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Title: The Elements of Drawing, in Three Letters to Beginners

Author: John Ruskin

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin

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Library Edition

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND
PERSPECTIVE
THE TWO PATHS
UNTO THIS LAST
MUNERA PULVERIS
SESAME AND LILIES
ETHICS OF THE DUST

NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

NEW YORK CHICAGO

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING

IN

THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.

CONTENTS.

page
Preface ix
LETTER I.
On First Practice 1
LETTER II.
Sketching from Nature 65
LETTER III.
On Color and Composition 106

APPENDIX I.
Illustrative Notes 183
APPENDIX II.
Things to be Studied 188

["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856. The First Edition was published in
1857; the Second followed in the same year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition
consisted of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth thousand, 1861.

The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874;
with new editions in 1875, 1882, and 1886.

Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to
write a systematic manual for the use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fésole." Of this
only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.

As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely superseded, and as many readers of
Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it stood
in 1859.]

ADVERTISEMENT

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication of this work, have
indicated points requiring elucidation, I have added a few short notes in the first
Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to modify the form or add to the
matter of a book as it passes through successive editions; I have, therefore, only
mended the wording of some obscure sentences; with which exception the text
remains, and will remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered.
Should the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it, such
additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the first Appendix,
where they can be at once referred to, in any library, by the possessors of the
earlier editions; and I will take care they shall not be numerous.
August 3, 1857.

PREFACE.

i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I ought to
expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but those reasons appear
to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them. With
the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already, I will waive all
discussion respecting the importance of the subject, and touch only on those
points which may appear questionable in the method of its treatment.
ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of children under the
age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to engage a child in any but
the most voluntary practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually
scrawling on what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free
will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts. It
should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors almost as soon as it has sense
enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the
color-box may be taken away till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting
red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colors at
command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and
historical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite as
valuable, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by their elders,) it should be
gently led by the parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the
things it can see and likes,—birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.
iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should only be granted as a
reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited
number of good and amusing prints should always be within a boy's reach: in
these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales
without good wood-cuts in it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best
of this kind; but should be firmly restricted to a few prints and to a few books. If a
child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has many
prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the
number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected, and his attention
concentrated. The parents need give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as
far as drawing is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits
with his colors and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,
and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line is too short or
too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy; accuracy being the first
and last thing they look for. If the child shows talent for inventing or grouping
figures, the parents should neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it
frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing

it well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any more than they
would praise it for being stout. They should praise it only for what costs it self-
denial, namely attention and hard work; otherwise they will make it work for
vanity's sake, and always badly. The best books to put into its hands are those
illustrated by George Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age
of twelve or fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good hope it may be
so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to know something of the
first principles of art.
iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought forward
as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at present devise for an
isolated student. It is very likely that farther experience in teaching may enable me
to modify it with advantage in several important respects; but I am sure the main
principles of it are sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be
rendered without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word or two of
explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be thought willful
eccentricity.
v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all directed,
as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they propose to give the
student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil or water-color, so as to
emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter work of our second-rate artists; or
they propose to give him such accurate command of mathematical forms as may
afterwards enable him to design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When
drawing is taught as an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed;
while the second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
the branch Government Schools of Design.
vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to the end
specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it seems to me, that we
are all too much in the habit of confusing art as applied to manufacture, with
manufacture itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive workman designs
and molds a beautiful cup, is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is
copied and afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original piece, are
not to be developed by the same system of instruction as those which enable
another to produce a maximum number of approximate copies of it in a given
time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any reference to purposes of

manufacture should interfere with the education of the artist himself. Try first to
manufacture a Raphael; then let Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design
you a plate, or cup, or a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them
in the most convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the
platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain first the
best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any consideration of
economy or facility of production. Then leave your trained artist to determine how
far art can be popularized, or manufacture ennobled.
vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual temper and
character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on refinement of
perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so that
while powers of invention distinguish man from man, powers of perception
distinguish school from school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and
subtlety of sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without
exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate.
viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to obtain, first,
a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's power, a delicate method of
work, such as may insure his seeing truly. For I am nearly convinced, that when
once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty in drawing what we see;
but, even supposing that this difficulty be still great, I believe that the sight is a
more important thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my
pupils may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may
learn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing, for young people and
unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate the art of others, than to gain
much power in art themselves. Now the modes of sketching ordinarily taught are
inconsistent with this power of judgment. No person trained to the superficial
execution of modern water-color painting, can understand the work of Titian or
Leonardo; they must forever remain blind to the refinement of such men's
penciling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a degree of
manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode recommended to
him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot go once through the advised
exercises without beginning to understand what masterly work means; and, by the
time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at
the painting of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of
natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labor than I have asked
him to undergo.

ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it possible that it
should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works unassisted by a master. For the
smooth and straight road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be
dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to be close and trim when there is no
guide to warn or bring back the erring traveler. The system followed in this work
will, therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar with
the practice of our class at the Working Men's College; for there, the pupil, having
the master at his side to extricate him from such embarrassments as his first efforts
may lead into, is at once set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds
entertainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest
object which it is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and, practically, I find
a child's toy, a white leather ball, better than anything else; as the gradations on
balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who
have had previous practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It
has been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the most
difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;[A] but I do not want it to be drawn. All that
his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the
appearance of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from a sphere; because
any solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its
appearance of projection to its perspective; but in the sphere, what, without shade,
was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade, the image of a solid ball;
and this fact is just as striking to the learner, whether his circular outline be true or
false. He is, therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes the
ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out to him, and
he does better next time, and better still the next. But his mind is always fixed on
the gradation of shade, and the outline left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call
it outline, for the sake of immediate intelligibility,—strictly speaking, it is merely
the edge of the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline,
in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from the first, that Nature relieves
one mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines none. The outline exercise, the
second suggested in this letter, is recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw
outlines, but as the only means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of
eye, and discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and extent
of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the handling can be
gradually corrected in details of the work. But the solitary student can only find
out his own mistakes by help of the traced limit, and can only test the firmness of
his hand by an exercise in which nothing but firmness is required; and during

which all other considerations (as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely
excluded.
x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that
recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the most
important and special of all that are involved in my teaching: namely, the
attaching its full importance, from the first, to local color. I believe that the
endeavor to separate, in the course of instruction, the observation of light and
shade from that of local color, has always been, and must always be, destructive
of the student's power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much as it
retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by any discussion of the
principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only distinctive one in my system,
so far as it is a system. For the recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and
without alteration, whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable,
among other reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and
teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or stirrups;
my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold their reins prettily, but
to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."
xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with regret that I
have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous or formal discipline.
But, to the unassisted student, such formalities are indispensable, and I am not
without hope that the sense of secure advancement, and the pleasure of
independent effort, may render the following out of even the more tedious
exercises here proposed, possible to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if
it should be otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only
desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as that of
pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or whether it is likely, in
the natural order of matters in this working world, that so great a gift should be
attainable by those who will give no price for it.
xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have not
imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would be worth
while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a master's help, and in
the way perspective is at present explained in treatises, the difficulty is greater
than the gain. For perspective is not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary
work. You can draw the rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot
draw the sweep of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you
cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye,

certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever trouble themselves
about perspective, and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything by
the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work rules which
cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw
imperfectly, by laws of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in
five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending the
curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is true that when
perspective was first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it; and all the
great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind their Madonnas, merely to show
that they could draw in perspective: but even this was generally done by them
only to catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that
though they took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a
crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their capitals of columns
and towers of churches about in the background in the most wanton way,
wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they left just perspective
enough to please the public.
xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David Roberts,
knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at
a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the
Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as I remember,
drew a single building in true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as
much perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and
twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify
this; and would recommend the student at least to treat perspective with common
civility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he can learn it, by himself, is by
taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye,
at the distance at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be
placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass, but as high or
as low as the student likes; then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a little
body-color that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the landscape may be traced
on the glass, as you see them through it. When so traced they are all in true
perspective. If the glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true
perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane, while common
perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, in
early practice, to accustom yourself to inclose your subject, before sketching it,
with a light frame of wood held upright before you; it will show you what you
may legitimately take into your picture, and what choice there is between a

narrow foreground near you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree
or building you can properly take in, etc.[B]

xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because I do not
think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur.
As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles as
anything else.
xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student should be
found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended practice he find
himself in difficulties which I have not enough provided against, he may apply by
letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under drawing-master at the Working Men's College
(45 Great Ormond Street), and who will give any required assistance, on the
lowest terms that can remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not
leisure myself in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire
to do so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me when
he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough guidance is given
in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious embarrassment; and I believe
that the student who obeys its directions will find, on the whole, that the best
answerer of questions is perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the
woods and hills.
[1857.]

[A] Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see an error in a circle.

[B] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of perspective than he can learn in this
rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49 Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and to
whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since
this was written: Mr. Ward's present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton Street, Strand, London,
W.C.]

THE

ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

LETTER I.

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

1. My dear Reader,—Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends
wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a
graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse in a fluent manner about
drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot help you: but if
you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully,
records of such things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your own
memory of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you wish
to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world, and to preserve
something like a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which you must
yourself leave; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of great painters, and to
be able to appreciate their work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not
merely taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then I can help you, or,
which is better, show you how to help yourself.
2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers, which indeed are
noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much easier to learn to draw
well, than it is to learn to play well on any musical instrument; but you know that
it takes three or four years of practice, giving three or four hours a day, to acquire
even ordinary command over the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a
masterly command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with
it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a very short time. The kind of
drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or
two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not drawing at all. It is
only the performance of a few dexterous (not always even that) evolutions on
paper with a black-lead pencil; profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless

as a matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,
after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the
commonest piece of real work—suppose a lithograph on the titlepage of a new
opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day,—they
will find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn
with coarse chalk, much more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an
accomplished young lady is supposed to have command; and that wood-cut was
drawn in urgent haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were
done by people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power; both
were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any simple
handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.
3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a new
language, without some hard and disagreeable labor. But do not, on the other
hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable to
get on for want of special talent. It is indeed true that the persons who have
peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively, and get on almost without teaching;
though never without toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there
are many degrees: it will take one person a much longer time than another to
attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are never quite so
satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the faculties are naturally adapted
to the study. But I have never yet, in the experiments I have made, met with a
person who could not learn to draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory
and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all
persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a decent and
useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess such knowledge.
4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains, and to
bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I can promise you
that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an hour's practice every other day
for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way you find convenient, some
hundred and fifty hours' practice, will give you sufficient power of drawing
faithfully whatever you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point,
of other people's work: of which hours if you have one to spare at present, we may
as well begin at once.

EXERCISE I.

5. Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself to your
eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors variously shaded.[1]
Some of these patches of color have an appearance of lines or texture within them,
as a piece of cloth or silk has of threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of
hairs: but whether this be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that
of a patch of some definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
produce extents of smooth color, without texture.
6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft at the
point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpracticed hand, that it is
hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early
practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both that we may give some
support to the hand, and that by working over the subject with so delicate a point,
the attention may be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the
best artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument, in order
thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be content to do so for a
considerable period.

Fig. 1.

7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of color, we
must be able to lay on one color properly, in whatever gradations of depth and
whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore, first to lay on tints or patches of
gray, of whatever depth we want, with a pointed instrument. Take any finely
pointed steel pen (one of Gillott's lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of
quite smooth, but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that has
stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and as thick as it
can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and draw four straight lines, so as to
inclose a square, or nearly a square, about as large as a, Fig. 1. I say nearly a
square, because it does not in the least matter whether it is quite square or not, the
object being merely to get a space inclosed by straight lines.

8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so completely and
evenly that it shall look like a square patch of gray silk or cloth, cut out and laid
on the white paper, as at b. Cover it quickly, first with straightish lines, in any
direction you like, not troubling yourself to draw them much closer or neater than
those in the square a. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw
three or four squares side by side, you may always be going on with one while the
others are drying.) Then cover these lines with others in a different direction, and
let those dry; then in another direction still, and let those dry. Always wait long
enough to run no risk of blotting, and then draw the lines as quickly as you can.
Each ought to be laid on as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if
you try to reach this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the square,
which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now and then than to draw
the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen leaves a little dot of ink at the end of
each line, and these dots spoil your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping
always as nearly as you can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines which go
over the edge are afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you
have done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line that
goes over the edge makes a blot.
9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find some
parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make the lighter parts
as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal depth or darkness. You will
find, on examining the work, that where it looks darkest the lines are closest, or
there are some much darker lines than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other
lines, or little scratches and dots, between the lines in the paler parts; and where
there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with the
penknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in particular. The more
carefully and delicately you fill in the little gaps and holes the better; you will get
on faster by doing two or three squares perfectly than a great many badly. As the
tint gets closer and begins to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as
hardly to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use the
edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it softly into an
even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty consists in getting evenness:
one bit will always look darker than another bit of your square; or there will be a
granulated and sandy look over the whole. When you find your paper quite rough
and in a mess, give it up and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you
have done your best with every square. The tint at last ought at least to be as close
and even as that in b, Fig. 1. You will find, however, that it is very difficult to get a
pale tint; because, naturally, the ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all,

blacken the paper more than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so
much by leaving the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine,
lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last, passing the
penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in progress at one time, and
reserving your pen for the light one just when the ink is nearly exhausted, you
may get on better. The paper ought, at last, to look lightly and evenly toned all
over, with no lines distinctly visible.

EXERCISE II.

10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to vary it by
proceeding with another at the same time. The power of shading rightly depends
mainly on lightness of hand and keenness of sight; but there are other qualities
required in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but steadiness of hand;
and the eye, to be perfect in its power, must be made accurate as well as keen, and
not only see shrewdly, but measure justly.
11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on botany containing outline
plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad or good: Baxter's
British Flowering Plants is quite good enough. Copy any of the simplest outlines,
first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not
look right in proportions, rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it
is right: when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book; on this
paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your own; and
having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got it as
nearly accurate as may be. Work with a very soft pencil, and do not rub out so
hard[2] as to spoil the surface of your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets,
but do not roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not really
interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and
shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as right as
you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest your hand on a book about
an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen long; and go over your pencil
outline with ink, raising your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning
more heavily on one part of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of
the present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all
such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for your exercises, provided
you do not imitate this character: it is better, however, if you can, to choose a book
of pure outlines. It does not in the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or

thick; but it matters greatly that it should be equal, not heavier in one place than in
another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line slowly and in
any direction; all dashing lines, or approximations to penmanship, are bad. The
pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you should be able at any
moment to stop it, or to turn it in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.
12. As soon as you can copy every curve slowly and accurately, you have made
satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the slowness. It is easy
to draw what appears to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with what is
called freedom;[3] the real difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand
be free, but keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.

EXERCISE III.

13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares, and
chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for rest.

Fig. 2.

As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to produce gradated
spaces like Fig. 2, the dark tint passing gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly all
expression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of gradating delicately;
and the gradation is always most skillful which passes from one tint into another
very little paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as in
Fig. 2, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black, passing over the
greatest possible distance, yet so that every part of the band may have visible
change in it. The perception of gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to
say, in many artists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation
skillful enough, when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray
shaded ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early
stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen your band little
by little as you get more skillful, so as to give the gradation more lateral space,

and accustom yourself at the same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The
sky is the largest and the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down,
and try to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a piece
of paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe how
quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the window, of
one or two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and inside of a common
white cup or bowl, which make it look round and hollow;[4] and then on folds of
white drapery; and thus gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle
transitions of the light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when
your eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.
14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects in
which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad omen for
your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of by you, if the first
thing at which you aim should be a little bit of sky. So take any narrow space of
evening sky, that you can usually see, between the boughs of a tree, or between
two chimneys, or through the corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit
at, and try to gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated—as
tenderly you cannot gradate it without color, no, nor with color either; but you
may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your spots and lines of ink, when
you look at the beauty of the sky, the sense you will have gained of that beauty is
something to be thankful for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and
ink; for all great painters, however delicate their perception of color, are fond of
the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch, and in a
wood-cut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black lines; and if you
cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will never gradate well with pale
ones. By looking at any common wood-cuts, in the cheap publications of the day,
you may see how gradation is given to the sky by leaving the lines farther and
farther apart; but you must make your lines as fine as you can, as well as far apart,
towards the light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross
irregularly in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing but their
gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of lines, however, I shall have
to tell you more, presently; in the meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.

