I do not ask if Rubens was a man of genius. I am only questioning the title, which has been so generally conferred upon him, of a colourist. I am aware that a host of artists and connoisseurs will rather admire the audacity of making the inquiry, than pursue it, through the necessary disquisition, into the true principles of art. It may be possible that the taste of the English school, and of our English collectors, may have become to a degree vitiated. And with regard to the former, the artists, (and I say it without at all denying their great abilities,) it may be very possible, nay, it is certain, that any vitiation of taste must be a blight upon their powers, natural or acquired, however great. I believe this very reputation of Rubens as the great colourist, has been extensively injurious to the British School of Art, (if there be such a school.) It has been so often repeated, that artists take it up as an established fact, not to be denied; and have too blindly admired, and hence endeavoured (though for lack of the material they have failed) to imitate him in this one department, his colour. The result has been melancholy enough; an inferior, flimsy, and flashy style has been engendered, utterly abhorrent from any sound and true principle of colouring. Even in Rubens, there is this tendency to the flimsy, to the light glitter, rather than to the substantial glory of the art: but it is much disguised under his daring hand, and by the use of that lucid vehicle which, independent of subject, and even colour, is pleasing in itself. There is always power in his pictures, for his mind was vigorous to a degree; a power that throws down the gauntlet, as it were, with a confidence that disdains any disguise or fear of criticism: a confidence the more manifest in the defects, particularly of grossness and anachronism, bringing them out strongly palpable and conspicuous by a more vivid colouring, more determined opposition of dark and light,—as if he should say, behold, I dare. And this power has the usual charm of all power; it commands respect, and too often obeisance. But Rubens' colour requires Rubens' power in the other departments of art. To endeavour to imitate him in that respect, with any the least weakness either of hand or design, is only to set the weakness in a more glaring light, dressing it up, not in the gorgeous array and real jewellery of the court, but in the foil and tinsel glitter, and mock regality of a low theatrical pageantry. And this would be the case even if we had in use his luscious vehicle; but with an inferior one, too often with a bad one, the case of weakness is aggravated, and not unseldom the presumption and the failure of an attempt the more conspicuous.

I do not mean to say, that Rubens is universally imitated among us; but where his peculiar style is not imitated, the vitiation to which it has led is seen, in the general tendency of our artists, to shun the deep and sober tones of the Italian school, and, as their phrase is, to put as much daylight as possible into their works. But even here I would pause to suggest, that light, daylight, in its great characteristic, is more lustrous than white, and will be produced rather by the lower than the lighter tones, as may be seen in the pictures of Claude, whose key of colouring is many degrees lower than in pictures which affect his light, without his means of attaining it.

It is surprising that there should be such inconsistency in the decisions of taste; but this title of colourist has been bestowed chiefly upon two painters, who in this very respect of colour were the antipodes to each other, Titian and Rubens. Are there no steady sure principles of colour? If there be, it is impossible that such discordant judgments can be duly and justly given.

It will be necessary to refer to something of a first principle, before we can come to any true notion of good colouring. And it is surprising, when we consider its simplicity, that it should, at least practically, have escaped the due notice of artists in general.

There are two things to be first considered in colour. Its agreeability per se,—its charm upon the eye; and its adaptation to a subject,—its expressing the sentiment.

However well it may express the palpable substance and texture of objects that are but parts, if it fail in these first two rules, the colour of a picture is not good. With regard to the first, its agreeability. Is it a startling assertion to say, that this does not depend upon its naturalness? That it does so is a common opinion. Aware, however, that the term naturalness would lead to a deeper disquisition than I here mean to enter upon, I shall take it in its common meaning, as it represents the common aspect of nature. Now, besides that this aspect is subject to an almost infinite variety by changes of atmosphere, and other accidents, affording the artist a very wide range from which to select, it has a characteristic as important as its light and its dark of colour,—its illumination; so that a sacrifice (for art is a system of compensation) of one visible truth, say a very light key, does not necessarily render a picture less natural, if it attain that superior characteristic, which by the other method it would not attain.

