On such instances I shall not insist, for the finding fault with Turner

is not, I think, either decorous in myself or like to be beneficial to

the reader.[15] The greater number of failures took place in the

transition period, when the artist was feeling for the new qualities,

and endeavoring to reconcile them with more careful elaboration of form

than was properly consistent with them. Gradually his hand became more

free, his perception and grasp of the new truths more certain, and his

choice of subject more adapted to the exhibition of them. But his powers

did not attain their highest results till towards the year 1840, about

which period they did so suddenly, and with a vigor and concentration

which rendered his pictures at that time almost incomparable with those

which had preceded them. The drawings of Nemi, and Oberwesel, in the

possession of B. G. Windus, Esq., were among the first evidences of this

sudden advance; only the foliage in both of these is inferior; and it is

remarkable that in this phase of his art, Turner has drawn little

foliage, and that little badly--the great characteristic of it being

its power, beauty, and majesty of color, and its abandonment of all

littleness and division of thought to a single impression. In the year

1842, he made some drawings from recent sketches in Switzerland; these,

with some produced in the following years, all of Swiss subject, I

consider to be, on the whole, the most characteristic and perfect works

he has ever produced. The Academy pictures were far inferior to them;

but among these examples of the same power were not wanting, more

especially in the smaller pictures of Venice. The Sun of Venice, going

to sea; the San Benedetto, looking towards Fusina; and a view of Murano,

with the Cemetery, were all faultless: another of Venice, seen from near

Fusina, with sunlight and moonlight mixed (1844) was, I think, when I

first saw it, (and it still remains little injured,) the most perfectly

_beautiful_ piece of color of all that I have seen produced by human

hands, by any means, or at any period. Of the exhibition of 1845, I have

only seen a small Venice, (still I believe in the artist's possession,)

and the two whaling subjects. The Venice is a second-rate work, and the

two others altogether unworthy of him.

In conclusion of our present sketch of the course of landscape art, it

may be generally stated that Turner is the only painter, so far as I

know, who has ever drawn the sky, (not the clear sky, which we before

saw belonged exclusively to the religious schools, but the various forms

and phenomena of the cloudy heavens,) all previous artists having only

represented it typically or partially; but he absolutely and

universally: he is the only painter who has ever drawn a mountain, or a

stone; no other man ever having learned their organization, or possessed

himself of their spirit, except in part and obscurely, (the one or two

stones noted of Tintoret's, (Vol. II., Part III. Ch. 3,) are perhaps

hardly enough on which to found an exception in his favor.) He is the

only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, Titian having come the

nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular development of the

larger trunks, (though sometimes losing the woody strength in a

serpent-like flaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the

ramifications. He is the only painter who has ever represented the

surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the

effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract

beauty of natural color. These assertions I make deliberately, after

careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or

momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with the

consciousness of being able to prove them.

Sec. 47. Difficulty of demonstration in such subjects.

This proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the present

portion of this work, which was originally written, as before explained,

for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, I should have gladly

cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of fact

and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be of service to

some readers who would be unwilling to enter into the more speculative

fields with which the succeeding sections are concerned. I leave,

therefore, nearly as it was originally written, the following

examination of the relative truthfulness of elder and of recent art;

always requesting the reader to remember, as some excuse for the

inadequate execution, even of what I have here attempted, how difficult

it is to express or explain, by language only, those delicate qualities

of the object of sense, on the seizing of which all refined truth of

representation depends. Try, for instance, to explain in language the

exact qualities of the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty

of expression about the half-opened lips of Raffaelle's St. Catherine.

There is, indeed, nothing in landscape so ineffable as this; but there

is no part nor portion of God's works in which the delicacy appreciable

by a cultivated eye, and necessary to be rendered in art, is not beyond

all expression and explanation; I cannot tell it you, if you do not see

it. And thus I have been entirely unable, in the following pages, to

demonstrate clearly anything of really deep and perfect truth; nothing

but what is coarse and commonplace, in matters to be judged of by the

senses, is within the reach of argument. How much or how little I have

done must be judged of by the reader: how much it is impossible to do I

have more fully shown in the concluding section.

I shall first take into consideration those general truths, common to

all the objects of nature, which are productive of what is usually

called "effect," that is to say, truths of tone, general color, space,

and light. I shall then investigate the truths of specific form and

color, in the four great component parts of landscape--sky, earth,

water, and vegetation.

FOOTNOTES

[6] Not the large Paradise, but the Fall of Adam, a small picture

chiefly in brown and gray, near Titian's Assumption. Its companion,

the Death of Abel, is remarkable as containing a group of trees

which Turner, I believe accidentally, has repeated nearly mass for

mass in the "Marly." Both are among the most noble works of this or

any other master, whether for preciousness of color or energy of

thought.

[7] The triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple,

probably gave it strange typical interest among the Christian

painters. Angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the

foreground of his Crucifixion had, I imagine, a view also to its

chemical property.

[8] This is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may

appear. From the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however

numerous, we have no right to conjecture his total inability; a time

may come when he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur

when his efforts shall be successful. But there are some pictures

which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or

commissions; some things which a man cannot do nor say without

sealing forever his character and capacity. The angel holding the

cross with his finger in his eye, the roaring red-faced children

about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I speak deliberately and

determinedly) head of Christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in

which the martyrdom of the saint is exhibited (I do not choose to

use the expressions which alone could characterize it) are perfect,

sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in

any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we

may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we

feel disposed to admire him. I am prepared to support this position,

however uncharitable it may seem; a man may be tempted into a gross

sin by passion, and forgiven; and yet there are some kinds of sins

into which only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and which

cannot be forgiven. It should be added, however, that the artistical

qualities of these pictures are in every way worthy of the

conceptions they realize; I do not recollect any instances of color

or execution so coarse and feelingless.

[9] It appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists

who complain acrimoniously of their positions on the Academy walls,

that the Academicians have in their own rooms a right to the line

and the best places near it; in their taking this position there is

no abuse nor injustice; but the Academicians should remember that

with their rights they have their duties, and their duty is to

determine among the works of artists not belonging to their body

those which are most likely to advance public knowledge and

judgment, and to give these the best places next their own; neither

would it detract from their dignity if they occasionally ceded a

square even of their own territory, as they did gracefully and

rightly, and, I am sorry to add, disinterestedly, to the picture of

Paul de la Roche in 1844. Now the Academicians know perfectly well

that the mass of portrait which encumbers their walls at half height

is worse than useless, seriously harmful to the public taste, and it

was highly criminal (I use the word advisedly) that the valuable and

interesting work of Fielding, of which I have above spoken, should

have been placed where it was, above three rows of eye-glasses and

waistcoats. A very beautiful work of Harding's was treated either in

the same or the following exhibition with still greater injustice.

Fielding's was merely put out of sight; Harding's where its faults

were conspicuous and its virtues lost. It was an Alpine scene, of

which the foreground, rocks, and torrents were painted with

unrivalled fidelity and precision; the foliage was dexterous, the

aerial gradations of the mountains tender and multitudinous, their

forms carefully studied and very grand. The blemish of the picture

was a buff-colored tower with a red roof; singularly meagre in

detail, and conventionally relieved from a mass of gloom. The

picture was placed where nothing but this tower could be seen.

[10] I have not given any examples in this place, because it is

difficult to explain such circumstances of effect without diagrams:

I purpose entering into fuller discussion of the subject with the

aid of illustration.