EXERCISE IV.

15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an H. or
HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest possible to the

palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen, lightening, however, now with
india-rubber instead of the penknife. You will find that all pale tints of shade are
thus easily producible with great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get
the same dark power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is
apt to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere, however,
in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing any single speck or
line that may be too black, with the point of the knife: you must not scratch the
whole with the knife as you do the ink. If you find the texture very speckled-
looking, lighten it all over with india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and
excessively fine touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to
perfect evenness with the darker spots.
You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work with it
as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.
16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured that some
clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking amazement, and ask
you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you persevere in it, you will have
to sustain considerable persecution from your artistical acquaintances generally,
who will tell you that all good drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind
them. You do not hear them tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with
a crash among the keys, in imitation of the great masters: yet they might, as
reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your knowledge.
Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the sense of being careless,
confident, or exhibitory,—no,—no, and a thousand times no; for, even if you were
not a beginner, it would be bad advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be
done quickly, but good and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find
no boldness in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not
bold at her work, do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind what
people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently; and if you can trust me
in anything, trust me when I tell you, that though there are all kinds and ways of
art,—large work for large places, small work for narrow places, slow work for
people who can wait, and quick work for people who cannot,—there is one
quality, and, I think, only one, in which all great and good art agrees;—it is all
delicate art. Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present,
because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and subtle care, the great
painters put into touches that at first look coarse; but, believe me, it is true, and
you will find it is so in due time.

17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil drawing, by
noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant by a chance touch of
the india-rubber, than by an hour's labor with the point; and you may wonder why
I tell you to produce tints so painfully, which might, it appears, be obtained with
ease. But there are two reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you
must be able to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction
you wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber does it: and, secondly, that
all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness
of ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage,
the glitter of the leaves; in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone,
granulation: in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be
represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an instrument
known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the point properly, you
will indeed be able to do much also with this instrument, or with your fingers; but
then you will have to retouch the flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light
into them, and that can only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore,
courageously, with that only.

EXERCISE V.

Fig. 3.

18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point, get
a good large alphabet, and try to tint the letters into shape with the pencil point.
Do not outline them first, but measure their height and extreme breadth with the
compasses, as a b, a c, Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter

A, inclosed within the lines, being in what Turner would have called a "state of
forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, draw pen-
and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as at d, and remove any touches outside the
limit, first with the india-rubber, and then with the penknife, so that all may look
clear and right. If you rub out any of the pencil inside the outline of the letter,
retouch it, closing it up to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are all to
be ruled,[5] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand; and you will
soon find what good practice there is in getting the curved letters, such as Bs, Cs,
etc., to stand quite straight, and come into accurate form.
19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be persisted in
alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in any of them. An entire
master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to be able to draw any form at once,
as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this is only to be expected of the consummate
master, having pencil in hand all his life, and all day long,—hence the force of
Giotto's proof of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without
attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point being, not that
every line should be precisely what we intend or wish, but that the line which we
intended or wished to draw should be right. If we always see rightly and mean
rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger a little; but if we mean
wrongly, or mean nothing, it does not matter how firm the hand is. Do not
therefore torment yourself because you cannot do as well as you would like; but
work patiently, sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of
power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a more
amusing exercise for you.

EXERCISE VI.

20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of leaves, and
which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall, or other light ground: it
must not be against strong light, or you will find the looking at it hurt your eyes;
nor must it be in sunshine, or you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But
the tree must be in shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray
or rainy day is the best for this practice.
21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the sky. Consider
them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map with absolute accuracy;
and, without the least thought about the roundness of the stems, map them all out

in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your
letters; then correct and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how
much your paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is
exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in curvature and in
thickness. Look at the white interstices between them with as much
scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had to survey, and draw
maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties if you cut the least
bit of a corner off any of them, or gave the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and
try continually to fancy the whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white
ground. Do not take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused
network or mist; leave them all out,[6] drawing only the main branches as far as
you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not to draw a tree, but to
learn how to do so. When you have got the thing as nearly right as you can,—and
it is better to make one good study, than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,—
take your pen, and put a fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter,
taking care, as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so as
not to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to affirm the whole
more clearly; to do away with little accidental roughnesses and excrescences, and
especially to mark where boughs cross, or come in front of each other, as at such
points their arrangement in this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline.
It may perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than your
outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to mark the facts clearly.
The temptation is always to be slovenly and careless, and the outline is like a
bridle, and forces our indolence into attention and precision. The outline should be
about the thickness of that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small
stone pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading within the
outline, as I could not easily express it in a wood-cut; and you have nothing to do
at present with the indication of foliage above, of which in another place. You may
also draw your trees as much larger than this figure as you like; only, however
large they may be, keep the outline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough
into their outer sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this
figure, otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.

Fig. 4.

22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you some
new notion about trees. But when you are tired of tree boughs, take any forms
whatever which are drawn in flat color, one upon another; as patterns on any kind
of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in two colors only; and
practice drawing them of the right shape and size by the eye, and filling them in
with shade of the depth required.
In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of representing depth of
color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of ultramarine blue will have to be
represented by a darker tint of gray than a pattern of yellow.
23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use of the
brush; and necessary for you to do so in order to provide yourself with the
gradated scale of color which you will want. If you can, by any means, get
acquainted with any ordinary skillful water-color painter, and prevail on him to

show you how to lay on tints with a brush, by all means do so; not that you are
yet, nor for a long while yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often more
convenient than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner
you know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you have no
opportunity of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of any kind, the
following directions will help you:—

EXERCISE VII.

24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so as to take
up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub much more, and the
color gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two teaspoonfuls of water to the color
you have rubbed down, and mix it well up with a camel's-hair brush about three
quarters of an inch long.
25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or pasteboard;
divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large as those of the very
largest chess-board: they need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can
quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as much as an ordinary
desk; then, dipping your brush into the color you have mixed, and taking up as
much of the liquid as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay a
pond or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond of color gradually
downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you were adding a row
of bricks to a building, all along (only building down instead of up), dipping the
brush frequently so as to keep the color as full in that, and in as great quantity on
the paper, as you can, so only that it does not run down anywhere in a little
stream. But if it should, never mind; go on quietly with your square till you have
covered it all in. When you get to the bottom, the color will lodge there in a great
wave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and with the dry
brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a sponge, till it all looks
even.
26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush continually go over the
edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not endeavor to retouch these,
nor take much care about them; the great thing is to get the color to lie smoothly
where it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it
over the square as fast as possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able
to give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally to strike the color

up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first thing is to get it even,—the
power of rightly striking the edge comes only by time and practice: even the
greatest artists rarely can do this quite perfectly.
27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not
communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares, as on a
chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put
another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use of turning the paper
upside down is to neutralize the increase of darkness towards the bottom of the
squares, which would otherwise take place from the ponding of the color.
28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of your lips, to
dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will save you from much
partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw the brush from root to
point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe it as you would a pen when
you want it very dry, without doing harm, provided you do not crush it upwards.
Get a good brush at first, and cherish it; it will serve you longer and better than
many bad ones.
29. When you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,
always trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your color is
exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much as you
can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate squares three times
over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and dry more slowly, begin on the
white squares, and bring them up to the same tint in the same way. The amount of
jagged dark line which then will mark the limits of the squares will be the exact
measure of your unskillfulness.
30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and then draw
straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the spaces so produced between
the straight line and the circumference; and then draw any simple shapes of
leaves, according to the exercise No. II., and fill up those, until you can lay on
color quite evenly in any shape you want.
31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always put exactly
the same quantity of water to the color, that the darker the color is, the more
difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore, when you have gained some
definite degree of power, try to fill in the forms required with a full brush, and a
dark tint, at once, instead of laying several coats one over another; always taking
care that the tint, however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so

much of it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it dries.
A little experience will teach you how apt the color is to do this, and how to
prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented, for a great master in water-
colors will sometimes draw a firm outline, when he wants one, simply by letting
the color dry in this way at the edge.
32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker
color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it is led on from
part to part. You will then find the following method useful. Lay in the color very
pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you can only just see where it is on the paper.
Lead it up to all the outlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly
wet everywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color, and lay some
of it into the middle of the liquid color. It will spread gradually in a branchy kind
of way, and you may now lead it up to the outlines already determined, and play it
with the brush till it fills its place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and
pure as a single dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.
33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint, you must
try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the color with three or four teaspoonfuls of
water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about two-thirds of it, keeping a
teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your paper as before, draw two pencil lines all
the way down, leaving a space between them of the width of a square on your
chess-board. Begin at the top of your paper, between the lines; and having struck
on the first brushful of color, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in water,
and mix up the color on the plate quickly with as much more water as the brush
takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead the tint farther down. Dip
in water again, mix the color again, and thus lead down the tint, always dipping in
water once between each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color on the
plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the color has become so pale that
you cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the wave
down a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry brush, and leave it to
dry.
34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your color gets pale, you may
either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when you left off, on
another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness at last. When all is quite
dry, recommence at the top with another similar mixture of color, and go down in
the same way. Then again, and then again, and so continually until the color at the
top of the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into

pure white paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth gradation
from one into the other.
35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead of evenly
gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up more water in your
brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on the plate, or led one tint too far
before replenishing with the next. Practice only will enable you to do it well; the
best artists cannot always get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do
they ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.
36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more quickly down, you
will be able to gradate in less compass;[7] beginning with a small quantity of color,
and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful; with finer brushes, also, you
may gradate to a less scale. But slight skill will enable you to test the relations of
color to shade as far as is necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be
done thus:—
37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt, and
vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done with the
Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[8] Cut a narrow slip, all the way down,
of each gradated color, and set the three slips side by side; fasten them down, and
rule lines at equal distances across all the three, so as to divide them into fifty
degrees, and number the degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you
have gradated them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly
equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of the black
slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in weight the degree
similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then, when you are drawing from
objects of a crimson or blue color, if you can match their color by any
compartment of the crimson or blue in your scales, the gray in the compartment of
the gray scale marked with the same number is the gray which must represent that
crimson or blue in your light and shade drawing.
38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will find that
you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[9] for yellow and scarlet, so long
as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to black; we cannot have,
properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow,
blue, and scarlet, half-way down; passing then gradually to white. Afterwards use
lake to darken the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to
darken the cobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white nearly
to black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and through scarlet. By

mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make another with green; mixing
the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the sepia alone will make a forcible
brown one; and so on, until you have as many scales as you like, passing from
black to white through different colors. Then, supposing your scales properly
gradated and equally divided, the compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will
represent in chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray the No. 2
of the other colors, and so on.
39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should understand the
principle; for it would never be possible for you to gradate your scales so truly as
to make them practically accurate and serviceable; and even if you could, unless
you had about ten thousand scales, and were able to change them faster than ever
juggler changed cards, you could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one
side of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand the principle, and
see how all colors contain as it were a certain quantity of darkness, or power of
dark relief from white—some more, some less; and how this pitch or power of
each may be represented by equivalent values of gray, you will soon be able to
arrive shrewdly at an approximation by a glance of the eye, without any
measuring scale at all.
40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any shapes
of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble or tortoiseshell, spots in
surfaces of shells, etc., as tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond to
their colors; and when you find you can do this successfully, it is time to begin
rounding.

EXERCISE VIII.

41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first round or oval
stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the smoother it is the better,
only it must not shine. Draw your table near the window, and put the stone, which
I will suppose is about the size of a in Fig. 5 (it had better not be much larger), on
a piece of not very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the light
may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point interferes with your
sight of your work. You must not let the sun fall on the stone, but only ordinary
light: therefore choose a window which the sun does not come in at. If you can
shut the shutters of the other windows in the room it will be all the better; but this
is not of much consequence.

42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything; I mean, anything
that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only
the idea of them more or less suggested; but if you can draw the stone rightly,
everything within reach of art is also within yours.
For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing Roundness.
If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and straightforward; if you cannot do
that, nothing else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all
made up of roundnesses; not the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously
curved surfaces. Boughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded,
clouds are rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more
flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is round, and
so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work, which is often very flat
indeed.

Fig. 5.

Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you have won
the battle.
43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the side of it
next the window is lighter than most of the paper; that the side of it farthest from
the window is darker than the paper; and that the light passes into the dark
gradually, while a shadow is thrown to the right on the paper itself by the stone:
the general appearance of things being more or less as in a, Fig. 5, the spots on the
stone excepted, of which more presently.

44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that everything you
can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker than the things about
it, or of a different color from them. It is either seen as a patch of one color on a
ground of another; or as a pale thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing
from a pale thing. And if you can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the
same size, shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will
produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best draughtsman—
Titian and Paul Veronese themselves—could do no more than this; and you will
soon be able to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if you once
understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done. Suppose you have a
brown book on a white sheet of paper, on a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do
but to put on spaces of red, white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated
from dark to light in the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not
look at what you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there, if
you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper with
"vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain, unaffected, and
finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature
will show you nothing if you set yourself up for her master. But forget yourself,
and try to obey her, and you will find obedience easier and happier than you think.
45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the forms and the evenness
of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are dissatisfied with your
work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It may not be wrong—in all
probability is not wrong, in any (so-called) great point. But its edges are not true
enough in outline; and its shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white
holes. Get it more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.
46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have a
finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can draw with
nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log of wood charred at
the end. True boldness and power are only to be gained by care. Even in fencing
and dancing, all ultimate ease depends on early precision in the commencement;
much more in singing or drawing.
47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in Fig. 5, but to copy the stone
before you in the way that my sketch is done. To which end, first measure the
extreme length of the stone with compasses, and mark that length on your paper;
then, between the points marked, leave something like the form of the stone in
light, scrawling the paper all over, round it; b, in Fig. 5, is a beginning of this
kind. Rather leave too much room for the high light, than too little; and then more

cautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and putting in the dark
slowly on the dark side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of shape,
because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible for you to draw the
shape of the stone quite truly, and you must gradually gain correctness by means
of these various exercises: what you have mainly to do at present is, to get the
stone to look solid and round, not much minding what its exact contour is—only
draw it as nearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it more right
by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the outline at
first. For you can see no outline; what you see is only a certain space of gradated
shade, with other such spaces about it; and those pieces of shade you are to imitate
as nearly as you can, by scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right
shape, with the same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really
more likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline. For
instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin at a, in Fig. 5, whose form, though
irregular, required more care in following than that of a common stone, I was
going to draw it also under another effect; reflected light bringing its dark side out
from the background: but when I had laid on the first few touches I thought it
would be better to stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at b. In which
beginning it will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I can more or
less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work on, the lines which
suggest the outline being blended with the others if I do not want them; and the
having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the irregularities of such a sketch will
probably secure a higher completion at last, than if half an hour had been spent in
getting a true outline before beginning.
48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark. In order to
ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round hole, about half the size of a
pea, in a piece of white paper the color of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of
paper with the hole in it, between you and your stone; and pass the paper
backwards and forwards, so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other
subject) through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like one
of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only changing in
depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen through it. You will be able
thus actually to match the color of the stone at any part of it, by tinting the paper
beside the circular opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite
black, but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.[10]

