CHAPTER II.

RULES FOR PRODUCING PICTURES IN COLOUR.

Although Harmony or Pictorial Colouring does not _depend_ upon any _particular_ quantities or arrangement of _particular_ tints, as the slightest consideration of the infinite variety of Pictures that have been produced will prove; certain quantities and arrangements of certain colours, have been found to effect it.

These discoveries have been made from time to time, and have each been adopted as principles by different artists; and though admitting of considerable variation in details, their effects have been so evidently distinguished by the public as uniform in general aspect, that they have been ranged in classes or schools, to one of which any individual work is instantly referred, by those who have even a slight acquaintance with the Art.

By _writers_ upon Art it has been very generally contended, that there _must_ be a balance of warm and cold colours. A little consideration will show, that this, as well as _all_ restrictive regulations, such as that blue must not come in the front of the picture, &c. are unfounded, or nearly the whole of the Dutch school of landscape and interiors must be condemned as wanting in Harmony, or bad colourists; for Ruysdael and Hobbima, Teniers and Ostade, seem to have had a horror of warm colours, while, on the other hand, Cuyp and Both seem to have had an equal dread of cool tints. That a balance of warm and cold colour is _one_ principle by which Pictorial Harmony may be obtained, is perfectly true; and that there are various means of balancing them is also true; which affords numerous varieties of style or character of pictures. And that the principle deduced by Sir Joshua Reynolds from the Venetian school, that one-third of the picture should (may) be cool, and the remaining two-thirds warm, is also just; and will be productive of beautiful results. The error consists in making these relative proportions _indispensable_ to Harmony.

This chapter will contain such principles as have been found to ensure Harmony. There may, perhaps, be many others in store for future discovery.

These principles are of universal application, whatever objects may be the subject of the drawing or picture, whether landscape, figures, animals, flowers, or altogether; and they are wholly independent of Poetical or Dramatic colouring,--the application of colour to Expression and Character,--and of the colouring of individual objects.

The art of composition, in regard to colour, consists in arranging objects in such a manner, that their true colouring will produce the combination required by the principle adopted. The art of too many of the artists of the present day, consists in introducing the colours required, without any reference to their being found in nature or not.