[11] The inscription is to the following effect,--a pleasant thing

to see upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed:--

CAMPO. DI. S. MAURIZIO

______

D I O

CONSERVI A NOI.

LUNGAMENTE

LO ZELANTIS. E. REVERENDIS

D. LUIGI. PICCINI.

NOSTRO

N O V E L L O P I E V A N O.

______

G L I E S U L T A N T.

PARROCCHIANI

[12] The quantity of gold with which the decorations of Venice were

once covered could not now be traced or credited without reference

to the authority of Gentile Bellini. The greater part of the marble

mouldings have been touched with it in lines and points, the

minarets of St. Mark's, and all the florid carving of the arches

entirely sheeted. The Casa d'Oro retained it on its lions until the

recent commencement of its Restoration.

[13] Indeed there should be no such difference at all. Every

architect ought to be an artist; every very great artist is

necessarily an architect.

[14] This passage seems at variance with what has been said of the

necessity of painting present times and objects. It is not so. A

great painter makes out of that which he finds before him something

which is independent of _all_ time. He can only do this out of the

materials ready to his hand, but that which he builds has the

dignity of dateless age. A little painter is annihilated by an

anachronism, and is conventionally antique, and involuntarily

modern.

[15] One point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no

question of art but of material. The reader will have observed that

I strictly limited the perfection of Turner's works to the time of

their first appearing on the walls of the Royal Academy. It bitterly

grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. No

_picture_ of Turner's is seen in perfection a month after it is

painted. The Walhalla cracked before it had been eight days in the

Academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the

exhibition is over; and when all the colors begin to get hard a year

or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity

comes over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many

of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if

the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the

case. I believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable,

the colors being so peculiarly blended and mingled in Turner's

present manner as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but

that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes

take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the

more brilliant works. Thus the Old Temeraire is nearly safe in

color, and quite firm; while the Juliet and her Nurse is now the

ghost of what it was; the Slaver shows no cracks, though it is

chilled in some of the darker passages, while the Walhalla and

several of the recent Venices cracked in the Royal Academy. It is

true that the damage makes no further progress after the first year

or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always

valuable and records its intention; but it is bitterly to be

regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work by

which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. The fact of his

using means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of

the pictures in his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind

which appears to me utterly inexplicable; and both are without

excuse. If the effects he desires cannot be to their full extent

produced except by these treacherous means, one picture only should

be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate power, and the

rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labor and time

in safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of

immediate effect. That which is greatest in him is entirely

independent of means; much of what he now accomplishes

illegitimately might without doubt be attained in securer

modes--what cannot should without hesitation be abandoned.

Fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration.

Many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been I think

always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very

early works. I have myself known no instance of a drawing properly

protected, and not rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest

change. The great foes of Turner, as of all other great colorists

especially, are the picture cleaner and the mounter.

SECTION II.

OF GENERAL TRUTHS.

CHAPTER I.

OF TRUTH OF TONE.

Sec. 1. Meaning of the word "tone:" First, the right relation of objects in

shadow to the principal light.

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 understood how far it extends.

Sec. 2. Secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of

its brightness to the hue of light upon it.

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 distant, 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 colors

to the shadows to the colors 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 illuminated parts themselves, with respect to the

degree in which they are influenced by the color 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 kind of light, and in one kind

of atmosphere; this being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and

inexplicable quality of each color laid on, which makes the eye feel

both what is the actual color 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 color

as a very dead or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally

different in _quality_; and that quality by which the illuminated dead

color 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.

Sec. 3. Difference between tone in its first sense and aerial perspective.

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 color, etc., assisted by greater pitch

of shadow, and requires only that objects should be detached from each

other, by degrees of intensity in _proportion_ 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.

Sec. 4. The pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of middle tints

to light.

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 middle distance having precisely the same

relation to the light of the sky 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-obscuro 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.

Sec. 5. And consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to

darkness.

Now if this could be done consistently, and all the 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 one distance to another, we give the same quantity of

difference 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, imitative 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.

Sec. 6. General falsehood of such a system.

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? Nay, the very truth to which the rest are sacrificed 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.

Sec. 7. The principle of Turner in this respect.

Turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. He

boldly takes pure white (and justly, 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

separate degree of distance,[16] giving each step of approach, not the

exact difference in pitch which it would have in nature, but a

difference bearing the same proportion 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 intermediate 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.

Sec. 8. Comparison of N. Poussin's "Phocion,"

Take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has

produced--the work of a really great and 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 moon, 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 lateral, 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 noonday 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 color, or any other means, between

them and the foreground.

Sec. 9. With Turner's "Mercury and Argus."

Compare with these, Turner's treatment of his materials 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 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, 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.

Sec. 10. And with the "Datur Hora Quieti."

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 vigorous

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.

Sec. 11. The second sense of the word "tone."

Sec. 12. Remarkable difference in this respect between the paintings and

drawings of Turner.

Sec. 13. Not owing to want of power over the material.

It was not, therefore, with reference to this division of the subject

that I admitted inferiority in our great modern 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 especially that precious

quality of each color laid on, which makes it appear a quiet color

illuminated, not a bright color 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. VI. of this section,

pieces of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, 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 something in the material which modern artists

in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels Turner himself

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 shivering 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 the Slaver) which

directly contradict it, and which prove to us 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. Not so with the recent Academy pictures; 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 perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is

necessarily 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.

Sec. 14. The two distinct qualities of light to be considered.

Light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be

considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colors with

fidelity; or colored, and consequently modifying these local tints, with

its own. But the power of pure white light to exhibit local color is

strangely variable. The morning light of about nine or ten is usually

very pure; but the difference of its effect on different days,

independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable.

Every one knows how capriciously the colors 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 color, brings every color up to the highest

possible pitch and key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief

attribute of finely-toned pictures by the great _colorists_ as opposed

to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless of color, are

content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing

light.

Sec. 15. Falsehoods by which Titian attains the appearance of quality in

light.

Falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far

more of feeling than of proof, for any color 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 color. In the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian,

it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than

the blue of the distant landscape;--impossible, not from its vividness,

but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity

of color; 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 spectator. Yet make

this blue faint, aerial, and distant--make it in the slightest degree to

resemble the truth of nature's color--and all the tone of the picture,

all its intensity and splendor, will vanish on the instant. So again, in

the exquisite and inimitable little bit of color, the Europa in the

Dulwich Gallery; the blue of the dark promontory on the left is

thoroughly absurd and impossible, 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.

Sec. 16. Turner will not use such means.

Sec. 17. But gains in essential truth by the sacrifice.

Sec. 18. The second quality of light.

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 color as Titian

does. He infinitely prefers having the power of giving extension of

space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep melodies 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,[17]

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 space, but he is right also in the abstract

question of color; for as we observed above (Sect. 14,) it is only the

white light--the perfect unmodified group of rays--which will bring out

local color perfectly; and if the picture, therefore, is to be complete

in its system of color, 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 exhibits, and thereby rendering

certain colors necessary, and certain colors 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

overwhelming in its effect on local color. 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 color being absolutely annihilated.

And so under all colored 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 color, which, when in a picture

it is so exactly proportioned that we feel at once both what the local

colors are in themselves, and what is the color and strength of the

light upon them, gives us truth of tone.

Sec. 19. The perfection of Cuyp in this respect interfered with by numerous

solecisms.

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 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

color of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight. It is possible that

the original color 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

colors--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 colors 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 including 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.

Sec. 20. Turner is not so perfect in parts--far more so in the whole.

