However requisite it may be philosophically to account for these appearances, it is unnecessary to perplex the reader of the present work with a questionable statement of the greater impetus of rays of certain colours enabling them to penetrate through the dense atmosphere, while others are more feeble, and are swallowed up and absorbed by the medium through which they in vain essay to pass. This may be a very pretty story to amuse children with, and such philosophers as are verging on their second childhood; but while so simple a method can be discovered of accounting for the blueness of the sky and distant objects, and one that can be so easily exemplified as that given in the previous pages, we shall not be the parties to contribute to that amusement, by writing "the history of some blue rays that were lost in a fog." Nor is this the place to point out the absurdity of such theories; it will be sufficient to remark that if they are correct, all distant objects must appear red; and the blueness of the sky can only be accounted for by the hypothesis, that the atmosphere is a sort of trap for the blue rays of all the light that has passed and is passing through it!
Such being the effect of the atmosphere, and such being the antagonizing influence of Association in looking at Nature, it has been found necessary for the purposes of Art, in representation, to exaggerate the former, to overstep the modesty of Nature, and thus to produce what may be termed conventional imitations or translations of Nature.
For, in looking at a picture, Association again affects us; and as we know what is before us to be a flat surface, this can only be overcome by increasing the effects produced by atmospheric influence, reflections, refractions, &c. Hence the colour of all distant objects are reduced to some tone of grey, oscillating between the extremes of bright blue or even purple, and the medium between black and white as the subject, may be in sunshine cold daylight; or, as the taste of the artist may lead him to prefer one scale of colouring to another. Those who delight in the sunny skies of Italy, or tropical climates, represent the distance by the purest blue that Ultramarine affords. Others, who delineate the village church or cathedral tower, represent them of a dark grey. Mountain scenery is represented of a deep Indigo blue, sometimes inclining to a decided purple, as all must remember in the drawings of the late Mr. Robson.
If this exaggeration or pictorial license be objected to, as an unnecessary departure from truth or the beauty of Nature, let the most inveterate worshipper of verisimilitude place himself before a landscape under bright sunshine, on a clear day, and make an exact representation, if he be able, of what he sees; and he will be convinced that in such an instance, something more and very different is required, to make a finely coloured picture. It cannot be that the colours of the original are deficient in beauty, but that an essential quality of the beauty of Nature cannot be preserved by Imitative Art. He will find that it will not be possible to preserve even slightly the gradation of tints before him, without descending almost to blackness in the shadows, which will be destructive of brilliancy of sunshine, and at the same time, of that quality which is indispensable in a work of Art, breadth. He will find that in comparison with the brightness of the sky, the trees will look as dark as they are represented by Ruysdael and Hobbima, but who incontestibly do not give the idea of sunshine. As in translating from one language to another, he will find that a literal version may give the bones, but not the spirit of the text; and that something more is required to transfer the full force and character of the original. Herein consists a great part of the art of colouring objects. It may be that the scene being unbounded in Nature, is acted upon by extraneous circumstances which cannot be called to the aid of a picture.
As it is impossible with pigments to rival the brightness of light, it has been found necessary to adopt some method of forcing the effect of colours, so as to conceal or to supply a compensation for this deficiency, and apparently to produce the vigour of truth.
This has led to a division, which rivals in fierceness as in name, the feud of the Bianchi and the Neri of Italy, into two great schisms or factions of colourists, of whom, it is to be regretted, too many are apt to consider those of the opposite party as lost in the depths of absurdity. The hostility and contempt are quite mutual, and equally ungrounded.
A writer in Blackwood's Magazine of the Neri faction says, "We have received a prescriptive right to make war upon the rising heresy of light pictures, and we will wage it to the knife," or some such expressions.
Certain tones of colour have been found to be almost universally recognized as agreeables; and by the above mentioned class of artists and critics, the Neri, it is held to be "fine colouring," to reduce every representation, without consideration of propriety, to these conventionally agreeable tones. Plate. Sir Joshua Reynolds commends a picture of a moonlight scene by Rubens, which is so rich in colour, that if you hide the moon it appears like a sunset.
The background of the far-famed Mercury, Venus and Cupid, by Corregio, in the National Gallery, and the sky of the Bacchus and Ariadne, by Titian, in the same collection, are instances of this practice, the use of conventionally agreeable tones, which may be seen by every one. It would be difficult to say what the former was meant for, except background to the figures; and no one ever saw a sky such a blue as the latter. It irresistibly brings to mind the counter-criticism of a sceptic to the admiration of a landscape by Poussin, in which Sir ——, a worshipper of the old masters, was indulging:—"What I like so much is, it looks so like an old picture."—"Yes," said the sceptic, "and the sky looks as old as the rest of the picture, for you never see such a sky now-a-days."
The Neri apparently give up all hope of rivalling the brightness of nature; but by forcing the shadows and general tone of the whole picture, endeavour to produce the same gradation of light and shadow as in nature, but on a lower scale.