweeping way is trustworthy. I have often had to repent of over-
praise of inferior men; and continually to repent of insufficient
praise of great men; but of broad condemnation, never. For I do not
speak it but after the most searching examination of the matter, and
under stern sense of need for it: so that whenever the reader is
entirely shocked by what I say, he may be assured every word is
true.[Footnote: He must, however, be careful to distinguish blame--
however strongly expressed, of some special fault or error in a true
painter,--from these general statements of inferiority or
worthlessness. Thus he will find me continually laughing at Wilson's
tree-painting; not because Wilson could not paint, but because he had
never looked at a tree.] It is just because it so much offends him,
that it was necessary: and knowing that it must offend him, I should
not have ventured to say it, without certainty of its truth. I say
"certainty," for it is just as possible to be certain whether the
drawing of a tree or a stone is true or false, as whether the drawing
of a triangle is; and what I mean primarily by saying that a picture is
in all respects worthless, is that it is in all respects False: which
is not a matter of opinion at all, but a matter of ascertainable fact,
such as I never assert till I have ascertained. And the thing so
commonly said about my writings, that they are rather persuasive than
just; and that though my "language" may be good, I am an unsafe guide
in art criticism, is, like many other popular estimates in such
matters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth; it
is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking
receptive surface, and in every particular, upside down. For my
"language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose,
obscure, and more or less feeble; and still, though I have tried hard
to mend it, the best I can do is inferior to much contemporary work. No
description that I have ever given of anything is worth four lines of
Tennyson; and in serious thought, my half-pages are generally only
worth about as much as a single sentence either of his, or of
Carlyle's. They are, I well trust, as true and necessary; but they are
neither so concentrated nor so well put. But I am an entirely safe
guide in art judgment: and that simply as the necessary result of my
having given the labour of life to the determination of facts, rather
than to the following of feelings or theories. Not, indeed, that my
work is free from mistakes; it admits many, and always must admit many,
from its scattered range; but, in the long run, it will be found to
enter sternly and searchingly into the nature of what it deals with,
and the kind of mistake it admits is never dangerous, consisting,
usually, in pressing the truth too far. It is quite easy, for instance,
to take an accidental irregularity in a piece of architecture, which
less careful examination would never have detected at all, for an
intentional irregularity; quite possible to misinterpret an obscure
passage in a picture, which a less earnest observer would never have
tried to interpret. But mistakes of this kind--honest, enthusiastic
mistakes--are never harmful; because they are always made in a true
direction,--falls forward on the road, not into the ditch beside it;
and they are sure to be corrected by the next comer. But the blunt and
dead mistakes made by too many other writers on art--the mistakes of
sheer inattention, and want of sympathy--are mortal. The entire purpose
of a great thinker may be difficult to fathom, and we may be over and
over again more or less mistaken in guessing at his meaning; but the
real, profound, nay, quite bottomless, and unredeemable mistake, is the
fool's thought--that he had no meaning.
I do not refer, in saying this, to any of my statements respecting
subjects which it has been my main work to study: as far as I am aware,
I have never yet misinterpreted any picture of Turner's, though often
remaining blind to the half of what he had intended: neither have I as
yet found anything to correct in my statements respecting Venetian
architecture; [Footnote: The subtle portions of the Byzantine Palaces,
given in precise measurements in the second volume of the "Stones of
Venice," were alleged by architects to be accidental irregularities.
They will be found, by every one who will take the pains to examine
them, most assuredly and indisputably intentional,--and not only so,
but one of the principal subjects of the designer's care.] but in
_casual references_ to what has been quickly seen, it is
impossible to guard wholly against error, without losing much valuable
observation, true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, and harmless
even when erroneous.
APPENDIX II.
REYNOLDS' DISAPPOINTMENT.
It is very fortunate that in the fragment of Mason's MSS., published
lately by Mr. Cotton in his "Sir Joshua Reynolds' Notes," [Footnote:
Smith, Soho Square, 1859.] record is preserved of Sir Joshua's feelings
respecting the paintings in the window of New College, which might
otherwise have been supposed to give his full sanction to this mode of
painting on glass. Nothing can possibly be more curious, to my mind,
than the great painter's expectations; or his having at all entertained
the idea that the qualities of colour which are peculiar to opaque
bodies could be obtained in a transparent medium; but so it is: and
with the simplicity and humbleness of an entirely great man he hopes
that Mr. Jervas on glass is to excel Sir Joshua on canvas. Happily,
Mason tells us the result.