Then, again, that very variety of nature, by its multiplicity, disposes the mind ever to look for a constant change and new effect, so that we are not easily startled by any actual unnaturalness, unless it be very strange indeed, and entirely out of harmony, one part with another, as we should be were one aspect only and constantly presented to us. This may be exemplified by a dark mirror—and, better still, by a Claude glass, as it is called, by which we look at nature through coloured glasses. We do not the less recognise nature—nay, it is impossible not to be charmed with the difference, and yet not for a moment question the truth. I am not here discussing the propriety of using such glasses—it may be right or it may be wrong, according to the purpose the painter may have; I only mean to assert, that nature will bear the changes and not offend any sense. The absolute naturalness, then, of the colour of nature, in its strictest and most limited sense, local and aerial, is not so necessary as that the eye cannot be gratified without it. And it follows, that agreeability of colour does not depend upon this strict naturalness.

I said, that it is of the first importance that the colouring be agreeable per se; that, without any regard to a subject, the eye should be gratified by the general tone, the harmony of the parts, and the quality—namely, whether it be opaque or transparent, and to what degree. There are certain things that we greatly admire on this very account—such as all precious gems, polished and lustrous stones and marbles, especially those into which we can look as into a transparent depth.

A picture, therefore, cannot be said to be well coloured unless this peculiar quality of agreeability be in it. To attain this, much exactness may be sacrificed with safety. It should be considered indispensable.

And this perfect liberty of altering to a certain degree the naturalness of colouring, leads properly to that second essential—its adaptation to a subject, or its expressing the sentiment. For it is manifest, that if we can, without offending, alter the whole aspect of nature in most common scenes, we can still more surely do so when the scenes are at all ideal or out of the common character. And we can do it likewise without a sacrifice of truth, in the higher sense of truth, as a term of art or of poetry.

For the mind also gives its own colouring, or is unobservant of some colours which the eye presents, and makes from all presented to it its own selections and combinations, and suits them to its own conception and creation. It has always been admitted that the painter's mind does this with objects of form, omitting much, generalizing or selecting few particulars. Now if this power be admitted with regard to objects themselves, as to their forms and actual presence, why should it not, with equal propriety, be extended to the colours of those objects, even though they have a sensible effect upon the scenes which are before us? But, as was said, the mind colours; it is not the slave to the organ of sight, and in the painter, as in the poet, asserts its privilege of making, delighting even to "exhaust worlds" and "imagine new." It takes for an imperial use the contributions the eye is ever offering, but converts them into riches of its own. It will not be confined by space, nor limited by time, but gathers from the wide world, and even beyond its range. Thus, in the simple yet creative enthusiasm of his passion, did Burns gather, at one moment, the flowers of all seasons, and all

and cold would be the criticism that would stop to note the impossibility; yet was it a great truth, the garden was his own heart, and his every wish a new flower. Here they all were.

It is the misfortune of art that this great power of the mind over materials is not sufficiently and practically admitted. In colouring we seem to have altogether abandoned the idea of invention. We go quite contrary to the practice of those good architects of other ages, who spoke and painted by their art; who invented because they felt the religious awe, that solemn chiaro-scuro—and the painted windows, not gorgeous and flaring with large masses of unmixed colours, (as are the unmeaning windows the modern Templars have put up in their ill-painted church, in which, too, the somewhat tame and dead Byzantine colouring of the walls agrees not with the overpowering glass of the windows;) these old architects, I say, affecting the "dim religious light," and knowing the illumination and brilliancy of their material, took colours without a name, for the most part neither raw reds, nor blues, nor yellows, but mixed, and many of a low and subdued tone; and so, when these windows represented subjects, the designs had a suitable quaintness, a formality, a saint-like immutability, a holy repose; and the very strong colours were sparingly used, and in very small spaces; and the divisions of the lead that fastened the parts together had doubtless, in the calculation of the architect, their subduing effect. Religious poetry—the highest poetry, consequently the highest truth—was here. There are who might prefer the modern conventicle, with its glare of sunshine, and white glass, and bare, unadorned, white-washed walls, and justify their want of taste by a reference to nature, whose light and atmosphere, they will tell you, they are admitting. And like this is the argument of many an artist, when he would cover the poverty of his invention under the plea of his imitation of nature—a plea, too, urged in ignorance of nature, for nature does actually endeavour—if such a word as endeavour maybe used where all is done without effort—to subdue the rawness of every colour, and even to stain the white-wash we put upon her works, and covers the lightest rocks with lichen.

But as the mind colours, and absolute naturalness is not necessary, it results that there must be a science by which the mind can effect its purpose.