49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of the paper it
lies on, look luminous through the opening; so that the little circle then tells as a
light spot instead of a dark spot. When this is so, you cannot imitate it, for you
have no means of getting light brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper
more sloped towards the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which
before looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if you can
place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone looks slightly dark,
the little hole will tell always as a spot of shade, and if your drawing is put in the
same light, you can imitate or match every gradation. You will be amazed to find,
under these circumstances, how slight the differences of tint are, by which,
through infinite delicacy of gradation, Nature can express form.
If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light through the
hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it white; you can do no more.
50. When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed to
finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the stone as closely
as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or fissures of any kind, whether
between stones in walls, or in the grain of timber or rocks, or in any of the
thousand other conditions they present, are never expressible by single black lines,
or lines of simple shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light
and shade, however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, with a dark or
shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the bottom. This is one
of the instances in which it may be as well to understand the reason of the
appearance; it is not often so in drawing, for the aspects of things are so subtle and
confused that they cannot in general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain
some, we are sure to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to exaggerate them,
so that merely scientific draughtsmen caricature a third part of Nature, and miss
two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to see at once how the
thing looks, and who need not therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it
looks so: but few people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are
destitute of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help, especially
when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils to ask the reason of
anything, because, as I watch their work, I can always show them how the thing
is, and what appearance they are missing in it; but when a master is not by to
direct the sight, science may, here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object—for instance, the stone you
are drawing—has a light side turned towards the light, a dark side turned away

from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on something else (as by the stone on
the paper it is set upon). You may sometimes be placed so as to see only the light
side and shadow, sometimes only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both
or either without the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all the
three, as the stone does here.
52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now with your
side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to the window. You will
see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the other distinctly in shade. Here are
light side and dark side, with no seen shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps
on the table, perhaps on the other side of the room; you need not look for it at
present.
53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise, as you hold your hand,
wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is turned from the light, the
paper being of course farther from the window. You will see, as it passes, a strong
gleam of light strike on your hand, and light it considerably on its dark side. This
light is reflected light. It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in
coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a ball would be if
somebody threw it through the window at the wall and you caught it at the
rebound.
Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet cloth. You
will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as you wave the book, is now
reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find the gleam is blue. Thus every object
will cast some of its own color back in the light that it reflects.
54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your hand:
every object in the room on that side of it reflects some, but more feebly, and the
colors mixing all together form a neutral[11] light, which lets the color of your
hand itself be more distinctly seen than that of any object which reflects light to it;
but if there were no reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a
coal.
55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct light, and partly by
light reflected from the objects around them, or from the atmosphere and clouds.
The color of their light sides depends much on that of the direct light, and that of
the dark sides on the colors of the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to
say beforehand what color an object will have at any point of its surface, that
color depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of rays

reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides is, that their
color will be changeful, and that a picture which gives them merely darker shades
of the color of the light sides must assuredly be bad.
56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You will see
one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow of your hand on the
paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of shade seen at once. And although
the paper is white, and your hand of a rosy color somewhat darker than white, yet
you will see that the shadow all along, just under the finger which casts it, is
darker than the flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is, that much
light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but very little is
reflected from other things to the paper itself in that chink under your finger.
57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of the shadow
nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the object. I say in general,
because a thousand accidents may interfere to prevent its being so. Take a little bit
of glass, as a wine-glass, or the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of
your hand farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing
gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the
glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and you will see
your hand dark on the white paper. Now a stupid painter would represent, for
instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one of his figures, and because he
had been taught by rule that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would
never think of the reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand,
just as if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of the true
effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why the hand is
so light on its dark side.
58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a rule in matters of art; yet
it is useful for you to remember that, in a general way, a shadow is darker than the
dark side of the thing that casts it, supposing the colors otherwise the same; that is
to say, when a white object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on
a dark surface: the rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow of a
black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark, usually, as the black
thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the ultimate truth in such matters is to
look for it; but, in the meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in
the stone are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply, while the
other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little darker shadow at the bottom
of the crack; and the general tone of the stone surface is not so bright as the light
bank of the ravine. And, therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform

tint, more or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or streak in
it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white one, you may turn it, as
you choose, into either a ridge or an incision, into either a boss or a cavity. If you
put the dark touch on the side of it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that
the light comes from, you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete success of the effect
depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the drawing; that is to say,
on the evident correspondence of the form of the shadow with the form that casts
it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far
more by a little patience in following the forms carefully, though with slight
touches, than by labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of
shadow.
59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the stains
and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the forms. Very often,
spots or bars of local color do more to express form than even the light and shade,
and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature carries light into her
shadows, and shade into her lights; an art of which we shall have more to say
hereafter, in speaking of composition. a, in Fig. 5, is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-
urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming through a
chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in the light; and their sides,
rising out of the shadow, form smaller whiter spots in the dark. You may take such
scattered lights as these out with the penknife, provided you are just as careful to
place them rightly as if you got them by a more laborious process.
60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on anything natural
or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided it be not too complicated in
form. I have asked you to draw a stone first, because any irregularities and failures
in your shading will be less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the
rough stone surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may
as well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little while, till you
find you can really shade delicately. You may then take up folds of thick white
drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on the table is as good as anything,
and try to express them in the same way; only now you will find that your shades
must be wrought with perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of
the folds. Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work resolutely,
and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel or napkin must be put

on something that may be locked up, so that its folds shall not be disturbed till you
have finished. If you find that the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a
piece of drapery (there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of
the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate your
hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then ascertain what it
is that is wanting in your studies from Nature, whether more gradation, or greater
watchfulness of the disposition of the folds. Probably for some time you will find
yourself failing painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the greater the gain
in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement of form than delicate in
perception of tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help you. Try whether it
does or not: and if the patterned drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the
simple white one; but if it helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans
and simple checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern occasionally,
copying all the distortions and perspective modifications of it among the folds
with scrupulous care.
61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater they are, the
more pains they take to do it truly.[12] Nor can there be better practice at any time,
as introductory to the nobler complication of natural detail. For when you can
draw the spots which follow the folds of a printed stuff, you will have some
chance of following the spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as
he leaps; but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully drawn, will be
the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves of the
sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well rendered, will enable
you to disentangle masterfully the living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet
bank.
62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or other
finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much about the
wooliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade and fold, and true in
pattern. We shall see, in the course of after-practice, how the penned lines may be
made indicative of texture; but at present attend only to the light and shade and
pattern. You will be puzzled at first by lustrous surfaces, but a little attention will
show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right drawing of
their light and shade, and reflections. Put a small black japanned tray on the table

in front of some books; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as in a
little black rippled pond; its own color mingling always with that of the reflected
objects. Draw these reflections of the books properly, making them dark and
distorted, as you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster
to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in general practice;
only you should do one or two in order to understand the aspect of any lustrous
portion of other things, such as you cannot avoid; the gold, for instance, on the
edges of books, or the shining of silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the
expression of their folds. Observe also that there are very few things which are
totally without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles you, on some
apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another object.
63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the point
of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I give you leave
to use the brush with one color,—sepia, or blue black, or mixed cobalt and blue
black, or neutral tint; and this will much facilitate your study, and refresh you.
But, preliminary, you must do one or two more exercises in tinting.

EXERCISE IX.

64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII. Take a brush full of it, and
strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry, sweep the
surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper very lightly; every
such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more or less minute interstices in
the color. The lighter and faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry;
and, as soon as it is dry, with little color in your brush, so that you can bring it to a
fine point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make the whole as
even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more color, always trying to let
the edges of the first and of the newly applied color exactly meet, and not lap over
each other. When your new color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than
the first. Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A
very small bit of color thus filled up with your very best care, and brought to look
as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you better practice and more
skill than a great deal filled in carelessly; so do it with your best patience, not
leaving the most minute spot of white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and
then go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a marked
limit; then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always seeing distinctly what is
done and what undone.

EXERCISE X.

65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of paper. Let
it dry. Then another coat over four fifths of the square, or thereabouts, leaving the
edge rather irregular than straight, and let it dry. Then another coat over three
fifths; another over two fifths; and the last over one fifth; so that the square may
present the appearance of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker
than the one beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,
when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those used in the pen
etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately beyond each edge, so as to
lead the darker tints into the paler ones imperceptibly. By touching the paper very
lightly, and putting a multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every
direction, you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of
each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with the next tint.
The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded from dark to pale, with
no bars, only a crossing texture of touches, something like chopped straw, over the
whole.[13]

66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade you like;
outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of color, prepared very pale,
quite flat over all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge of your color
quite sharp. Then another wash, extending only over the darker parts, leaving the
edge of that sharp also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still
darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry sharp. Then,
with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the darks, and work the whole
delicately together as you would with the pen, till you have got it to the likeness of
the true light and shade. You will find that the tint underneath is a great help, and
that you can now get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen
merely.
67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not trouble or
vex the color, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the paper: color looks much more
lovely when it has been laid on with a dash of the brush, and left to dry in its own
way, than when it has been dragged about and disturbed; so that it is always better
to let the edges and forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in water
color can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and bad masters in water color
lay on grossly false forms with a dash, and leave them false; for people in general,

not knowing false from true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power in
the irregular blot as with the presence of power in the determined one; but we, in
our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then correct
with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be right, at whatever
cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we can be right with freedom.
68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two or three teaspoonfuls of
water; but, in finishing your light and shade from the stone, you may, as you
efface the edge of the palest coat towards the light, use the color for the small
touches with more and more water, till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus
you may obtain a perfect gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when
they are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the color tolerably
dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and dash away the superfluous
color on blotting paper, you will find that, touching the paper very lightly with the
dry brush, you can, by repeated touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very
valuable in giving depth to shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of
hand to do this properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds
and shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[14]

69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will gradually find out their
ways for yourself, and get the management of them. And you will often save
yourself much discouragement by remembering what I have so often asserted,—
that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting, not
force; and connection, not alteration. If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do
not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out,
at the place you think wrong; but look if there are no shadows you can gradate
more perfectly; no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms you can more
delicately define: and do not rush at any of the errors or incompletions thus
discerned, but efface or supply slowly, and you will soon find your drawing take
another look. A very useful expedient in producing some effects, is to wet the
paper, and then lay the color on it, more or less wet, according to the effect you
want. You will soon see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you
can reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker. Also, while the
color is still damp on the paper, by drying your brush thoroughly, and touching the
color with the brush so dried, you may take out soft lights with great tenderness
and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of this kind, noticing how the color
behaves; but remembering always that your final results must be obtained, and can
only be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen drawing.

70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated subjects,
that Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer than yours, that you
cannot possibly get all, or anything like all, the gradations of shadow in any given
group. When this is the case, determine first to keep the broad masses of things
distinct: if, for instance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a
black inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass, the
green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass; and do not
shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as to equal in depth the
darkness of the inkstand. The great difference between the masters of light and
shade, and imperfect artists, is the power of the former to draw so delicately as to
express form in a dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored object
with little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and there
unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of the great masses.
And this, observe, not because masses are grand or desirable things in your
composition (for with composition at present you have nothing whatever to do),
but because it is a fact that things do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and
that we see paper, book, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the
wrinkles, or chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at once,
that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in reality; and strive
to keep all your shadows and marks and minor markings on the masses, lighter
than they appear to be in Nature; you are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You
will in doing this find that you cannot get the projection of things sufficiently
shown; but never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,
but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be preserved. All
deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration of shadow; and whenever
you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more or less bad: a thoroughly fine
drawing or painting will always show a slight tendency towards flatness.
71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an object may be, there is
always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must therefore have a
slight tone of gray over everything in your picture except on the extreme high
lights; even the piece of white paper, in your subject, must be toned slightly down,
unless (and there are thousand chances against its being so) it should all be turned
so as fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white objects in
any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian, you will soon
understand this.[15]

72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush the
undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed to draw

more complicated and beautiful things.[16] And first, the boughs of trees, now not
in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the first bit of branch or stump that
comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut off the ends of the forking branches, so as to
leave the whole only about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix
your bit of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw it
thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above all things, to get an
accurate expression of its structure at the fork of the branch. When once you have
mastered the tree at its armpits, you will have little more trouble with it.
73. Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you see it.
Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is behind it, ugly
or not, else you will never know whether the light and shade are right; they may
appear quite wrong to you, only for want of the background. And this general law
is to be observed in all your studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and
unalteringly, else you never know if what you have done is right, or whether you
could have done it rightly had you tried. There is nothing visible out of which you
may not get useful practice.
74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or
five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-colored or white paper
behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field; then
sketch in their dark shape carefully with pencil as you did the complicated
boughs, in order to be sure that all their masses and interstices are right in shape
before you begin shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the
manner of Fig. 6, which is a young shoot of lilac.
75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at first puzzled
by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of retirement or projection
depends not so much on the perspective of the leaves themselves as on the double
sight of the two eyes. Now there are certain artifices by which good painters can
partly conquer this difficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or color in the
nearer parts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not attempt
anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves, shut one of your
eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point of one of the leaves against;
and so sketch the whole bough as you see it in a fixed position, looking with one
eye only. Your drawing never can be made to look like the object itself, as you see
that object with both eyes,[17] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen
with one, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these
terms.

76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take a single
long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as you can, so as to see
nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted to know how thin it was; outline it
so. Then slope it down gradually towards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to
its full length, held perpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four
different positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each
position, and you will soon find out how it must be.

Fig. 6.

77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters; and practice,
in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and leafage, till you find
you can master the most difficult arrangements, not consisting of more than ten or
twelve leaves. You will find as you do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting
any gallery of pictures, that you take a much more lively interest than before in
the work of the great masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds
are composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the chief
interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test your progress
accurately by the degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the
head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne. All this, however, will not
enable you to draw a mass of foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece
of vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any
possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too intricate,
to be thus dealt with.

Fig. 7.

78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of execution,
capable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first, you must understand
what the character of that confusion is. If you look carefully at the outer sprays of
any tree at twenty or thirty yards' distance, you will see them defined against the
sky in masses, which, at first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you
will see, mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which are,
some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the edge turned
towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for, supposing the real leaf
shape to be as at a, Fig. 7, this, when removed some yards from the eye, will

appear dark against the sky, as at b; then, when removed some yards farther still,
the stalk and point disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more
than a line; and the result is the condition at c, only with this farther subtlety in the
look of it, inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the stalk and point of the leaf,
though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet some influence in checking the
light at the places where they exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of
the leaf which remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by
two layers of color, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next drawing the broken
portions of the leaf, as at c, and carefully indicating the greater darkness of the
spot in the middle, where the under side of the leaf is.

Fig. 8.

This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach such
accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the foliage
satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.
79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long. Fix it firmly
by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put it about eight feet away
from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a sheet of not very white paper behind

it, as usual. Then draw very carefully, first placing them with pencil, and then
filling them up with ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as
you see them against the paper: Fig. 8 is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not be
afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come together; this
exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of such masses are when seen
against the sky.
80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common tree,
—oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and industrious, you
will make one such study carefully at least three times a week, until you have
examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can get branches of. You are to make
two studies of each bough, for this reason,—all masses of foliage have an upper
and under surface, and the side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different
organization of branches from that seen in the view from above. They are
generally seen more or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature
puts her best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from above
or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary you should draw
it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree. The difference between the
two views is often far greater than you could easily conceive. For instance, in Fig.
9, a is the upper view and b the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8 is an
intermediate view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some lateral
distance also.
81. When you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the
drawings you have made, and put it first a yard away from you, then a yard and a
half, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and leaves gradually
disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where they were; and make
another study of the effect at each distance, taking care to draw nothing more than
you really see, for in this consists all the difference between what would be
merely a miniature drawing of the leaves seen near, and a full-size drawing of the
same leaves at a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would really
appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass held at the same
distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your drawing. You can always
ascertain this full size of any object by holding your paper upright before you, at
the distance from your eye at which you wish your drawing to be seen. Bring its
edge across the object you have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points
where the outline of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You
will always find it, thus measured, smaller than you supposed.

Fig. 9.

82. When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your own
drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real trees, because the
black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and does not shake, and is not
confused by sparkles of luster on the leaves,) you may try the extremities of the
real trees, only not doing much at a time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle
and perplex your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the
outline itself; at least the chemical action of the light in a photograph extends
much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, eats them away, so that no
tree extremity, stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming against bright sky,
is truly drawn by a photograph; and if you once succeed in drawing a few sprays
rightly, you will find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
photograph can be.
83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the dark form
of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those sprays, and in the heart of
the tree, there is a complexity of a much more embarrassing kind; for nearly all
leaves have some luster, and all are more or less translucent (letting light through
them); therefore, in any given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper
shadows and foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter
or hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves,—often very forcibly.
Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes the blue of the sky,
sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms
and shadows of other leaves, seen as darknesses through the translucent parts of
the leaf; a most important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by
landscape artists in general.

