An overview of Turner's colour

 Taken  generally,  the  chief  characteristics  of  Turner's  colour, whether  in  drawings  or  paintings, considered  only  with  respect  to  truth,  and without reference to composition or beauty, of which at present we can take no cognizance, are those above pointed out, which we shall briefly recapitulate. 

1.  Prevalence,  variety,  value,  and  exquisite  composition  of  greys.  The grey tones are, in the drawings especially, the most wonderful as  well  as  the  most  valuable  portions  of  the  whole  picture.

Some of the very first-rate drawings are merely harmonies of different kinds of grey: Long Ships lighthouse, Land's End, for instance. Several appear to have been drawn entirely with modulated  greys  first,  and  then  sparingly  heightened  with colour  on  the  lights;  but  whatever  the  subject,  and  however brilliant the effect, the grey tones are the foundation of all its beauty.

2. Refinement, delicacy, and uncertainty in all colours whatsoever. Positive colour is,  as  I  before  said,  the  rarest  thing  imaginable  in  Turner's  works,  and  the  exquisite refinement  with  which  variety  of  hue  is  carried  into  his  feeblest  tints  is  altogether unparalled in art. The drawing of Colchester, in the England series, is an example of this delicacy and fulness of tint together, with which nothing but nature can be compared. But I have before me while I write a drawing of the most vigorous and powerful colour, with concentrated aërial blue opposed to orange and crimson. I should have fancied at a little distance, that a cake of ultramarine had been used pure upon it. But, when I look close, I discover that all which looks blue in effect is in reality a changeful grey, with black  and  green  in  it,  and  blue  tones  breaking  through  here  and  there  more  or  less decisively, but without one grain or touch of pure blue in the whole picture, except on a figure in the foreground, nor one grain nor touch of any colour whatsoever, of which it is possible to say what it is, or how many are united in it. Such will invariably be found the case, even with the most brilliant and daring of Turner's systems of colour. 

3. Dislike of purple, and fondness for opposition of yellow and black, or clear blue and white.

4. Entire subjection of the whole system of colour to that of chiaroscuro. I have not before noticed this, because I wished to show how true and faithful Turner's  colour  is,  as  such,  without  reference  to  any  associated principles. But the perfection and consummation of its truth rests in  its subordination to light and shade...

Nature's yellow and black

I think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of  her  hues,  never,  or  very  rarely,  using  red without  it,  but  frequently  using  yellow  with scarcely  and  red;  and  I  believe  it  will  be  in consequence found that her favourite opposition, that which generally characterizes and gives tone to  her  colour,  is  yellow  and  black,  passing,  as  it  retires,  into white and blue. It is beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition  of  Rubens  is  yellow  and  black;  and,  that  on  this, concentrated in one part of the picture, and modified in various greys  throughout,  chiefly  depend  the  tones  of  all  his  finest works. And in Titian, though there is a far greater tendency to the purple than in Rubens, I believe no red is ever mixed with the
pure  blue,  or  glazed  over  it, which  has  not  in  it  a  modifying quantity  of  yellow.

The infinite and unapproachable variety of Nature

And I wish to insist on this the more particularly, because it is one of the eternal principles of nature, that she will not have one  line  or  colour,  nor  one  portion  or  atom  of space, without a change in it. There is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of perpetual variation: I do not mean in time, but in space. There is not a leaf in the world which has the same colour visible over  its  whole  surface;  it  has  a  white  high  light somewhere; and in proportion as it curves to or from that focus, the colour is brighter or greyer. Pick up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes and hues of colour. Every  bit  of  bare  ground  under  your  feet  has  in  it  a  thousand such; the grey pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the greys and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might keep a painter at work for a month, if he were obliged to follow them touch for touch:  how  much  more  when  the  same  infinity  of  change  is carried out  with vastness of object and space. The extreme of distance may   appear  at   first   monotonous;   but   the   least examination will show it to be full of every kind of change; that its outlines are perpetually melting and appearing again, sharp here, vague there,now lost altogether, now just hinted and still confused  among  each  other;  and  so  for  ever  in  a  state  and necessity  of  change. Hence,  wherever  in  a  painting  we  have unvaried  colour  extended  even  over  a  small  space,  there  is falsehood. Nothing can be natural which is monotonous; nothing  true which only tells one story.