For the cultivation of a sense arises from a want which the mind alone at first feels, and to the mind in that state of desire things speak suggestively that were before mute; discoveries are made into the deeper and previously hidden secrets of nature, and new means are invented of gratifying the awakened senses. Hence all art which is above the merely common and uncultivated sense. All we see and all we hear takes a vitality not its own from our thoughts, mixes itself (as aliment does, and becomes our substance) with our intellectual texture, and is anew created.

Winds might have blown, and wild animals have uttered their cries, but it was the heightened imagination that heard them howl and roar. And it was from a further cultivation of the sense, giving forth, at every step, new wants, that the nature of all sounds was investigated and music invented—science but discovering wonderful mysteries, secrets, and gifted faculties drawing them out of their deep hiding-places, making them palpable, and combining and converting them into humanities whereby mankind may be delighted and improved.

If, then, the ear has its science, so has the eye. There is the mystery of colours as well as of sounds. Nor can it be justly said that we are out of nature because we pursue that mystery beyond its commonly perceptible and outward signs to its more intricate truths; nay, on the contrary, as we have thereby more of those truths, we have more of nature; and we know them to be truths by their power and by their adoption.

This science of colour has been, perhaps, too much neglected. In conversing with artists, one is surprised how little attention they have paid to it; and even where it has been studied, it is only upon its surface, and by those well known diagrams which show the oppositions.

Few, indeed, consider colouring as a means of telling the story—as at all sympathetic. In an historical subject, more attention is paid to the exact naturalness of the light, the time of day, the local colouring of the objects, as they probably were, than upon those tones and hues which best belong to the feeling which the action represented is meant to convey: by which practice an unnaturalness is too often the result; for there is forced upon the eye a vividness and variety of colours, in dresses, accessories, and the scene, which one present at the action would never have noticed—which, as the feeling would have rejected, so would the obedient eye have left undistinguished; and we know how the eye is obedient to the feelings and withholds impressions, and in the midst of crowds, to use a common expression, will "fix itself on vacancy." It will do even more; it will adopt the colouring which the feeling suggests—will set aside what is, and assume what is not. Thus, in reading some melancholy tale, the very scene becomes

and thus it is that actually the eye aids tile imagination while it

This neglect of colour as an end, as a means of narration, and as a sympathy, is peculiar to modern art. And hence it is, that there is less feeling among us for works of the Italian schools, than for those less poetical, and too often mean and low ones of the Dutch and Flemish. I mean not here to pass any censure on the colouring of the Dutch and Flemish schools; it was admirable in its lucid and harmonious, but mostly so in its imitative, character. Their subjects seldom allowed scope for any high aim at sympathetic colouring: both appealed to the eye,—not without exceptions, however,—to mention one only, Rembrandt, whose colouring was generally ideal, and by it mostly was the story told. But one perfection of colour they almost all of them had, that agreeability, that gem-like lustre and richness, which I spoke of as one of the essentials of good colouring. And in this, even where modern art has professed to work upon the model of the Flemish school, it has failed, and by endeavouring to go beyond that school in brightness, has fallen very far short of its excellence; for in the very light key that has been adopted, and the prevalence of positive white, it has lost sight of that mellowness and illumination which is so great a charm in the Dutch and Flemish pictures. It has, too, mistaken lightness for brightness, and a certain chalkiness has been the result. And artists who have fallen into this error, perceiving, as they could not fail to do, this bad effect, have endeavoured to divert the eye from this unpleasantness, by force, by extreme contrasts of glazed dark, by vividness of partial crude colours, and by the violence of that most disagreeable of all pigments, as destructive of all real depth and atmosphere—asphaltum.

In our assuming, then, this very high, this white key, we deviate from the practice of every good school. It is not desirable that this should be the peculiarity of the English school; but it certainly has too great a tendency that way. The Dutch and Flemish are of a much lower key, and the Italian of a lower still. Even in their landscape it is remarkable, that the painters whose country was the lightest, should have adopted the deepest tones; and that the landscapes of their historical painters are of all the deepest, and they were the best landscape painters. What exquisite richness and depth, and jewel-like glow, is there in the landscape of Titian, and Giorgione; and what illumination, that superior characteristic of nature, so much overlooked now a-days. And yet our country is, from our atmosphere, darker than theirs, and presents a greater variety of deep tones and nameless colours. And as I before mentioned, the admired Claude, whom I rank of the Italian school, is of a very low key, delighting in masses of deep tones. And it is remarkable that his trees are never edged out light with Naples yellow, as our artists are fond of doing, but are mostly in dark masses, and whether near or distant, singly or in groups, are always without any strong and vivid colour. His object seems to have been to paint atmosphere not light, or rather that free penetrating light which he best effected by his lower key. And from this cause it is, that the eye rests, is filled, satisfied by the general effect, is never irritated either by too much whiteness, or too vivid colours; for he knew well that such irritation, though at first it attracts and forces attention, is after a while painful, and should therefore at any sacrifice be avoided.