84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance, the form
of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvelous and quaint confusion, very
definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of growth, and unity of action, but
wholly indefinable and inextricable, part by part, by any amount of patience. You
cannot possibly work it out in facsimile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to
a tree; and you must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will
more or less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of
Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.
85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form only,
because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural object exists
which does not involve in some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this mystery
of quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and trick of touch to express it
completely. If leaves are intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so
are fur and hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and
dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first the thorough
knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot draw a branch perfectly,
then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of mist perfectly, much less a flock of
clouds; and if not a single grass blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet
having once got this power over decisive form, you may safely—and must, in
order to perfection of work—carry out your knowledge by every aid of method
and dexterity of hand.
86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at Art as
well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have actually
employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon arises the question,
what opportunity you have to obtain engravings? You ought, if it is at all in your
power, to possess yourself of a certain number of good examples of Turner's
engraved works: if this be not in your power, you must just make the best use you
can of the shop windows, or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very
possibly, the difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to
better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess yourself,
first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or Rogers's Poems, and then
of about a dozen of the plates named in the annexed lists. The prefixed letters
indicate the particular points deserving your study in each engraving.[18] Be sure,
therefore, that your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each
letter. Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the twelve at first;
for the more engravings you have, the less attention you will pay to them. It is a
general truth, that the enjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in

quantity, beyond a certain point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it
were, over a larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated in
different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his attention should
be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his enjoyment founded on
them, than that he should look at many, with divided thoughts. He has much to
discover; and his best way of discovering it is to think long over few things, and
watch them earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and to
see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality know
anything rightly. Beware of handbook knowledge.
87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to copy; and
they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of composition, than they
are at present; still, it will do you a great deal of good, sometimes to try how far
you can get their delicate texture, or gradations of tone: as your pen-and-ink
drawing will be apt to incline too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade.
For instance, the texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled
roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work can
possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable achievement if you can at all
approach it. In like manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at p.
7, or the sky at p. 80, of the same volume, or the foliage at pp. 12 and 144, it will
be good gain; and if you can once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9
of the Italy, or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the moonlight at p. 223,
you will find that even Nature herself cannot afterwards very terribly puzzle you
with her torrents, or towers, or moonlight.
88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect. And if you
feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think that engraving is not
drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to draw, remember that it differs
from common drawing only by the difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps
have got into a careless habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy
enough when one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of
drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is more
difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is true that there are
certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it at certain stages either to
pure machine work, or to more or less a habit of hand and arm; but this is not so in
the foliage you are trying to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always
etched—that is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is
white instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of what you
are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for you, because it will

awaken you to the real labor and skill of the engraver, and make you understand a
little how people must work, in this world, who have really to do anything in it.
89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a model—far
from it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as well[19] before you think of
doing better, and you will find many little helps and hints in the various work of it.
Only remember that all engravers' foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the
peculiar wriggling parallel lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must
not copy; nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and portions of
the foliage in the plates marked f, which you may copy. The best for this purpose,
if you can get it, is the "Chain bridge over the Tees," of the England series; the
thicket on the right is very beautiful and instructive, and very like Turner. The
foliage in the "Ludlow" and "Powis" is also remarkably good.
90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm there is in
their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible, with a Rembrandt etching,
or a photograph of one (of figures, not landscape). It does not matter of what
subject, or whether a sketchy or finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally
cheapest, and will teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially
that Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid with
almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all interesting. The
"Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such others,
containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will be the most
instructive. You can buy one; copy it well; then exchange it, at little loss, for
another; and so, gradually, obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever you
have an opportunity of examining his work at museums, etc., do so with the
greatest care, not looking at many things, but a long time at each. You must also
provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Dürer's. This you will
not be able to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer to it as a standard
of precision in line. If you can get one with a wing in it, it will be best. The crest
with the cock, that with the skull and satyr, and the "Melancholy," are the best you
could have, but any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these
two masters, Rembrandt and Dürer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague; and
Dürer has little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see anywhere a
drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the two characters; but
there are no engravings which present this perfection, and your style will be best
formed, therefore, by alternate study of Rembrandt and Dürer. Lean rather to
Dürer; it is better, for amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on that of
vagueness: and though, as I have just said, you cannot copy a Dürer, yet try every

now and then a quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can
come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the "Melancholia" too
often.
91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Dürer, you may still learn much
by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or Leech's wood-cuts
in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and Richter's[20] on the severe side.
But in so doing you will need to notice the following points:
92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an artist
does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,—that is to say, one in which no
lines shall be prominently visible,—and he is reduced to show the black lines,
either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is better to make these lines help, as far
as may be, the expression of texture and form. You will thus find many textures,
as of cloth or grass or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech
with zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that Alfred
Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding of surfaces by
the direction of the lines which shade them. All these various means of expression
will be useful to you, as far as you can learn them, provided you remember that
they are merely a kind of shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way,
but in the only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after use of
such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to get as much
record of the object as you can in a given time; and that you continually make
efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions of the objects rightly.
93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that of surface,
observe these few points:

Fig. 10.

If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they can indicate
anything by their direction, they should explain rather than oppose the general
character of the object. Thus, in the piece of wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the
lines are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also
its roundness, and the flow of its grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly
engraving, sets himself always thus to make his lines as valuable as possible;
telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you were
always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to express effects
of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert Dürer's way of work would
be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as the perfect way of drawing is by
shade without lines, and the great painters always conceive their subject as
complete, even when they are sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when
they are not limited in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will
often scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines, that is to
say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to themselves. When the hand is
free, the easiest line for it to draw is one inclining from the left upwards to the
right, or vice versâ, from the right downwards to the left; and when done very
quickly, the line is hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next.
Hence, you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a very great master
full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you will find him using
simple straight lines from left to right, when an inferior master would have used
curved ones. Fig. 11 is a fair facsimile of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which

exhibits these characters very distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da
Vinci are shaded most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume
it as a point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master if you
find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with straight lines.

Fig. 11.

94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest dealers
to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Fig. 11, and pass them for the work of
great masters; and how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing
depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the objects drawn, and perceiving

whether the hasty handling is all conducive to the expression of those truths. In a
great man's work, at its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity,
but the economy of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to judge of
this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you cannot
of course discern how far he has done it; that is, you must know the beauty and
nature of the thing he was drawing. All judgment of art thus finally founds itself
on knowledge of Nature.
95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous execution
is never affectedly impetuous. If a great man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to
be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand; if he thinks his
effect would be better got with two lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to
do it with one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance), that
you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution of a great
master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the easy execution will
fall from your hand as it did from his: but if you merely scrawl because he
scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will not only never advance in power,
but every able draughtsman, and every judge whose opinion is worth having, will
know you for a cheat, and despise you accordingly.
96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:
All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an artist of any
power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his outlines occasionally,
and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself to
outline only. Hence the fact of his so restricting himself, whatever may be the
occasion, shows him to be a bad draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his
power economically. This hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to
remain in the state in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be
proceeded with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw
pure outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up
afterwards with color, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or tracings;
but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing wholly for its own sake,
and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves it, an artist restricts himself to
outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and his work is bad. There is no exception to this
law. A good artist habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make
his drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade
than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched with
shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.

97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the English
imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are
bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste. And of such
outlines, the worst are those which are darkened in some part of
their course by way of expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from
Dante, and such others; because an outline can only be true so long
Fig. 12. as it accurately represents the form of the given object with one of
its edges. Thus, the outline a and the outline b, Fig. 12, are both
true outlines of a ball; because, however thick the line may be,
whether we take the interior or exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a
true circle. But c is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner or outer edge
of the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be thicker in one
place than another. Hence all "force," as it is called, is gained by falsification of
the contours; so that no artist whose eye is true and fine could endure to look at it.
It does indeed often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and
again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by
setting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer supposes it has
been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes also, at a place where shade is
afterwards to inclose the form, the painter will strike a broad dash of this shade
beside his outline at once, looking as if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas
this broad line is only the first installment of the future shadow, and the outline is
really drawn with its inner edge.[21] And thus, far from good draughtsmen
darkening the lines which turn away from the light, the tendency with them is
rather to darken them towards the light, for it is there in general that shade will
ultimately inclose them. The best example of this treatment that I know is
Raphael's sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the
one that shows part of the left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the
nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones behind
the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will see in Fig. 11 the same
principle variously exemplified; the principal dark lines, in the head and drapery
of the arms, being on the side turned to the light.

Fig. 13.

98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not affect your
drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines as equal as possible;
and employ pure outline only for the two following purposes: either (1.) to steady
your hand, as in Exercise II., for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never
be able to terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is
absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are pressed
for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined, for the most part,
by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being shown against the
darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant one; and to draw this properly,
nearly as much work is required to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5.
Of course you cannot often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of
each tree as is done by Dürer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful memorandum
of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe in doing this,
you must not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that procedure itself.
You will find, on copying that bit of Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm,
deliberate, and accurately descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a
size and such a shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true
"signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round

that village. If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at all—you
are merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When you have had four or
five years' practice you may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but
not yet; except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you
presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to objects which
have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone, when it rises against
another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in water; if
these are to be expressed at all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the
rule that no good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute.
You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his reason for even limiting himself so much
to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains, is that he may leave them
in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky and the dark village
spire: and the scene becomes real and sunny only by the addition of these shades.

Fig. 14.

99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go back to our
question about tree-drawing left unanswered at page 48.

Fig. 15.

We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it is
quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the difficulty is to
keep organization in the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in doing
this unless you lean always to the definite side, and allow yourself rarely to
become quite vague, at least through all your early practice. So, after your single
groups of leaves, your first step must be to conditions like Figs. 14 and 15, which
are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful wood-cut of Dürer's, the
"Flight into Egypt." Copy these carefully,—never mind how little at a time, but
thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your drawing, and do not be
content till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true enough to carry you
safely through meshes of real leaves. And in the course of doing this, you will find
that not a line nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced without harm; that all add to the
effect, and either express something, or illumine something, or relieve something.

If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which so
many rich examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated periodicals (any
of the Christmas numbers of last year's Illustrated News or others are full of
them), you will see that, though good and forcible general effect is produced, the
lines are thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well
go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all
together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little careless
scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the same result without an
effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything but
downright skill and thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there
is considerable intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine
leaves of his, as well as of the grass.

Fig. 16.

100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner, you may draw from
Nature as much as you like in the same way; and when you are tired of the intense
care required for this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves, as
in Fig. 10 (p. 55). This is facsimilëd from an engraving after Titian, but an
engraving not quite first-rate in manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it
is a good enough model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the
thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16,[22]
taking care always to have thorough command over your hand; that is, not to let
the mass take a free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but
because in Nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and you have faithfully
followed the same.
101. And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as true
shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure, other
considerations enter into the business, which are by no means confined to first
practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this letter is long enough, I should
think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents) I will arrange in a
second letter; praying you only to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one—
tiresomeness inseparable from directions touching the beginning of any art,—and
to believe me, even though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
Very faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[1] (N.B.—This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or curious readers. You may miss it if you
are in a hurry, or are willing to take the statement in the text on trust.)

The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We see nothing but flat colors; and it is
only by a series of experiments that we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates the dark side of a solid
substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical
power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the innocence of the eye; that is to say, of a
sort of childish perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without consciousness of what they
signify,—as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.

For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain directions, it is turned from green into a
peculiar and somewhat dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly endowed with
sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was
green, and part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the color of primroses); and, if there were primroses near, we
should think that the sunlighted grass was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color. We should
try to gather some of them, and then find that the color went away from the grass when we stood between it
and the sun, but not from the primroses; and by a series of experiments we should find out that the sun was
really the cause of the color in the one,—not in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain colors,
we always suppose that we see what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of
the signs we have learned to interpret. Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow.

Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly as possible to this condition of
infantine sight. He sees the colors of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the
sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colors that form its shade and light. To him it does not
seem shade and light, but bluish green barred with gold.

Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact about sight. This, in your hand, which
you know by experience and touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously
gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by experience you know to be a table, is to your eye
only a patch of brown, variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Painting consists
merely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of color, and putting patches of the same size,
depth, and shape on canvas. The only obstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the real colors are
brighter and paler than it is possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to represent them.

[2] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing, than india-rubber, for it disturbs the
surface of the paper less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste the good
bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber
very lightly; or, if heavily, pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what pencil marks will not
come away so, without minding them. In a finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable,
helping the general tone, and enabling you to take out little bright lights.

[3] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is the character of the drawing of a
great master in a hurry, whose hand is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly as
it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master at real work is never free: its swiftest dash
is under perfect government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's breadth of any appointed
mark, in their fastest touches; and follow, within a hair's breadth, the previously intended curve. You must
never, therefore, aim at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it should be free, but that it should be
right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and then your work will be free in the best sense; but there is
no merit in doing wrong easily.

These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading, which, it will be remembered, are to be
made as quickly as possible. The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it is at the ends,
and therefore the more easily joined with other lines, and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading
being to conceal the lines as much as possible.

And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of hand than accuracy of eye for outline;
for there are no outlines in Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he draws them at
all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at
present if you find your hand gaining command over the curves.

[4] If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed, they will be useful models.

[5] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this permission. My chief reason is, that I think it
more necessary that the pupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of curve and right
lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that he should practice drawing straight lines. But also, I
believe, though I am not quite sure of this, that he never ought to be able to draw a straight line. I do not
believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a line without some curvature in it, or some variety of
direction. Prout could draw a straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great
draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every line but a straight one.

[6] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick touches, indicating the general shape
of the cloud or mist of twigs round the main branches; but do not take much trouble about them.

[7] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow gradation than an extended one; but the ultimate
difficulty is, as with the pen, to make the gradation go far.

[8] Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.

[9] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is always indicated by the color of the solid
cake in the box.

[10] The figure a, Fig. 5, is very dark, but this is to give an example of all kinds of depths of tint, without
repeated figures.

[11] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite different tones in its neutrality, according
to the colors of the various reflected rays that compose it.

[12] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might perhaps be able to show you some
metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by light and shade and
perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is at present not to the point; and all that you need to know is that
the drawing of such things is good exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret,
Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.

[13] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be able, when you begin to color, to let
one hue be seen in minute portions, gleaming between the touches of another.

[14] William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.

[15] At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal examples of Turner's later water-color
drawing, perhaps the most neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most
wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a
little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the
surface of the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will begin to
understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National
Gallery is focused to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the white flower in the
wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same thing.

[16] I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as they are distinguished only by
increasing difficulty of subject, not by difference of method.

[17] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know why; if not, it does not matter; trust
me for the truth of the statement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much loss of time.
See, however, Note 1, in Appendix I.

[18] The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See note at the end of Appendix I. The letters
mean as follows:—

a stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns, cottages, etc.
c clouds, including mist and aërial effects.
f foliage.
g ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
l effects of light.
m mountains, or bold rocky ground.
p power of general arrangement and effect.
q quiet water.

r running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of flow is beautifully marked.

From the England Series.

acf
Arundel. a f p. Lancaster.
r.
clm
a f l. Ashby de la Zouche. Lancaster Sands.*
r.
alq
Barnard Castle.* a g f. Launceston.*
r.
f m r. Bolton Abbey. c f l r. Leicester Abbey.
f g r. Buckfastleigh.* f r. Ludlow.
a l p. Caernarvon. a f l. Margate.
c l q. Castle Upnor. a l q. Orford.
a f l. Colchester. c p. Plymouth.
l q. Cowes. f. Powis Castle.
c f p. Dartmouth Cove.* l m q. Prudhoe Castle.
flm
c l q. Flint Castle.* Chain Bridge over Tees.*
r.
afg
Knaresborough.* m q. Ulleswater.
l.
m r. High Force of Tees.* f m. Valle Crucis.
a f q. Trematon.

From the Keepsake.

mp
Arona. p. St. Germain en Laye.
q.
l m. Drachenfels.* l p q. Florence.
f l. Marly.* l m. Ballyburgh Ness.*

From the Bible Series.

clp
f m. Mount Lebanon. Solomon's Pools.*
q.
m. Rock of Moses at Sinai. a l. Santa Saba.
a l m. Jericho. a l. Pool of Bethesda.

a c g. Joppa.

From Scott's Works.

p r. Melrose.* c m. Glencoe.
f r. Dryburgh.* c m. Loch Coriskin.*

a l. Caerlaverock.

From the Rivers of France.

Château of Amboise, with large bridge on
a q. f p. Pont de l'Arche.
right.
Rouen, looking down the river, poplars on View on the Seine, with
l p r. f l p.
right.* avenue.
Rouen, with cathedral and rainbow, avenue
a l p. a c p. Bridge of Meulan.
on left.
cgp
a p. Rouen Cathedral. Caudebec.*
r.

[19] As well;—not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on the steel than you can draw on paper with
your pen; but you must be able to get tones as even, and touches as firm.