The basis of grey under all of Turner's vivid hues

Throughout the works of Turner, the same truthful principle of delicate and subdued colour is carried out with a care  and  labour  of  which  it  is  difficult  to  form  a conception.  He  gives  a  dash  of  pure  white  for  his highest light; but all the other whites of his picture are  pearled  down  with  grey  or  gold.  He  gives  a  fold  of  pure crimson  to  the  drapery  of  his  nearest  figure,  but  all  his  other crimsons will be deepened with black, or warmed with yellow. In one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of the purest  blue,  but  all  the  rest  is  palpitating  with  a  varied  and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks vivid blue  as  a  mass,  but  is  only  so  by  opposition.  It  is  the  most difficult,  the  most  rare  thing,  to  find  in  his  works  a  definite space, however small, of unconnected colour; that is, either of a blue which has nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm colour, which has nothing to connect it with the greys of the whole; and the result is, that there is a general system and under-current of grey pervading the whole of his colour, out of which his highest lights, and those local touches of pure colour, which are, as I said before, the keynotes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he stands alone.

Nature discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of colour and light

It is to be observed, however, in  general, that  wherever in brilliant  effects  of  this  kind,  we  approach  to
anything like a true statement of nature's colour, there  must  yet  be  a  distinct  difference  in  the impression   we   convey,   because   we   cannot approach her light. All such hues are usually given by  her  with  an  accompanying  intensity  of  sunbeams  which dazzles  and  overpowers  the  eye,  so  that  it cannot  rest  on  the actual colour, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in rendering  all  effects  of  this  kind,  there  must  be  a  want  of  the ideas of imitation, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of colour, and are unable to give the accompanying truths of  light;  so  that  the  more  true  we  are  in  colour,  the  greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the intensity of  hue and the feebleness of light.

But the painter who really loves nature  will  not,  on  this  account,  give  you  a  faded  and  feeble image, which indeed may appear to you to be right, because your feelings  can  detect  no  discrepancy  in  its  parts,  but  which  he knows   to   derive   its   apparent   truth   from   a   systematized falsehood.  No;  he  will  make  you  understand  and  feel  that  art cannot  imitate  nature;  that  where  it  appears  to  do  so,  it  must malign her and mock her. He will give you, or state to you, such truths as are in his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot give, he will leave to your imagination. If you are acquainted with nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply from your memory and from your heart that  light  which  he  cannot  give.  If  you  are  unacquainted  with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings;  but  do  not  ask  for  the  truth  which  you  would  not acknowledge and could not enjoy.

MP I, p. 289

Tone and climate

"...for  wherever  climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every 200 feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower ones; these from the rest of the landscape, and  in  all  probability,  some  part  of  the  horizon  from  the  rest. And  when  nature  allows  this  in  a  high  degree,  as  in  her  most gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at  once with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July  evening,  but  rather  with  the  magnificence  and  variety  of associated colour, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity  and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. Now, in Turner's power of associating cold with warm light no one has ever approached or even ventured into the same field with him. The old masters, content with one simple  tone,  sacrificed  to  its  unity  all  the  exquisite  gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. "

MP 1, p. 275

Grammatical accuracy of tone

And  the  best  proof  of  the  grammatical accuracy of the tones of Turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all his pictures at any distance. We approach only to follow the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it; while many even of the best pictures of  Claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. The smallest of the three sea-ports in the National Gallery is valuable and right in tone, when we are close to it; but ten yards off, it is all brickdust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue.