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 color, Turner is in the habit of allowing

excessively cold fragments in big warmest pictures; but these are never,

observe, warm colors 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

valuable as color, 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 reflected

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 _color_ of

the picture 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 color as false in tone, and injurious to

everything near them. And 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.

Sec. 21. The power in Turner of uniting a number of tones.

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

landscape, 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

color, 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 associating cold with warm light, no one has ever

approached, or even ventured into the same field with him. The old

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 matter 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,

deceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in

it more than sunlight, because under the blazing 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.

Sec. 22. Recapitulation.

And if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell upon the

individual tones, and to study the laws of their reconcilement, there

will be found in the recent Academy pictures of this great artist a mass

of various truth to which nothing can be brought for comparison, which

stands not only unrivalled, but uncontended with, and which, when in

carrying out it may be inferior to some of the picked passages of the

old masters, is so through deliberate choice rather to suggest a

multitude of truths than to imitate one, and through a strife with

difficulties of effect of which art can afford no parallel example. Nay,

in the next chapter, respecting color, we shall see farther reason for

doubting the truth of Claude, Cuyp, and Poussin, in tone,--reason so

palpable that if these were all that were to be contended with, I should

scarcely have allowed any inferiority in Turner whatsoever;[18] but I

allow it, not so much with reference to the deceptive imitations of

sunlight, wrought out with desperate exaggerations of shade, of the

professed landscape painters, as with reference to the glory of Rubens,

the glow of Titian, the silver tenderness of Cagliari, and perhaps more

than all to the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and

heavenly light, holy and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless

passion of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep

and noble conceptions of the early school of Italy,--of Fra Bartolomeo,

Perugino, and the early mind of Raffaelle.

FOOTNOTES

[16] Of course I am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro,

but of that quantity of depth of shade by which, _coeteris

paribus_, a near object will exceed a distant one. For the truth of

the systems of Turner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro,

vide Chapter III. of this Section, Sec. 8.

[17] 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.

[18] We must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the

works of the late George Barrett, which afford glorious and exalted

passages of light; and John Varley, who, though less truthful in his

aim, was frequently deep in his feeling. Some of the sketches of De

Wint are also admirable in this respect. As for our oil pictures,

the less that is said about them the better. Callcott has the truest

aim; but not having any eye for color, it is impossible for him to

succeed in tone.

CHAPTER II.

OF TRUTH OF COLOR.

Sec. 1. Observations on the color of G. Poussin's La Riccia.

There is, in the first room of the National Gallery, a landscape

attributed to Gaspar Poussin, called sometimes Aricia, sometimes Le or

La Riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue printers. Whether it can

be supposed to resemble the ancient Aricia, now La Riccia, close to

Albano, I 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

gray beside the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being

moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted

of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick-red, the only thing like

color in the picture. The foreground is a piece of road, which in order

to make allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in

light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vegetation usually

present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green gray, 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.

Sec. 2. As compared with the actual scene.

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 prototypes of Veiento.[19] It had been

wild weather when I left Rome, 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 flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in

deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. The noonday 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 color, 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

sunbeam, 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 gray walls of rock into a thousand separate

stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind 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-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of

dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,--casting their quiet

shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them

filling 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 repose 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.

Sec. 3. Turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature.

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 color

which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. For all our artificial

pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and

lightless beside her living color; 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

sunlight which trebles their brilliancy, while the painter, deprived of

this splendid aid, works still with what is actually a gray shadow

compared to the force of nature's color. 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 picture will be

extinguished. So far from out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere

vividness of color goes, one-half reach her;--but does he use this

brilliancy of color on objects to which it does not properly belong? Let

us compare his works in this respect with a few instances from the old

masters.

Sec. 4. Impossible colors of Salvator, Titian;

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 symbolical 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 color. Salvator has painted it throughout without

one instant of variation; but this, I suppose, is simplicity and

generalization;--let it pass: but what is the color? _Pure sky blue_,

without one grain of gray, 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 mountain thrown in

with unmitigated ultramarine. Now mountains 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 color is concerned, broad, bold

falsehood--the direct assertion 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 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 color 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

exquisite care and watchfulness in color as false, while they receive

such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction with the most generous

and simple credulity.

Sec. 5. Poussin, and Claude.

Again, in the upper sky of the picture of Nicolas 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 gray,) 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. Now 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 color in which she is not apt to indulge. You will be

puzzled to show me such a thing in the recent works of Turner.[20]

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

Isaac and Rebecca, or Gaspar's sacrifice of Isaac, for instance:) 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 color of a leaf in the sun

(the darkest you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched

color 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 color of the old

masters!

And let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidelity of

_impression_ be brought forward here. I have nothing 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 veneration for the _feeling_ of the old

masters, but I must not let it influence me now--my business is to match

colors, 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

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 inaccuracy, and need of cultivation. Turner's color is

glaring to one person's sensations, and beautiful to another's. This

proves nothing. Poussin's color 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 gray.

Whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the objects 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

intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the necessity,

if a picture is to be truthful in effect of color, that it should tell

as a broad space of graduated illumination--not, as do those of the old

masters, as a patch-work of black shades. Their works are nature in

mourning weeds,--[Greek: oud hen helio katharo tethrammenoi, all hypo

symmigei skia].

Sec. 6. Turner's translation of colors.

It is true that there are, here and there, in the Academy pictures,

passages in which Turner has translated the unattainable intensity of

one tone of color, into the attainable pitch of a higher one: the golden

green for instance, of intense sunshine on verdure, into pure yellow,

because he knows it to be impossible, with any mixture of blue

whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative intensity of light, and

Turner always will have his light and shade right, whatever it costs him

in color. But he does this in rare cases, and even then over very small

spaces; and I should be obliged to his critics if they would go out to

some warm, mossy green bank in full summer sunshine, and try to reach

its tone; and when they find, as find they will, Indian yellow and

chrome look dark beside it, let them tell me candidly which is nearest

truth, the gold of Turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and

verdigris greens in which Claude, with the industry and intelligence of

a Sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his

childish foreground.

Sec. 7. Notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach

that of reality.

Sec. 8. Reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with respect to

their representation.

Sec. 9. Color of the Napoleon.

But it is singular enough that the chief attacks on Turner for

overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when there could by any

possibility be any chance of his outstepping nature, but when he has

taken subjects which no colors of earth could ever vie with or reach,

such, for instance, as his sunsets among the high clouds. When I come to

speak of skies, I shall point out what divisions, proportioned to their

elevation, exist in the character of clouds. It is the highest

region,--that exclusively characterized by white, filmy, multitudinous,

and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or flakes, of which I

speak at present, a region which no landscape painters have ever made

one effort to represent, except Rubens and Turner--the latter taking it

for his most favorite and frequent study. Now we have been speaking

hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature, of the ordinary

effects of daylight on ordinary colors, and we repeat again, that no

gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these. But it is a widely

different thing when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does

something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. She has

a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the

noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in these sunsets

among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun

sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls

upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable

delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be

pure snow white, and which give therefore fair field to the tone of

light. There is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the

intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the

horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black

bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied,

shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there

are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind,--things which can

only be conceived while they are visible,--the intense hollow blue of

the upper sky melting through it all,--showing here deep, and pure, and

lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless body of the

transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and

gold. Now there is no connection, no one link of association or

resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand but

Turner's. He alone has followed nature in these her highest efforts; he

follows her faithfully, but far behind; follows at such a distance below

her intensity that the Napoleon of last year's exhibition, and the

Temeraire of the year before, would look colorless and cold if the eye

came upon them after one of nature's sunsets among the high clouds. But

there are a thousand reasons why this should not be believed. The

concurrence of circumstances necessary to produce the sunsets of which I

speak does not take place above five or six times in the summer, and

then only for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as the sun

reaches the horizon. Considering how seldom people think of looking for

sunset at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a position from

which it can be fully seen, the chances that their attention should be

awake, and their position favorable, during these few flying instants of

the year, is almost as nothing. What can the citizen, who can see only

the red light on the canvas of the wagon at the end of the street, and

the crimson color of the bricks of his neighbor's chimney, know of the

flood of fire which deluges the sky from the horizon to the zenith? What

can even the quiet inhabitant of the English lowlands, whose scene for

the manifestation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of

hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the old elm-trees, know of the mighty

