"With the copy Jervas made of this picture he was grievously
disappointed. 'I had frequently,' he said to me, 'pleased myself by
reflecting, after I had produced what I thought a brilliant effect of
light and shadow on my canvas, how greatly that effect would be
heightened by the transparency which the painting on glass would be
sure to produce. It turned out quite the reverse.'"
APPENDIX III.
CLASSICAL ARCHITECTURE.
This passage in the lecture was illustrated by an enlargement of the
woodcut, Fig. 1; but I did not choose to disfigure the middle of this
book with it. It is copied from the 49th plate of the third edition of
the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (Edinburgh, 1797), and represents an
English farmhouse arranged on classical principles. If the reader cares
to consult the work itself, he will find in the same plate another
composition of similar propriety, and dignified by the addition of a
pediment, beneath the shadow of which "a private gentleman who has a
small family may find conveniency."
APPENDIX IV.
SUBTLETY OF HAND.
I had intended in one or other of these lectures to have spoken at some
length of the quality of refinement in Colour, but found the subject
would lead me too far. A few words are, however, necessary in order to
explain some expressions in the text.
"Refinement in colour" is indeed a tautological expression, for colour,
in the true sense of the word, does not exist until it _is_
refined. Dirt exists,--stains exist,--and pigments exist, easily enough
in all places; and are laid on easily enough by all hands; but colour
exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a
hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very
strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch
laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not
take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The
grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it
with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We
acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases "dead colour,"
"killed colour," "foul colour." Those words are, in some sort,
literally true. If more colour is put on than is necessary, a heavy
touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of colour
that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it
pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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