"With the copy Jervas made of this picture he was grievously
disappointed. 'I had frequently,' he said to me, 'pleased myself by
reflecting, after I had produced what I thought a brilliant effect of
light and shadow on my canvas, how greatly that effect would be
heightened by the transparency which the painting on glass would be
sure to produce. It turned out quite the reverse.'"
APPENDIX III.
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE.
This passage in the lecture was illustrated by an enlargement of the
woodcut, Fig. 1; but I did not choose to disfigure the middle of this
book with it. It is copied from the 49th plate of the third edition of
the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (Edinburgh, 1797), and represents an
English farmhouse arranged on classical principles. If the reader cares
to consult the work itself, he will find in the same plate another
composition of similar propriety, and dignified by the addition of a
pediment, beneath the shadow of which "a private gentleman who has a
small family may find conveniency."
APPENDIX IV.
SUBTLETY OF HAND.
I had intended in one or other of these lectures to have spoken at some
length of the quality of refinement in Colour, but found the subject
would lead me too far. A few words are, however, necessary in order to
explain some expressions in the text.
"Refinement in colour" is indeed a tautological expression, for colour,
in the true sense of the word, does not exist until it _is_
refined. Dirt exists,--stains exist,--and pigments exist, easily enough
in all places; and are laid on easily enough by all hands; but colour
exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a
hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very
strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch
laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not
take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The
grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it
with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We
acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases "dead colour,"
"killed colour," "foul colour." Those words are, in some sort,
literally true. If more colour is put on than is necessary, a heavy
touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of colour
that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it
pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch.
The art of painting, properly so called, consists in laying on the
least possible colour that will produce the required result, and this
measurement, in all the ultimate, that is to say, the principal,
operations of colouring, is so delicate that not one human hand in a
million has the required lightness. The final touch of any painter
properly so named, of Correggio--Titian--Turner--or Reynolds--would be
always quite invisible to any one watching the progress of the work,
the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in
mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to
the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized
that they do their best work without effort: but analyze the touches
afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth of the colour
laid mathematically demonstrable to be of literally infinite fineness,
the last touches passing away at their edges by untraceable gradation.
The very essence of a master's work may thus be removed by a picture-
cleaner in ten minutes.
Observe, however, this thinness exists only in portions of the ultimate
touches, for which the preparation may often have been made with solid
colours, commonly, and literally, called "dead colouring," but even
that is always subtle if a master lays it--subtle at least in drawing,
if simple in hue; and farther, observe that the refinement of work
consists not in laying absolutely _little_ colour, but in always
laying precisely the right quantity. To lay on little needs indeed the
rare lightness of hand; but to lay much,--yet not one atom _too_
much, and obtain subtlety, not by withholding strength, but by
precision of pause,--that is the master's final sign-manual--power,
knowledge, and tenderness all united. A great deal of colour may often
be wanted; perhaps quite a mass of it, such as shall project from the
canvas; but the real painter lays this mass of its required thickness
and shape with as much precision as if it were a bud of a flower which
he had to touch into blossom; one of Turner's loaded fragments of white
cloud is modelled and gradated in an instant, as if it alone were the
subject of the picture, when the same quantity of colour, under another
hand, would be a lifeless lump.
The following extract from a letter in the _Literary Gazette_ of
13th November, 1858, which I was obliged to write to defend a
questioned expression respecting Turner's subtlety of hand from a
charge of hyperbole, contains some interesting and conclusive evidence
on the point, though it refers to pencil and chalk drawing only:--
"I must ask you to allow me yet leave to reply to the objections you
make to two statements in my catalogue, as those objections would
otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that, in a given
drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner's pencil did
not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning; and you charge
this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much
within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of
fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is only
necessary to measure a piece of any ordinary good work to ascertain
this. Take, for instance, Finden's engraving at the 180th page of
Rogers' poems; in which the face of the figure, from the chin to the
top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space
between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of
an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say one-
fiftieth of an inch, and within that space both the lips and the much
more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and
rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any
artist will assure you that in order to draw a mouth as well as this,
there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches; that
is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less
than the thousandth of an inch.