passages of splendor which are tossed from Alp to Alp over the azure of

a thousand miles of champaign? Even granting the constant vigor of

observation, and supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge,

it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable the memory is

of retaining for any time the distinct image of the sources even of its

most vivid impressions. What recollection have we of the sunsets which

delighted us last year? We may know that they were magnificent, or

glowing, but no distinct image of color or form is retained--nothing of

whose _degree_ (for the great difficulty with the memory is to retain,

not facts, but _degrees_ of fact) we could be so certain as to say of

anything now presented to us, that it is like it. If we did say so, we

should be wrong; for we may be quite certain that the energy of an

impression fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct

every day; and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the

decision and certainty of one present to the senses. How constantly do

we affirm that the thunder-storm of last week was the most terrible one

we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the

thunder-storm of last year, but with the faded and feeble recollection

of it. And so, when we enter an exhibition, as we have no definite

standard of truth before us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to

the quietness of color which is all that human power can ordinarily

attain to; and when we turn to a piece of higher and closer truth,

approaching the pitch of the color of nature, but to which we are not

guided, as we should be in nature, by corresponding gradations of light

everywhere around us, but which is isolated and cut off suddenly by a

frame and a wall, and surrounded by darkness and coldness, what can we

expect but that it should surprise and shock the feelings? Suppose,

where the Napoleon hung in the Academy last year, there could have been

left, instead, an opening in the wall, and through that opening, in the

midst of the obscurity of the dim room and the smoke-laden atmosphere,

there could suddenly have been poured the full glory of a tropical

sunset, reverberated from the sea: How would you have shrunk, blinded,

from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings! What picture in the room

would not have been blackness after it? And why then do you blame Turner

because he dazzles you? Does not the falsehood rest with those who do

_not_? There was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far

below what nature would have used in the same circumstances, nor was

there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest;--the stormy

blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich

crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed; the pure gold and

purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the deep passage of

solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the

limitless shore--all were given with harmony as perfect as their color

was intense; and if, instead of passing, as I doubt not you did, in the

hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but so much as one

quarter of an hour before the picture, you would have found the sense of

air and space blended with every line, and breathing in every cloud, and

every color instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light.

Sec. 10. Necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color

and light.

It is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in brilliant

effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true statement of

nature's color, there must yet be a distinct difference in the

impression we convey, because we cannot approach her _light_. All such

hues are usually given by her with an accompanying intensity of sunbeams

which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the

actual colors, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in

rendering all effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of

_imitation_, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary

observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of color,

and are unable to give the accompanying truths of light, so that the

more true we are in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the

discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of

light. But the painter who really loves nature will not, on this

account, give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may appear to

you to be right, because your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its

parts, but which he knows to derive its apparent truth from a

systematized falsehood. No; he will make you understand and feel that

art _cannot_ imitate nature--that where it appears to do so, it must

malign her, and mock her. He will give you, or state to you, such truths

as are in his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot

give, he will leave to your imagination. If you are acquainted with

nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply

from your memory and from your heart that light which he cannot give. If

you are unacquainted with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen

to satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which you would

not acknowledge and could not enjoy.

Sec. 11. This discrepancy less in Turner than in other colorists.

Sec. 12. Its great extent in a landscape attributed to Rubens.

Nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do

away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by

lowering his color, but by increasing his light. And it is indeed by

this that the works of Turner are peculiarly distinguished from those of

all other colorists, by the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light

which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more than their

brilliant color, is the real source of their overpowering effect upon

the eye, an effect so _reasonably_ made the subject of perpetual

animadversion, as if the sun which they represent were quite a quiet,

and subdued, and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled

anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. I am fond of standing by a

bright Turner in the Academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments

of the crowd--"What a glaring thing!" "I declare I can't look at it!"

"Don't it hurt your eyes?"--expressed as if they were in the constant

habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the most perfect comfort

and entire facility of vision. It is curious after hearing people malign

some of Turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really

ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters, in which we have

color given _without_ light. Take, for instance, the landscape

attributed to Rubens, No. 175, in the Dulwich Gallery. I never have

spoken, and I never will speak of Rubens but with the most reverential

feeling; and whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from

his unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion,

his calibre of mind was originally such that I believe the world may see

another Titian and another Raffaelle, before it sees another Rubens. But

I have before alluded to the violent license he occasionally assumes;

and there is an instance of it in this picture apposite to the immediate

question. The sudden streak and circle of yellow and crimson in the

middle of the sky of that picture, being the occurrence of a fragment of

a sunset color in pure daylight, and in perfect isolation, while at the

same time it is rather darker, when translated into light and shade,

than brighter than the rest of the sky, is a case of such bold

absurdity, come from whose pencil it may, that if every error which

Turner has fallen into in the whole course of his life were concentrated

into one, that one would not equal it; and as our connoisseurs gaze upon

this with never-ending approbation, we must not be surprised that the

accurate perceptions which thus take delight in pure fiction, should

consistently be disgusted by Turner's fidelity and truth.

Sec. 13. Turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color.

Hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness of pure color, and

showing that it is used by Turner only where nature uses it, and in no

less degree. But we have hitherto, therefore, been speaking of a most

limited and uncharacteristic portion of his works; for Turner, like all

great colorists, is distinguished not more for his power of dazzling and

overwhelming the eye with intensity of effect, than for his power of

doing so by the use of subdued and gentle means. There is no man living

more cautious and sparing in the use of pure color than Turner. To say

that he never perpetrates anything like the blue excrescences of

foreground, or hills _shot_ like a housekeeper's best silk gown, with

blue and red, which certain of our celebrated artists consider the

essence of the sublime, would be but a poor compliment. I might as well

praise the portraits of Titian because they have not the grimace and

paint of a clown in a pantomime; but I do say, and say with confidence,

that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however

sober and lightless their effects may look, who does not employ more

pure and raw color than Turner; and that the ordinary tinsel and trash,

or rather vicious and perilous stuff, according to the power of the mind

producing it, with which the walls of our Academy are half covered,

disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrading and corrupting

our whole school of art, is based on a system of color beside which

Turner's is as Vesta to Cotytto--the chastity of fire to the foulness of

earth. Every picture of this great colorist has, in one or two parts of

it, (key-notes of the whole,) points where the system of each individual

color is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from

the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even the most

brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw color; that is to

say, there is no warmth which has not gray in it, and no blue which has

not warmth in it; and the tints in which he most excels and distances

all other men, the most cherished and inimitable portions of his color,

are, as with all perfect colorists they must be, his grays.

