After this praise of white, one does not expect--"I think nature
mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues;" but this is said
merely in aversion to purple. "I think the first approach to
viciousness of colour in any master, is commonly indicated chiefly by
a prevalence of purple and an absence of yellow." "I am equally
certain that Turner is distinguished from all the vicious colourists
of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black,
yellow, and intermediate greys, while the tendency of our common
glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples."
"Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who the _purple_ evening lie,"
saith Dyer, in his landscape of "Grongar Hill." The "glare-seekers" is
curious enough, when we remember the graduate's description of
landscapes, (of course Turner's,) and his excursions; but we think we
have seen many purples in Turner, and that opposed to his flaming red
in sunsets. He prefers warmth where most people feel cold--this is not
surprising; but as to picture "is it true?" "My own feelings would
guide me rather to the warm greys of such pictures as the
'Snow-Storm,' or the glowing scarlet and gold of the 'Napoleon' and
the 'Slave Ship.'" The two latter must be well remembered by all
Exhibition visitors; they were the strangest things imaginable in
colour as in every particle that should be art or nature. There is a
whimsical quotation from Wordsworth, the "keenest-eyed," page 145. His
object is to show the strength of shadow--how "the shadows on the
trunk of the tree become darker and more conspicuous than any part of
the boughs or limbs;" so, for this strength and blackness, we have--
"At the root
Of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare
And slender stem, while here I sit at eve,
Oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path,
Traced _faintly_ in the greensward."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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