FINE COLOURING.
Having shown in the preceding chapters certain principles upon which Pictorial arrangements of Colours may be ensured, the attention of the reader must be directed to what other qualities are requisite to constitute Fine Colouring.
Fine Colouring must not be confounded with Fine Colours. Some of the Finest Colourists have avoided Fine Colours, and Sir Joshua Reynolds adduces as a proof that Apelles was a Fine Colourist, the statement by Pliny, that, "after he had finished his pictures, he passed an atramentum, or blackness, over the whole of them."
Nor is truth of imitation sufficient of itself to constitute Fine Colouring, though it always confers a value on a work of Art.
Fine Colouring, in the higher walks of Art, implies an adaptation of the general aspect or style of colouring to the expression and character of the subject; it then acquires the title of Poetical Colouring, which is its highest commendation as a means of Art.
But, independent of subject, there are other abstract qualifications of Fine Colouring to be sought for, in the representation of objects. It not only requires such an arrangement of tints and tones as shall produce an agreeable whole, but descends to minutiæ, and demands that such tints and tones, shall be obtained by a degree of refinement or idealization, within probability, of the ordinary appearances of Nature, or by a selection of the greatest beauties she displays, and such a combination of them as shall contribute to convey the most pleasing impressions, and present her under the most attractive aspect.
CHAPTER III.
SECTION I.
PRINCIPLES OF COLOURING OBJECTS.