MP I p. 274

Two qualities of light

Light,  with  reference  to  the  tone  it  induces  on  objects,  is either  to  be  considered  as  neutral  and  white, bringing out local colours with fidelity; or coloured, and consequently modifying these local tints with  its own. But the power of pure white light to exhibit local  colour  is  strangely  variable.  The  morning  light  of  about nine or ten is usually very pure; but the difference of its effect on different   days,   independently   of   mere   brilliancy,   is   as inconceivable    as    inexplicable.    Every    one    knows    how capriciously the colours of a fine opal vary from day to day, and how  rare  the  lights  are  which  bring  them  fully  out.  Now  the expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it alters no colour, brings every colour up to the highest possible pitch and key of pure harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute  of  finely  toned  pictures  by  the  great  colourists,  as opposed  to  pictures  of  equally  high  tone,  by  masters  who, careless of colour, are content, like Cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light.
....
 the positive hue, namely, which it may itself possess, of course  modifying  whatever  local  tints  it  exhibits,  and  thereby rendering   certain   colours   necessary,   and   certain   colours impossible. Under the direct yellow light of a descending sun, for  instance,  pure  white  and  pure  blue  are  both  impossible; because the purest whites and blues that nature could produce would  be  turned  in  some  degree  into  gold  or  green  by  it.

MP I, p. 270

"There  are  two  qualities  of  light  most  carefully  to  be  distinguished  in speaking of the tone of a picture. 1st. Its own actual colour, which falls more or less  on  everything  which  it  touchesŕneutralizing  the  colours  existing  in  the objects themselves. Such is the well-known pure rose-colour which the rays of the  sun  assume  five  minutes  before  sunset.  This  colour  is  scarcely  ever  seen except on mountains and clouds, for the sun is too low before the tint is taken to permit its falling clear upon objects on a level with it, but sometimes, with a sea horizon, and a perfectly clear sky, it may be seen low. I adduce it as the most  positive  and  overpowering  tint  of  light  I  know,  for  no  colour  stands  before green or blue or whatever it may be, all are turned nearly pure rose by it. It is of course seen in its greatest purity on the Alps, but often occurs very pure on the highest clouds, not the cumuli, but the streaky uppermost bars at sunset. I have   seen   it   once   at   Venice,   of   extraordinary   intensit, so   totally overwhelming  every  local  tint  within  its  reach,  as  to  admit  of  nothing  like  a guess at their actual colour, the rose appearing inherent and positive in them. The  trees  in  the  Botanic  Gardens,  especially,  which  were  of  a  pure  pale green (it was May) became not merely russet but pure red."

Mercury and Argos

Here is a passage from Modern Painters, illustrating some of Ruskin's ideas on colour as described in the third part of the Elements of Drawing:

"In the Mercury and Argus, the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with grey and pearly white, the gold colour of the light warming it more or less as it approaches or retires from the sun; but, throughout, there is not a grain of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling grey and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a single crumbling touch; the keynote of the whole is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. (Modern Painters v. I, pp. 292-293)"

J.M.W Turner: Mercury and Argos (c.1836) National Gallery of Canada

Prodigals

But  they  are  prodigals,  and  foolish  prodigals  in  art;  they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves  powerless  when  they  should  seize  a thousand.

Glaukopis

And in doing this we have first to note the meaning of the principal epithet applied to Athena, “Glaukopis,” “with eyes full of light,” the first syllable being connected, by its root, with words signifying sight, not with words signifying colour. As far as I can trace the colour perception of the Greeks, I find it all founded primarily on the degree of connection between colour and light; the most important fact to them in the colour of red being its connection with fire and sunshine; so that “purple” is, in its original sense, “fire-colour,” and the scarlet, or orange, of dawn, more than any other, fire-colour. I was long puzzled by Homer’s calling the sea purple; and misled into thinking he meant the colour of cloud shadows on green sea; whereas he really means the gleaming blaze of the waves under wide light. Aristotle’s idea (partly true) is that light, subdued by blackness, becomes red; and blackness heated or lighted, also becomes red. Thus, a colour may be called purple because it is light subdued (and so death is called “purple” or “shadowy” death); or else it may be called purple as being shade kindled with fire, and thus said of the lighted sea; or even of the sun itself, when it is thought of as a red luminary opposed to the whiteness of the moon: “purpureos inter soles, et candida lunæ sidera”; or of golden hair: “pro purpureo pœnam solvens scelerata capillo”; while both ideas are modified by the influence of an earlier form of the word, which has nothing to do with fire at all, but only with mixing or staining; and then, to make the whole group of thoughts inextricably complex, yet rich and subtle in proportion to their intricacy, the various rose and crimson colours of the murex-dye,—the crimson and purple of the poppy, and fruit of the palm—and the association of all these with the hue of blood;—partly direct, partly through a confusion between the word signifying “slaughter” and “palm-fruit colour,” mingle themselves in, and renew the whole nature of the old word; so that, in later literature, it means a different colour, or emotion of colour, in almost every place where it occurs: and casts around for ever the reflection of all that has been dipped in its dyes.