But, to return to colouring as an expression. Here is a great field for practical experiment. On this subject I will quote a passage from the Sketcher in Maga of Sept. 1833.

"As in music all notes have their own expression, and combinations of them have such diversity of effect upon the mind, may not the analogy hold good with regard to colours? Has not every colour its own character? And have not combinations of them effects similar to certain combinations in sounds? This is a subject well worth the attention of any one who has leisure and disposition to take it up: and I am persuaded that the old masters either worked from a knowledge of this art, or had such an instinctive perception of it, that it is to be discovered in their works. Suppose a painter were to try various colours on boards, and combinations of them—place them before him separately with fixed attention, and then examine the channels into which his thoughts would run. If he were to find their character to be invariable, and peculiar to each of the boards put before him, he would learn that before he trusts his subject to the canvass, he should question himself as to the sentiment he intends it to express, and what combination of colours would be consentient or dissentient to it.

"This will certainly account for the colours of the old (particularly the historical) painters being so much at variance with common nature, sometimes glaringly at variance with the locality and position of the objects represented." "This knowledge of the effect of colours is certainly very remarkable in the Bolognese school. Who ever saw Corregio's backgrounds in nature, or indeed the whole colour of his pictures, including figures? Examine his back-ground to his Christ in the garden—what a mystery is in it! The Peter Martyr, at first sight, from the charm of truth that genius has given to it, might pass for the colour of common nature; but examine the picture as an artist, and you will come to another conclusion, and you will the more admire Titian."

Some critics have been misled by the simplicity of art in this masterpiece of Titian's, and have greatly admired the exactness with which he has drawn and coloured every object; but they have been deceived by that perfect unity which exists in all its parts, and have wrongly conceived the kind of naturalness of the picture. It is full of this sympathetic naturalness of colour; we are thoroughly satisfied, and ascribe that general naturalness to each particular part. Indeed if it were altogether in colour and forms no more than common nature, there would be no real martyrdom in it—it would be but a vulgar murder; but every part is in sympathy with the sentiment. Had Titian merely represented the clear sky of Italy, and brought out prominently green-leaved trees and herbage, because such things are, and were in such a scene where this martyrdom was suffered, the picture would not have been as it is, and must ever be, the admiration of the world and a monument of the genius of Titian. There was wanted a sky in which angels might come and go, and hover with the promise of the crown and glory of martyrdom, and there must be an under and more terrestrial sky, still grand and solemn, such as might take up the tale of horror, and tell it among the congenial mountains; and such there is in the voluminous clouds about the distant cliffs. And it is very observable that, in this picture, Titian, the colourist, is most sparing of what we are too fond of calling colour.[10] Colour, indeed, there is, and of the greatest variety, but it is all of the subdued hues, with which the very ground and trees are clothed, that nothing shall presume to shine out of itself in the presence of the announcing angels, and to be unshrouded before such a deed.

