'What will not be the result of the means of multiplying the metallic basis, and fixing the fleeting sunbeam, which are now opening upon us by means of chemical science? Steam-engine and furnace, the steel plate, the roller, the press, the Daguerreotype, the voltaic battery and the lens, are the antagonist principles of art; and so long as they are permitted to rule, so long must art be prevented from ever taking root again in the affections of mankind. It may continue to afford enjoyment to those who are severed in spirit from the multitude; but the masses will be quite easy without it.' 'Whilst we triumph in the "results of machinery," we must not repine if one of those results be the paralysis of the imaginative faculties of the human mind.'
Of all the application of mechanical means to effect the purposes of art, their contrast, with the operations of the hand, is as the stiffness and weight of death, compared with life, freedom, and vitality.
LIGHT AND SHADE.
————Shadows, to-night,
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers
Armed in proof.
The inexhaustible and unceasingly varying beauties of art begin to develope themselves most when the study of Light and Shade commences; and the student is amply recompensed for the time he has devoted to obtaining a knowledge of correctness in outline. It is now that he sees Nature with other and improved vision—with clearer conceptions of her character—in her sunny and joyous revellings, as in her vast and awful sublimity.
Drawing gives form; Colour, its visible quality; and Light and Shade, its solidity.
If the necessary form of a figure, or any other object, be not agreeable to the eye, its whole appearance may be so altered by a skilful management of its light and shade, as to become at once the contrary by judicious arrangement.
In arranging the light and shade of a sketch I intend to paint, I usually take a piece of grey, or neutral paper, place the highest light at some point of sufficient interest (for the high light in a picture always seems to say, 'Come and look at me, to see what I am about!') and gradually lead it away, diffusing its rays, as it were, into the half light, or the half shade, and so on, until it is wholly lost in the darkest point; then, with white paint, or chalk, proceed to mark all the immaterial lights, on parts of the figures, or other objects, as they occur in the design, as conductors of the more luminous one, into the shade, as repeats, to prevent its singleness of appearance, gradating until they are carried out of the work; like light 'collected to a focus by a lens, and emitting rays,' as in [plate 2]. The judgment being principally exerted in judiciously placing the repeats, one, or more, of these lesser lights must, of necessity, be of the same colour as the principal.