92. So that the word is really a liquid prism, and stream of opal. And then, last of all, to keep the whole history of it in the fantastic course of a dream, warped here and there into wild grotesque, we moderns, who have preferred to rule over coal-mines instead of the sea (and so have turned the everlasting lamp of Athena into a Davy’s safety-lamp in the hand of Britannia, and Athenian heavenly lightning into British subterranean “damp”), have actually got our purple out of coal instead of the sea! And thus, grotesquely, we have had enforced on us the doubt that held the old word between blackness and fire, and have completed the shadow, and the fear of it, by giving it a name from battle, “Magenta.”

93. There is precisely a similar confusion between light and colour in the word used for the blue of the eyes of Athena—a noble confusion, however, brought about by the intensity of the Greek sense that the heaven is light, more than that it is blue. I was not thinking of this when I wrote, in speaking of pictorial chiaroscuro, “The sky is not blue colour merely: it is blue fire, and cannot be painted” (Mod. P., iv. p. 361); but it was this that the Greeks chiefly felt of it, and so “Glaukopis” chiefly means grey-eyed: grey standing for a pale or luminous blue; but it only means “owl-eyed” in thought of the roundness and expansion, not from the colour; this breadth and brightness being, again, in their moral sense, typical of the breadth, intensity, and singleness of the sight in prudence (“if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light”2). Then the actual power of the bird to see in twilight enters into the type, and perhaps its general fineness of sense. “Before the human form was adopted, her (Athena’s) proper symbol was the owl, a bird which seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness of organic perception, its eye being calculated to observe objects which to all others are enveloped in darkness, its ear to hear sounds distinctly, and its nostrils to discriminate effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed prophetic, from discovering the putridity of death even in the first stages of disease.”

I cannot find anywhere an account of the first known occurrence of the type; but, in the early ones on Attic coins, the wide round eyes are clearly the principal things to be made manifest.

On the sky and infinity

"One, however, of these child instincts, I believe that few forget, the emotion, namely, caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the Sea. It is an emotion more pure than that caused by the sea itself 

Whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects,—from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things (and joyfulness there is in all of them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful,—the light of the declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon;

It  is  not  then  by  nobler  form,  it  is  not  by positiveness  of  hue,  it  is  not  by  intensity  of  light  (for  the  sun itself at noonday is effectless upon the feelings), that this strange distant  space  possesses  its  attractive  power.  But  there  is  one thing  that  it  has,  or  suggests,  which  no  other  object  of  sight suggests in equal degree, and that is—Infinity. It is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn form  the  earth  prison-house,  the  most  typical  of  the  nature  of God, the most suggestive of the glory of His dwelling-place."

Modern Painters II, p. 79-81

"And of  these hues, that of open sky is one not producible by human art.  The sky is not blue colour merely,—it is blue fire, and cannot be  painted.

§ 4. Next, observe, this blue fire has in it white fire; that is, it has  white  clouds,  as  much  brighter  than  itself  as  it  is  brighter than the white paper. So, then, above this azure light, we have another equally exalted step of white light. Supposing the value of the light of the pure white paper represented by the number 10, then that of the blue sky will be (approximately) about 20, and of the white clouds 30. But  look  at  the  white  clouds  carefully,  and  it  will  be  seen they are not all of the same white; parts of them are quite grey

compared with other parts, and they are as full of passages of light and shade as if they were of solid earth. Nevertheless, their most deeply shaded part is that already so much lighter than the blue sky,  which  has  brought  us  up  to  our  number  30,  and  all these high lights of white are some ten degrees above that, or, to white paper, as 40 to 10. And now if you look from the blue sky and white clouds towards the sun, you will find that this cloud white, which is four times as white as white paper, is quite dark and lightless compared with those silver clouds that burn nearer the  sun  itself,  which  you  cannot  gaze  upon,—an  infinite  of brightness. How will you estimate that? And yet to express all this, we have but our poor white paper after all. We must not talk too proudly of our “truths” of art: I am afraid we shall have to let a good deal of black fallacy into it, at the best."