I remember, I think it was about three years ago, a picture which well exemplifies this ideal colouring. It was exhibited at the Institution; it was of a female saint to whom the infant Saviour appears, by P. Veronese. The very excellence of the colouring was in its natural unnaturalness; I say natural, because it was perfectly true to the mystic dream, the saintly vision; a more common natural would have ruined it. No one ever, it is true, saw such a sky—but in a gifted trance it is such as would alone be seen, acknowledged, and remembered as of a heavenly vision. All the colouring was like it, rich and glorifying and unearthly, and imitative of the sanctifying light in old cathedrals. The sky was of very mixed tones and hues of green. The entire scene of the vision was thus hemmed in with the light and glory of holiness, apart from the world's ideas and employments. Why should modern painters be afraid of thus venturing into the ideal of colouring? Never was there a greater mistake, than that the common natural can represent the ideal. Wilkie with all his acuteness and good sense was bewildered with a notion of their union, and thought his sketches from the Holy Land would assist him in painting sacred subjects; whereas the truth is, that the very realities before his eyes would unpoeticise his whole mind; instead of trusting to his feeling, to his visionary dream, he would begin to doubt, as he did, what should be the exact costume, if his figures should stand or sit as Asiatics. As we are removed from events by time, so should we be by thought; we pass over an extensive region, and the clouds of days and of nights pursue us out of it, and we look back upon it in our memory, as under another light—the land itself, by distance and by memory making it a part of our minds, more than of our vision, becomes fabulous; it is no longer one for common language, but for song; and so the pencil that would paint it must be dipped in the colours of poetry. Memory glazes, to use a technical word, every scene. "The resounding sea and the shadowy mountains are far between us," as Homer says, and those fabulous territories that we love to revisit in the dreams of poetic night. There are no muses with their golden harps on Highgate Hill; nor would the painter that would paint them be over wise to expect a glimpse of their white feet on the real Parnassus.[11] As to nature in art, we make too much of a little truth, neglecting the greater. It is not every creation that is revealed to the eye; even to adore and to admire properly, we must imagine a more beautiful than we see. The inventions of genius are but discoveries in regions of a higher nature.

Of late years some painters have taken up the novelty of representing scriptural subjects as under the actual scenery and climate of the holy land, and attempted besides to portray the characteristics of the race,—a thing never dreamed of by the great painters of history. They are partial to skies hot and cloudless, and to European feelings not agreeable; forgetful of a land of promise and of wonder, and that these subjects belong, and must be modified to the mental vision of every age and country. They abhor the voluminous and richly coloured clouds, as unnatural. Can they not feel the passage—

Let then, not only their forms, but their colours too, be as far as may be worthy Him whom they are said to bear. They are, as it were, the folding and unfolding volumes wherein the history of all creation is written. As they are prominent in the language of poetry, so should they ever be the materials for poetic art.

I speak of this noble character of cloud skies, because a writer of more persuasive power than mature judgement,—the Author of "Modern Painters,"—has condemned them; that he has not felt them is surprising. He has, however, in his second, in many respects admirable part, manifested such change of opinion, and has shown such a growing admiration for the old masters, whom in his first volume he treated with so little respect, nay, with perfect contempt, that I cannot doubt the operation of his better judgment, when in prosecuting his subject, he will be led to consider the use of these materials of nature to poetic art.

I must not, however, forget that I began this paper with questioning the title of Rubens as a colourist. It has been shown, that I consider no painter a colourist, who does not unite the two essentials of colour,—agreeability, and its perfect sympathy with the subject.

I have endeavoured to show in what this agreeability consists. I have not presumed to lay down any definite rules for the second great essential; but I have endeavoured by illustration to enforce its necessity; in this confident that a proper practice will follow, and be the necessary result of a proper feeling. Now to speak of Rubens; what are his characteristics as a colourist? Wherein lies his excellence? I do not stop to repeat any of the extravagant praises that have been so freely lavished upon him. But I would ask, is there one important picture by his hand, wherein the colour is of a sentiment? Is there any one which, if you remove from it to such a distance as not to see the subject in its particulars, will indicate by its colouring what sort of narrative is to be told by a nearer inspection? Try him by those in our National Gallery. I will take first, his most powerful, and one of a subject most advantageous perhaps to his manner, because there is no very striking sentiment to be conveyed by it; for he seems scarcely serious in his treatment of this passage in the Roman history. I speak of his "Rape of the Sabines." Inasmuch as it is a picture of glare, and fluster, and confusion, it may be said to represent the subject; but such ought not to be the sentiment of it. But inasmuch as it has this glare, and is entirely deficient in all repose of colour, (for it is not requisite to representation of violent action, that there should not be that character of repose of colour which the essential agreeability demands,) the eye cannot rest upon it with satisfaction as a whole. You must approach it then nearer, to see how the particular objects are coloured. You will be pleased with the skill with which one colour is set off by another; and, doubtless, you will acknowledge a certain truth in the flesh tints: but all this while you are led away from the subject, draw no conclusion from it as a whole, and are induced to examine a detail which, however coloured with skill, and powerfully executed, is vulgar and disgusting. A mere trifle more of gross vulgarity would turn it into caricature, and you would think, that Rubens had been a successfully laborious satirist upon the narrative of the Roman historian. I confess that, but for its technical merits, which are lost upon most of the visitors of the Gallery, the picture would give me no pleasure whatever, nay, much disgust, as altogether derogatory to the dignity of art.

