Chapter 17

"Colour is a secondary truth, therefore less important than form." "He, therefore, who has neglected a truth of form for a truth of colour, has neglected a greater truth for a less one." It is true with regard to any individual object--but we doubt if it be always so in picture. The character of the picture may not at all depend upon form--nay, it is possible that the painter may wish to draw away the mind altogether from the beauty, and even correctness of form, his subject being effect and colour, that shall be predominant, and to which form shall be quite subservient, and little more of it than such as chiaro-scuro shall give; and in such a case colour is the more important truth, because in it lies the sentiment of the picture. The mystery of Rembrandt would vanish were beauty of form introduced in many of his pictures. We remember a picture, the most impressive picture perhaps ever painted, and that by a modern too, Danby's "Opening of the Sixth Seal." Now, though there are fine parts in this picture, the real power of the picture is in its colour--it is awful. We are no enemy to modern painters; we think this a work of the highest genius--and as such, should be most proud to see it deposited in our National Gallery. We further say, that in some respects it carries the art beyond the old practice. But, then, we may say it is a new subject. "It is not certain whether any two people see the same colours in things." Though that does not affect the question of the importance of colour, for it must imply a defect in the individuals, for undoubtedly there is such a thing as nature's harmony of colour; yet it may be admitted, that things are not always known by their colour; nay, that the actual local colour of objects is mainly altered by effects of light, and we are accustomed to see the same things, _quoad_ colour, variously presented to us--and the inference that we think artists may draw from this fact is, that there will be allowed them a great licence in all cases of colour, and that naturalness may be preserved without exactness--and here will lie the value of a true theory of the harmony of colours, and the application of colouring to pictures, most suitable to the intended impression, not the most appropriate to the objects. We have often laid some stress upon this in the pages of _Maga_--and we think it has been too much omitted in the consideration of artists. Every one knows what is called a Claude glass. We see nature through a coloured medium--yet we do not doubt that we are looking at nature--at trees, at water, at skies--nay, we admire the colour--see its harmony and many beauties--yet we know them to be, if we may use the term, misrepresented. While speaking of the Claude glass, it will not be amiss to notice a peculiarity. It shows a picture--when the unaided eye will not; it heightens illumination--brings out the most delicate lights, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, and gives greater power to the shades, yet preserves their delicacy. It seems to annihilate all those rays of light, which, as it were, intercept the picture--that come between the eye and the object. But to return to colour--we say that it must, in the midst of its license, preserve its naturalness--which it will do if it have a meaning in itself. But when we are called upon to question what is the meaning of this or that colour, how does its effect agree with the subject? why is it outrageously yellow or white, or blue or red, or a jumble of all these?--which are questions, we confess, that we and the public have often asked, with regard to Turner's late pictures--we do not acknowledge a naturalness--the license has been abused--not "sumpta pudenter." It is not because the vividness of "a blade of grass or a scarlet flower" shall be beyond the power of pigment, that a general glare and obtrusion of such colours throughout a picture can be justified. We are astonished that any man with eyes should see the unnaturalness in colour of Salvator and Titian, and not see it in Turner's recent pictures, where it is offensive because more glaring. Those masters sacrificed, if it be a sacrifice, something to repose--repose is _the_ thing to be sacrificed according to the notions of too many of our modern schools. It is likewise singular, after all the falsehoods which he asserts the old masters to have painted, that he should speak of "imitation"--as their whole aim, their sole intention to deceive; and yet he describes their pictures as unlike nature in the detail and in the general as can be, strangely missing their object--deception. We fear the truths, particulars of which occupy the remainder of the volume--of earth, water, skies, &c.--are very minute truths, which, whether true or false, are of very little importance to art, unless it be to those branches of art which may treat the whole of each particular truth as the whole of a subject, a line of art that may produce a multitude of works, like certain scenes of dramatic effect, surprising to see once, but are soon powerless--can we hope to say of such, "decies repetita placebunt?" They will be the fascinations of the view schools, nay, may even delight the geologist and the herbalist, but utterly disgust the imaginative. This kind of "knowledge" is not "power" in art. We want not to see water anatomized; the Alps may be tomahawked and scalped by geologists, yet may they be sorry painters. And we can point to the general admiration of the world, learned and unlearned, that a "contemptible fragment of a splintery crag" has been found to answer all the purposes of an impression of the greatness of nature, her free, great, and awful forms, and that depth, shades, power of chiaro-scuro, are found in nature to be strongest in objects of no very great magnitude; for our vision requires nearness, and we want not the knowledge that a mountain is 20,000 feet high, to be convinced that it is quite large enough to crush man and all his works; and that they, who, in their terror of a greater pressure, would call upon the mountains to cover them, and the holes of rocks to hide them, would think very little of the measurement of the mountains, or how the caverns of the earth are made. Greatness and sublimity are quite other things.

We shall not very systematically carry our views, therefore, into the detail of these truths, but shall just pick here and there a passage or so, that may strike us either for its utility or its absurdity.