It is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the Mercury

and Argus with the various illustrations of the serenity, space, and

sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which every year's

exhibition brings forward enough and to spare. In the Mercury and Argus,

the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with gray and

pearly white, the gold color of the light warming it more or less as it

approaches or retires from the sun; but throughout, there is not a grain

of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling

gray and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky

mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a

single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every

part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. The reader

can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction

to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer

piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard,

with heavy extra charge for ultramarine.

Sec. 14. The basis of gray, under all his vivid hues.

Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful principle of delicate

and subdued color is carried out with a care and labor of which it is

difficult to form a conception. He gives a dash of pure white for his

highest light; but all the other whites of his picture are pearled down

with gray or gold. He gives a fold of pure crimson to the drapery of his

nearest figure; but all his other crimsons will be deepened with black,

or warmed with yellow. In one deep reflection of his distant sea, we

catch a trace of the purest blue; but all the rest is palpitating with a

varied and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks

vivid blue as a mass, but is only so by opposition. It is the most

difficult, the most rare thing, to find in his works a definite space,

however small, of unconnected color; that is, either of a blue which has

nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color which has

nothing to connect it with the grays of the whole; and the result is,

that there is a general system and undercurrent of gray pervading the

whole of his color, out of which his highest lights, and those local

touches of pure color, which are, as I said before, the key-notes of the

picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he

stands alone.

Sec. 15. The variety and fulness even of his most simple tones.

Sec. 16. Following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature.

Intimately associated with this toning down and connection of the colors

actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and blending them, so

as never to give a quarter of an inch of canvas without a change in it,

a melody as well as a harmony of one kind or another. Observe, I am not

at present speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, not as

a characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim of the simple

follower of nature. For it is strange to see how marvellously nature

varies the most general and simple of her tones. A mass of mountain seen

against the light, may, at first, appear all of one blue; and so it is,

blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. But

look how that blue is made up. There are black shadows in it under the

crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray

half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth

and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every

tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual

character in the universal will. Who is there who can do this as Turner

will? The old masters would have settled the matter at once with a

transparent, agreeable, but monotonous gray. Many among the moderns

would probably be equally monotonous with absurd and false colors.

Turner only would give the uncertainty--the palpitating, perpetual

change--the subjection of all to a great influence, without one part or

portion being lost or merged in it--the unity of action with infinity of

agent. And I wish to insist on this the more particularly, because it is

one of the eternal principles of nature, that she will not have one line

nor color, nor one portion nor atom of space without a change in it.

There is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state

of perpetual variation: I do not mean in time, but in space. There is

not a leaf in the world which has the _same color_ visible over its

whole surface; it has a white high light somewhere; and in proportion as

it curves to or from that focus, the color is brighter or grayer. Pick

up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes

and hues of color. Every bit of bare ground under your feet has in it a

thousand such--the gray pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient

vegetation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might

keep a painter at work for a month, if he were obliged to follow them

touch for touch: how much more, when the same infinity of change is

carried out with vastness of object and space. The extreme of distance

may appear at first monotonous; but the least examination will show it

to be full of every kind of change--that its outlines are perpetually

melting and appearing again--sharp here, vague there--now lost

altogether, now just hinted and still confused among each other--and so

forever in a state and necessity of change. Hence, wherever in a

painting we have unvaried color extended even over a small space, there

is falsehood. Nothing can be natural which is monotonous; nothing true

which only tells one story. The brown foreground and rocks of Claude's

Sinon before Priam are as false as color can be: first, because there

never was such a brown under sunlight, for even the sand and cinders

(volcanic tufa) about Naples, granting that he had studied from these

ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden

and lustrous in full light compared to these ideals of crag, and become,

like all other rocks, quiet and gray when weathered; and secondly,

because no rock that ever nature stained is without its countless

breaking tints of varied vegetation. And even Stanfield, master as he is

of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here and there a little

bit of mud, instead of stone.

Sec. 17. His dislike of purple and fondness for the opposition of yellow and

black. The principles of nature in this respect.

What I am next about to say with respect to Turner's color, I should

wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute. I think that

the first approach to viciousness of color in any master is commonly

indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple, and an absence of yellow. I

think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues, never, or

very rarely, using red without it, but frequently using yellow with

scarcely any red; and I believe it will be in consequence found that her

favorite opposition, that which generally characterizes and gives tone

to her color, is yellow and black, passing, as it retires, into white

and blue. It is beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition of

Rubens is yellow and black; and that on this, concentrated in one part

of the picture, and modified in various grays throughout, chiefly depend

the tones of all his finest works. And in Titian, though there is a far

greater tendency to the purple than in Rubens, I believe no red is ever

mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which has not in it a

modifying quantity of yellow. At all events, I am nearly certain that

whatever rich and pure purples are introduced locally, by the great

colorists, nothing is so destructive of all fine color as the slightest

tendency to purple in general tone; and I am equally certain that Turner

is distinguished from all the vicious colorists of the present day, by

the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and the

intermediate grays, while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is

invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples. So fond indeed is Turner

of black and yellow, that he has given us more than one composition,

both drawings and paintings, based on these two colors alone, of which

the magnificent Quilleboeuf, which I consider one of the most perfect

pieces of simple color existing, is a most striking example; and I think

that where, as in some of the late Venices, there has been something

like a marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisitely

corrected by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the general

color has not been so perfect or truthful: my own feelings would always

guide me rather to the warm grays of such pictures as the Snow Storm, or

the glowing scarlet and gold of the Napoleon and Slave Ship. But I do

not insist at present on this part of the subject, as being perhaps more

proper for future examination, when we are considering the ideal of

color.

Sec. 18. His early works are false in color.

The above remarks have been made entirely with reference to the recent

Academy pictures, which have been chiefly attacked for their color. I by

no means intend them to apply to the early works of Turner, those which

the enlightened newspaper critics are perpetually talking about as

characteristic of a time when Turner was "really great." He is, and was,

really great, from the time when he first could hold a brush, but he

never was so great as he is now. The Crossing the Brook, glorious as it

is as a composition, and perfect in all that is most desirable and most

ennobling in art, is scarcely to be looked upon as a piece of color; it

is an agreeable, cool, gray rendering of space and form, but it is not

color; if it be regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid, and

very far inferior to the tones of the same kind given by Claude. The

reddish brown in the foreground of the Fall of Carthage, with all

diffidence be it spoken, is, as far as my feelings are competent to

judge, crude, sunless, and in every way wrong; and both this picture and

the Building of Carthage, though this latter is far the finer of the

two, are quite unworthy of Turner as a colorist.

Sec. 19. His drawings invariably perfect.

Not so with the drawings; these, countless as they are, from the

earliest to the latest, though presenting an unbroken chain of

increasing difficulty overcome, and truth illustrated, are all,

according to their aim, equally faultless as to color. Whatever we have

hitherto said, applies to them in its fullest extent; though each, being

generally the realization of some effect actually seen, and realized but

once, requires almost a separate essay. As a class, they are far quieter

and chaster than the Academy pictures, and, were they better known,

might enable our connoisseurs to form a somewhat more accurate judgment

of the intense study of nature on which all Turner's color is based.

Sec. 20. The subjection of his system of color to that of chiaroscuro.