[20] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be studied."

[21] See Note 2 in Appendix I.

[22] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like it. You will find it explained
presently.

LETTER II.

SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

102. My dear Reader,—The work we have already gone through together has,
I hope, enabled you to draw with fair success either rounded and simple masses,
like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves; provided
only these masses or complexities will stay quiet for you to copy, and do not
extend into quantity so great as to baffle your patience. But if we are now to go
out to the fields, and to draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these
conditions will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we
copy their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape
them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light where its tremulous
edge had rested the moment before, and involving in eclipse objects that had
seemed safe from its influence; and instead of the small clusters of leaves which
we could reckon point by point, embarrassing enough even though numerable, we
have now leaves as little to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless,
perhaps, as its foam.
103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes more or
less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it is possible; and when you
have time and opportunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you gain greater
skill, be rendered with an approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still,
whatever skill you may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose,
and of speed to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must
give more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic points, and the
attainment of concise methods.
104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons. First, that it
is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its modes of growth present
simple examples of the importance of leading or governing lines. It is by seizing
these leading lines, when we cannot seize all, that likeness and expression are
given to a portrait, and grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every
natural form. I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive of
the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a mountain, first,
how it was built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is now being worn away, and
from what quarter the wildest storms strike it. In a tree, they show what kind of
fortune it has had to endure from its childhood: how troublesome trees have come
in its way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when
kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most
fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show the run of the tide
and of the wind, and the sort of change which the water or vapor is at any moment

enduring in its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now
remember, nothing distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their
always, whether in life or in art, knowing the way things are going. Your dunce
thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your wise man sees the
change or changing in them, and draws them so,—the animal in its motion, the
tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away. Try
always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power
over its past fate and will have power over its futurity. Those are its awful lines;
see that you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16
(p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at Sestri near
Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their first budding by the great
rude root, and spring out in every direction round it, as water splashes when a
heavy stone is thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the root, they
begin to bend up again; some of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a
great notion of growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to recover
their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways in their
early years, is the effort that will mainly influence their future destiny, and
determine if they are to be crabbed, forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri,
whose clefts nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the
sea; or if they are to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of
temples, and the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of
cloudy green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give that spring and
resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their chief beauty is in
these.

Fig. 17.

105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small, you will notice that,
though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there is a tendency in

all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified in
the simplest possible terms at c, Fig. 17, is common to all trees that I know of, and
it gives them a certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their
branches which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely send off a
wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the branches share in one
great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and a path to take, which fills a
definite place, and each terminates all its minor branches at its outer extremity, so
as to form a greater outer curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for
each species. That is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as a, Fig. 17,
but as b, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor divisions right out to
the bounding curve; not but that smaller branches, by thousands, terminate in the
heart of the tree, but the idea and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its
child branches well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small,
take its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the type of
each separate bough is again not a, but b, Fig. 18; approximating, that is to say, so
far to the structure of a plant of broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and
leafage out to a rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless habit
of drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging to the
other, as in Fig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any painting of Wilson's you
will see this structure, and nearly every other that is to be avoided, in their
intensest types. You will also notice that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round
mass, but flat, as if it had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing pines
seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the
trunk, instead of all round it: always, therefore, take more pains in trying to draw
the boughs of trees that grow towards you than those that go off to the sides;
anybody can draw the latter, but the foreshortened ones are not so easy. It will
help you in drawing them to observe that in most trees the ramification of each
branch, though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in
its position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or shelter
something. If you take a looking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly
hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if you were going to
support the base of some great bowl, larger than you could easily hold; and sketch
your hand as you see it in the glass with the points of the fingers towards you; it
will materially help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their
hands: and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were
going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will get a good
type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such other spreading trees.

Fig. 18.

Fig. 19.

106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which these and
other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it carefully, you will be
surprised to find how the touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss
of the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the
undulation of the ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the
climbers of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimilëd from an etching of
Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure and firm
lines; it will also show you how the particular action in foliage, or anything else to
which you wish to direct attention, may be intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and
upright trees are made to look more tall and upright still, because their line is
continued below by the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes
on the bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in one
broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These figures are
placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully hereafter when we
come to talk about composition; but, if you please, we will not talk about that yet
awhile. What I have been telling you about the beautiful lines and action of

foliage has nothing to do with composition, but only with fact, and the brief and
expressive representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the "Law of
Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth: indeed it would in
some respects have been better to have said it here than there, only it would have
broken up the account of the principles of composition somewhat awkwardly.

Fig. 20.

107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite so
manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon enable you to see
that there are such lines in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and
bad draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all
over; but a good draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where
they are weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run
of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where it lies long and
feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few slates he draws, to mark the
way they bend together towards those hollows (which have the future fate of the
roof in them), and crowd gradually together at the top of the gable, partly
diminishing in perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in
most English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always the
direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the earth and cuts it
into hollows; and, generally, in any bank or height worth drawing, a trace of
bedded or other internal structure besides. Figure 20 will give you some idea of
the way in which such facts may be expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the
depression in the ground all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the
people always turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the
water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the roots of the
trees?
108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature to aim exclusively at
understanding and representing these vital facts of form; using the pen—not now
the steel, but the quill—firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but saying to
yourself before you lay on a single touch,—"that leaf is the main one, that bough
is the guiding one, and this touch, so long, so broad, means that part of it,"—point
or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you look at the thing, what
you will take, and what miss of it, and never let your hand run away with you, or
get into any habit or method of touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand
should pass calmly from one end of it to the other without a tremor; if you want a
shaking and broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a
musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that there is no
general way of doing any thing; no recipe can be given you for so much as the
drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and
flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or
dull: look at it, and try to draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you

to do grass." So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all
over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of Hercules. It
may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like
a ship's hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus saber, or
fused like a glass bottle, or crystallized like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf:
look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to "do a stone."
109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, and that you can
render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of Turner's or Dürer's
work,[24] you must add a simple but equally careful light and shade to your pen
drawing, so as to make each study as complete as possible; for which you must
prepare yourself thus. Get, if you have the means, a good impression of one plate
of Turner's Liber Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note
below.[25] If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any of these
engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you presently);
but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You will see that it is composed of a
firm etching in line, with mezzotint shadow laid over it. You must first copy the
etched part of it accurately; to which end put the print against the window, and
trace slowly with the greatest care every black line; retrace this on smooth
drawing-paper; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at the
original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the right side, not
making a line which is too curved or too straight already in the tracing, more
curved or more straight, as you go over it. And in doing this, never work after you
are tired, nor to "get the thing done," for if it is badly done, it will be of no use to
you. The true zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky
and inattentive labor of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right at the
first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with little ink in your pen,
thickening or reinforcing them as they need: you cannot give too much care to the
facsimile. Then keep this etched outline by you in order to study at your ease the
way in which Turner uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[26] it
is only in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this. Next,
copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this etching which you
like, and put on the light and shade with the brush, and any brown color that
matches that of the plate;[27] working it with the point of the brush as delicately as
if you were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you
can touch the paper, till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving.
110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked to close
resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject carelessly done.

Not that in drawing afterwards from Nature you are to be obliged to finish every
gradation in this way, but that, once having fully accomplished the drawing
something rightly, you will thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than
you could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out
quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which it would
have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work. Nothing is more
strange in art than the way that chance and materials seem to favor you, when
once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make yourself quite independent of
chance, get your result in spite of it, and from that day forward all things will
somehow fall as you would have them. Show the camel's hair, and the color in it,
that no bending nor blotting is of any use to escape your will; that the touch and
the shade shall finally be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that hour of
corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to all your wishes, and no
blot will dare to transgress its appointed border. If you cannot obtain a print from
the Liber Studiorum, get a photograph[28] of some general landscape subject, with
high hills and a village or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some
calm water of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working, as I have just directed
you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of the brush. You are under a
twofold disadvantage here, however; first, there are portions in every photograph
too delicately done for you at present to be at all able to copy; and, secondly, there
are portions always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene,
and involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher. Both
these characters will be advantageous to you for future study, after you have
gained experience, but they are a little against you in early attempts at tinting; still
you must fight through the difficulty, and get the power of producing delicate
gradations with brown or gray, like those of the photograph.
111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long as your
effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not perfect, though it may be
first-rate of its kind. But to get complete results in tints merely, requires both long
time and consummate skill; and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a
tint dashed over or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach
in any other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber Studiorum
print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest shorthand of this kind, a
shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with the most subtle natural effects; for
the firm etching gets at the expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry,
textures of ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most

tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud. Most of the best
drawings by the old masters are executed on this principle, the touches of the pen
being useful also to give a look of transparency to shadows, which could not
otherwise be attained but by great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any
ordinarily good public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have
folios either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss to
find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photographs
also are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and I hope that our
Mechanics' Institutes and other societies organized with a view to public
instruction, will not fail to possess themselves of examples of these, and to make
them accessible to students of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's
Liber, to show the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre, to
show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be all that is
necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than a larger
collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate prints. Two such
examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other modes of drawing, with pen
separately, or chalk separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest
student in any cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity of tinting
with line he cannot generally see but by some special inquiry, and in some out of
the way places he could not find a single example of it. Supposing that this should
be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any example of this kind,
try to make the matter out alone, thus:
112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to express
its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid color instead of ink,
outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows, as you
have been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching
is dry, take your sepia or gray, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of
the photograph; and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife or blotting
paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by a series of
experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen may be made
serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible
masses, and so on. The more time you have, the more delicate you may make the
pen drawing, blending it with the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you
must keep the two. Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself
sometimes only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in full
depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the parts as is possible

in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you will do well to repeat frequently,
whether you can get prints and drawings as well as photographs, or not.
113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or its
photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in your power of
working from Nature on all subjects that interest you, which you should do in four
different ways.
First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay quiet for
you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with
gray or brown color of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen.
114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in detail that
you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and shade, make a hasty study
of the effect, and give the rest of the time to a Düreresque expression of the
details. If the subject seems to you interesting, and there are points about it which
you cannot understand, try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make
a nearer memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your experience of the
aspect of things, and know that such and such a look of a tower or cottage at five
hundred yards off means that sort of tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer
sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If
you have time, however far your light and shade study in the distance may have
been carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your Düreresque
and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing be good, much of
the interesting detail must be lost in it, or disguised.
115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with a soft
pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of gray, which will
fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take out the higher lights with the dry
brush; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the highest lights with the penknife.
Five minutes, carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper
is to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can get more
gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on cunningly a little darker
here and there, than you can with body-color white, unless you are consummately
skillful. There is no objection to your making your Düreresque memoranda on
gray or yellow paper, and touching or relieving them with white; only, do not
depend much on your white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.

116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for Düreresque
detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the shadows with the brush
boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit of
expedition and decision; laying more color again and again into the tints as they
dry, using every expedient which your practice has suggested to you of carrying
out your chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the wooden handle of
the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it off with your sponge, etc.
Then, when the color is in, take your pen and mark the outline characters
vigorously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind of study is very
convenient for carrying away pieces of effect which depend not so much on
refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects
of sky, etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or slow
habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the endeavor to
obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for display's sake, is as
baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity and a dash which not only are
compatible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which cannot be had
otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and
decision, while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find yourself always
beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.

Fig. 21.

117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape scenery
you are passing through, to get into the habit of making memoranda of the shapes
of shadows. You will find that many objects of no essential interest in themselves,
and neither deserving a finished study, nor a Düreresque one, may yet become of
singular value in consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it
happens often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen within a few
yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers to which the shadows are
owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers
would not be seen; and a good painter's expression of the bridge would be merely
the large spot, and the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of
their cause, as in Fig. 22 a; and if we saw it at still greater distances, it would
appear, as in Fig. 22 b and c, diminishing at last to a strange, unintelligible, spider-
like spot of gray on the light hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his
distances, continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused touches in
Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough accuracy and intense meaning
of the shadow abstracts.

Fig. 22.

118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with an F. or
HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure your drawing
delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle; they are sure to
be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very
precious instrument after you are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil,
cunningly used, is both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches,
on which the best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or to
find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I
should recommend rather the steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever
time admits of it; keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket,
with its well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
never being without this.

119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to draw
from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also note one or two
points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods
of treating some of them; for one of by no means the least difficulties which you
have at first to encounter is a peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed,
to all beginners, to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given
scene. There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is nearly always
these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it will be something which,
though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture, and in which, when he has
drawn it, he will have little pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil
genius of beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their associations; or
at least do not draw them because you love them; but merely when you cannot get
anything else to draw. If you try to draw places that you love, you are sure to be
always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks,
greenhouses, and quickset hedges; besides that you will be continually led into
some endeavor to make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to
your progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the
drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it is done. All you
have to care about is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possible.
So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlor, or in your own, and
have nothing else to do, you may draw anything that is there, for practice; even
the fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it is for practice, and not
because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish
to please your friend by drawing her room.
121. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am addressing
you as a beginner—a time may come when your work will be precious to
everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know that it is worth
something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know that it is so). If any one
asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a couple of cakes of color and a
piece of Bristol board: those materials are, for the present, of more value in that
form than if you had spread the one over the other.
The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will much protect
you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings pretty.

122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if complicated in
form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and
fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it comes in
your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things
that do not shine.
(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw, and very
ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as
possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a
newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than an old empty coal-barge,
lying ashore at low tide: in general, everything that you think very ugly will be
good for you to draw.
(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen through
another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before your chosen cottage,
or between you and the turn of the river; its near branches all entangled with the
distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this; and though, when the tree is
there, you must not imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet
always look for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a thin tree in front
of it, rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse,
or confusion of intricate stems.
(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps nothing in the
whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the
ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted over it in
independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle line.
Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that the subject
overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that you should think you
had entirely mastered it. But at first, and even for some time, you must be
prepared for very discomfortable failure; which, nevertheless, will not be without
some wholesome result.
123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may, perhaps,
help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all banks are beautiful things,
and will reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in a lowland
country, you must look for places where the ground is broken to the river's edges,
with decayed posts, or roots of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such
things within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams,

etc. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful bits of
broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high chalk cliffs. In woods,
one or two trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at once the richest and
easiest kind of study: a not very thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter,
with ivy running up it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always beautiful, when
drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of pattern cottages, or villas
with Ionic and Doric porticoes. Any old English village, or cluster of farmhouses,
drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely;
much more a French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to
English as Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is
incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have
recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression
of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines.
In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden is in
every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of cabbages, and
hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses; you
cannot have better practice, nor be kept by anything in purer thoughts.
Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and study them
ripple by ripple.
Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a peculiar
meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old manor-houses are
often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I do
not think there is a single cathedral in England from which it is possible to obtain
one subject for an impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility,
or jarring vergerism about them.
125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is redundance of
subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece of rounded rock, with its
variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its complete roundings, and all the
patterns of the lichen in true local color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your
thinking of sketching among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of
distant hills will be comparatively easy.
126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these subjects as
may be accessible to you, you will certainly find difficulties arising which will
make you wish more than ever for a master's help: these difficulties will vary

according to the character of your own mind (one question occurring to one
person, and one to another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it
would make this too large a book if I answered all that I can anticipate; you must
be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her own time, interpret to
you much for herself; that farther experience on your own part will make some
difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by the occasional
observation of such artists' work as may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will
not close this letter without a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you
after you are somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing of
vegetation, water, and skies.
127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said enough
about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and tried to draw them
frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by this time to hear a
little more of them. You will also recollect that we left our question, respecting the
mode of expressing intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it
so because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing them for
yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle considerations as to method in
drawing them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have found out two principal
things, universal facts, about leaves; namely, that they always, in the main
tendencies of their lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to
the law of radiation, already referred to;[29] and the second, that this divergence is
never formal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. I must now
press both these facts on your attention a little farther.
128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of the
works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with the passages
referring to them in Modern Painters, in which they are highly praised. They are
deservedly praised, for they are the only works by a modern[30] draughtsman
which express in any wise the energy of trees, and the laws of growth, of which
we have been speaking. There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of
general character, obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in
power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you must not take even
Harding for a model, though you may use his works for occasional reference; and
if you can afford to buy his Lessons on Trees,[31] it will be serviceable to you in
various ways, and will at present help me to explain the point under consideration.
And it is well that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,

because their great influence on young students renders it desirable that their real
character should be thoroughly understood.
129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on Trees, a pretty wood-
cut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and in a very interesting
arrangement of lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy of Mr. Harding, tending too much
to make his pupil, at starting, think everything depends on black dots; still, the
main lines are good, and very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we
come to the point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
that he may practice from them till his hand gets into the habit of arranging lines
freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be universal in
application; "all outlines expressive of foliage," he says, "are but modifications of
them." They consist of groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23 below;
and the characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner ends
to a common center;" that "their ends terminate in [are inclosed by] ovoid curves;"
and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
130. Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of
radiation and inclosure, the main principle of this method
of execution confirms, in a very interesting way, our
conclusions respecting foliage composition. The reason of
the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be most
Fig. 23. emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one
end of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at
the other: but ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and, as Harding
uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as any mere habit of
touch can express. But, unfortunately, there is another law of tree growth, quite as
fixed as the law of radiation, which this and all other conventional modes of
execution wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency
shall be carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a touch is
monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the leaf individually being just as
essential a truth, as its unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group.
131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster may be,
nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one than b in Fig. 9,
p. 47, nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut, shedding its
leaves, Fig. 24; but in either of them, even the general reader, unpracticed in any
of the previously recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines

mixed with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if he
takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will find that neither
play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor any
learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a
resemblance of it; but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which
makes the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close to
you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw the entire
outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever so little a way
off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf here, and an edge there; some
of the surfaces will be confused by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if
you look carefully through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you
really can see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig. 9 nor
Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as Fig. 25.[32]

Fig. 24.

