The principles that regulate the choice of colours are in themselves as invariable as the light from which they spring, and as the shade that absorbs them. Their economy is neither arbitrary nor phantastic. Of this every one may convince himself who can contemplate a prism. Whatever the colours be, they follow each other in regular order; they emerge from, they flow into each other. No confusion can break or thwart their gradations, from blue to yellow, from yellow to red; the flame of every light, without a prisma, establishes this immutable scale.
From this theory you will not expect that I should enter into chemic disquisitions on the materials, or into technic ones on the methods of painting. When you are told that simplicity and keeping are the basis of purity and harmony, that one colour has a greater power than a combination of two, that a mixture of three impairs that power still more, you are in possession of the great elemental principles necessary for the economy of your palette. Method, handling, and the modes of execution are taught by trial, comparison, and persevering practice, but chiefly by the nature, of the object you pursue. The lessons of repetition, disappointment, and blunder, impress more forcibly than the lessons of all masters. Not that I mean to depreciate or to level the comparative value or inferiority of materials, or that instruction which may shorten your road to the essential parts of study; but he is as far from Nature who sees her only through the medium of his master, as he from colour who fancies it lies in costly, scarce, or fine materials, in curious preparations, or mouldy secrets, in light, in dark, in smooth, in rough, or in absorbent grounds: it may be in all, but is in none of these. The masters of ancient colour had for their basis only four, and this simplicity made Reynolds conclude that they must have been as great in colour as in form. He who cannot make use of the worst must disgrace the best materials; and he whose palette is set or regulated by another's eye, renounces his own, and must become a mannerist. There is no compendious method of becoming great; the price of excellence is labour, and time that of immortality.
Colour, like Design, has two essential parts, Imitation and Style. It begins in glare, is caught by deception, emerges to imitation, is finished by style, and debauched by manner.
Glare is always the first feature of a savage or an infant taste. The timid or barbarous beginner, afraid of impairing the splendour by diminishing the mass, exults in the Egyptian glare which he spreads over a surface unbroken by tint and not relieved by shade. Such are in general the flaming remnants of feudal decoration. This is the stage of missal painting; what Dante called "alluminar," the art of Cimabue; its taste continued, though in degrees less shocking, to the time of M. Agnolo and Raffaello. Gods, and mothers of Gods, Apostles and Martyrs, attracted devotion in proportion to the more or less gaudy colours in which they were arrayed. It was for this reason that Julius the Second wished M. Agnolo had added to the majesty of the Patriarchs and Sibyls by gold and lapis lazuli.
Deception follows glare; attempts to substitute by form or colour the image for the thing, always mark the puerility of taste, though sometimes its decrepitude. The microscopic precision of Denner, and even the fastidious, though broader detail of Gherard Douw, were symptoms of its dotage. The contest of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, if not a frolic, was an effort of puerile dexterity. But Deception, though at its ultimate pitch never more than the successful mimicry of absent objects, and for itself below the aim of art, is the mother of Imitation. We must penetrate the substances of things, acquaint ourselves with their peculiar hue and texture, and colour them in detail, before we can hope to seize their principle and give their general air.
Tiziano laboured first to make facsimiles of the stuffs he copied, before he changed them into drapery, and gave them local value and a place; he learnt first to distinguish tint from tint, and give the skeleton of colour, before he emboldened himself to take the greatest quantity of colour in an object for the whole; to paint flesh which abounded in demi-tints, entirely in demi-tints, and to deprive of all, that which had but a few. It was in the school of Deception he learnt the difference of diaphanous and opaque, of firm and juicy colour; that this refracts and that absorbs the light, and hence their place; those that cut and come forward, first, and those which more or less partake of the surrounding medium in various degrees of distance. It was here he learnt the contrast of the tints, of what is called warm and cold, and by their balance, diffusion, echo, to poise a whole. His eye as musical, if I may be allowed the metaphor, as his ear, abstracted here, that colour acts, affects, delights, like sound; that stern and deep-toned tints rouse, determine, invigorate the eye, as warlike sound or a deep bass the ear; and that bland, rosy, gray, and vernal tints soothe, charm, and melt like a sweet melody.
Such were the principles whose gradual evolution produced that coloured imitation which, far beyond the fascination of Giorgione, irresistibly entranced every eye that approached the magic of Tiziano Vecelli. To no colourist before or after him, did Nature unveil herself with that dignified familiarity in which she appeared to Tiziano. His organ, universal and equally fit for all her exhibitions, rendered her simplest to her most compound appearances with equal purity and truth. He penetrated the essence and the general principle of the substances before him, and on these established his theory of colour. He invented that breadth of local tint which no imitation has attained, and first expressed the negative nature of shade: his are the charms of glazing, and the mystery of reflexes, by which he detached, rounded, corrected or enriched his objects. His harmony is less indebted to the force of light and shade, or the artifices of contrast, than to a due balance of colour equally remote from monotony and spots. His tone springs out of his subject, solemn, grave, gay, minacious, or soothing; his eye tinged Nature with gold without impairing her freshness: she dictated his scenery. Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, as subject and as background, dates its origin from him. He is the father of portrait-painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination.
Colour may be considered relatively to the whole or the detail of the parts that compose a picture. In that point of view it depends on the choice of a sovereign tone; in this on the skilful disposition, gradation, rounding, and variety of the subordinate tones, their principal light, the local colour, the half tints, the shades, and the reflexes.
The general regulation of the primary tone, and the specific arrangement of the subordinate ones for the rounding of every figure, is the same. In both, the attention is to be directed to obtain a principal mass of light, and a predominant colour. This is to be supported by the mutual assistance and reciprocal relief of secondary ones, must be associated with the demi-tint and the shades, and recalled and relieved by the reflexes.
When treating on Chiaroscuro, we have observed what may now be applied to Colour, that the primary tone depends on choice, and is arbitrary; but it decides all the rest, as the tone of the first violin in a regular concert tunes all the voices and all the instruments. Its effect entirely depends on the union of the surrounding tones with it, and has no other value but what it derives from contrast. By this the simplest tone, well managed, may become rich, splendid, and harmonious; it is then the tone of nature; whilst the most brilliant colour, if contradicted or disappointed by the detail of inferior ones, may become heavy, leathern, and discordant.