This neglect of colour as an end, as a means of narration, and as a sympathy, is peculiar to modern art. And hence it is, that there is less feeling among us for works of the Italian schools, than for those less poetical, and too often mean and low ones of the Dutch and Flemish. I mean not here to pass any censure on the colouring of the Dutch and Flemish schools; it was admirable in its lucid and harmonious, but mostly so in its imitative, character. Their subjects seldom allowed scope for any high aim at sympathetic colouring: both appealed to the eye,—not without exceptions, however,—to mention one only, Rembrandt, whose colouring was generally ideal, and by it mostly was the story told. But one perfection of colour they almost all of them had, that agreeability, that gem-like lustre and richness, which I spoke of as one of the essentials of good colouring. And in this, even where modern art has professed to work upon the model of the Flemish school, it has failed, and by endeavouring to go beyond that school in brightness, has fallen very far short of its excellence; for in the very light key that has been adopted, and the prevalence of positive white, it has lost sight of that mellowness and illumination which is so great a charm in the Dutch and Flemish pictures. It has, too, mistaken lightness for brightness, and a certain chalkiness has been the result. And artists who have fallen into this error, perceiving, as they could not fail to do, this bad effect, have endeavoured to divert the eye from this unpleasantness, by force, by extreme contrasts of glazed dark, by vividness of partial crude colours, and by the violence of that most disagreeable of all pigments, as destructive of all real depth and atmosphere—asphaltum.
In our assuming, then, this very high, this white key, we deviate from the practice of every good school. It is not desirable that this should be the peculiarity of the English school; but it certainly has too great a tendency that way. The Dutch and Flemish are of a much lower key, and the Italian of a lower still. Even in their landscape it is remarkable, that the painters whose country was the lightest, should have adopted the deepest tones; and that the landscapes of their historical painters are of all the deepest, and they were the best landscape painters. What exquisite richness and depth, and jewel-like glow, is there in the landscape of Titian, and Giorgione; and what illumination, that superior characteristic of nature, so much overlooked now a-days.
And yet our country is, from our atmosphere, darker than theirs, and presents a greater variety of deep tones and nameless colours. And as I before mentioned, the admired Claude, whom I rank of the Italian school, is of a very low key, delighting in masses of deep tones. And it is remarkable that his trees are never edged out light with Naples yellow, as our artists are fond of doing, but are mostly in dark masses, and whether near or distant, singly or in groups, are always without any strong and vivid colour. His object seems to have been to paint atmosphere not light, or rather that free penetrating light which he best effected by his lower key. And from this cause it is, that the eye rests, is filled, satisfied by the general effect, is never irritated either by too much whiteness, or too vivid colours; for he knew well that such irritation, though at first it attracts and forces attention, is after a while painful, and should therefore at any sacrifice be avoided.
But, to return to colouring as an expression. Here is a great field for practical experiment. On this subject I will quote a passage from the Sketcher in Maga of Sept. 1833.
"As in music all notes have their own expression, and combinations of them have such diversity of effect upon the mind, may not the analogy hold good with regard to colours? Has not every colour its own character? And have not combinations of them effects similar to certain combinations in sounds? This is a subject well worth the attention of any one who has leisure and disposition to take it up: and I am persuaded that the old masters either worked from a knowledge of this art, or had such an instinctive perception of it, that it is to be discovered in their works. Suppose a painter were to try various colours on boards, and combinations of them—place them before him separately with fixed attention, and then examine the channels into which his thoughts would run. If he were to find their character to be invariable, and peculiar to each of the boards put before him, he would learn that before he trusts his subject to the canvass, he should question himself as to the sentiment he intends it to express, and what combination of colours would be consentient or dissentient to it.