With regard to truth of tone, he observes--that "the finely-toned pictures of the old masters are 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-obscura on a dark day, with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the finest pictures of the old masters." We only ask if, when looking at the picture in the camera, he did not still recognize nature--and then, if it was beautiful, we might ask him if it was not _true_; and then when he asserts our highest light being white paper, and that not white enough for the light of nature--we would ask if, in the camera, he did not see the picture on white paper--and if the whiteness of paper be not the exact whiteness of nature, or white as ordinary nature? But there is a quality in the light of nature that mere whiteness will not give, and which, in fact, is scarcely ever seen in nature merely in what is quite white; we mean brilliancy--that glaze, as it were, between the object and the eye which makes it not so much light as bright. Now this quality of light was thought by the old masters to be the most important one of light, extending to the half tones and even in the shadows, where there is still light; and this by art and lowering the tone they were able to give, so that we see not the value of the praise when he says--

"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 lamp-black for his deepest shade," &c. Now, if white be the sign of the most intense sunbeams, it is as we never wish to see them; what under a tropical sun may be white is not quite white with us; and we always find it disagreeable in proportion as it approaches to pure white. We never saw yet in nature a sky or a cloud pure white; so that here certainly is one of the "fallacies," we will not call them falsehoods. But as far as we can judge of nature's ideas of light and colour, it is her object to tone them down, and to give us very little, if any, of this raw white, and we would not say that the old masters did not follow her method of doing it. But we will say, that the object of art, at any rate, is to make all things look agreeable; and that human eyes cannot bear without pain those raw whites and too searching lights; and that nature has given to them an ever present power of glazing down and reducing them, when she added to the eye the sieve, our eyelashes, through which we look, which we employ for this purpose, and desire not to be dragged at any time--"Sub curru nimium propinqui solis."

After this praise of white, one does not expect--"I think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues;" but this is said merely in aversion to purple. "I think the first approach to viciousness of colour in any master, is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple and an absence of yellow." "I am equally certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious colourists of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and intermediate greys, while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples."

"Silent nymph, with curious eye, Who the _purple_ evening lie,"

saith Dyer, in his landscape of "Grongar Hill." The "glare-seekers" is curious enough, when we remember the graduate's description of landscapes, (of course Turner's,) and his excursions; but we think we have seen many purples in Turner, and that opposed to his flaming red in sunsets. He prefers warmth where most people feel cold--this is not surprising; but as to picture "is it true?" "My own feelings would guide me rather to the warm greys of such pictures as the 'Snow-Storm,' or the glowing scarlet and gold of the 'Napoleon' and the 'Slave Ship.'" The two latter must be well remembered by all Exhibition visitors; they were the strangest things imaginable in colour as in every particle that should be art or nature. There is a whimsical quotation from Wordsworth, the "keenest-eyed," page 145. His object is to show the strength of shadow--how "the shadows on the trunk of the tree become darker and more conspicuous than any part of the boughs or limbs;" so, for this strength and blackness, we have--

"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."

