The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
[Footnote 294: _Farbenschein_, as Hegel uses it later on, I find it
impossible to translate in one word. In fact it is not easy to seize
precisely what he means. "Modulation of colour" partly expresses it.
But he also seems to refer to what we understand as the personal
quality of a picture or its general atmosphere, not regarded simply
as Nature's atmosphere, but as the communication of the artist's own
afflatus.]
[Footnote 295: I crossed a young landscape-artist of growing fame the
other day, who affirmed and endeavoured to express in his pictures the
conviction that colour was as strong in distance as foreground. His
pictures were of great interest, but I still think his robust theory
unsound.]
[Footnote 296: We have no English equivalent for the German _das
Incarnat_ or colour incarnate.]
[Footnote 297: _Ein ideelles Ineinander._ By ideal Hegel means
apparently that the distinctions of tint fine away beyond the grasp of
sense vision. This of course is true in all natural colouring. Possibly
he may mean that the idea of Life is contributive to the result.]
[Footnote 298: Hardly a just simile for the reason that, as Hegel
himself points out, flesh does not reflect external objects.]
[Footnote 299: _Den Schein innerer Belebung._ This expression seems
to prove that Hegel uses the word _ideel_ in its ordinary sense of
spiritual ideality.]
[Footnote 300: _Als selbst lebendiges Ganze._ The colour must appear as
itself a part of the vitality, not a mere covering.]
[Footnote 301: _Vertreibung._ What Hegel exactly means I am not sure,
probably finish by overpaintings.]
[Footnote 302: Fresco painting is strictly in tempera. I suppose Hegel
has here before him the two processes of tempera painting on the wet
wall of plaster and tempera painting on some other dry surface.]
[Footnote 303: _Zu grosser innerer Klarheit und schönen Leuchten._ I
give what appears to me to be the meaning.]
[Footnote 304: I presume Hegel understands by _Deck und Lasurfarben_
the distinction of our opaque and transparent colours such as flake
white and the madders or umbers. He clearly refers to glazes.]
[Footnote 305: _Die Duftigkeit, Magie in der Wirkung des Kolorits._
This is a difficult passage to translate, and I am not quite sure
what Hegel is aiming at. He seems to have in his mind both the ideal
atmosphere of a composition and the presence of a personal style.]
[Footnote 306: Hegel has already related the effects considered to the
artist's personality. He now endeavours to examine more closely what is
implied in the relation.]
[Footnote 307: Adriaen van Ostade, 1610-1685.]
[Footnote 308: He means painting, of course. He never passed beyond the
stage of the average amateur.]
[Footnote 309: _Spiel von Scheinen._ The play of appearance, that is,
as it strikes on different natures.]
[Footnote 310: _Malerischen Auffassung._ Here the ideas on mental
conception and artistic composition seem to be combined. But Hegel is
rather loose in his use of them.]