"But this is mere child's play compared to the refinement of a first-
rate mechanical work--much more of brush or pencil drawing by a
master's hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative
evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kingsley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex
College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be
precisely right in any matter; for his great knowledge both of
mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular
powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen
sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement
respecting Turner's work, is amazing even to me, and will, I should
think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of measured
and tested refinement: here is No. 1:--
"'The finest mechanical work that I know, which is not optical, is that
done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series ruled by him
on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch,
perfectly correct to these places of decimals, and he has executed
others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat
these last with accuracy.'
"This is No. 1 of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2:--
"'But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the
construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns
out.'
"I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses
composing such a glass, 'each of which must be exact in radius and in
surface, and all have their axes coincident:' but it would not be
intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated; so I pass
to Mr. Kingsley's No. 3:--
"'I am tolerably familiar,' he proceeds, 'with the actual grinding and
polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own hand some
by no means bad optical work, and I have copied no small amount of
Turner's work, and _I still look with awe at the combined delicacy
and precision of his hand_; IT BEATS OPTICAL WORK OUT OF SIGHT. In
optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and
one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a
delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is
ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness
which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen
when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires
an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately
bad; but with "bold" work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog:
and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of
handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by
looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much
better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man
were to be "bold" with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though
his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred
drawings one sees.'
"The words which I have put in italics in the above extract are those
which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner's was as refined as any
optical work, but had no idea of its going beyond it. Mr. Kingsley's
word 'awe' occurring just before, is, however, as I have often felt,
precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the
handling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three
great Venetians, of Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something
greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For
the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed
with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more
appalling manifestation of Infinite Power, than the making either of
seas or mountains.
"After this testimony to the completion of Turner's work, I need not at
length defend myself from the charge of hyperbole in the statement
that, 'as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to
produce one sketch [footnote: A sketch, observe,--not a finished
drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each
other when they contain about the same quantity of work: the test of
their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of
touches. The assertion in the Catalogue which this letter was written
to defend, was made respecting the sketch of Rome, No. 101.] that shall
equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the
71st and following frames;' which memoranda, however, it should have
been observed, are stated at the 44th page to be in some respects 'the
grandest work in grey that he did in his life.' For I believe that, as
manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three
Venetians and Correggio) were equal to Turner; and, as far as I know,
none of those four ever put their full strength into sketches. But
whether they did or not, my statement in the catalogue is limited by my
own knowledge: and, as far as I can trust that knowledge, it is not an
enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may
be a mistake but it is not a hyperbole."
APPENDIX V.
I can only give, to illustrate this balcony, fac-similes of rough
memoranda made on a single leaf of my note-book, with a tired hand; but
it may be useful to young students to see them, in order that they may
know the difference between notes made to get at the gist and heart of
a thing, and notes made merely to look neat. Only it must be observed
that the best characters of free drawing are always lost even in the
most careful facsimile; and I should not show even these slight notes
in woodcut imitation, unless the reader had it in his power, by a
glance at the 21st or 35th plates in _Modern Painters_ (and yet
better, by trying to copy a piece of either of them), to ascertain how
far I can draw or not. I refer to these plates, because, though I
distinctly stated in the preface that they, together with the 12th,
20th, 34th, and 37th, were executed on the steel by my own hand, (the
use of the dry point in the foregrounds of the 12th and 21st plates
being moreover wholly different from the common processes of etching) I
find it constantly assumed that they were engraved for me--as if direct
lying in such matters were a thing of quite common usage.
Fig. 2 is the centre-piece of the balcony, but a leaf-spray is omitted
on the right-hand side, having been too much buried among the real
leaves to be drawn.
Fig. 3 shows the intended general effect of its masses, the five-leaved
and six-leaved flowers being clearly distinguishable at any distance.
