must incur censure from those painters who are content to work by routine and not by rule ;-who

Indiscreetly stray

Where purblind practice only leads the way;

Who every theoretic truth disdain,

And blunder on, mechanically vain ;—

who do such work as they do without reference to Nature, only to the conventional usage by which such workmen supersede Nature, and at last desert her altogether. The practice of true art, even in process, is like Nature, i.e. the beginning must be the commencement of the end-the end being completeness or unity obtained by and through variety of parts; both of which conditions constitute our never-ending delight in the study of nature. Art also, in a limited degree, does the same thing. For this reason we do not tire of excellent art, because, like Nature, we cannot exhaust it, and in proportion as we understand it are made the better by its study. It is indeed a form of religion-a reminder of the Great Artist; an aid to the reverence of Him, an educator of mankind of the most potent sort, because it is only attainable through a love of truth-a most scrupulous seeking for it in realities.

As to the effect of cleaning on the pictures done in 1852, I am confident that each one is worse for the operation. It is true, as was replied to the objectors to this process at the time," that the rawness of the colours would soon be toned down." The pictures are many tones lower, but, instead of having the glow and warmth they once exhibited, even through the alleged dirt (dirt there undoubtedly was), they now look dull, and would be leaden but for the latent quality of luminousness. Disjointed and patchy they certainly are, and I, with others, think, from being deprived of those transparent colours their authors employed to reveal the luminous quality, latent in these, but not in modern pictures, and which, when there, made each work into a perfect unity. I know that many painters of this day believe that transparent or glazing colours were not used. They naturally believe this from the fact that they cannot use them, or if they do, do so very partially, and never to the advantage of their work; because the commencement of their work is not of the kind that could gain anything by such a proceeding. But a proper use of opaque colours as a foundation involves the employment of transparent ones over them. The improper use forfeits the characteristic qualities of each.

The peculiar properties of opacity and transparency which pigments ground in oil offer to the painter does really constitute the distinction which is perceived, but by few appreciated, between these and water-colours. The belief that the distinction lies in the vehicles only is ungrounded. That it is generally believed, I conclude by the talk common among artists, and from instances of water-colour painters taking to oils: for example, the late Copley Fielding and Mr. Thorburn. The latter's miniatures upon ivory have a fulness and a force of colour seldom attained in water-colours; while

the landscapes of the former are of the tenderest delicacy. Both fail in the same degree of excellence in oil through not perceiving that success depends on something else than the mere fact that the colours are mixed in the one case in oil and the other in water. Yet practice founded on this conclusion is the prevailing one, and will so continue until patrons and artists learn that patches of coloured pigment laid in juxtaposition upon a canvas do not constitute a practice; but that the art of using colour lies first in the imitation of the luminous quality of Nature's light and shade, and next, in the unbroken gradation of her colour from the one to the other, so as to make the beholder forget that pigments are employed at all. In these particulars there is no deficiency in the works of the old masters. At present, both these qualities are wanting, and the "mellowing effect of time is expected to do what the artist could not! Sir Joshua Reynolds said, "There is not a man on earth who has the least notion of colouring: we all of us have it equally to seek for, and find out -as at present it is totally lost to the art."* He tried his whole life through, and tried (as his own notes show) some very unlikely modes of attaining to the knowledge he so coveted. His aspirations were of the highest, his taste was excellent, his sense of the arrangement of light and shade very uncommon. Hence his pictures engrave well, but his colour is too like a tinted surface, and, as we see, the local colours of the parts nearly faded altogether. In his case they never could have been part and parcel of the form, as it is in the work of the Venetians and that of all good colourists, who drew the shapes of things with colours, and with such perfect mastery of the means as we now see in pictures by them that have escaped injury from external causes. Yet the method they employed to paint a face we are no more reminded of than the processes in a living one; and so their pictures bear confronting with Nature now. Good art, like Nature still, does not obtrude the means employed to produce the end. The details of her works are never obtruded upon the beholder; the entireness or unity of the object is what attracts attention. Its unity remains in the memory apart from and independent of its details. Details have to be examined alone, one by one, and afford a separate source of pleasure. We look at them with the wonder of children, to learn how the real marvel-the unity-is arrived at; we do not need, neither have the majority of people the skill to dissect. It is only the student who has to do this,-and he only does it to advantage by remembering that details refer to a whole. This is the "art of seeing Nature." The details of Nature's works are beyond the reach of man's imitation, as infinity is beyond his conception. Detail in works of art must never interfere with the general effect of the work, be it in sculpture, painting, poetry, music, architecture, or any form of art. The total presentment of the subject chosen is the main point; the degree of detail must be such that no doubt may arise in the mind of the spectator as to what the actual form of the object represented really is. The details of