I purposely pass by his allegorical pictures as mere furniture for walls, not being subjects of sentiment; nor should I very much care if his "Peace and War" were in the sorry condition which has been wrongly given to it.

Examine then the Judgment of Paris. Here is a subject most favourable for him. It shows glaringly the defect of his manner. Admit that his flesh tints are most natural, that they are beautiful; has he not sacrificed too much to make them so? All, excepting these nude figures, is monotonous, has no relation by any tint to the figures, or to any idea of sentiment such a subject may be supposed to convey. The single excellence lies in the flesh-colouring of the three goddesses. But when I use the word excellence, I do not mean to say that in this respect he surpasses any other painter, as I will presently show. Now, there is a peculiarity in Rubens' method, and which strictly belongs to his colouring, from which arises what may be not improperly designated flimsiness, that is, the leaving too much of the first getting in of his picture, the first transparent sketchy brown. If in some respect this gives force to the more solid parts, by the contrast of the transparent with the opaque, yet is it rather a flashy force, in which the means become too visible; an entire substance is wanted; we come too immediately to the bare ground of the canvass. And this first colouring being a mere brown, not deserving the name of colour, as it is not the real colour of the objects upon which it is disposed, is in entire disagreement with the studied truth to nature in the other parts. There is every reason to believe that Rubens, after his return from Italy, was aware of this, by his partially adopting the Italian method of more generally solid painting and after glazing; but he returned to the Flemish method, and as it certainly was the more expeditious, it may have better suited his hand, and the demands upon it. Now, here it may be remarked, that even for the first essential—agreeability of colouring, that is, of the substance of the paint—it is necessary that it should be rich, really a substance, not a merely thin wash: such was the positive depth of even the shadowy parts in the back grounds of Corregio; the paint itself is a rich substance, with the lustrous depth of precious stones. So that it would appear that there is in Rubens' style of colouring an original incompleteness, destructive in part of the naturalness he would aim at; it is a mannerism, very tolerable in such light works as those lucid and charming pictures by Teniers where all is light and unlaboured; but becoming a weakness where the other labour and the subject are important.

Now, with regard to this celebrated excellence of his, in colouring the nude, (and here it should be observed, that it is almost exclusively in his female figures,) however natural it may be, is it nature in its most agreeable, its most perfect colouring? It has been said, and intended as praise, that the flesh looks as if it had fed upon roses; but is it a praise? I should rather say it would not unaptly express the thinness, the unsubstantialness of it, as of a rose leaf surface merely. In form, indeed, the figures are any thing but thin and unsubstantial: but I am considering only the colouring; it is not rich; it has indeed the light and play of life, but it has not the glow; it is a surface life, not life, warm life to the very marrow, such as we see in the works of Titian and Giorgione. They did not, as Rubens did, heighten the flesh with pure white; they reserved the power of that for another purpose, preserving throughout a lower tone, so that the eye shall not fasten upon any one particular tint, the whole being of the character of the "nimium lubricus aspici." Their white and their dark, they artfully placed as opposition, the cool white to set off the warmth, the life-glow of the flesh, and the dark to make the low tone shine out fair; so that in this very excellence of flesh painting, they were more perfect, that one only approach to excellence, by which it should seem Rubens had acquired his title as a colourist. But these painters, as well as many others—though take only these, as the most striking contrasts to Rubens—excelled also in the agreeability of their colouring, without reference to subject, and in the sympathy with regard to it. So that in them were united the two essentials. Whereas Rubens had in any perfection neither; the one not at all, and the other only in a minor part and degree.

Such was the general character of Rubens' colouring. I do not mean that there are no felicitous exceptions. I would notice—but there the human figure is not—his lioness on a ledge of rock; there is an entire absence of his strong and flickering colours: on the contrary all is dim—the scenery natural to the animal, for it partakes of its proper colours, (and this is strictly true, as the hare and the fox conceal themselves by their assimilating earths and forms.) The spectator advances upon the scene, unaware of the stealthily lurking danger. The dimness and repose are of a terror, that contrast and forcible colour would at least mitigate; the surprise would be lost, or rather be altogether of another kind; it would arm you for the danger, which becomes sublime by taking you unprepared. And there is his little landscape with the sun shedding his rays through the hole in the tree, where the sentiment of the obscure—the dim wood—is enhanced by the bright gleam—and there is in this little picture a whole agreeability of colour. His landscapes in general are, however, very strange; rather eccentric than natural in colour, yet preserving the intended atmospheric effect by an idealism of colouring not quite in keeping with the unromantic commonness of the scenery.