 (Modern Painters vol. IV, p. 51)

Turner and Venice

But let us take, with Turner, the last and greatest step of all. Thank heaven, we are in sunshine again, and what sunshine! Not the lurid, gloomy, plague-like oppression of Canaletti, but white, flashing fulness of dazzling light, which the waves drink and the clouds breathe, bounding and burning in intensity of joy. That sky, it is a very visible infinity, liquid, measureless, unfathomable, panting and melting through the chasms in the long fields of snow-white, flaked, slow-moving vapour, that guide the eye along their multitudinous waves down to the islanded rest of the Euganean hills. Do we dream, or does the white forked sail drift nearer, and nearer yet, diminishing the blue sea between us with the fulness of its wings? It pauses now; but the quivering of its bright reflection troubles the shadows of the sea, those azure, fathomless depths of crystal mystery, on which the swiftness of the poised gondola floats double, its black beak lifted like the crest of a dark ocean bird, its scarlet draperies flashed back from the kindling surface, and its bent oar breaking the radiant water into a dust of gold. Dreamlike and dim, but glorious, the unnumbered palaces lift their shafts out of the hollow sea, pale ranks of motionless flame, their mighty towers sent up to heaven like tongues of more eager fire, their grey domes looming vast and dark, like eclipsed worlds, their sculptured arabesques and purple marble fading farther and fainter, league beyond league, lost in the light of distance. Detail after detail, thought beyond thought, you find and feel them through the radiant mystery, inexhaustible as indistinct, beautiful, but never all revealed; secret in fulness, confused in symmetry, as nature herself is to the bewildered and foiled glance, giving out of that indistinctness, and through that confusion, the perpetual newness of the infinite, and the beautiful. Yes, Mr. Turner, we are in Venice now.

I think the above example may, at least, illustrate my meaning, and render clear the  distinction which I wish the reader always to keep in mind, between those truths which are selected as a means of deception, and those which are selected for their own sake.

Prout and Venice

Let us pass to Prout. The imitation is lost at once. The buildings have nothing resembling their real relief against the sky; there are multitudes of false distances; the shadows in many places have a great deal more
Vandyke-brown than darkness in them; and the lights very often more yellow-ochre than sunshine. But yet the effect on our eye is that very brilliancy and cheerfulness which delighted us in Venice itself, and there is none of that oppressive and lurid gloom which was cast upon our feelings by Canaletti. And now we feel there is something in the subject worth drawing, and different from other subjects and architecture. That house is rich, and strange, and full of grotesque carving and character that one next to it is shattered and infirm, and varied with picturesque rents and hues of decay that farther off is beautiful in proportion, and strong in its purity of marble. Now we begin to feel that we are in Venice; this is what we could not get elsewhere; it is worth seeing, and drawing, and talking and thinking of, not an exhibition of common daylight or brick walls. But let us look a little closer; we know those capitals very well; their design was most original and perfect, and so delicate that it seemed to have been cut in ivory; what have we got for them here? Five straight strokes of a reed pen! No, Mr. Prout, it is not quite Venice yet.

 

Force of national feeling in all great painters

«All artists who have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by, the national peculiarities of other times and countries, have instantly, whatever their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether; and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost their power over the human heart, lost all capability of teaching or benefiting others.»

(Modern Painters Ι)

The gift

That then which I would have the reader inquire respecting every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is, not whether it be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or power, but whether it have any virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth; whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown; whether it have added one single stone to our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path. This, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to his race. God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race for ever—

 “Fool not,” says George Herbert,
 “For all may have,
If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave.”

If, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious or powerless imitation of other men’s labours, if it be a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity,—Cast it out. It matters not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savour, it is worse than worthless—perilous,—Cast it out.