* ALLAN CUNNINGHAM's Lives of the British Painters (art. Northcote).

the most highly wrought painting our National Gallery contains well exemplify the utmost degree of it at which the student need aim; but in mere detail, photography beats this hollow. In no other respect, however, is photography so true. I dwell on these points in order to lead attention to the fact, that Art and Nature are entirely distinct. Art is founded on Nature-vies with her, indeed,—and, although of more limited capacity, is mistress of her domain. Ages back the limit of her means of expression was attained, as Greek art witnesses; the boundaries then ascertained cannot be passed or neglected, but to cause confusion. This confusion prevails now, because the true knowledge of the law of expression by means of colour is lost, and each painter, not having this knowledge, but trusting only to "feeling," is led by it, ever wide of the mark.

Have the cleaners ever noticed that Sir Joshua Reynolds commends the brief account Pliny gives of the mode of operation used by Apelles"that over his so far finished picture he spread a transparent liquid like ink, of which the effect was to give brilliancy, and at the same time to lower the too great glare of the colour?-(quod absoluta opera atramento illinebat ita tenui, ut id ipsum repercussu claritates colorum excitaret; et cum ratione magna, ne colorum claritas oculorum aciem offenderet.)" This passage, though it may possibly perplex the critics, is a true and artist-like description of the effect of glazing, such as was practised by Titian and the rest of the Venetian masters. This custom or mode of operation implies at least a true taste of that in which the excellence of colouring consists: which does not proceed from fine colours, but true colours; from breaking down those fine colours which would appear too raw to a deep-toned brightness. Perhaps the manner in which Correggio practised the art of glazing was still more like that of Apelles, which was only perceptible to those who looked close to the picture (ad manum intuenti demum appareret); whereas in Titian, and still more in Bassan, and others his imitators, it was apparent on the slightest inspection. Artists who may not approve of glazing must still acknowledge that this practice is not that of ignorance. Unfortunately for the world it is that Reynolds did not himself know perfectly how to conduct the first stages of his work, so that it could be completed by this last, the value of which he so thoroughly appreciated. The reason his colours have fled is a simple one. The transparent colours were laid upon his preparation of opaque colour before it was fully dry, and were absorbed by it in a very short time. His contemporary, Peter Pindar, through witnessing their early failure, was enabled to say, "If he did not succeed entirely, at least he came off with flying colours." Another fundamental error-a main one -was the assumption that all the force and value of the local colour of an object could be attained by washes of transparent tints over a preparation done in solid black and white without colour. This is the plan pursued in colouring an engraving. The proof that he felt this plan to be incomplete is seen in his own notes. These show that he, like other inquirers, now and then believed that he had found what he sought.

"Jan. 22, 1770. Sono stabilito in maniere di dipingere." Other entries show how little it was established, and explain away, I think, the accusation that he withheld information from his pupils. The works of his pupil Northcote do not exhibit any excellence of colour, because of the indefinite teaching of the master, whose merits are from the genius Nature gave him; his best works are done by "a kind of felicity," and this is incommunicable. The rule he lays down, and by which his own practice was governed, for ascertaining the proportion or composition of light and shade in the old pictures, got from his study of the best masters, is one of the few useful to students. The scholars of Titian are great colourists, not such great designers as their master; so are Rubens's, so Vandyke's, because the law or science of colour was taught by them. The intuition, or genius, was and always will be the gift of Nature: she gives intuition to the poet, but does not give him the rules of grammar; yet, without this science of language, how could he utter his inspirations, or we readers entertain them? Can colours then be employed without order or rule? The imperfection of modern painting points to a negative; the perfection of ancient paintings also does the same. Reynolds only felt the uncertainty of his own knowledge as to the real method "that was totally lost to the art." He had a suspicion that his contemporary Gainsborough knew it; for although he took exception to the "slight feathery execution of this admirable painter," he yet remarked "how truly he gets the place of his tint" (in other words, the gradation of it).