Fig. 4 is its profile, rather carefully drawn at the top, to show the
tulip and turkscap lily leaves. Underneath there is a plate of iron
beaten into broad thin leaves, which gives the centre of the balcony a
gradual sweep outwards, like the side of a ship of war. The central
profile is of the greatest importance in ironwork, as the flow of it
affects the curves of the whole design, not merely in surface, as in
marble carving, but in their intersections, when the side is seen
through the front. The lighter leaves, _b b_, are real bindweed.
Fig. 5 shows two of the teeth of the border, illustrating their
irregularity of form, which takes place quite to the extent indicated.
Fig. 6 is the border at the side of the balcony, showing the most
interesting circumstance in the treatment of the whole, namely, the
enlargement and retraction of the teeth of the cornice, as it
approaches the wall. This treatment of the whole cornice as a kind of
wreath round the balcony, having its leaves flung loose at the back,
and set close at the front, as a girl would throw a wreath of leaves
round her hair, is precisely the most finished indication of a good
workman's mind to be found in the whole thing.
Fig. 7 shows the outline of the retracted leaves accurately. It was
noted in the text that the whole of this ironwork had been coloured.
The difficulty of colouring ironwork rightly, and the necessity of
doing it in some way or other, have been the principal reasons for my
never having entered heartily into this subject; for all the ironwork I
have ever seen look beautiful was rusty, and rusty iron will not answer
modern purposes. Nevertheless it may be painted, but it needs some one
to do it who knows what painting means, and few of us do--certainly
none, as yet, of our restorers of decoration or writers on colour.
It is a marvellous thing to me that book after book should appear on
this last subject, without apparently the slightest consciousness on
the part of the writers that the first necessity of beauty in colour is
gradation, as the first necessity of beauty in line is curvature,--or
that the second necessity in colour is mystery or subtlety, as the
second necessity in line is softness. Colour ungradated is wholly
valueless; colour unmysterious is wholly barbarous. Unless it looses
itself and melts away towards other colours, as a true line loses
itself and melts away towards other lines, colour has no proper
existence, in the noble sense of the word. What a cube, or tetrahedron,
is to organic form, ungradated and unconfused colour is to organic
colour; and a person who attempts to arrange colour harmonies without
gradation of tint is in precisely the same category, as an artist who
should try to compose a beautiful picture out of an accumulation of
cubes and parallelepipeds.
The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods
depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colours palpitate and
fluctuate; _inequality_ of brilliancy being the _condition_ of brilliancy,
just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in
sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators in books,
and the Indians in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of colour
to gradate other colours, and confuse the eye, is the first secret in their
gift of splendour: associated, however, with so many other artifices which
are quite instinctive and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell
upon them. Delicacy of organization in the designer given, you will soon
have all, and without it, nothing. However, not to close my book with
desponding words, let me set down, as many of us like such things, five
Laws to which there is no exception whatever, and which, if they can
enable no one to produce good colour, are at least, as far as they
reach, accurately condemnatory of bad colour.
1. ALL GOOD COLOUR IS GRADATED. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush
itself), is the type of rightness in arrangement of pure hue.
2. ALL HARMONIES OF COLOUR DEPEND FOR THEIR VITALITY ON THE ACTION AND
HELPFUL OPERATION OF EVERY PARTICLE OF COLOUR THEY CONTAIN.
3. THE FINAL PARTICLES OF COLOUR NECESSARY TO THE COMPLETENESS OF A
COLOUR HARMONY ARE ALWAYS INFINITELY SMALL; either laid by immeasurably
subtle touches of the pencil, or produced by portions of the colouring
substance, however distributed, which are so absolutely small as to
become at the intended distance infinitely so to the eye.
4. NO COLOUR HARMONY IS OF HIGH ORDER UNLESS IT INVOLVES INDESCRIBABLE
TINTS. It is the best possible sign of a colour when nobody who sees it
knows what to call it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else.
Even among simple hues the most valuable are those which cannot be
defined; the most precious purples will look brown beside pure purple,
and purple beside pure brown; and the most precious greens will be
called blue if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside pure
blue.
5. THE FINER THE EYE FOR COLOUR, THE LESS IT WILL REQUIRE TO GRATIFY IT
INTENSELY. But that little must be supremely good and pure, as the
finest notes of a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a
great colourist will make even the absence of colour lovely, as the
fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred.