[41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading
Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over color in the
abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest
for rendering color under effects of light; and of these two,
Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of
beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness.
Rossetti's carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color,
never in oil.
[42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the
rise of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown
trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to
work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is
browned and shining; but fallacy in dead color is detected on the
instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_
that he could touch any portion of his work with gum, he is going
wrong.
It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
between translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have
said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but
luster or _shininess_ is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of
my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to
both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day
to persuade me that luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it
was only the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain
streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point
to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly in such matters;
but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever
may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes
shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she
would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to
polish a rose?
[43] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed
imperial, or gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is
best. Coarse, gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and
blunderers; no good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner
worked much on a thin tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his
sketches in tight bundles that would go deep into his pockets.
[44] I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I
address you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can
sometimes get out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without
confession. Yet even Titian's alterations usually show as stains on
his work.
[45] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few
colors: it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing,
and you may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange
them in your color-box in the order I have set them down, you will
always easily put your finger on the one you want.
Cobalt Smalt Antwerb blue Prussian blue
Black Gamboge Emerald green Hooker's green
Lemon yellow Cadmium yellow Yellow ocher Roman ocher
Raw sienna Burnt sienna Light red Indian red
Mars orange Extract of vermilion Carmine Violet carmine
Brown madder Burnt umber Vandyke brown Sepia
Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and
they are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more
fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color,
put in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and
Prussian blue. No. 1 is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a
noble color for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into
afterwards with other colors.
If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
"Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says
about principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements
of practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on
each other when mixed, etc.
[46] A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the
sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip
of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening,
and match each color beside one of the circular openings. You will
thus have no occasion to wash any of the colors away. But the first
rough method is generally all you want, as, after a little practice,
you only need to _look_ at the hue through the opening in order to
be able to transfer it to your drawing at once.
[47] If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should
have many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer
I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except
black, Prussian 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.
[48] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors,
which is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any
artist. The best color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not
quite right.
[49] See Note 6 in Appendix I.
[50] The worst general character that color can possibly have is a
prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a
decaying heap of vegetables; this color is _accurately_ indicative
of decline or paralysis in missal-painting.
[51] That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The
gradations of color in the various shadows belonging to various
lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colorist can ever
draw _forms_ perfectly (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at
the end); but all notions of explaining form by superimposed color,
as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color 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. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as
in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes 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 colors are of equal
depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch
more than the red one.
[52] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one
more point connected with the management of color, under the head
"Law of Harmony."
[53] See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap.
viii. § 6.
[54] See Note 7 in Appendix I.
[55] "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 dissimilarity 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."
[56] This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, 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.
[57] 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 pretending 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 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 dangerous 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 engineering mind.
[58] 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.
[59] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without
having gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch
of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4, p. 17, and examine the
curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here
stated under the heads A and B.
[60] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these
figures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by
compasses.
[61] I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely
facsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to
illustrate my meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to
get on to something 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.
[62] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature
dependent, 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.
[63] 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 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 between 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.
[64] In the smaller figure (32), 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 represented 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.
[65] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
[66] If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing 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 dress.
[67] 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 behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the
mountain's edge.
[68] "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 on Criticism._
[69] I am describing from an MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
Decretalia, in my own possession.
[70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
marked through this division.
[71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
considerable 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.
[72] 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.
[73] In all the best arrangements of color, 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.
[74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
before.