The relativity of truths

Again, a truth which may be of great interest, when an object is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when it is viewed in relation to other objects. Thus if we were painting a piece of drapery as our whole subject, it would be proper to give in it every source of entertainment, which particular truths could supply, to give it varied color and delicate texture; but if we paint this same piece of drapery, as part of the dress of a Madonna, all these ideas of richness or texture become thoroughly contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind at the same moment with the idea of the Virgin. The conception of drapery is then to be suggested by the simplest and slightest means possible, and all notions of texture and detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation; but this, observe, is not because they are particular or general or anything else, with respect to the drapery itself, but because they draw the attention to the dress instead of the saint, and disturb and degrade the imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to give the conception of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible, by rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary to the very existence of drapery, and not one more.

Modern Painters Vol. 1, II.I.3

Constancy, change and the ideal form

...the truths of nature are one eternal change—one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush;—there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. And out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attention only that the conception of the constant character—the ideal form—hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of truth.

(Modern Painters I)

Knowing and Seeing

And all the early works, whether of nations or of men, show, by their want of shade, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. The eye of a Red Indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of actual sight in the early painters of Italy. "The imitations," he says, "of early art are like those of children—nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and sought for; and numberless observable differences between the age of ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much the contraction or extension of our sphere of vision depends upon other considerations than the mere returns of our natural optics." And the deception which takes place so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of nature. We are constantly supposing that we see what experience only has shown us, or can show us, to have existence, constantly missing the sight of what we do not know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to the last hour of their lives, are apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting what exists, rather than what they can see. I shall prove the extent of this error more completely hereafter. 

(Modern Painters I)

On Seeing and Attention

...unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen.

...a man may receive impression after impression, and that vividly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason upon those impressions and trace them to their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that produced them;

How many people are misled, by what has been said and sung of the serenity of Italian skies, to suppose they must be more blue than the skies of the north, and think that they see them so; whereas, the sky of Italy is far more dull and gray in color than the skies of the north, and is distinguished only by its intense repose of light. And this is confirmed by Benvenuto Cellini, who, I remember, on his first entering France, is especially struck with the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the mist of Italy. And what is more strange still, when people see in a painting what they suppose to have been the source of their impressions, they will affirm it to be truthful, though they feel no such impression resulting from it. Thus, though day after day they may have been impressed by the tone and warmth of an Italian sky, yet not having traced the feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by its blueness, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of Italy as cold or dull. 

The exceeding importance of truth

Nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling, (supposing that feeling could be pure and false at the same time;) not the most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for two reasons; first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading; and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the human mind can conceive, that every departure from her is a fall beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an ornamental falsehood. All falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury as well as a deception.

(Modern Painters vol 1)

Ideas peculiar to things

It is self-evident that when we are painting or describing anything, those truths must be the most important which are most characteristic of what is to be told or represented. Now that which is first and most broadly characteristic of a thing, is that which distinguishes its genus, or which makes it what it is. For instance, that which makes drapery be drapery, is not its being made of silk or worsted or flax, for things are made of all these which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to drapery; the properties which, when inherent in a thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity and comparative thinness. Everything which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. So that these ideas separate drapery in our minds from everything else; they are peculiarly characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important group of ideas connected with it.

(Modern Painters vol 1, ΙΙ.Ι.ΙΙΙ,5)

Sketching vs Finishing

But yet it is far easier to sketch than to finish-far less power is in reality indicated by the brilliant imperfection, than by the majestic completion of a work. I do not say that there may not be refinements in the sketch of a master which invariably set it above that of other men, but yet not so far as his completion is above their completion. People learn to sketch by finishing, they never learn to finish by sketching.

(Modern Painters vol I, Pt.Ι Sec II)

On the colour brown

I was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what Dante meant by the word; but I was at a loss to account for his not, as it seemed, acknowledging the existence of the colour of brown at all; for if he called dark neutral tint “brown,” it remained a question what term he would use for things of the colour of burnt umber. But one day, just when I was puzzling myself about this, I happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colourists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly, and by mere accident, after we had been talking of other things, “Do you know I have found that there is no brown in Nature? What we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. It never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast.”

It is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue;—how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old umber idolatries of Sir George Beaumont and his colleagues, the “where do you put your brown tree” system; the code of Cremona-violin-coloured foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old night-owl science, which, like Young’s pencil of sorrow,

“In melancholy dipped, embrowns the whole.”