But these exceptions do not indicate the characteristics of Rubens as a colourist; he is more known, and more imitated, as far as he can be imitated, in the mannerism of his style which has been described.

Deficient, then, as I think him to have been in these two essentials, I am still disposed to question his claim to the title, and to ask, "Was Rubens a colourist?" If the answer be in the negative, it may be worth while to consider the precise point from which his style may be said to have deviated from the right road; nor is it here necessary to particularise, but to refer to the Italian practice generally, which will be found to consist chiefly in this—in the choosing a low key; and for the greatest perfection of colouring, the proper union of the two essentials of good colouring, it may be safe to refer, first to the Venetian, the Lombard, and then to the Bolognese schools. Not that the Roman school is altogether to be omitted. Out of his polished style, Raffaelle is often excellent—both rich in tone, and, where he is not remarkably so, often sentimental. Some of his frescoes, as the Heliodorus, are good examples. And in that small picture in our National Gallery, the "St Catherine," the sentiment of purity and loveliness is admirably sustained in the colouring. There is in the best pictures of that school no affected flashiness of high lights—no flimsiness in the unsubstantial paint in the shadows; there is an evenness throughout, which, if it reach not the perfection of colouring, is the best substitute for it.

Power is not inconsistent with modesty—with forbearance. In the flashy style, all the force is expended, and visibly so; and as in that excess of power the flash of lightning is but momentary, we cannot long bear the exhibition of such a power rendered continuous. In the more modest—the subdued style—the artist conceals as much as may be the very power he has used, thereby actually strengthening it; for while you have all you want, you know not how much may be in reserve, and you feel it unseen, or may believe it to be unseen, when in fact it is before your eyes, though half veiled for a purpose.

Let not any painter who would be a colourist deceive himself into the belief that the most vivid and unmixed colours are the best for his art, nor that even they are the truest to nature, in whatever sense he may take the word nature. It is easy enough to lay on crude vermilion, lake, and chrome yellows; yet the colours that shall be omitted shall be infinite, and by far more beautiful than the chosen, and for which, since the generality are not painters, nor scientific in the effects of colours, there are no names. Let a painter who would have so limited a scale and view of colour do his best, and the first flower-bed he looks at will shame him with regard to those very colours he has adopted, as with regard to those thousand shades of hues, mixed and of endless variety, which are still more beautiful. We scarcely ever in nature see a really unmixed colour; and that the mixed are the most agreeable may be more than conjectured, from the fact that, of the three, the blue, the red, and the yellow, the mixture of the two will be so unsatisfactory, that the mind's eye will, when withdrawn, supply the third.

A few words only remain to be said. To complete, practically, agreeability of colouring, there is wanting a more perfect vehicle for our colours. Much attention has, of late years, been directed to this subject; and there is every reason to believe not in vain. I wait, impatiently enough, Mr Eastlake's other volume, in which he promises to treat of the Italian methods. He has been indefatigable in collecting materials,—has an eye to know well what is wanted; and, as a scholar and collector of all that has been written on art, in Italian, as well as other languages, has the best sources from which to gather isolated facts, which, put together, may lead to most important discoveries.

Mrs Merrifield, also, whose translation from Cennino Cennini, and whose works on fresco painting are so valuable, has been collecting materials abroad, and will shortly publish her discoveries. The two proofs to which we are to look are documents and chemistry. The secret of Van Eyck may have been found out, but its modification under the Italian practice will be, perhaps, the more important discovery. I am glad also to learn, that Mr Hendrie intends to publish entire with notes, the "De Magerne MS." in the British Museum. I believe artists are already giving up the worst of vehicles, the meguilp, made of mastic, of all the varnishes the most ready to decompose, as well as to separate the paint, and produce those unseemly gashes which have been the ruin of so many pictures.

Whether colour be considered in its agreeability, per se, or in its sympathetic, its sentimental application,—for the attainment of either end, it is of the highest importance to resume the very identical vehicle, and the mode of using it, which were the vehicle and the methods of Titian, Giorgione, and Corregio, and generally of the old masters. Yours ever,