If he is wise he does this side by side with his water-colour sketch, making each help the other, and thinking in glass; even perhaps making his water-colour sketch afterwards from the glass.
Is it not reasonable?
Is it not far more easy, less dangerous?
He has not to rake in his cold and meagre memory to fish out some poor handful of all the possible harmonies;
To repeat himself over and over again.
He has all the colours burning round him; singing to him to use them; sounding all their chords.
Is it not the way? Is it not common sense?
Tints! pure tints! What great things they are.
I remember an old joke of the pleasant Du Maurier, a drawing representing two fashionable ladies discussing the afternoon's occupation. One says: "It's quite too dull to see colours at Madame St. Aldegonde's; suppose we go to the Old Masters' Exhibition!"
Rather too bad! but the ladies were not so altogether frivolous as might at first appear. I am afraid Punch meant that they were triflers who looked upon colour in dress as important, and colour in pictures as a thing which would do for a dull day. But they were not quite so far astray as this! There are other things in pictures besides colour which can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our academies