Fig. 25.

132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these three
laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is, first, the organic unity;
the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism, or concurrent action, which rules the
masses of herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the
individual liberty of the members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the
mystery under which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This is the first
distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your common sketcher or bad
painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks; he cannot
see the lines of action or growth; he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not
perceiving the sweeps of associated curves which the real clouds are following as
they fly; and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen, or of the
lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is the main delight of the
great draughtsman to trace these laws of government; and his tendency to error is
always in the exaggeration of their authority rather than in its denial.
133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and liberty of the
separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great masters separate themselves
finally from the inferior ones; for if the men of inferior genius ever express law at
all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception
of the sweep of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or
mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has great
feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail gives nothing
but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species of tree, much less the
variety of its leafage, being ever discernible. Now, although both these

expressions of government and individuality are essential to masterly work, the
individuality is the more essential, and the more difficult of attainment; and,
therefore, that attainment separates the great masters finally from the inferior ones.
It is the more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a lamentable and
unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no government, actuated by no
ruling principle, and associated by no common affection: but it would be a more
lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into
assimilation as to have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in
aim, no dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in which
no man could help another, since none would be feebler than himself; no man
admire another, since none would be stronger than himself; no man be grateful to
another, since by none he could be relieved; no man reverence another, since by
none he could be instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable
of a stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would walk
as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting multiplication,
gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness. Therefore it is that
perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of form are more essential to
them even than their being subdued by some great gathering law: the law is
needful to them for their perfection and their power, but the difference is needful
to them for their life.
134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you enjoy the pursuit of
analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning them, you
may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters in a piece of
painting by merely considering what are the noble characters of man in his
association with his fellows. What grace of manner and refinement of habit are in
society, grace of line and refinement of form are in the association of visible
objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or
quaintness in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. What
power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve human souls; that power
precisely in the same relative degree, play and laxity of line have to strengthen or
refresh the expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can
conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of goodness and
greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its color, the severity of its
forms, and the symmetry of its masses.

135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too far. They
cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete, that the farther you
pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find them.
They will not fail you in one particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no
moral vice, no moral virtue, which has not its precise prototype in the art of
painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the
art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness, and quietness, feebleness
and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all other such habits, and
every conceivable modification and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with
mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and color; and not merely these
definable vices and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character
and passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the innocent
or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the investigation
of the higher branches of composition, matters which it would be quite useless to
treat of in this book; and I only allude to them here, in order that you may
understand how the utmost noblenesses of art are concerned in this minute work,
to which I have set you in your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest
attention, and the most noble execution, that it is possible to express these
varieties of individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
137. Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of
Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly observes, with more truth than any
other work of the kind, the great laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,—and
observe, not in a minor, but in the principal point,—because it cannot rightly
render any one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not from
mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true drawing of detail
being for evermore impossible to a hand which has contracted a habit of
execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf, and stops, and says calmly,—That
leaf is of such and such a character; I will give him a friend who will entirely suit
him: then he considers what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he
draws his friend. This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is
great—one of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
is always gone through; no touch or form is ever added to another by a good
painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when the hand has
got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf No. 2; you cannot stop, your hand is as

a horse with the bit in its teeth; or rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out
leaves to order and pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however
painfully; make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders; otherwise it is not
you who are the master, but your fingers. You may therefore study Harding's
drawing, and take pleasure in it;[33] and you may properly admire the dexterity
which applies the habit of the hand so well, and produces results on the whole so
satisfactory: but you must never copy it; otherwise your progress will be at once
arrested. The utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's
manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain his
dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides drawing. You
would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what truly great work
was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and complete study of facts, you will
gradually come to understand the one and love the other more and more, whether
you can draw well yourself or not.
138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above stated, that of
mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen perfectly, but only by
fragments, and under various conditions of obscurity.[34] This last fact renders the
visible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human nature. We have,
observe, first, Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least
essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every serrated point
and shining vein which escapes or deceives our sight among the forest leaves,
how little we may hope to discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents and veins of
the human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's actions or spirits,
which we at first think we understand, a closer and more loving watchfulness
would show to be full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.

Fig. 26.

139. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at all until
you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try always when you are
sketching any object with a view to completion in light and shade, to draw only
those parts of it which you really see definitely; preparing for the after
development of the forms by chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches
for a future arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the
etchings of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples, and so peculiar. The
character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains that Turner
has taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with the greatest
possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is etched as in Fig. 26. The
work looks at first like a scholar's instead of a master's; but when the light and
shade are added, every touch falls into its place, and a perfect expression of grace

and complexity results. Nay, even before the light and shade are added, you ought
to be able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the
expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are more true
than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before Turner's time,
had been employed, even by the best masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 27 is
sufficiently characteristic of the manner of the old wood-cuts after Titian; in
which, you see, the leaves are too much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and
the boughs too completely seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in
aspect, owing to the want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this
somewhat conventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and
their exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their conventionalism from
degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and other derivative masters, the
conventionalism prevails everywhere, and sinks gradually into scrawled work,
like Fig. 28, about the worst which it is possible to get into the habit of using,
though an ignorant person might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore
better than Fig. 26. Note also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that
a bough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally somewhere, as
in Fig. 26, just above the foliage. Very often the muscular action which is to be
expressed by the line runs into the middle of the branch, and the actual outline of
the branch at that place may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the
future shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance, will be
indicated.

Fig. 27.

140. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In the
minds of our ordinary water-color artists a distant tree seems only to be conceived

as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving cool color
to the landscape, but differing no wise, in texture, from the blots of other shapes
which these painters use to express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you
have drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed
more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their softness of surface.
A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of color, but a more or less globular mass
of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find,
practically, this lovely softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters
to reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface,
but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form and growth as are
only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife passed lightly over this
careful drawing will do a good deal; but you must accustom yourself, from the
beginning, to aim much at this softness in the lines of the drawing itself, by
crossing them delicately, and more or less effacing and confusing the edges. You
must invent, according to the character of tree, various modes of execution
adapted to express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in your
mind, and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the intention of Nature
that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of her foliage should be felt, even at
the far distance, in the most distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat
surfaces of rocks or buildings.

Fig. 28.

141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of
representing water, of which important feature of landscape I have hardly said
anything yet.
Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose
horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In paintings, white
dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.
But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of calm
water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects
above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing them
here and there as you see the breeze or current disturb them, you will get the effect
of the water; but if you have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient
will give you a true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate
drawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the least motion
on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken, while
the vertical ones will remain decisive, and the oblique ones decisive in proportion
to their steepness.
142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you need to be
told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the surface, as when a bird
swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or other
obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the curves of these lines true; the whole
value of your careful drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a
single false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if
you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and delicacy: if
your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to give
you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking pains, work the softer reflections,
where they are drawn out by motion in the water, with touches as nearly
horizontal as may be; but when you are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of
the images with vertical lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated
reflection is with horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the
descending shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always
when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the vertical
touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become shaken, and must be
drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.

143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest possible
importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their perspective is, if not
more subtle, at least more stringent than that of any other lines in Nature. It will
not be detected by the general observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the
sweep of a cloud, or the perspective of a building;[36] but every intelligent
spectator will feel the difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or
shingle, and a false one. Absolutely right, in difficult river perspectives seen from
heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and observe, there is NO
rule for them. To develop the curve mathematically would require a knowledge of
the exact quantity of water in the river, the shape of its bed, and the hardness of
the rock or shore; and even with these data, the problem would be one which no
mathematician could solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it;
nothing else.
144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences
between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if
you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects
above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the
water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy.
Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid
objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the
true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror, lay it
horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and draw them and
their reflections; moving them about, and watching how their reflections alter, and
chiefly how their reflected colors and shades differ from their own colors and
shades, by being brought into other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a
more important character in water-painting than mere difference in form.
145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows on
the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections; and in a clear
mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of effect resulting from the
shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling with the aspect of the stones
themselves seen through the water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on
the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out
everything that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted always by
refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone shows straight parallel lines
above the water, you may be sure they will be bent where they enter it; then the

reflection of the part of the stone above the water crosses and interferes with the
part that is seen through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and
wherever the reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and vice
versâ. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where that
shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and where the sunshine falls, you
will see more of the surface of the water, and of any dust or motes that may be
floating on it: but whether you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of
the water, or of the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the
eye. The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects through it;
the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you see the reflection of
objects above it. Hence the color of a given space of surface in a stream will
entirely change while you stand still in the same spot, merely as you stoop or raise
your head; and thus the colors with which water is painted are an indication of the
position of the spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the
shores. The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is when
the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich reddish-orange and
black, and the water is seen at an angle which exactly divides the visible colors
between those of the stones and that of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue.
The resulting purple, obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red,
broken by the play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably
lovely.
146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong color in
the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena
are doubly involved; for the darker reflections now become of the color of the
water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance, at Venice, is never black,
but pure dark green. And, farther, the color of the water itself is of three kinds:
one, seen on the surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where the
waves let light through them, at their edges; and the third, shown as a change of
color on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a
white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or violet-
colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure emerald green by transmitted
sunshine through its edges. With all this, however, you are not much concerned at
present, but I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we have afterwards to say
about color, and partly that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence,
[38] and study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.[39] Not but that much
may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what you mean by
them, as you will see by many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at

the National Gallery; but you must have painted water many and many a day—
yes, and all day long—before you can hope to do anything like those.

147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the clouds, I
say nothing special about ground.[40] But there is too much to be said about that to
admit of my saying it here. You will find the principal laws of its structure
examined at length in the fourth volume of Modern Painters; and if you can get
that volume, and copy carefully Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with
great pains, it will give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in irregular
ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of the perspective
diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and much also by shadows. If
you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks on any undulating ground with
entire carefulness, you will be surprised to find how much they explain of the
form and distance of the earth on which they fall.
148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity about sky
subject, as distinguished from earth subject;—that the clouds, not being much
liable to man's interference, are always beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of
this in any other features of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain
scene especially depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or
the landlord quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a special
purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most delicate grasses, is
always that which the farmer plows or builds upon. But the clouds, though we can
hide them with smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be quarried nor built
over, and they are always therefore gloriously arranged; so gloriously, that unless
you have notable powers of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of
any sky that interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united
influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn together in a
marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place, or fails of
its part in the choir: and if you are not able to recollect (which in the case of a
complicated sky it is impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all
the clouds at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will
not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before another.
149. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching at the
utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand
or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as transparent,

or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving afterwards such completion to the parts
as your recollection will enable you to do. This, however, only when the sky is
interesting from its general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky,
but a single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite
steady enough to let you mark out his principal masses; and one or two white or
crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without serious change for as
long. And in order to be the readier in drawing them, practice occasionally
drawing lumps of cotton, which will teach you better than any other stable thing
the kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a
few genuine studies of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that
ordinary artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding the
clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones tied up in a
sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or
flat lights in the sky; and think they have done enough in leaving a little white
paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an irregular space out with the sponge.
Now clouds are not as solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither
spongy nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more drifted into form than
they are carved into form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by
absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain limits; hence their angular and fantastic
outlines, as different from a swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one
hand, as from that of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all
is, that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms, especially
considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn also at greater
disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the force of light in clouds being
wholly unattainable by art; so that if we put shade enough to express their form as
positively as it is expressed in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on
the dark sides. Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and there; one
of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much the memorandum so obtained,
as the lesson you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines. You will
always find yourself at a loss to see where the outline really is; and when drawn it
will always look hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too
square, however often you alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the other
and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean between roundness
and squareness in all its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only of
the cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be

outlined;—they can only be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen.
Firmly developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and
may be drawn with decision. When you have thus accustomed yourself a little to
the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light and shade, just as
carefully as you do that of other things, looking exclusively for examples of
treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems, and to the Liber
Studiorum, unless you have access to some examples of Turner's own work. No
other artist ever yet drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are
conventional. The clouds in the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and "Calais
Pier," are among the best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the
vignettes to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.
151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the present, let
our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to master the contents of my
next letter. If you have any real talent for drawing, you will take delight in the
discoveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I have already proposed will
lead you into, among the fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the whole, will your
progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the subjects of the following
letter at greater length, and in a separate work addressed to more advanced
students; but as there are one or two things to be said on composition which may
set the young artist's mind somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defense
from the urgency of ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter
here; trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book with talk not
altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
Faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[23] It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."

[24] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Dürer in their strength, that is to say, in their
imagination or power of design. But you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.

[25] The following are the most desirable plates:—

Grande Chartreuse. Calais Pier.
Æsacus and Hesperie. Pembury Mill.

Cephalus and Procris. Little Devil's Bridge.
Source of Arveron. River Wye (not Wye and Severn).
Ben Arthur. Holy Island.
Watermill. Clyde.
Hindhead Hill. Lauffenburg.
Hedging and Ditching. Blair Athol.
Dumblane Abbey. Alps from Grenoble.
Morpeth. Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, trees, and castle on the right.)

If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable, except only the twelve following,
which are quite useless:—

1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
2. Interior of church.
3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a pipe.
4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen through them.
6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
8. Rivaulx Abbey.
9. Wye and Severn.
10. Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.
11. Martello Towers.
12. Calm.

It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original etchings; if you should, it will be a
drawing-master in itself alone, for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very
careful one; only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane were not etched by Turner; and the
etchings of those three are not good for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how Turner,
apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates up himself,
and either conquered or brought into use the bad etching by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was,
however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him. The finest Turner etching is of an
aqueduct with a stork standing in a mountain stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to have been so fond of these plates that
he kept retouching and finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via Mala is certainly,
in the state in which Turner left it, the finest of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that of
the aqueduct. Figure 20, above, is part of another fine unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the

published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, Æsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing
at a Cistern; the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth, are
also very desirable.

[26] You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.

[27] The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be specified.

[28] You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a Liber print as well.

[29] See the closing letter in this volume.

[30] [In 1857.]

[31] If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely supposition, considering their popularity,)
and cannot meet with the one in question, the diagrams given here will enable you to understand all that is
needful for our purposes.

[32] I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being impossible to express the refinements
of shade in distant foliage in a wood-cut.

[33] His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and the Forest, and his various lessons on
foliage, possess greater merit than the more ambitious engravings in his Principles and Practice of Art. There
are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work.

[34] On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look at the fourth chapter of the fourth volume
of Modern Painters.

[35] See Note 3 in Appendix I.

[36] The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of buildings is of little consequence; but he
will find it so ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface.

[37] See Note 4 in Appendix I.

[38] See Note 5 in Appendix I.

[39] It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water, so as to make the liquid definitely
blue: fill a large white basin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it; walnut
shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc. Then study the effects of the reflections, and of the stems of the
flowers or submerged portions of the floating objects, as they appear through the blue liquid; noting
especially how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections clearly; and how,
as you raise your head, you lose the reflections, and see the submerged stems clearly.

