[1] The word in the uppermost note, to the right of the sun, is “red;” the others, “yellow,” “purple,” “cold” light gray. He always noted the colors of the skies in this way.
[2] It is not so good a facsimile as those I have given from Durer, for the original sketch is in light pencil; and the thickening and delicate emphasis of the lines, on which nearly all the beauty of the drawing depended, cannot be expressed in the woodcut, though marked by a double line as well as I could. But the figure will answer its purpose well enough in showing Turner’s mode of sketching.
[3] Thus, in the Holy Family of Titian, lately purchased for the National Gallery, the piece of St. Catherine’s dress over her shoulders is painted on the under dress, after that was dry. All its value would have been lost, had the slightest tint or trace of it been given previously. This picture, I think, and certainly many of Tintoret’s, are painted on dark grounds; but this is to save time, and with some loss to the future brightness of the color.
[4] In cleaning the “Hero and Leander,” now in the National collection, these upper glazes were taken off, and only the black ground left. I remember the picture when its distance was of the most exquisite blue. I have no doubt the “Fire at Sea” has had its distance destroyed in the same manner.
PART IX.
OF IDEAS OF RELATION:—II. OF INVENTION SPIRITUAL.
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CHAPTER I.