"Of the truth of space," he says that "in a real landscape, we can see the whole of what would be called the middle distance and distance together, with facility and clearness; but while we do so, we can see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of lines and colours; and that if, on the contrary, we look at any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct impression of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder and mystery. And therefore, if in a painting our foreground is any thing, our distance must be nothing, and _vice versa_." "Now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old school, as far as I remember, ever paid the slightest attention. Finishing their foregrounds clearly and sharply, and with vigorous impression on the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with equal attention to what they could see of its details," &c. But he had blamed Claude for not having given the exactness and distinct shape and colour of leaves in foreground. The fact is, the picture should be as a piece of nature framed in. Within that frame, we should not see distinctly the foreground and distance at the same instant: but, as we have stated, the eye and mind are rapid, the one to see, the other to combine; and as a horse let loose into a field, runs to the extremity of it and around it, the first thing he does--so do we range over every part of the picture, but with wondrous rapidity, before our impression of the whole is perfect. We must not, therefore, slur over any thing; the difficulty in art is to give the necessary, and so made necessary, detail of foreground unostentatiously--to paint nothing, that which is to tell as nothing, but so as it shall satisfy upon examination; and we think so the old masters did paint the foregrounds, particularly Gaspar Poussin--so Titian, so Domenichino, and all of any merit. But this is merely an introduction, not to a palliation of, but the approbation and praise of a glaring defect in Turner. "Turner introduced a new era in landscape art, by showing that the foreground might be sunk for the distance, and that it was possible to express immediate proximity to the spectator, without giving any thing like completeness to the forms of the near objects." We are now, therefore, prepared for an absurd "justification of the want of drawing in Turner's figures," thus contemptuously, with regard to all but himself, accounted for. "And now we see the reason for the singular, and, to the ignorant in art, the offensive execution of Turner's figures. I do not mean to assert that there is any reason whatsoever for _bad_ drawing, (though in landscape it matters exceedingly little;) but there is both reason and necessity for that want of drawing which gives even the nearest figures round balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet; for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding from the utmost distance, and some partial impression from all the distances, it should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and features of near figures than Turner gives." Yet what wonderful detail has he required from Canaletti and others?--But is there any reason why we should have "_pink_ spots?"--is there any reason why Turner's foreground figures should resemble penny German dolls?--and for the reason we have above given, there ought to be reason why the figures should be made out, at least as they are in a camera-obscura. We here speak of nature, of "truth," and with him ask, it may be all very well--but "is it true?" But we have another fault to find with Turner's figures; they are often bad in intention. What can be more absurd and incongruous, for instance, than in a picture of "elemental war"--a sea-coast--than to put a child and its nurse in foreground, the child crying because it has lost its hoop, or some such thing? It is according to his truth of space, that distances should have every "hair's-breadth" filled up, all its "infinity," with infinities of objects, but that whatever is near, if figures, may be "pink spots," and "four dashes of the brush." While with Poussin--"masses which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible and painful;" and he thinks Poussin has but "meaningless tricks of clever execution"--forgetting that all art is but a trick--yet one of those tricks worth knowing, and yet which how few have acquired! Surely our author is not well acquainted with Hobbima's works; that painter had not a niggling execution. "A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of Hobbima could have rendered his canvass, if he had worked on it till doomsday." Our author seems to have studied skies, such as they are in Turner or in nature. He talks of them with no inconsiderable swagger of observation, while the old masters had no observation at all;--"their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature; and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in study." What is the _it_, will be asked--we believe it to be a "cirrus," and that a cirrus is the subject of a chapter to itself. This beard of the sky, however, instead of growing below, is quite above, "never formed below an elevation of at least 15,000 feet, are motionless, multitudinous lines of delicate vapour, with which the blue of the open sky is commonly streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. They are more commonly known as 'mare's tails.'" Having found this "mare's nest," he delights in it. It is the glory of modern masters. He becomes inflated, and lifts himself 15,000 feet above the level of the understanding of all old masters, and, as we think, of most modern readers, as thus:--"One alone has taken notice of the neglected upper sky; it is his peculiar and favourite field; he has watched its every modification, and given its every phase and feature; at all hours, in all seasons, he has followed its passions and its changes, and has brought down and laid open to the world another apocalypse of heaven." Very well, considering that the cirrus never touches even the highest mountains of Europe, to follow its phase (query faces) and feature 15,000 feet high, and given pink dots, four pink dots for the faces and features of human beings within fifteen feet of his brush. We will not say whether the old masters painted this cirrus or not. We believe they painted what they and we see, at least so much as suited their pictures--but as they were not, generally speaking, exclusively sky-painters, but painters of subjects to which the skies were subordinate, they may be fairly held excused for this their lack of ballooning after the "cirrus;" and we thank them that they were not "glare-seekers," "threading" their way, with it before them, "among the then transparent clouds, while all around the sun is unshadowed fire." We lose him altogether in the "central cloud region," where he helps nature pretty considerably as she "melts even the unoccupied azure into palpitating shades," and hopelessly turns the corner of common observation, and escapes among the "fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels to the shechinah of the blue." We must expect him to descend a little vain of his exploit, and so he does--and wonders not that the form and colour of Turner should be misunderstood, for "they require for the full perception of their meaning and truth, such knowledge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses, or can bestow." The inference is, that the graduate has graduated a successful phæton, driving Mr Turner's chariot through all the signs of the zodiac. So he sends all artists, ancient and modern, to Mr Turner's country, as "a magnificent statement, all truth"--that is, "impetuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow, gushing water, and oppressed cattle"--yes, more, it wants repose, and there it is--"High and far above the dark volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep sky;" and there they are, "delicate, soft, passing vapours," and there is "the exquisite depth and _palpitating_ tenderness of the blue with which they are islanded." Thus _islanded in tenderness_, what wonder is it if Ixion embraced a cloud? Let not the modern lover of nature entertain such a thought; "Bright Ph[oe]bus" is no minor canon to smile complacently on the matter; he has a jealousy in him, and won't let any be in a melting mood with the clouds but himself; he tears aside your curtains, and steam-like rags of capricious vapour--"the mouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with blood." This is no fanciful description, but among the comparative views of nature's and of Turner's skies, as seen, and verified upon his affidavit, by a graduate of Oxford; who may have an indisposition to boast of his exclusive privilege.

"+Aerobatô kai periphronô ton hêlion.+"

Accordingly, in "the effects of light rendered by modern art," our author is very particular indeed. His extraordinary knowledge of the sun's position, to a hair's-breadth in Mr Turner's pictures, and minute of the day, is quite surprising. He gives a table of two pages and a-half, of position and moment, "morning, noon, and afternoon," "evening and night." In more than one instance, he is so close, as "five minutes before sunset."