"This will certainly account for the colours of the old (particularly the historical) painters being so much at variance with common nature, sometimes glaringly at variance with the locality and position of the objects represented." "This knowledge of the effect of colours is certainly very remarkable in the Bolognese school. Who ever saw Corregio's backgrounds in nature, or indeed the whole colour of his pictures, including figures? Examine his back-ground to his Christ in the garden—what a mystery is in it! The Peter Martyr, at first sight, from the charm of truth that genius has given to it, might pass for the colour of common nature; but examine the picture as an artist, and you will come to another conclusion, and you will the more admire Titian."
Some critics have been misled by the simplicity of art in this masterpiece of Titian's, and have greatly admired the exactness with which he has drawn and coloured every object; but they have been deceived by that perfect unity which exists in all its parts, and have wrongly conceived the kind of naturalness of the picture. It is full of this sympathetic naturalness of colour; we are thoroughly satisfied, and ascribe that general naturalness to each particular part. Indeed if it were altogether in colour and forms no more than common nature, there would be no real martyrdom in it—it would be but a vulgar murder; but every part is in sympathy with the sentiment. Had Titian merely represented the clear sky of Italy, and brought out prominently green-leaved trees and herbage, because such things are, and were in such a scene where this martyrdom was suffered, the picture would not have been as it is, and must ever be, the admiration of the world and a monument of the genius of Titian. There was wanted a sky in which angels might come and go, and hover with the promise of the crown and glory of martyrdom, and there must be an under and more terrestrial sky, still grand and solemn, such as might take up the tale of horror, and tell it among the congenial mountains; and such there is in the voluminous clouds about the distant
cliffs. And it is very observable that, in this picture, Titian, the colourist, is most sparing of what we are too fond of calling colour.[10] Colour, indeed, there is, and of the greatest variety, but it is all of the subdued hues, with which the very ground and trees are clothed, that nothing shall presume to shine out of itself in the presence of the announcing angels, and to be unshrouded before such a deed.
I remember, I think it was about three years ago, a picture which well exemplifies this ideal colouring. It was exhibited at the Institution; it was of a female saint to whom the infant Saviour appears, by P. Veronese. The very excellence of the colouring was in its natural unnaturalness; I say natural, because it was perfectly true to the mystic dream, the saintly vision; a more common natural would have ruined it. No one ever, it is true, saw such a sky—but in a gifted trance it is such as would alone be seen, acknowledged, and remembered as of a heavenly vision. All the colouring was like it, rich and glorifying and unearthly, and imitative of the sanctifying light in old cathedrals. The sky was of very mixed tones and hues of green. The entire scene of the vision was thus hemmed in with the light and glory of holiness, apart from the world's ideas and employments. Why should modern painters be afraid of thus venturing into the ideal of colouring? Never was there a greater mistake, than that the common natural can represent the ideal. Wilkie with all his acuteness and good sense was bewildered with a notion of their union, and thought his sketches from the Holy Land would assist him in painting sacred subjects; whereas the truth is, that the very realities before his eyes would unpoeticise his whole mind; instead of trusting to his feeling, to his visionary dream, he would begin to doubt, as he did, what should be the exact costume, if his figures should stand or sit as Asiatics. As we are removed from events by time, so should we be by thought; we pass over an extensive region, and the clouds of days and of nights pursue us out of it, and we look back upon it in our memory, as under another light—the land itself, by distance and by memory making it a part of our minds, more than of our vision, becomes fabulous; it is no longer one for common language, but for song; and so the pencil that would paint it must be dipped in the colours of poetry. Memory glazes, to use a technical word, every scene. "The resounding sea and the shadowy mountains are far between us," as Homer says, and those fabulous territories that we love to revisit in the dreams of poetic night. There are no muses with their golden harps on Highgate Hill; nor would the painter that would paint them be over wise to expect a glimpse of their white feet on the real Parnassus.[11] As to nature in art, we make too much of a
little truth, neglecting the greater. It is not every creation that is revealed to the eye; even to adore and to admire properly, we must imagine a more beautiful than we see. The inventions of genius are but discoveries in regions of a higher nature.