One point only remains to be noted respecting his system of color

generally--its entire subordination to light and shade, a subordination

which there is no need to prove here, as every engraving from his

works--and few are unengraved--is sufficient demonstration of it. I have

before shown the inferiority and unimportance in nature of color, as a

truth, compared with light and shade. That inferiority is maintained and

asserted by all really great works of color; but most by Turner's as

their color is most intense. Whatever brilliancy he may choose to

assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which

there is no appeal. No richness nor depth of tint is considered of value

enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. No

brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a

determined shadow. And hence it is, that while engravings from works far

less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, because the little

color employed has not been rightly based on light and shade, an

engraving from Turner is always beautiful and forcible in proportion as

the color of the original has been intense, and never in a single

instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect

composition.[21] Powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is,

it is the least important of all his excellences, because it is the

least important feature of nature. He paints in color, but he thinks in

light and shade; and were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his

forms, or one ray of his sunshine, would, I apprehend, be content to

paint in black and white to the end of his life. It is by mistaking the

shadow for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire,

without perceiving of what deep-studied shade and inimitable form

it is at once the result and the illustration, that the host of his

imitators sink into deserved disgrace. With him, as with all the

greatest painters, and in Turner's more than all, the hue is a beautiful

auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not

the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a

visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of

nobler ideas--as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings

for the reading of the mysteries of God.

FOOTNOTES

[19] "Caecus adulator--

Dignus Aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes,

Blandaque devexae iactaret basia rhedae."

[20] There is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great

colorist than his power of using greens in strange places without

their being felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of

green gray to purple gray. And this hue of Poussin's clouds would

have been perfectly agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or

crimson enough in the rest of the picture to have thrown it into

gray. It is only because the lower clouds are pure white and blue,

and because the trees are of the same color as the clouds, that the

cloud color becomes false. There is a fine instance of a sky, green

in itself, but turned gray by the opposition of warm color, in

Turner's Devonport with the Dockyards.

[21] This is saying too much; for it not unfrequently happens that

the light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the

effect of which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of

the artist himself, by introductions of new features. Sometimes,

when a drawing depends chiefly on color, the engraver gets

unavoidably embarrassed, and must be assisted by some change or

exaggeration of the effect; but the more frequent case is, that the

engraver's difficulties result merely from his inattention to, or

wilful deviations from his original; and that the artist is obliged

to assist him by such expedients as the error itself suggests.

Not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in

reviewing a picture after some time has elapsed since its

completion, even the painter is liable to make unnecessary or

hurtful changes. In the plate of the Old Temeraire, lately published

in Finden's gallery, I do not know whether it was Turner or the

engraver who broke up the water into sparkling ripple, but it was a

grievous mistake, and has destroyed the whole dignity and value of

the conception. The flash of lightning in the Winchelsea of the

England series does not exist in the original; it is put in to

withdraw the attention of the spectator from the sky which the

engraver destroyed.

There is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that color

can be expressed by particular characters of line; and in the

endeavor to distinguish by different lines, different colors of

equal depth, they frequently lose the whole system of light and

shade. It will hardly be credited that the piece of foreground on

the left of Turner's Modern Italy, represented in the Art-Union

engraving as nearly coal black, is in the original of a pale warm

gray, hardly darker than the sky. All attempt to record color in

engraving, is heraldry out of its place: the engraver has no power

beyond that of expressing transparency or opacity by greater or less

openness of line, (for the same depth of tint is producible by lines

with very different intervals.)

Texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel,

and ought not to be laboriously sought after; nature's surfaces are

distinguished more by form than texture; a stone is often smoother

than a leaf; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at

least be sure that he knows what the texture of the object actually

is, and how to represent it. The leaves in the foreground of the

engraved Mercury and Argus have all of them three or four black

lines across them. What sort of leaf texture is supposed to be

represented by these? The stones in the foreground of Turner's

Llanthony received from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone;

the engraver covered them with contorted lines and turned them into

old timber.

A still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or

finishing what the artist left incomplete. In the England plate of

Dudley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building

with the chimney on the left. These _are_ engraver's improvements;

in the original they are barely traceable, their lines being

excessively faint and tremulous as with the movement of heated air

between them and the spectator: their vulgarity is thus taken away,

and the whole building left in one grand unbroken mass. It is almost

impossible to break engravers of this unfortunate habit. I have even

heard of their taking journeys of some distance in order to obtain

knowledge of the details which the artist intentionally omitted; and

the evil will necessarily continue until they receive something like

legitimate artistical education. In one or two instances, however,

especially in small plates, they have shown great feeling; the

plates of Miller (especially those of the Turner illustrations to

Scott) are in most instances perfect and beautiful interpretations

of the originals; so those of Goodall in Rogers's works, and

Cousens's in the Rivers of France; those of the Yorkshire series are

also very valuable, though singularly inferior to the drawings. But

none even of these men appear capable of producing a large plate.

They have no knowledge of the means of rendering their lines vital

or valuable; cross-hatching stands for everything; and inexcusably,

for though we cannot expect every engraver to etch like Rembrandt or

Albert Durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like Titian, at least

something of the system and power of the grand works of those men

might be preserved, and some mind and meaning stolen into the

reticulation of the restless modern lines.

CHAPTER III.

OF TRUTH OF CHIAROSCURO.

Sec. 1. We are not at present to examine particular effects of light.

It is not my intention to enter, in the present portion of the work,

upon any examination of Turner's particular effects of light. We must

know something about what is beautiful before we speak of these.

At present I wish only to insist upon two great principles of

chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the works of the great modern

master, and set at defiance by the ancients--great general laws, which

may, or may not, be sources of beauty, but whose observance is

indisputably necessary to truth.

Go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a tree with a broad

trunk, having rather delicate boughs hanging down on the sunny side,

near the trunk. Stand four or five yards from it, with your back to the

sun. You will find that the boughs between you and the trunk of the tree

are very indistinct, that you confound them in places with the trunk

itself, and cannot possibly trace one of them from its insertion to its

extremity. But the shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find

clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their whole

course, except when they are interrupted by the crossing boughs. And if

you retire backwards, you will come to a point where you cannot see the

intervening boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there,

but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. Now, this may serve to

show you the immense prominence and importance of shadows where there is

anything like bright light. They are, in fact, commonly far more

conspicuous than the thing which casts them, for being as large as the

casting object, and altogether made up of a blackness deeper than the

darkest part of the casting object, (while that object is also broken up

with positive and reflected lights,) their large, broad, unbroken

spaces, tell strongly on the eye, especially as all form is rendered

partially, often totally invisible within them, and as they are suddenly

terminated by the sharpest lines which nature ever shows. For no outline

of objects whatsoever is so sharp as the edge of a close shadow. Put

your finger over a piece of white paper in the sun, and observe the

difference between the softness of the outline of the finger itself and

the decision of the edge of the shadow. And note also the excessive

gloom of the latter. A piece of black cloth, laid in the light, will not

attain one-fourth of the blackness of the paper under the shadow.

Sec. 2. And therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief means of

expressing vividness of light.

Sec. 3. Total absence of such distinctness in the works of the Italian

school.

Sec. 4. And partial absence in the Dutch.

Hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most

conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights. All forms

are understood and explained chiefly by their agency: the roughness of

the bark of a tree, for instance, is not seen in the light, nor in the

shade: it is only seen between the two, where the shadows of the ridges

explain it. And hence, if we have to express vivid light, our very first

aim must be to get the shadows sharp and visible; and this is not to be

done by blackness, (though indeed chalk on white paper is the only thing

which comes up to the intensity of real shadows,) but by keeping them

perfectly flat, keen, and even. A very pale shadow, if it be quite

flat--if it conceal the details of the objects it crosses--if it be gray

and cold compared to their color, and very sharp edged, will be far more

conspicuous, and make everything out of it look a great deal more like

sunlight, than a shadow ten times its depth, shaded off at the edge, and

confounded with the color of the objects on which it falls. Now the old

masters of the Italian school, in almost all of their works, directly

reverse this principle: they blacken their shadows till the picture

becomes quite appalling, and everything in it invisible; but they make a

point of losing their edges, and carrying them off by gradation; in

consequence utterly destroying every appearance of sunlight. All their

shadows are the faint, secondary darknesses of mere _daylight_; the sun

has nothing whatever to do with them. The shadow between the pages of

the book which you hold in your hand is distinct and visible enough,

(though you are, I suppose, reading it by the ordinary daylight of your

room,) out of the sun; and this weak and secondary shadow is all that we

ever find in the Italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. Even Cuyp

and Berghem, though they know thoroughly well what they are about in

their foregrounds, forget the principle in their distances; and though

in Claude's seaports, where he has plain architecture to deal with, he

gives us something like real shadows along the stones, the moment we

come to ground and foliage with lateral light, away go the shadows and

the sun together. In the Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, in our own

gallery, the trunks of the trees between the water-wheel and the white

figure in the middle distance, are dark and visible; but their shadows

are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite vague and lost in

the building. In nature, every bit of the shadow would have been darker

than the darkest part of the trunks, and both on the ground and building

would have been defined and conspicuous; while the trunks themselves

would have been faint, confused, and indistinguishable, in their

illumined parts, from the grass or distance. So in Poussin's Phocion,

the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded

off and lost, while you see the stick plain all the way. In nature's

sunlight it would have been the direct reverse--you would have seen the

shadow black and sharp all the way down, but you would have had to look

for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have

been confused with the stone behind it.

And so throughout the works of Claude, Poussin, and Salvator, we shall

find, especially in their conventional foliage, and unarticulated

barbarisms of rock, that their whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is

merely the gradation and variation which nature gives in the _body_ of

her shadows, and that all which they do to express sunshine, she does to

vary shade. They take only one step, while she always takes two;

marking, in the first place, with violent decision, the great transition

from sun to shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thousand

gentle gradations and double shadows, in themselves equivalent, and more

than equivalent, to all that the old masters did for their entire

chiaroscuro.

Sec. 5. The perfection of Turner's works in this respect.

Now if there be one principle, or secret more than another, on which

Turner depends for attaining brilliancy of light, it is his clear and

exquisite drawing of the _shadows_. Whatever is obscure, misty, or

undefined in his objects or his atmosphere, he takes care that the

shadows be sharp and clear--and then he knows that the light will take

care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by blackness, but by

excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. He will keep them

clear and distinct, and make them felt as shadows, though they are so

faint, that, but for their decisive forms, we should not have observed

them for darkness at all. He will throw them one after another like

transparent veils, along the earth and upon the air, till the whole

picture palpitates with them, and yet the darkest of them will be a

faint gray, imbued and penetrated with light. The pavement on the left

of the Hero and Leander, is about the most thorough piece of this kind

of sorcery that I remember in art; but of the general principle, not one

of his works is without constant evidence. Take the vignette of the

garden opposite the title-page of Rogers's Poems, and note the drawing

of the nearest balustrade on the right. The balusters themselves are

faint and misty, and the light through them feeble; but the shadows of

them are sharp and dark, and the intervening light as intense as it can

be left. And see how much more distinct the shadow of the running figure

is on the pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself. Observe

the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page 91, how they conquer all

the details of the trunk itself, and become darker and more conspicuous

than any part of the boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to

Campbell's Beechtree's Petition. Take the beautiful concentration of all

that is most characteristic of Italy as she is, at page 168 of Rogers's

Italy, where we have the long shadows of the trunks made by far the most

conspicuous thing in the whole foreground, and hear how Wordsworth, the

keenest-eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in

nature, illustrates Turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other

points.

"At the root

Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare

And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,

Oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path,

Traced faintly in the greensward."

EXCURSION, Book VI

Sec. 6. The effect of his shadows upon the light.

So again in the Rhymer's Glen, (Illustrations to Scott,) note the

intertwining of the shadows across the path, and the checkering of the

trunks by them; and again on the bridge in the Armstrong's Tower; and

yet more in the long avenue of Brienne, where we have a length of two or

three miles expressed by the playing shadows alone, and the whole

picture filled with sunshine by the long lines of darkness cast by the

figures on the snow. The Hampton Court in the England series, is another

very striking instance. In fact, the general system of execution

observable in all Turner's drawings, is to work his grounds richly and

fully, sometimes stippling, and giving infinity of delicate, mysterious,

and ceaseless detail; and on the ground so prepared to cast his shadows

with one dash of the brush, leaving an excessively sharp edge of watery

color. Such at least is commonly the case in such coarse and broad

instances as those I have above given. Words are not accurate enough,

nor delicate enough to express or trace the constant, all-pervading

influence of the finer and vaguer shadows throughout his works, that

thrilling influence which gives to the light they leave, its passion and

its power. There is not a stone, not a leaf, not a cloud, over which

light is not felt to be actually passing and palpitating before our

eyes. There is the motion, the actual wave and radiation of the darted

beam--not the dull universal daylight, which falls on the landscape

without life, or direction, or speculation, equal on all things and dead

on all things; but the breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels,

and receives, and rejoices, and acts--which chooses one thing and

rejects another--which seeks, and finds, and loses again--leaping from

rock to rock, from leaf to leaf, from wave to wave,--glowing, or

flashing, or scintillating, according to what it strikes, or in its

holier moods, absorbing and enfolding all things in the deep fulness of

its repose, and then again losing itself in bewilderment, and doubt, and

dimness; or perishing and passing away, entangled in drifting mist, or

melted into melancholy air, but still,--kindling, or declining,

sparkling or still, it is the living light, which breathes in its

deepest, most entranced rest, which sleeps, but never dies.

Sec. 7. The distinction holds good between almost all the works of the

ancient and modern schools.

I need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction between the works

of the old masters and those of the great modern landscape-painters in

this respect. It is one which the reader can perfectly well work out for

himself, by the slightest systematic attention,--one which he will find

existing, not merely between this work and that, but throughout the whole

body of their productions, and down to every leaf and line. And a little

careful watching of nature, especially in her foliage and foregrounds,

and comparison of her with Claude, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator, will

soon show him that those artists worked entirely on conventional

principles, not representing what they saw, but what they thought would

make a handsome picture; and even when they went to nature, which I

believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their

biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing

what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there.[22] I believe

you may search the foregrounds of Claude, from one end of Europe to

another, and you will not find the shadow of one leaf cast upon another.

You will find leaf after leaf painted more or less boldly or brightly out

of the black ground, and you will find dark leaves defined in perfect

form upon the light; but you will not find the form of a single leaf

disguised or interrupted by the shadow of another. And Poussin and

Salvator are still farther from anything like genuine truth. There is

nothing in their pictures which might not be manufactured in their

painting-room, with a branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of

weeds before them, to give them the form of the leaves. And it is

refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent repetitions of

childish conception, to the clear, close, genuine studies of modern

artists; for it is not Turner only, (though here, as in all other points,

the first,) who is remarkable for fine and expressive decision of

chiaroscuro. Some passages by J. D. Harding are thoroughly admirable in

this respect, though this master is getting a little too much into a

habit of general keen execution, which prevents the parts which ought to

be especially decisive from being felt as such, and which makes his

pictures, especially the large ones, look a little thin. But some of his

later passages of rock foreground have, taken in the abstract, been

beyond all praise, owing to the exquisite forms and firm expressiveness

of their shadows. And the chiaroscuro of Stanfield is equally deserving

of the most attentive study.

