The Crown of Wild Olive
prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the
sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of
cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match
each colour beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no
occasion to wash any of the colours away. But the first rough method is
generally all you want, as after a little practice, you only need to
_look_ at the hue through the opening in order to be able to transfer it
to your drawing at once.
[240] If colours were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have
many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would
lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colours except black,
Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for
students. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do more
to advance real art than a great many schools of design.
[241] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colours,
which is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist.
The best colour we reach is got by stippling; but this not quite right.
[242] The worst general character that colour can possibly have is a
prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying
heap of vegetables; this colour is _accurately_ indicative of decline or
paralysis in missal-painting.
[243] That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The
gradations of colour in the various shadows belonging to various lights
exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colourist can ever draw _forms_
perfectly (see "Modern Painters," vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end); but
all notions of explaining form by superimposed colour, as in
architectural mouldings, are absurd. Colour adorns form, but does not
interpret it. An apple is prettier, because it is striped, but it does
not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because it is flushed,
but you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were not.
Colour may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as in grounding a
bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance of projection, and
whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground,
the bas-relief will be just as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved,
as long as the colours are of equal depth. The blue ground will not
retire the hundredth part of an inch more than the red one.
[244] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more
point connected with the management of colour, under the head "Law of
Harmony."
[245] See farther, on this subject, "Modern Painters," vol. iv. chap.
viii Sec. 6.
[246] "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are
peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events,
that one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition
of another history, being more or less results of quietness, while
dissimilarity and non-succession are results of interference and
disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of
sound heard, its repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of
calmness attainable in no other way; hence also the feeling of calm
given to a landscape by the voice of a cuckoo."
[247] This is obscure in the rude woodcut, the masts being so delicate
that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original
they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.
[248] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is _always_ lost, for
you must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you
only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back,
and pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only
wasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the
bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary
slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the
bridge can take it, and not pushed aside into the approach, as in our
Waterloo road; the only rational excuse for doing which is that when the
slope must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the
bridge, and that any restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the
bridge than on the embankment. To this I answer: first, it is not more
dangerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always
guarded by an effective parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no
parapet, or only a useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have
the slope on the bridge, and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as
to be quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no
loss, but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my
picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see
them built again some day, instead of the frightful straight-backed
things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the pontifical
rigidities of the engineering mind.
[249] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other
books: but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of
this part of our subject in "Modern Painters," vol. iv. chap. xviii.,
and "Stones of Venice," vol. iii. chap. i. Sec. 8.
[250] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without
having gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of
the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. page 30., and examine the curves
of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated
under the heads A. and B.
[251] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these
figures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by
compasses.
[252] I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts are merely
facsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate
my meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to
something else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would
take more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat
than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it
is.
[253] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature
dependent, as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of
continual injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure
by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of
course, space here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws
above stated apply to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to
be familiar to the student.
[254] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of
leaves upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to
attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them,
you will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but
that, through each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in
the form of a round or oval spot; that is to say, it produces the image
of the sun itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or
ellipse according to the slope of the ground. Of course the sun's rays
produce the same effect, when they fall through any small aperture: but
the openings between leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an
ordinary observer, or to attract his attention to it by its frequency,
and lead him to think what this type may signify respecting the greater
Sun; and how it may show us that, even when the opening through which
the earth receives light is too small to let us see the Sun himself, the
ray of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear
with it His image.
[255] In the smaller figure (32.), it will be seen that this
interruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge; and
this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading
out of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be
easily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation
of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the
direction of the curve it begins being indicated by the dashes only.
[256] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
[257] If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's representing a
coat of arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the
concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage
carried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the
shield in opposing the rich folds of the dress.
[258] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to
oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set
behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's edge.
[259]
"A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
_Essay on Criticism._
[260] I am describing from a MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
"Decretalia" in my own possession.
[261] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is
little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of
scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great
part of their power to infinitude of division; order being marked
through this division.
[262] I fully believe that the strange grey gloom, accompanied by
considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art must
be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French landscape
always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror,
and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its
perversion.
[263] Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially
in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in "Modern Painters," vol.
iv. chap. iii.
[264] In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight occasioned by
their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot
reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not: and yet
there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad
taste respecting it, as also in music.
[265] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made; but
the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ecclesiastical
sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the
principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use this word regretfully, no other
existing which will serve for it,--had been known and felt in our wild
northern districts long before.
APPENDIX.
THINGS TO BE STUDIED.
The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is that
of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his difficulties,
as his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer; and although, under
the guidance of a master, many works of art may be made instructive,
which are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of them being
duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies alone, will be
in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way, so free from
faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously mislead him, and to
contemplate only those works of art which he knows to be either perfect
or noble in their errors. I will therefore set down in clear order, the
names of the masters whom you may safely admire, and a few of the books
which you may safely possess. In these days of cheap illustration, the
danger is always rather of your possessing too much than too little. It
may admit of some question, how far the looking at bad art may set off