Fields Chromatography | Page 3

perfection,
it attained harmony of colouring and effect in the works of Titian and

Tintoret; but it sunk into grossness and sensuality while perfecting
itself materially among the Flemish and Dutch.
In the practice of the individual in painting, as well as in all revolutions
of pictorial art, in ancient Greece as in modern Italy, colouring in its
perfection has been the last attainment of excellence in every school. It
has been justly observed, indeed, that for near three hundred years,
since painting was revived, we could hardly reckon six painters that
had been good colourists, among the thousands who had laboured to
become such. But there is reason to hope that as Zeuxis succeeded and
excelled Polygnotus, and Titian Raphael, the artists of Britain will
transcend all preceding schools in the chromatic department of painting.
It is even probable that they may surpass them in all other branches,
and in every mode and application of the art, as they have already more
particularly done in an original and unrivalled use of water-colours.
Happily, too, there has arisen among us a school of colouring that
confirms this expectation, strengthened as it is, by the suitableness of
our climate to perfect vision. For in it we have that mean degree of
light which is best adapted to the distinguishing of colours, a boundless
diversity of hue in nature relieved by those fine effects of light and
shade which are denied to more vertical suns, besides those beauties of
complexion and feature in our females peculiar to England; respects in
which at least our country is not unfavourable to art.
Even now it is urged by some to the disparagement of the British
school, that it excels in colouring; as if this were incompatible with any
other excellence, or as if nature, the great prototype of art, ever
dispensed with it. The graphic branches of painting, owe everything to
colour, which, if it does not constitute a picture, is its flesh and blood.
Without it, the finest performances remain lifeless skeletons, and yield
no pleasure. Painting is the art of representing visible things by light,
shade, form, and colour; but of these, colour--and colour alone--is the
immediate object which attracts the eye. Colouring is, therefore, the
first requisite--the one thing imparting warmth and life--the chief
quality engaging attention; in short, the best introduction to a picture,
and that which continues to give it value so long as it is regarded. It is a

power, too, which is with the most difficulty retained, being the first to
leave the artist himself, and the first to quit a school on its decline.
Graphic art without colouring, is as food without flavour; and it was the
deficiency of colouring in the great works of the Roman and Florentine
schools that caused Sir Joshua Reynolds to confess a certain want of
attraction in them. To relish and estimate truly their greatness, required,
he said, a forced and often-repeated attention, and "it was only those
persons incapable of appreciating such divine performances, who made
pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them."
Gainsborough also, with a candour similar to that of Reynolds, upon
viewing the cartoons at Hampton Court, acknowledged that their
beauty was of a class he could neither appreciate nor enjoy.
Colouring, then, is a necessity; but there is in it a vicious extreme; that
in which it is rendered so principal as, by want of subordination, to
overlay the subject. There is also a negative excellence which consists
in not always employing pleasing tints, but of sometimes taking
advantage of the effects to be derived from impure hues, as Poussin did
in his "Deluge." In this work, neither black nor white, blue, red, nor
yellow appears; the whole mass being, with little variation, of a sombre
grey, the true resemblance of a dark and humid atmosphere, by which
every object is rendered indistinct and almost colourless. This absence
of colour, however, is a merit, and not a fault. Vandyke employed such
means with admirable effect in the background of a Crucifixion, and in
his Pieta; and the Phaëton of Giulio Romano is celebrated for a
suffusion of smothered red, which powerfully excites the idea of a
world on fire.
Of the rank and value of this department of painting, there will be, as
there has been, difference of judgment and opinion, as there is variety
in the powers of the eye and understanding. But take from Rubens,
Rembrandt, Titian, and other distinguished masters, the estimation of
their colouring, and we fear all that is left to them would hardly
preserve their names from oblivion. Art cannot, indeed, attain its
appropriate end, that of pleasing, without excellence in colouring. It is
colour which the true artist most loves, and it is colouring in all its
complex and