Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 40, February, 1861 | Page 2

crimson and the other green, was the
crimson. Nor was this the result of inexperience. He had been for years
familiar not only with Nature's coloring, but with the works of the best
schools of art, and had been in continual contact with the first living
artists.
The instances of this peculiar blindness are exceptional, yet not more so
than is the perfection of vision which enables the eye to discriminate
accurately the innumerable tints derived from the three primitives.
Nothing can be finer than the sense of identity and harmony resulting
from this exquisite organization. We have been told that there is a
workman at the Gobelin manufactory who can select twenty-two
thousand tints of the material employed in the construction of its
famous tapestries. This capability is, of course, almost wholly
dependent upon rare physical qualifications; yet it is the basis, the very
foundation of a painter's power.
Still, it is but the foundation. An "eye for color" never yet made any
man a colorist.
Perhaps there can be no severer test of this faculty of perception than

the copying of excellent pictures. And among the few successful copies
which have been produced, Page's stand unsurpassed.
The ability to perceive Nature, when translated into art, is, however, a
possession which this painter shares with many. Nor is he alone in the
skill which enables him to realize upon his own canvas the effects
which some master has rendered.
It is in the presence of Nature itself that a power is demanded with
which mechanical superiority and physical qualifications have little to
do. Here the man stands alone,--the only medium between the ideal and
the outward world, wherefrom he must choose the signs which alone
are permitted to become the language of his expression. None can help
him, as before he was helped by the man whose success was the parent
of his own. Here is no longer copying.
In the first place, is to be found the limit of the palette. Confining
ourselves to the external, what, of all the infinitude of phenomena to
which the vision is related, so corresponds to the power of the palette
that it may become adequately representative thereof?
Passing over many minor points in which there seems to be an
imperfect relation between Nature's effects and those of pigments, we
will briefly refer to the great discrepancy occasioned by the luminosity
of light. In all the lower effects of light, in the illumination of Nature
and the revelation of colored surfaces, in the exquisite play and power
of reflected light and color, and in the depth and richness of these when
transmitted, we find a noble and complete response on the palette. But
somewhere in the ascending scale a departure from this happy relation
begins to be apparent. The _color_-properties of light are no longer the
first. Another element--an element the essential nature of which is
absorbed in the production of the phenomena of color--now asserts
itself. Hitherto the painter has dealt with light indirectly, through the
mediatorship of substances. The rays have been given to him, broken
tenderly for his needs;--ocean and sky, mountain and valley, draperies
and human faces, all things, from stars to violets, have diligently
prepared for him, as his demands have arisen, the precious light. And
while he has restrained himself to the representation of Nature subdued
to the limit of his materials, he has been victorious.
Turner, in whose career can be found almost all that the student needs
for example and for warning, is perhaps the best illustration of wise

temperance in the choice of Nature to be rendered into art. Nothing can
be finer than some of those early works wrought out in quiet pearly
grays,--the tone of Nature in her soberest and tenderest moods. In these,
too, may be observed those touches of brilliant color,--bits of gleaming
drapery, perhaps,--prophetic flecks along the gray dawn. Such pictures
are like pearls; but art demands amber, also.
When necessity has borne the artist out of this zone, the peaceful
domain of the imitator, he finds himself impelled to produce effects
which are no longer the simple phases of color, but such as the means
at his disposal fail to accomplish. In the simpler stages of coloring,
when he desired to represent an object as blue or red, it was but
necessary to use blue or red material. Now he has advanced to a point
where this principle is no longer applicable. The illuminative power of
light compels new methods of manipulation.
As examples of a thorough comprehension of the need of such a change
in the employment of means, of the character of that change, of the skill
necessary to embody its principles, and of utter success in the result, we
have but to suggest the name and