Nay, I do Young an injustice by associating his words with the asphalt schools; for his eye for colour was true, and like Dante’s; and I doubt not that he means dark grey, as Byron purple-grey in that night piece of the Siege of Corinth, beginning

“’Tis midnight; on the mountains brown

The cold, round moon looks deeply down;”

and, by the way, Byron’s best piece of evening colour farther certifies the hues of Dante’s twilight,—it

“Dies like the dolphin, . . . as it gasps away;

The last still loveliest; till—’tis gone—and all is grey.”

Let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of getting other tints. Brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is the only tint which is not to be in the finished picture, and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples utterly opposite to it in their nature. But there is infinite difference between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,—and as a base for light: and also an infinite difference between using brown shadows, associated with coloured lights—always the characteristic of false schools of colour,—and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. I shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing how brown is used by great colourists in their studies, not as colour, but as the pleasantest negation of colour, possessing more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike warmth. Hence Turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in colour science, he gradually introduced, in the place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded, apparently, on Indian red and vermilion, and passing into various tones of russet and orange.

(Modern Painters vol III, Part IV, Chapter XV)

On shadows and the picturesque

Thus, in the treatment of the features of the human face by Francia or Angelico, the shadows are employed only to make the contours of the features thoroughly felt; and to those features themselves the mind of the observer is exclusively directed (that is to say, to the essential characters of the thing represented). All power and all sublimity rest on these; the shadows are used only for the sake of the features. On the contrary, by Rembrandt, Salvator, or Caravaggio, the features are used for the sake of the shadows; and the attention is directed, and the power of the painter addressed, to characters of accidental light and shade cast across or around those features. In the case of Rembrandt there is often an essential sublimity in invention and expression besides, and always a high degree of it in the light and shade itself; but it is, for the most part, parasitical or engrafted sublimity as regards the subject of the painting, and, just so far, picturesque.

 Again, in the management of the sculptures of the Parthenon, shadow is frequently employed as a dark field on which the forms are drawn. This is visibly the case in the metopes, and must have been nearly as much so in the pediment. But the use of that shadow is entirely to show the confines of the figures; and it is to their lines, and not to the shapes of the shadows behind them, that the art and the eye are addressed. The figures themselves are conceived, as much as possible, in full light, aided by bright reflections; they are drawn exactly as, on vases, white figures on a dark ground; and the sculptors have dispensed with, or even struggled to avoid, all shadows which were not absolutely necessary to the explaining of the form. On the contrary, in Gothic sculpture, the shadow becomes itself a subject of thought. It is considered as a dark colour, to be arranged in certain agreeable masses; the figures are very frequently made even subordinate to the placing of its divisions: and their costume is enriched at the expense of the forms underneath, in order to increase the complexity and variety of the points of shade. There are thus, both in sculpture and painting, two, in some sort, opposite schools, of which the one follows for its subject the essential forms of things, and the other the accidental lights and shades upon them. There are various degrees of their contrariety: middle steps, as in the works of Correggio, and all degrees of nobility and of degradation in the several manners: but the one is always recognised as the pure and the other as the picturesque school. Portions of picturesque treatment will be found in Greek work, and of pure and unpicturesque in Gothic; and in both there are countless instances, as pre-eminently in the works of Michael Angelo, in which shadows become valuable as media of expression, and therefore take rank among essential characteristics.

 

(Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chapter VI)

Ideas of Beauty

Ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to their degree; and it would appear that we are intended by the Deity to be constantly under their influence, because there is not one single object in nature which is not capable of conveying them, and which, to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably greater number of beautiful than of deformed parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, in pure undiseased nature, like positive deformity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of permitted contrast as may render all around them more valuable by their opposition-spots of blackness in creation, to make its colours felt.

Of Greatness in Art

The picture which has the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is a greater and a better picture than that which has the less noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully expressed. No weight, nor mass nor beauty of execution, can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought.

The indistinctness of colour

If we look at nature carefully, we shall find that her colours are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive greys and yellows from the ground; every hair's breadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky, or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local colour; this local colour, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the grey of the shadow; and the confusion and blending of tint are altogether so great, that were we left to find out what objects were by their colours only, we could scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them, or the ground beneath them. 

