EVERY one seems to be satisfied that warm colouring is essential to a good picture: but what is warm colouring is not determined. Some have joined the idea of warmth to yellow, others to red, others to the compound of both, the orange—they also differ in the degrees of each. A warm picture to some, is cold to others; and vice versa. Lambert’s idea of warmth, was to make his pictures appear as if they were behind a yellow glass. Vanbloom’s have a red glass before them. Both’s an orange colour. Each has its admirers, who condemn the rest.

Nature. All these hues are right as particulars, but wrong as universals.

Let us examine the different appearances of light from the dawn to noon. The first break of day is a cold light in the East—this, by degrees, is tinged with purple, which grows redder and redder until the purple is lost in orange—the orange in yellow, and before the sun is two degrees high, the yellow is changed to white. Invert the order of these, and it is the coming on of the evening. All these hues then exist in nature, and one is just as right as the other.

It is necessary to distinguish between the painter’s warmth, and the sensation. A picture, that has most warmth of colouring, represents that time of the day when we feel least. A true representation of noon must have no tinge of yellow or red in the sky; and yet from its being noon, one might be led to imagine it must be warm. It is the critic, and not the artist, which confounds the meaning of these terms. In like manner, summer and winter, in respect to light, are just the same: the sun rises and sets as gorgeously in December, if the weather be clear, as in June. I remember seeing two pictures of Cuyp, companions—one, a cattle piece in summer; the other, winter with figures skaiting. The sky in both was equally warm, for which the painter was much censured by an auction-connoisseur, who declared that it was impossible the sky could be warm in winter.

I believe it is a common mistake to apply the red and purple tints to the morning, and the orange and yellow to the evening. We hear pictures of Claude called mornings and evenings, which may be either. It is really odd enough, that there should not be a single circumstance to distinguish the morning from the evening, unless it be in a view of a particular place—in this case, the reversing of the light shews the difference. In a picture, there is no distinction between going to work, or milking, or returning from it—men ride, drive cattle, are fishing, &c. as well early as late.

These considerations should soften the peremptory style of some judges, and extend their taste, which at present seems much confined. We have seen that there are more natural hues than one or two. I will allow them to say, that a picture is too warm, too cold, too red, too yellow to please them, but let them not deny that these hues are all in nature, and that well-managed they are all pictoresque.