No doubt there was a floating tradition amongst the painters of the day--" for knowledge grows from man to man"--to which he got the clue from Hayman, his master, to whom it came, though greatly impaired, through Kneller direct from Vandyke, and that he had the discrimination to detect the principle and apply it in the way we see with that dainty lightness of hand which some object to, but for no sufficient reason, because the essence of the thing is in his works; that is, luminousness, true grada. tion, the planes of his objects occupying their true places, and the whole done with the most felicitous ease and grace, "as though breathed upon the canvas." For what is finish but completeness and unity? Elaboration is not necessarily finish. It is constantly talked of as such. The present pre-Raphaelites all exhibit most painfully the former, but the latter, never. To them, elaboration and finish seem the same. There is no written account, that I am aware of, of "this method that is lost" (but very many contradictory details-Mrs. Merrifield's books contain much valuable information, some viva voce statements of professors, that amuse from the confusion in which they leave the subject-matter); but I believe the method was of tardy growth, and so perfected at last that its principle of practice served for all schools whatsoever that are distinguished for excellence of colouring. All the accounts that I have seen remark upon the extraordinary care the old painters bestowed upon the preparation of their grounds; but the true reason for this painstaking is only partially hinted at. The late Sir Charles Eastlake describes at some

length, in his materials for a History of Oil-Painting, the different grounds made in old times, but does not indicate their true and important office, which is that of a reflector of light to the colours overlying the surface. The most brilliant pictures of all schools are found to have a base of pure white. But as a gradation of white cannot be got upon white, their grounds are also found to be covered with a wash of transparent colour. A light yellow always is the key of the brightest, frequently a red, or orange. This wash reduced the white ground to a half tint, which not only enabled the artist to get his half tones by the simple process of drawing over it with transparent and opaque colours, from the greatest dark in the one case, and from the greatest light in the other, to the lesser in both; but also served the important office of a key-note to the finished work, governing all the colours overlying it, which, being pitched or chosen at the beginning, might not be departed from. Those pictures by the old painters upon copper, and grounds made. of solid red pigments, are invariably heavier or darker than the aforesaid. This mode of using colours simplified the practice of painting so that it became drawing in fact, simple in each of its stages, simple as the act of drawing with black and white chalk upon a half-tint paper. The greater complexity of painting over drawing arises from the fact that the three primitive colours-red, yellow, and blue-have to be present in every part of the work, so introduced that they shall not mix together, but modify one the other to the tint required, and obtained by showing one through the other, entirely lost by mixing them together. Hogarth,-who acquired the practice, but not the theory of painting from Hayman, coloured well unconsciously, as some of his works especially show-in his Analysis of Beauty says: "The difficulty lies in bringing blue, the third original colour, into flesh, on account of the vast variety introduced thereby, and this omitted, all the difficulty ceases," &c.

His suggestion about colouring a bust shows thought upon the matter, as well as that he had not mastered the true theory of the application of colours. Marble can be tinted, as we all saw in the instance of Gibson's Venus; but the colour of nature was not imitated, neither can it be by only tinting a surface. The external surface of natural objects is the finishing one; colours from several surfaces below are exhibited through and modified by this. It is especially so in flesh. If the goddess herself had appeared to men of the leprous tint Gibson gave to her statue, she would have affrighted instead of alluring them by the living beauty of her colour; and this is what I mean by Hogarth's unconsciousness: for some of his pictures are excellent in colour. "The gray," or retreating tint, which is to all moderns a sort of painter's puzzle, was by the old painters got first by washing, also in transparent form, the opposite colour of the ground over the whole. Then, with a colour mixed with white lead to the desired tint of the part, the light parts were modelled by drawing the form of the part into this wash of cold colour, simply from the thickly impasted focal light, gradating thinner and thinner from where it impinges,