In course of time I got to understand that seeing colour does not mean inventing colour, or exaggerating it, but being on the look out for it, thus seeing it where another will not see it, and giving it the preference as among things to be preserved and rendered amid the wholesale slaughter of innocents which is inevitable in any painting. Painting is only possible as a quasi-hieroglyphic epitomising of nature; this means that the half goes for the whole, whereon the question arises which half is to be taken and which made to go? The colourist will insist by preference on the coloured half, the man who has no liking for colour, however much else he may sacrifice, will not be careful to preserve this and, as a natural consequence, he will not preserve it. Good, that is to say, pleasing, beautiful, or even pretty colour cannot be got by putting patches of pleasing, beautiful or pretty colour upon one’s canvas and, which is a harder matter, leaving them when they have been put. It is said of money that it is more easily made than kept and this is true of many things, such as friendship; and even life itself is more easily got than kept. The same holds good of colour. It is also true that, as with money, more is made by saving than in any other way, and the surest way to lose colour is to play with it inconsiderately, not knowing how to leave well alone. A touch of pleasing colour should on no account be stirred without consideration. That we can see in a natural object more colour than strikes us at a glance, if we look for it attentively, will not be denied by any who have tried to look for it. Thus, take a dull, dead, level, grimy old London wall: at a first glance we can see no colour in it, nothing but a more or less purplish mass, got, perhaps as nearly as in any other way, by a tint mixed with black, Indian red and white. If, however, we look for colour in this, we shall find here and there a broken brick with a small surface of brilliant crimson, hard by there will be another with a warm orange hue perceivable through the grime by one who is on the look out for it, but by no one else. Then there may be bits of old advertisement of which here and there a gaily coloured fragment may remain, or a rusty iron hook or a bit of bright green moss; few indeed are the old walls, even in the grimiest parts of London, on which no redeeming bits of colour can be found by those who are practised in looking for them. To like colour, to wish to find it, and thus to have got naturally into a habit of looking for it, this alone will enable a man to see colour and to make a note of it when he has seen it, and this alone will lead him towards a pleasing and natural scheme of colour in his work.