 

(Modern Painters, vol. 1)

Of Deceptive Chiaroscuro

Finally, far below all these come those particular accuracies or tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projecting from the canvas, not worthy of the name of truths, because they require for their attainment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at our disposal the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates her objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect deception in one, to destroy its relation to the rest. And thus he who throws one object out of his picture, never lets the spectator into it. Michael Angelo bids you follow his phantoms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern French painter drops his hero out of the picture frame. This solidity or projection, then, is the very lowest truth that art can give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food for the eye which is properly only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor exalt; nor can it please, except as jugglery; it addresses no sense of beauty nor of power; and wherever it characterizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and the evidence of the vilest and lowest mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to.

(Modern Painters vol. 1)

On Ideas of Imitation

Ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second place, because not only do they preclude the spectator from enjoying inherent beauty in the subject, but they can only be received from mean and paltry subjects, because it is impossible to imitate anything really great. We can “paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up; but we cannot imitate the ocean, or the Alps. We can imitate fruit, but not a tree; flowers, but not a pasture; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. All pictures in which deceptive powers of imitation are displayed are therefore either of contemptible subjects, or have the imitation shown in contemptible parts of them, bits of dress, jewels, furniture, etc.

Thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas of power are associated with them. To the ignorant, imitation, indeed, seems difficult, and its success praiseworthy, but even they can by no possibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unacquainted.


(Modern Painters, vol. 1)

On the relation between colour and form

1.  First, then, I think that in making this reference we are to consider our building as a kind of organised creature; in colouring  which  we  must  look  to  the  single  and  separately organised creatures of Nature, not to her landscape combinations. And  the  first  broad  conclusion  we  shall  deduce  from observance of natural colour in such cases will be, that it never follows  form,  but  is  arranged  on  an  entirely  separate  system. What mysterious connection there may be between the shape of  the  spots  on  an  animal’s  skin  and  its  anatomical  system,  I do not  know,  nor  even  if  such  a  connection  has  in  anywise  been traced:  but to the eye the systems are entirely separate, and in many  cases that of  colour is accidentally variable. The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the  spots  of  a  leopard.  In  the  plumage  of  birds,  each  feather bears a part of the pattern which is arbitrarily carried over the body, having indeed certain graceful harmonies with the form, diminishing or enlarging in directions which sometimes follow, but also not unfrequently oppose, the directions of its muscular lines.  Whatever  harmonies  there  may  be,  are  distinctly  like those of two separate musical parts, coinciding  here and there only—never  discordant,  but  essentially  different.  I  hold  this, then, for the first great principle of architectural colour.  Let it be  visibly  independent  of  form.

[...]

The   boundaries   of   the   forms   he   will   assuredly, whatever  the  object,  have  found  drawn  with  a  delicacy  and precision  which  no  human  hand  can  follow.  Those of  its colours he will find in many cases, though governed always by a  certain  rude  symmetry,  yet  irregular,  blotched,  imperfect,  liable to all kinds of accidents and awkwardnesses. Look at the tracery  of  the  lines  on  a  camp  shell,  and  see  how  oddly  and awkwardly its tents are pitched.   It is not indeed always so: there is  occasionally,  as  in  the  eye  of  the  peacock’s  plume,  an apparent precision, but still a precision far inferior to that of the drawing of the filaments which bear that lovely stain; and in the plurality of cases a degree of looseness and variation, and, still more  singularly,  of  harshness  and  violence  in  arrangement,  is admitted in colour which would be monstrous in form. Observe the difference in the precision of a fish’s scales and of the spots on them.

[...]

 Infinite  nonsense  has  been  written about the union of perfect colour with perfect form. They never will, never can be united. Colour, to be perfect, must have a soft outline  or  a  simple  one:  (it  cannot  have  a  refined  one;) and you  will  never  produce  a  good  painted  window  with  good figure-drawing in it. You will lose perfection of colour as you give  perfection  of  line.  Try to  put  in  order  and  form  the colours of a piece of opal."

(Seven Lamps of Architecture, Chapter IV: The Lamp of Beauty, §§ 36-38)