He was a master of line in the high sense that with a few lines he could render not only the character but the characteristics of whatever was before him. He was a master of form,--even as Ruskin uses the term,--since he could, when the conditions required it, express the most subtle contours in terms of light and shade and color; but he cared less for the bald realities of sunlight than for the shadows of dusk and the mysteries of night. He has himself said: “The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the sky is bereft of cloud, and without all is of iron. The windows of the Crystal Palace are seen from all points of London. The holiday-maker rejoices in the glorious day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes. “How little this is understood, and how dutifully the casual in nature is accepted as sublime, may be gathered from the unlimited admiration daily produced by a very foolish sunset. “The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see for the sake of seeing is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail. “And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us,--then the wayfarer hastens home; the working-man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure cease to understand, as they have ceased to see; and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master,--her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her.”[43] And it was his habit to paint when the studio was filled with gloom and lengthening shadows crept across the floor; when it was so dark the dull eye of sitter or chance visitor could scarce distinguish the figure on the canvas. This “painting in the dark,” as some have called it, was a singular trait. He would paint with increasing force and effect as the room became darker and darker, until it seemed as if the falling of night was an inspiration. Once a sitter asked him how it was possible to paint when it was so dark. “As the light fades and the shadows deepen all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the garment remains; the garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And _that_ night cannot efface from the painter’s imagination.” * * * * *