Tho’ I have purposely omitted pointing out many of the particular
beauties of these poems, I would wish you to observe, in this last, the
fine effect of compound words in which this author is so happy: also
the noble swell in the third stanza—the application of his allegory
to its meaning, in the fourth, where the expression so admirably
suits with both “our peaceful flame, &c.”——if these are not genuine
strokes of genius, I must, as a great critic says on a like occasion,
acknowledge my ignorance of such subjects. I wish we had some word in
our language to express the same idea in poetry as _crescendo_ does in
music; swell is applied to so many other purposes, that it has not the
effect of an appropriated term.
But for the present I must quit the subject—in a little time expect
the remainder of my observations on this poet.
=LETTER= XX.
Every one seems to be satisfied that warm colouring is essential to
a good picture: but what _is_ warm colouring is not determined. Some
have joined the idea of warmth to yellow, others to red, others to the
compound of both, the orange—they also differ in the degrees of each.
A warm picture to some, is cold to others; and vice versa. Lambert’s
idea of warmth, was to make his pictures appear as if they were behind
a yellow glass. Vanbloom’s have a red glass before them. Both’s an
orange colour. Each has its admirers, who condemn the rest.
Who shall decide when Doctors disagree?
Nature. All these hues are right as _particulars_, but wrong as
_universals_.
Let us examine the different appearances of light from the dawn to
noon. The first break of day is a cold light in the East—this, by
degrees, is tinged with purple, which grows redder and redder until
the purple is lost in orange—the orange in yellow, and before the sun
is two degrees high, the yellow is changed to white. Invert the order
of these, and it is the coming on of the evening. All these hues then
exist in nature, and one is just as right as the other.
It is necessary to distinguish between the painter’s _warmth_, and the
sensation. A picture, that has most warmth of colouring, represents
that time of the day when we feel least. A true representation of noon
must have no tinge of yellow or red in the sky; and yet from its being
noon, one might be led to imagine it must be _warm_. It is the critic,
and not the artist, which confounds the meaning of these terms. In like
manner, summer and winter, in respect to light, are just the same: the
sun rises and sets as gorgeously in December, if the weather be clear,
as in June. I remember seeing two pictures of Cuyp, companions—one,
a cattle piece in summer; the other, winter with figures skaiting. The
sky in both was equally _warm_, for which the painter was much censured
by an auction-connoisseur, who declared that it was impossible the sky
could be _warm_ in winter.
I believe it is a common mistake to apply the red and purple tints to
the morning, and the orange and yellow to the evening. We hear pictures
of Claude called mornings and evenings, which may be either. It is
really odd enough, that there should not be a single circumstance to
distinguish the morning from the evening, unless it be in a view of a
particular place—in this case, the reversing of the light shews the
difference. In a picture, there is no distinction between going to
work, or milking, or returning from it—men ride, drive cattle, are
fishing, &c. as well early as late.
These considerations should soften the peremptory style of some judges,
and extend their taste, which at present seems much confined. We have
seen that there are more natural hues than one or two. I will allow
them to say, that a picture is too warm, too cold, too red, too yellow
to please them, but let them not deny that these hues are all in
nature, and that well-managed they are all pictoresque.
=LETTER= XXI.
At the revival of the arts, some evil genius, who was determined to
retard the progress of painting, dictated this rule. “A picture should
always have its horizon the height of the eye _that looks at it_—in
nature, the eye being always the height of the horizon; therefore a
picture will be most like nature that has its horizon the height of the
_natural eye_.” One of the falsest rules that ever was founded on a
false principle! and this is the more lamentable, as it has spoiled,
in point of perspective, three parts of the historical pictures that
have ever been painted.
As it is very difficult to destroy a rooted error, and as this is a
most pernicious one, it is necessary to be full and particular.
When I say _eye_ and _horizon_—the natural eye and horizon are meant.
When the terms _artificial eye_ and _artificial horizon_ are used, the
eye and the horizon represented in painting are to be understood. We
must be clear in this distinction, for it is the confounding of the
ideas expressed by these terms which has occasioned the mischief.