After seeing all the fine pictures in France, Italy, and Germany, one
must come to this conclusion--that _colour_, if not the first, is at
least an essential quality in painting. No master has as yet maintained
his ground beyond his own time without it. But in oil painting it is
richness and depth alone that can do justice to the material. Upon this
subject every prejudice with which I left home is, if anything, not only
confirmed but increased. What Sir Joshua wrote, and what our friend Sir
George so often supported, _was right_; and after seeing what I have
seen, I am not now to be _talked_ out of it.
With us, as you know, every young exhibitor with pink, white, and blue,
thinks himself a colourist like Titian; than whom perhaps no painter is
more misrepresented or misunderstood. I saw myself at Florence his
famous Venus upon an easel, with Kirkup and Wallis by me. This picture,
so often copied, and every copy a fresh mistake, is, what I expected it
to be, deep yet brilliant; indescribable in its hues, yet simple beyond
example in its execution and its colouring. Its flesh (O how our friends
at home would stare!) is a simple, sober, mixed-up tint, and apparently,
like your skies, completed while wet. No scratchings, no hatchings, no
scumbling nor multiplicity of repetitions--no ultramarine lakes nor
vermilions--not even a mark of the brush visible; all seemed melted in
the fat and glowing mass, solid yet transparent, giving the nearest
approach to life that the painter's art has ever yet reached.
_Wilkie._