CHAPTER I.
_On Colouring._
301. _True or absolute colouring_ is the faithful reproduction in painting of the modifications that light enables us to perceive in the objects taken for models.
302. In the ordinary use of the word _colouring_, we allude to the more or less perfect manner in which the painter has complied with the rules,
1. _Of aërial perspective._
2. _Of the harmony of local colours, and of the colours of the different objects composing the picture._
ARTICLE I.
_Of Aërial Perspective._
303. We must not believe that the employment of many colours in a composition is indispensable to give the epithet of _colourist_ to the artist, for in pictures painted in one colour only, the simplest of all, in which we only distinguish two colours including white, the artist may be honoured with the title of _colourist_, if his work presents lights and shades distributed as they are upon the model. To convince ourselves of the justice of the expression, it will suffice to remark that the model might very well appear to the painter coloured with a single colour, modified by light and shade. In the same sense this epithet may be applied to the engraver, who, by means of his burin, reproduces a picture as faithfully as possible, in respect both to the aërial perspective of its different planes, and to the relief of each particular object.
304. A painter who has faithfully reproduced the aërial perspective, with all its modifications of white and coloured light and of shades, has effected a _true or absolute colouring_, which, however, may not be universally deemed as perfect as that in which this quality of absolute colouring is not found, at least in the same degree of perfection.
_Imperfectly faithful imitation._
305. _A painter may have perfectly seized upon all the modifications of white and coloured light, but in his imitation, some of these modifications are more strongly marked than in nature._
It almost always happens that _true but exaggerated colouring_ is more agreeable than absolute colouring; and that many persons who experience pleasure in seeing the modifications of exaggerated coloured light which a picture may exhibit, do not feel the same pleasure from the sight of a model, because the modifications corresponding to those which are imitated in excess are not sufficiently prominent to be evident to them. Besides the relish of the eye for an excess of an exciting cause, is essentially analogous to the inclination we have for food and drink of a pungent flavour and odour.
306. A painter may have perfectly seized all the modifications of light which bring forward the planes and the relief of objects; the modifications of the coloured light of his picture may be true, but the colours may not be those of his model. As in pictures in which there is a dominant colour, not found in the model, which is often called _the tone of such a picture, and the tone of such a painter_, if he uses it habitually.
307. We may form a very just idea of these pictures, by supposing the artist to have painted them while looking at his model through a glass of precisely the colour, to enable him to see the tint which predominates in his imitation. We may mention as an example, of this kind of imitation, a landscape painted from its reflection in a black mirror, the effect of which is very soft and harmonious. Thus we speak of brilliant or warm, cold or dull colouring.
_Of Colouring in respect to the Harmony of the Colours of the various objects composing the Picture._
308. The colouring of the picture may be _true or absolute_, and yet not agreeable in effect because the colours of the objects are not harmonious. On the contrary, a picture may please by the harmony in the local colours of each object, and by that of the colours of objects contiguous to each other, and yet may offend in its gradation of lights and shades, and by the _fidelity_ of its colours. In a word, it offends by _true or absolute_ colouring, while a picture in flat tints, the colours of which are perfectly assorted for the eye, although not those which belong to the objects imitated, produces, with regard to general harmony of colours, an extremely agreeable effect.
309. The general conclusion resulting from the analysis just made of the word colouring, is, that the epithet _colourist_ may be applied to painters endowed, in very different degrees, with the faculty of imitating coloured objects by means of painting.
310. They who know the difficulties of _chiaro-’scuro_ and drawing, may give the name of colourists to painters remarkable for the skill with which they bring out objects placed upon the different planes of their pictures, by means of correct drawing and a skilful gradation of light and shade, even when their pictures do not exactly produce every modification of coloured light, and have not this harmony of different colours properly distributed to complete the effects of perfect colouring.
311. Persons unaccustomed to judge of painting, or _chiaro-’scuro_, are generally inclined to refuse the title of colourist to such painters, while they unhesitatingly accord it to others who reproduce the modifications of coloured light, and who tastefully distribute the different colours of their pictures. Besides, the eye is so powerfully influenced by colour, that frequently those who are strangers to painting can only conceive a colourist to be skilful whose tints are vivid, although his works may evince a want of observation.
312. We see by this how judgments will differ according to the importance respectively attached to one quality of colouring rather than to another.
313. For a painter to be a perfect colourist, he must not only imitate the model by reproducing the image faithfully, with respect to the variously coloured light, but also with regard to harmony of tints in the local colours, and in the colours of the different objects imitated. And although there are colours inherent to the model, which the painter cannot change without being unfaithful to nature, yet, in every composition, there are also colours at his disposal which must be chosen so as to harmonize with the rest. We shall return to this subject in the next chapter.
314. It is thus evident, that when a change in the colours of a picture has been effected by time, it is impossible to decide whether the artist who painted it should be called a _perfect_ colourist (310). But if we refer to what I have said of the painter who has correctly seized all the modifications of light adapted to bring out the distances and relief of objects, who has truly represented the modifications of coloured light, but which are not those of the model (312), we may very easily conceive how, at the present day, after the lapse of centuries, we may apply the name of _colourist_ to Albano, Titian, Rubens, and others. In fact, the pictures of these great masters now present to us gradations, more or less perfect, of light and shade, and such harmonies of colours, that it is impossible to mistake or not to admire them; and the idea that many pictures, not more than twenty or five-and-twenty years old, painted by artists of undoubted ability, have failed in colour more than the preceding, also increases our admiration of the latter.