Sec. 8. Second great principle of chiaroscuro. Both high light and deep

shadow are used in equal quantity and only in points.

The second point to which I wish at present to direct attention has

reference to the _arrangement_ of light and shade. It is the constant

habit of nature to use both her highest lights and deepest shadows in

exceedingly small quantity; always in points, never in masses. She will

give a large mass of tender light in sky or water, impressive by its

quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow relieved against it, in

foliage, or hill, or building; but the light is always subdued if it be

extensive--the shadow always feeble if it be broad. She will then fill

up all the rest of her picture with middle tints and pale grays of some

sort or another, and on this quiet and harmonious whole, she will touch

her high lights in spots--the foam of an isolated wave--the sail of a

solitary vessel--the flash of the sun from a wet roof--the gleam of a

single whitewashed cottage--or some such sources of local brilliancy,

she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into

definite shade by comparison. And then taking up the gloom, she will use

the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some

shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so

sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison;

thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint,

approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet

sharply separated from the utmost degrees either of the one or the

other.

Sec. 9. Neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art.

Sec. 10. And consequent misguiding of the student.

Now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem to have

noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. They all talk of

deep shadow as a thing that may be given in quantity,--one fourth of the

picture, or, in certain effects, much more. Barry, for instance, says

that the practice of the great painters, who "best understood the

effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to make the mass of

middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of dark larger than the

masses of light and middle tint together, _i.e._, occupying more than

one-half of the picture. Now I do not know what we are to suppose is

meant by "understanding chiaroscuro." If it means being able to

manufacture agreeable patterns in the shape of pyramids, and crosses,

and zigzags, into which arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion

and motion arranged, for the promotion and encouragement of the cant of

criticism, such a principle may be productive of the most advantageous

results. But if it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual,

systematic, unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's

chiaroscuro--if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are

not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be

coadjutors--then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a

principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in

chiaroscuro. And my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed

against by all artists, as the great Circe of art--the great transformer

of mind into sensuality--no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so

great a peril and stumbling-block to the young student, as the

admiration he hears bestowed on such artificial, false, and juggling

chiaroscuro, and the instruction he receives, based on such principles

as that given us by Fuseli--that "mere natural light and shade, however

separately or individually true, is not always legitimate chiaroscuro in

art." It may not always be _agreeable_ to a sophisticated, unfeeling,

and perverted mind; but the student had better throw up his art at once,

than proceed on the conviction that any other can ever be _legitimate_.

I believe I shall be perfectly well able to prove, in following parts of

the work, that "mere natural light and shade" is the only fit and

faithful attendant of the highest art; and that all tricks--all visible,

intended arrangement--all extended shadows and narrow lights--everything

in fact, in the least degree artificial, or tending to make the mind

dwell upon light and shade as such, is an injury, instead of an aid, to

conceptions of high ideal dignity. I believe I shall be able also to

show, that nature manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and

cleverly than people fancy;--that "mere natural light and shade" is a

very much finer thing than most artists can put together, and that none

think they can improve upon it but those who never understood it.

Sec. 11. The great value of a simple chiaroscuro.

But however this may be, it is beyond dispute that every permission

given to the student to amuse himself with painting one figure all

black, and the next all white, and throwing them out with a background

of nothing--every permission given to him to spoil his pocketbook with

sixths of sunshine and sevenths of shade, and other such fractional

sublimities, is so much more difficulty laid in the way of his ever

becoming a master; and that none are in the right road to real

excellence, but those who are struggling to render the simplicity,

purity, and inexhaustible variety of nature's own chiaroscuro in open,

cloudless daylight, giving the expanse of harmonious light--the

speaking, decisive shadow--and the exquisite grace, tenderness, and

grandeur of aerial opposition of local color and equally illuminated

lines. No chiaroscuro is so difficult as this; and none so noble,

chaste, or impressive. On this part of the subject, however, I must not

enlarge at present. I wish now only to speak of those great principles

of chiaroscuro, which nature observes, even when she is most working for

effect--when she is playing with thunder-clouds and sunbeams, and

throwing one thing out and obscuring another, with the most marked

artistical feeling and intention;--even then, she never forgets her

great rule, to give precisely the same quantity of deepest shade which

she does of highest light, and no more; points of the one answering to

points of the other, and both vividly conspicuous and separated from all

the rest of the landscape.

Sec. 12. The sharp separation of nature's lights from her middle tint.

And it is most singular that this separation, which is the great source

of brilliancy in nature, should not only be unobserved, but absolutely

forbidden by our great writers on art, who are always talking about

connecting the light with the shade by _imperceptible gradations_. Now

so surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for imperceptible

gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of objects seen out

of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, shadow. Nature's principle of

getting light is the direct reverse. She will cover her whole landscape

with middle tint, in which she will have as many gradations as you

please, and a great many more than you can paint; but on this middle

tint she touches her extreme lights, and extreme darks, isolated and

sharp, so that the eye goes to them directly, and feels them to be

key-notes of the whole composition. And although the dark touches are

less attractive than the light ones, it is not because they are less

distinct, but because they exhibit nothing; while the bright touches are

in parts where everything is seen, and where in consequence the eye goes

to rest. But yet the high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves,

they are too bright and dazzle the eye; and having no shadows in them,

cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some kind or

another. Hence the highest lights and deepest darks agree in this, that

nothing is seen in either of them; that both are in exceedingly small

quantity, and both are marked and distinct from the middle tones of the

landscape--the one by their brilliancy, the other by their sharp edges,

even though many of the more energetic middle tints may approach their

intensity very closely.

Sec. 13. The truth of Turner.

I need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any one of the works

of Turner, and you will perceive in a moment the exquisite observation

of all these principles; the sharpness, decision, conspicuousness, and

excessively small quantity, both of extreme light and extreme shade, all

the mass of the picture being graduated and delicate middle tint. Take

up the Rivers of France, for instance, and turn over a few of the plates

in succession.

1. Chateau Gaillard (vignette.)--Black figures and boats, points of

shade; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat, of light. See how the

eye rests on both, and observe how sharp and separate all the lights

are, falling in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting off into it.

2. Orleans.--The crowded figures supply both points of shade and light.

Observe the delicate middle tint of both in the whole mass of buildings,

and compare this with the blackness of Canaletto's shadows, against

which neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as points of

shade.

3. Blois.--White figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, dome of church

on the right, for light; woman on horseback, heads of boats, for shadow.

Note especially the isolation of the light on the church dome.

4. Chateau de Blois.--Torches and white figures for light, roof of

chapel and monks' dresses for shade.

5. Beaugency.--Sails and spire opposed to buoy and boats. An exquisite

instance of brilliant, sparkling, isolated touches of morning light.

6. Amboise.--White sail and clouds; cypresses under castle.

7. Chateau of Amboise.--The boat in the centre, with its reflections,

needs no comment. Note the glancing lights under the bridge. This is a

very glorious and perfect instance.

8. St. Julien, Tours.--Especially remarkable for its preservation of

deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of extended

shade.