Lectures on Landscape | Page 5

of the public as Molière of his old woman; you have done nothing really great or good if you can't please her.
15. Now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you will learn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you attempt those of variable light and cloud. Do not trouble yourselves with or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are brilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning I recommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary of the manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-book, with pencil cut over night, and colors moist. The one indulgence which I would have you allow yourselves in fast coloring, for some time, is the endeavor to secure some record at the instant of the colors of morning clouds; while, if they are merely white or gray or blue, you must get an outline of them with pencil. You will soon feel by this means what are the real difficulties to be encountered in all landscape coloring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity and harmonious action of forms.
But for the rest--learn to paint everything in the quietest and simplest light. First outline your whole subject completely, with delicate sharp pencil line. If you don't get more than that, let your outline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole.
16. All the objects are then to be painted of their proper colors, matching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal is painted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions; re?nforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but, above all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is.[3]
[Footnote 3: Make a note of these points:
1. Date, time of day, temperature, direction and force of wind.
2. Roughly, by compass, the direction in which you are looking; and angle of the light with respect to it.
3. Angle subtended by picture, and distance of nearest object in it.]
17. I have brought two old-fashioned colored engravings,[4] which are a precise type of the style I want you to begin with. Finished from corner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything done to good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste or affectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. The observation is accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure; and the effect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious and deceptive.
[Footnote 4: From a "Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan" ... engraved from designs by J. Lory of Neufchatel. London: Published by R. Ackermann, at his Repository of Arts, 1820.]
They are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapes I could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or which put your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease, they would take in the air and light of Italy.
I dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because I have lost much time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of the minds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two points of my subject and neglecting the rest.
18. We have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in its terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color.
First of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline.
I think the examples of shell outline in your copying series must already have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, the difficulty of it, and the value.
But we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind.
The outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complex parts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. The outline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a determinable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides with or does not. You can say of that line, either it is wrong or right; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive of the character of the object. But the greater number of objects in a landscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could follow them (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at all, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds, foam, and the like. And even in things which have determinate form, the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing their real character.
[Illustration]
19. Here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance, a pleasantly colored stone. Any of its pure outlines are not only without beauty, but