[40] Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of Prout in the Appendix.

LETTER III.

ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.

152. My dear Reader,—If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done all
that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much subdued remonstrance,
and some serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when you were led by the
course of your study to observe closely such things as are beautiful in color, you
had not longed to paint them, and felt considerable difficulty in complying with
your restriction to the use of black, or blue, or gray. You ought to love color, and
to think nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it; and if you really do love it,
for its own sake, and are not merely desirous to color because you think painting a
finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may color well. Nevertheless,
you need not hope ever to produce anything more than pleasant helps to memory,
or useful and suggestive sketches in color, unless you mean to be wholly an artist.
You may, in the time which other vocations leave at your disposal, produce
finished, beautiful, and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well,
requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is
increased—not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more—by the
addition of color to your work. For the chances are more than a thousand to one
against your being right both in form and color with a given touch: it is difficult
enough to be right in form, if you attend to that only; but when you have to attend,
at the same moment, to a much more subtle thing than the form, the difficulty is
strangely increased,—and multiplied almost to infinity by this great fact, that,
while form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it
is either right or wrong, color is wholly relative. Every hue throughout your work
is altered by every touch that you add in other places; so that what was warm a
minute ago, becomes cold when you have put a hotter color in another place, and
what was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant as you set other colors
beside it; so that every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time,
but with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is afterwards to
be done being previously considered. You may easily understand that, this being
so, nothing but the devotion of life, and great genius besides, can make a colorist.
153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings of any value,
you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of great use to other people, by
occasionally sketching with a view to color only; and preserving distinct

statements of certain color facts—as that the harvest moon at rising was of such
and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such and such a rosy gray; that the
mountains at evening were in truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's
side were indeed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have an eye
for color; but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy color.
154. And, though of course you should always give as much form to your
subject as your attention to its color will admit of, remember that the whole value
of what you are about depends, in a colored sketch, on the color merely. If the
color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and sing false
notes, it does not matter how true the words are. If you sing at all, you must sing
sweetly; and if you color at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, rather
than the slightest part of the color: just as, if you felt yourself in danger of a false
note, you would give up the word, and sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that
so you could save the note. Never mind though your houses are all tumbling
down,—though your clouds are mere blots, and your trees mere knobs, and your
sun and moon like crooked sixpences,—so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun
or moon, are of the right colors. Of course, the discipline you have gone through
will enable you to hint something of form, even in the fastest sweep of the brush;
but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the least, when you begin to
make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the subject, draw it in black
and white. If you want its color, take its color, and be sure you have it, and not a
spurious, treacherous, half-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colors
all wrong, and the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit of
considering the colored work merely as supplementary to your other studies;
making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a colored
memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in hue, and entirely
minding its own business. This principle, however, bears chiefly on large and
distant subjects: in foregrounds and near studies, the color cannot be had without a
good deal of definition of form. For if you do not map the mosses on the stones
accurately, you will not have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss
pattern, and then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies the
work much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied, when necessary,
to fail of all but that.
155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting coloring, which is
the beginning and end of a painter's craft, I should need to make this a work in
three volumes instead of three letters, and to illustrate it in the costliest way. I only
hope, at present, to set you pleasantly and profitably to work, leaving you, within

the tethering of certain leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from
the works of art of which every year brings a greater number within your reach;—
and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists will be more ready to
give kindly, and better able to give wisely.
156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not moist colors: grind a
sufficient quantity of each on your palette every morning, keeping a separate
plate, large and deep, for colors to be used in broad washes, and wash both plate
and palette every evening, so as to be able always to get good and pure color when
you need it; and force yourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colors.
The two best colorists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[41] afford us, I am
sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice. Turner was, and
Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men can well be; but the result of
this was, with Turner, that the colors have altered in all his pictures, and in many
of his drawings; and the result of it with Rossetti is, that though his colors are
safe, he has sometimes to throw aside work that was half done, and begin over
again. William Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice; so, I
believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the leading Pre-Raphaelites,
Rossetti only excepted. And there can be no doubt about the goodness of the
advice, if it were only for this reason, that the more particular you are about your
colors the more you will get into a deliberate and methodical habit in using them,
and all true speed in coloring comes of this deliberation.
157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colors in order to pale
them, instead of a quantity of water. You will thus be able to shape your masses
more quietly, and play the colors about with more ease; they will not damp your
paper so much, and you will be able to go on continually, and lay forms of passing
cloud and other fugitive or delicately shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except
by time.
158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render them opaque,
constitutes body-color drawing as opposed to transparent-color drawing, and you
will, perhaps, have it often said to you that this body-color is "illegitimate." It is
just as legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling is concerned, the same
process, only without its uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its
inconvenience; for oil will not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same
effects of atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said that the body-
color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, think so yourself, be yet
assured of this, that though certain effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are
not to be reached without transparent color, those glows and glooms are not the

noblest aim of art. After many years' study of the various results of fresco and oil
painting in Italy, and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am now
entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art must be done
in dead color. The habit of depending on varnish or on lucid tints for transparency,
makes the painter comparatively lose sight of the nobler translucence which is
obtained by breaking various colors amidst each other: and even when, as by
Correggio, exquisite play of hue is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight
in the depth almost always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro; it
leads him to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,[42] and to enjoy, in
general, quality of color more than grandeur of composition, and confined light
rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest thoughts of the greatest men
have always, so far as I remember, been reached in dead color, and the noblest oil
pictures of Tintoret and Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.
159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little chalky and
coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch, infinitely liker Nature than transparent
color: the bloom and mist of distance are accurately and instantly represented by
the film of opaque blue (quite accurately, I think, by nothing else); and for ground,
rocks, and buildings, the earthy and solid surface is, of course, always truer than
the most finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can ever be.
160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds of color
are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to alter at your pleasure,
or blunder at your ease. There is no vehicle or method of color which admits of
alteration or repentance; you must be right at once, or never; and you might as
well hope to catch a rifle bullet in your hand, and put it straight, when it was going
wrong, as to recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color in oil, water,
or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by Mulready: "Know
what you have to do." The process may be a long one, perhaps: you may have to
ground with one color; to touch it with fragments of a second; to crumble a third
into the interstices; a fourth into the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole
with a fifth; and to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or
ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must go straight through them
knowingly and foreseeingly all the way; and if you get the thing once wrong, there
is no hope for you but in washing or scraping boldly down to the white ground,
and beginning again.
161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all this, more than any
other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling into the pestilent habit
of sponging to get texture; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-color

school of art. There are sometimes places in which a skillful artist will roughen his
paper a little to get certain conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could
otherwise; and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will, in the midst of
transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky body-color in representing
the surfaces of rocks or building. But artifices of this kind are always treacherous
in a tyro's hands, tempting him to trust in them: and you had better always work
on white or gray paper as smooth as silk;[43] and never disturb the surface of your
color or paper, except finally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are using
transparent colors.
162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach you the use of color
better than working with merely transparent tints; but this is not because the
process is an easier one, but because it is a more complete one, and also because it
involves some working with transparent tints in the best way. You are not to think
that because you use body-color you may make any kind of mess that you like,
and yet get out of it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of your
material, which enable you most nearly to imitate the processes of Nature. Thus,
suppose you have a red rocky cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You
paint your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a tint (and here
is a great part of the skill needed) that when it is laid over the red, in the thickness
required for the effect of the mist, the warm rock-color showing through the blue
cloud-color, may bring it to exactly the hue you want (your upper tint, therefore,
must be mixed colder than you want it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike
it, getting the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done, with exquisite
quality of color, from the warm tint's showing through and between the particles
of the other. When it is dry, you may add a little color to retouch the edges where
they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want roundness, or put another
tone over the whole: but you can take none away. If you touch or disturb the
surface, or by any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors together, all
is lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from the ground again if you like, or
throw it into the fire if you like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.[44]

163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and opaque color has,
however, led us a little beyond the point where we should have begun; we must go
back to our palette, if you please. Get a cake of each of the hard colors named in
the note below[45] and try experiments on their simple combinations, by mixing
each color with every other. If you like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare
a squared piece of pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top and

side; the mixed tints being given at the intersections, thus (the letters standing for
colors):

b c d e f etc.
aab ac ad ae af
b— bc bd be bf
c— — cd ce cf
d— — — de df
e— — — — ef
etc.

This will give you some general notion of the characters of mixed tints of two
colors only, and it is better in practice to confine yourself as much as possible to
these, and to get more complicated colors, either by putting the third over the first
blended tint, or by putting the third into its interstices. Nothing but watchful
practice will teach you the effects that colors have on each other when thus put
over, or beside, each other.
164. When you have got a little used to the principal combinations, place
yourself at a window which the sun does not shine in at, commanding some
simple piece of landscape: outline this landscape roughly; then take a piece of
white cardboard, cut out a hole in it about the size of a large pea; and supposing R
is the room, a d the window, and you are sitting at a, Fig. 29, hold this cardboard a
little outside of the window, upright, and in the direction b d, parallel to the side of
the window, or a little turned, so as to catch more light, as at a d, never turned as
at c d, or the paper will be dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit,
through the circular hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you
can, mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a touch
of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark tree color," "hill
color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash the tint away from beside the
opening, and the cardboard will be ready to match another piece of the landscape.
[46] When you have got the colors of the principal masses thus indicated, lay on a
piece of each in your sketch in its right place, and then proceed to complete the
sketch in harmony with them, by your eye.

Fig. 29.

165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be much struck by two
things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in sunlighted things;
and the second, that among the tints which you can imitate, those which you
thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality the lightest. Darkness
of objects is estimated by us, under ordinary circumstances, much more by
knowledge than by sight; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be
thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us; because we know by
experience that the peculiar color they exhibit, at that distance, is the sign of
darkness of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the near oak
will be found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar, perhaps, pale gray-
purple. The quantity of purple and gray in Nature is, by the way, another
somewhat surprising subject of discovery.
166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may proceed to fill
up your sketch; in doing which observe these following particulars:
(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the aperture in the paper
brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted grass, etc. Leave these portions, for the
present, white; and proceed with the parts of which you can match the tints.
(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must have observed how
many changes of hue took place over small spaces. In filling up your work, try to
educate your eye to perceive these differences of hue without the help of the
cardboard, and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as separate colors,
preparing each carefully on your palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of

colored cloth, cut out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch; so that the
fault of your work may be, not a slurred or misty look, but a patched bed-cover
look, as if it had all been cut out with scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk
of a birch tree, there will be probably white high lights, then a pale rosy gray
round them on the light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper gray on the dark
side, varied by reflected colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and brown
spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the high lights and for the
spots of moss, and not touching the dark side. Then lay the gray for the dark side,
fitting it well up to the rosy gray of the light, leaving also in this darker gray the
white paper in the places for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss
colors separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left for it. Not one
grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights, must be visible when
the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass, so cunningly must you fit the
edges to each other. Finally, take your background colors, and put them on each
side of the tree trunk, fitting them carefully to its edge.
167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had not learned to
draw first, and could not now draw a good outline for the stem, much less
terminate a color mass in the outline you wanted?
Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first begin to paint in
this way, and before you can modify it, as I shall tell you presently how; but never
mind; it is of the greatest possible importance that you should practice this
separate laying on of the hues, for all good coloring finally depends on it. It is,
indeed, often necessary, and sometimes desirable, to lay one color and form boldly
over another: thus, in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through the interstices of the
leaves; and the great Venetians constantly lay their blue ground first, and then,
having let it dry, strike the golden brown over it in the form of the leaf, leaving the
under blue to shine through the gold, and subdue it to the olive-green they want.
But in the most precious and perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked
round it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is
equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the color. Either your
ground must be laid firmly first, and then your upper color struck upon it in
perfect form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or else the two colors must be
individually put in their places, and led up to each other till they meet at their
appointed border, equally, thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see,
involves absolute decision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try
this way and that with your color, it is all over with it and with you. You will

continually see bad copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by daubing their
colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and softening: when every touch and
every added hue only lead them farther into chaos. There is a dog between two
children in a Veronese in the Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment.
He has a dark ground behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then
when it was dry, or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with
some half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and forever. Had one
line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been wrong forever; no retouching
could have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some background, and then
some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then the hair; work for hours at it,
expecting it always to come right to-morrow—"when it is finished." They may
work for centuries at it, and they will never do it. If they can do it with Veronese's
allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the dark background,
well; if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right, and get
true answer from him—on Launce's conditions: "If he say 'ay,' it will; if he say
'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will."
168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure that however large it
may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. No color exists in Nature under
ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not see this, it is the fault of
your inexperience: you will see it in due time, if you practice enough. But in
general you may see it at once. In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray must
be gradated by the roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the
shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by adding water,
or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you will do at pleasure,
according to the texture you wish to produce), you must, in every tint you lay on,
make it a little paler at one part than another, and get an even gradation between
the two depths. This is very like laying down a formal law or recipe for you; but
you will find it is merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically
impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of color, but it is so supremely
improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking yourself invariably,
when you are going to copy a tint—not "Is that gradated?" but "Which way is that
gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, you will be able
to answer decisively after a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so
subtle that you did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
color may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one part of it is not
darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for it is not merely because the natural fact is
so, that your color should be gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the
color itself depends more on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is

to colors just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful by the pure
instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types, expressing the law of
gradual change and progress in the human soul itself. What the difference is in
mere beauty between a gradated and ungradated color, may be seen easily by
laying an even tint of rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The
victorious beauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on
the delicacy and quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being either less
rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less tender, being patched
and veined instead of flushed.
169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that color should be gradated
by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another. Generally color
changes as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also purer at
one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least follow that the darkest spots
should be the purest; still less so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often
the two gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction
from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to dullness,
but there will almost always be both of them, however reconciled; and you must
never be satisfied with a piece of color until you have got both: that is to say,
every piece of blue that you lay on must be quite blue only at some given spot, nor
that a large spot; and must be gradated from that into less pure blue,—grayish
blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue,—over all the rest of the space it occupies.
And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the color is wet, mix with
it the color which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more and a little more;
or else, when the color is quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another color over it,
leaving only a point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints on in
small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of each of these
methods I have something to tell you separately; but that is distinct from the
subject of gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing upon you
the preëminent necessity of introducing it everywhere. I have profound dislike of
anything like habit of hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to
encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper with color, without
securing a gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or
seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of color as large as a grain of
wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice, that brilliancy of hue, and vigor
of light, and even the aspect of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on
this character alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from
equality of color than from nature of color. Give me some mud off a city crossing,
some ocher out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will

paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my mud, and subdue
my dust: but though you had the red of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for
the light, and amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep
the masses of those colors unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth.
170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation and other characters
are to be obtained:
A. Mixing while the color is wet.
You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in separate
patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you lay them on: but the
separate masses are to be laid, when colors distinctly oppose each other at a given
limit; the hues to be mixed, when they palpitate one through the other, or fade one
into the other. It is better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint
the dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in reality, the two
tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light, gradually one into the other;
and, after being laid separately on, will need some farther touching to harmonize
them: but they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the
trunk, and it is easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas
it often happens that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one being
continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it: blue and green
often do so in water; blue and gray, or purple and scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of
such instances the most beautiful and truthful results may be obtained by laying
one color into the other while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or
blending it with the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color;
only observe, never mix in this way two mixtures; let the color you lay into the
other be always a simple, not a compound tint.
171. B. Laying one color over another.
If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is quite dry, strike a little
very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much more brilliant red than
by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark color first, and
strike a little blue or white body-color lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful
gray than by mixing the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you trust much to
them: they are apt to make you think too much of quality of color. I should like
you to depend on little more than the dead colors, simply laid on, only observe
always this, that the less color you do the work with, the better it will always be:

[47] so that if you had laid a red color, and you want a purple one above, do not
mix the purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red, but
take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over the red, so as to let
the red be seen through, and thus produce the required purple; and if you want a
green hue over a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a little
yellow, and so on, always bringing the under color into service as far as you
possibly can. If, however, the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have
to lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must either remove
the required parts of the under color daintily first with your knife, or with water;
or else, lay solid white over it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the
white with the upper color. This is better, in general, than laying the upper color
itself so thick as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a transparent color,
you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees over
blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places left for them in laying the
blue, it is better to lay them first in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and
ocher, than to mix the sienna and white; though, of course, the process is longer
and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very
delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then mix the warm color thick
at once, and so use it: and this is often necessary for delicate grasses, and such
other fine threads of light in foreground work.
172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over another.
This is the most important of all processes in good modern[48] oil and water-
color painting, but you need not hope to attain very great skill in it. To do it well is
very laborious, and requires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be
acquired by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage in noting the
following points:
173. (a.) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rippled water, or broken
clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of rather dry color,
with other colors afterwards put cunningly into the interstices. The more you
practice this, when the subject evidently calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy
the higher qualities of color. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the
principle of separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of
color in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up minute
interstices of this kind, that if you want the color you fill them with to show
brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point of it, with a little white left beside
or round it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the color over the whole

interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they
show brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.
174. (b.) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed portions of another, it is,
in many cases, better to lay the uppermost color in rather vigorous small touches,
like finely chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two
reasons: the first, that the play of the two colors together is pleasant to the eye; the
second, that much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the
upper dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken
crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds they may indicate
the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the cloud masses; and in water, the
minor waves. All noble effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-color
drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colors, or retouching the lower
one with fine darker drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark
atmospheric effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for
passages of delicate atmospheric light.
175. (c.) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints by
interlaced touches of the pure colors out of which they are formed, and use the
process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious
effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society, in this
respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers;
not painting the flower completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and
painting the spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of lilies,
geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their position in the
flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful
to get the gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceolarias,
foxgloves, and the like; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots
themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never
get their richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first, the
universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon; secondly, that
Nature is just as economical of her fine colors as I have told you to be of yours.
You would think, by the way she paints, that her colors cost her something
enormous; she will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal turns
into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued,
even in the showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look
close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world at once,
only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it. And so with all her
colors. Sometimes I have really thought her miserliness intolerable: in a gentian,

for instance, the way she economizes her ultramarine down in the bell is a little
too bad.[49]

176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake of
students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments; but if you
mean to be a colorist, you must lay a tax on them yourself when you begin to use
true color; that is to say, you must use them little, and make of them much. There
is no better test of your color tones being good, than your having made the white
in your picture precious, and the black conspicuous.
177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering or brilliant:
it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage
with chalky dew; but when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely
delicious,—tender as well as bright,—like inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses
washed in milk. The eye ought to seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to
feel it as a space of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the
colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint, by
absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need it, and by
keeping the white itself subdued by gray, except at a few points of chief luster.
178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a point of
black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is too heavy in the
shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some color,—never black, nor
approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a luminous nature, and
the black should look strange among them; never occurring except in a black
object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses
of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully
used with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength,
becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator should notice
this gray neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on
account of it, the gold color and the white which it relieves. Of all the great
colorists Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His black is more
precious than most other people's crimson.
179. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make valuable;
you must give rare worth to every color you use; but the white and black ought to
separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colors should be
continually passing one into the other, being all evidently companions in the same
gay world; while the white, black, and neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof
in the midst of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple into

blue, and your blue into green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You
should, however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and this
especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work, and giving each
hue the highest value by opposition. All fine coloring, like fine drawing, is
delicate; and so delicate that if, at last, you see the color you are putting on, you
are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone,
by touches of color which individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one
atom of any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts
it.
180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are odd colors. You shall
look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you know what to call it.
You thought it was brown, presently you feel that it is red; next that there is,
somehow, yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to
copy it you will always find your color too warm or too cold—no color in the box
will seem to have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were laid at a
single touch with a single color.
181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general, if you cannot choose
and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If you need examples
of utterly harsh and horrible color, you may find plenty given in treatises upon
coloring, to illustrate the laws of harmony; and if you want to color beautifully,
color as best pleases yourself at quiet times, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as
if it were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the color may be
pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful. Look much at the morning and
evening sky, and much at simple flowers—dog-roses, wood-hyacinths, violets,
poppies, thistles, heather, and such like,—as Nature arranges them in the woods
and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you that two colors are "discordant,"
make a note of the two colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have
actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors
which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be felt, either of
them, in its full beauty without the other!—a peacock's neck, or a blue sky
through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through it, being precisely
the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you
have a good eye for colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts
purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral
gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general tones, and
then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and you will gradually
come to like what she does, and find out new and beautiful chords of color in her

work every day. If you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain
point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them
wrong. If color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it,
you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color, whenever
you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.
182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your state of
health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill you will not see
colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not choose them well: thus,
though not infallibly a test of character in individuals, color power is a great sign
of mental health in nations; when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their
coloring always gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by
affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it: numbers are
eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their lives received one
genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of Overbeck are
just like people who eat slate-pencil and chalk, and assure everybody that they are
nicer and purer than strawberries and plums.
183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help or
display form; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do so.

184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm colors"
(reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold colors" (blue and
gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that no
expression of distance in the world is so great as that of the gold and orange in
twilight sky. Colors, as such, are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance.
It is their quality (as depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint.
A blue bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch
farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always appear to be
beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is quite true that in certain
objects, blue is a sign of distance; but that is not because blue is a retiring color,
but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm color which has not
strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue is
no more, on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a retiring color,
because, when stones are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie the
browner they look; or than yellow is a retiring color, because, when objects are
seen through a London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they look. Neither
blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing
either nearness or distance: they express them only under the peculiar

circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, signs of
nearness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if
you put the orange a great way off, its color will not look so bright; but vivid
orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get the color of orange in a
cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because
the closer you look at them the more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a
sign of distance, because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray.
It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale color will more or less
express distance, and a powerful or dark color nearness; but even this is not
always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple near, and an
intense and dark purple far away; the rose color of sunset on snow is pale on the
snow at your feet, deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green of a
Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the
sunstreak six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong
light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense reflections, all its
colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint; while the distance, when it is in
shadow, may relieve the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue
green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and absurd to
expect any help from laws of "aërial perspective." Look for the natural effects,
and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and never alter a color
because it won't look in its right place. Put the color strong, if it be strong, though
far off; faint, if it be faint, though close to you. Why should you suppose that
Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She
certainly intends you always to enjoy her coloring, but she does not wish you
always to measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted
the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance in "aërial
perspective."
185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some claims
to be considered a constant one: namely, that dullness and heaviness of color are
more or less indicative of nearness. All distant color is pure color: it may not be
bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light
coming between us and any earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it;
hence a bad colorist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do not of
course mean that you are to use bad colors in your foreground by way of making
it come forward; but only that a failure in color, there, will not put it out of its
place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once do away with its
remoteness; your dull-colored foreground will still be a foreground, though ill-

painted; but your ill-painted distance will not be merely a dull distance,—it will
be no distance at all.
186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to color petulantly
or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, if you attend properly to your coloring,
to get anything like the quantity of form you could in a chiaroscuro sketch;
nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush at your work, nor do it lazily, you may
always get enough form to be satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed
in quietness over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference
between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you
determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have, and, when
it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into the form
required; and then, after it is dry, consider thoroughly what touches are needed to
complete it, before laying one of them on; you will be surprised to find how
masterly the work will soon look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered
sketch. In no process that I know of—least of all in sketching—can time be really
gained by precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of
ways; for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by an
intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colors. You may often make a simple
flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a complicated piece of subject
without a single retouch. The two Swiss cottages, for instance, with their
balconies, and glittering windows, and general character of shingly eaves, are
expressed in Fig. 30 with one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines of
it; all of which you ought to be able to lay on without more than thrice dipping
your brush, and without a single touch after the tint is dry.

Fig. 30.

187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations tell you more, I must
leave you to follow out the subject for yourself, with such help as you may receive
from the water-color drawings accessible to you; or from any of the little treatises
on their art which have been published lately by our water-color painters.[52] But
do not trust much to works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them as
to mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a useful artifice or process
explained; but nearly all such books are written only to help idle amateurs to a
meretricious skill, and they are full of precepts and principles which may, for the
most part, be interpreted by their precise negatives, and then acted upon with
advantage. Most of them praise boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a
beginner is caution;—advise velocity, when the first condition of success is
deliberation;—and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of power
must be laid in knowledge of speciality.

188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you respecting that
dangerous nobleness of consummate art,—Composition. For though it is quite
unnecessary for you yet awhile to attempt it, and it may be inexpedient for you to
attempt it at all, you ought to know what it means, and to look for and enjoy it in
the art of others.
Composition means, literally and simply, putting several things together, so as
to make one thing out of them; the nature and goodness of which they all have a
share in producing. Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes together in
certain relations; a poet composes a poem, by putting thoughts and words in
pleasant order; and a painter a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in
pleasant order.
In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of composition.
A pavior cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which he empties from his
cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand. It is the
essence of composition that everything should be in a determined place, perform
an intended part, and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is
connected with it.

189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the arts of
mankind, of the Providential government of the world.[53] It is an exhibition, in
the order given to notes, or colors, or forms, of the advantage of perfect
fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a well-composed air, no note, however
short or low, can be spared, but the least is as necessary as the greatest: no note,
however prolonged, is tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its
duration: no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for, and are
benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the others
prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility: and the result is, that each and
every note has a value in the position assigned to it, which, by itself, it never
possessed, and of which, by separation from the others, it would instantly be
deprived.
190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value of
those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a loveliness which
depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the same
word in a dictionary, and you will hardly recognize it.
Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so arranged as to
advantage the rest. None are inessential, however slight; and none are
independent, however forcible. It is not enough that they truly represent natural
objects; but they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain harmonious
groups: so that, for instance, the red chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its
place as a chimney, but that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye,
the pieces of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that
the work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these patches of
green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it perfectly impossible to
determine what the colors represent: or to see whether the red is a chimney, or an
old woman's cloak; and whether the blue is smoke, sky, or water.
191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we do, of the great
laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition in the arts should
strongly affect every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the
popular delight in rhythm and meter, and in simple musical melodies. But it is also
appointed that power of composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive
attribute of great intellect. All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more
or less, remember it: powers of reflection and investigation are also common to us
all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests only on questions of degree. A.
has a better memory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift

of composition is not given at all to more than one man in a thousand; in its
highest range, it does not occur above three or four times in a century.
192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to give rules
which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily receive rules to
enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would cease to
be either admirable or amusing: if it were possible to compose melody by rule,
Mozart and Cimarosa need not have been born: if it were possible to compose
pictures by rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of
composition lies precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the
operation of an individual mind of range and power exalted above others.
But though no one can invent by rule, there are some simple laws of
arrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will not
enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to set forth what
goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than you could have done
otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good composers, you may better
understand the grasp of their imagination, and the power it possesses over their
materials. I shall briefly state the chief of these laws.

1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.

193. The great object of composition being always to secure unity; that is, to
make out of many things one whole; the first mode in which this can be effected
is, by determining that one feature shall be more important than all the rest, and
that the others shall group with it in subordinate positions.

Fig. 31.

This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of two
leaves, a, Fig. 31, is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading leaf; but that at b is
prettier, because it has a head or master leaf; and c more satisfactory still, because
the subordination of the other members to this head leaf is made more manifest by
their gradual loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we
have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.
194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger and brighter than the
other lights, or one figure more prominent than the other figures, or one mass of
color dominant over all the other masses; and in general you will find it much
benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall be one light on the cottage wall,
or one blue cloud in the sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading
gloom, above all others. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly
concealed by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first traceable; and
you will generally find they are vulgar pictures in which the law is strikingly
manifest.
195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody: for instance, in such
phrases as this—

one note (here the upper G) rules the whole passage, and has the full energy of it
concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to completely subordinated
compositions in painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated. But, in such a
phrase as this—

it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The A in the last bar is
slightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of power running through the
whole; and such passages rarely weary. And this principle holds through vast
scales of arrangement; so that in the grandest compositions, such as Paul
Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on
the principal figure; and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not
catch the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more conspicuous as we
gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant
to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait it was evidently the
painter's object to make as interesting as possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St.
George with a drifting banner, and many figures more, occupy the center of the
picture, and first catch the eye; little by little we are led away from them to a
gleam of pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the head which it
shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.
196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or less
exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining them to analyze
one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from various works. I shall
therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which will allow us, so to speak, easily to
decompose it, and illustrate each law by it as we proceed.

Fig. 32.

Fig. 32 is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the old bridge
over the Moselle at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein
on the left. The leading or master feature is, of course, the tower on the bridge. It
is kept from being too principal by an important group on each side of it; the
boats, on the right, and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and
more forcible in color, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is
simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its mass, but so
reduced by aërial perspective of color that it cannot contend with the tower, which
therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key of the picture. We shall see presently
how the very objects which seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are
made, occultly, to increase its preëminence.

2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.

197. Another important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of
sympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest, because most
surprising, kind of sympathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another; not in
the way of balance or symmetry, but subordinately, like a far-away and broken

echo of it. Prout has insisted much on this law in all his writings on composition;
and I think it is even more authoritatively present in the minds of most great
composers than the law of principality.[54] It is quite curious to see the pains that
Turner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of color; in the Pembroke
Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with a red, and another with a
white sail. In a line with them, on the beach, are two fish in precisely the same
relative positions; one red and one white. It is observable that he uses the artifice
chiefly in pictures where he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my notice
of the plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbors of England, I have already
had occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the note[55] one or two
sentences which explain the principle. In the composition I have chosen for our
illustration, this reduplication is employed to a singular extent. The tower, or
leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger
over this lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of
Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does not
matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the towers about till
they come right, as fearlessly as if they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The
dual arrangement of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it not for
the little one which pretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so
faint as hardly to be discernible: it just takes off the attention from the artifice,
helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which, however, has
instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.[56] Then there is the large boat near,
and its echo beyond it. That echo is divided into two again, and each of those two
smaller boats has two figures in it; while two figures are also sitting together on
the great rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the
great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no answering form,
has almost its facsimile in the bank on which the girl is sitting; this bank is as
absolutely essential to the completion of the picture as any object in the whole
series. All this is done to deepen the effect of repose.
198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal opposition, is
one of the conditions of treatment under the law of Repetition. For the opposition,
in a symmetrical object, is of like things reflecting each other: it is not the balance
of contrary natures (like that of day and night), but of like natures or like forms;
one side of a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water.
Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. She takes the
greatest care to secure some difference between the corresponding things or parts
of things; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only permitted in

animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference between the balancing
parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in precisely the same position at each
side, your head upright, your body straight; divide your hair exactly in the middle
and get it as nearly as you can into exactly the same shape over each ear; and you
will see the effect of accurate symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and
power in the human form result from the interference of motion and life with
symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its changefulness. Your
position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type of symmetry as understood by
modern architects.
199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of harmonious
opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power: almost any works of
the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, etc., will furnish you with notable
instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel
Michael on one side and Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you
can have.
In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out, in proportion
to the wish of the painter to express disciplined calmness. In bad compositions, as
in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on the other;
but in good compositions, as in graceful statues, it is always easy and sometimes
hardly traceable. In the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in
seeing how the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set
in nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central mass, uniting both.

3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.

200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by giving
some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less similar. And this
succession is most interesting when it is connected with some gradual change in
the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succession of the pillars of a
cathedral aisle is most interesting when they retire in perspective, becoming more
and more obscure in distance: so the succession of mountain promontories one
behind another, on the flanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading
farther and farther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of
different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed order. If there
be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there
is only repetition—monotony. It is the change in shape which suggests the idea of

their being individually free, and able to escape, if they like, from the law that
rules them, and yet submitting to it.

Fig. 33.

201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to take up
another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of Turner's most tender studies,
a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and
cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a
wood-cut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 33, is enough to give an idea of its
arrangement. The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud and
wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting
towards that point in the horizon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in
winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in which they cross each
other so quietly, at their edges; just folding one over another as they meet, like a
little piece of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their
hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed arches on
the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting. But all this would not have been
enough expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds,

strained and bent by the storm waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one
another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.
202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of this law of
continuance in the subject chosen for our general illustration. It was simply that
gradual succession of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced Turner to
paint the subject at all; and it was this same principle which led him always to
seize on subjects including long bridges wherever he could find them; but
especially, observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather
than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general laws of
composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a
minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the study of composition.
203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to lean a little on
one side: they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will
always, if they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get cool
under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish,
and childlike, and another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify
themselves, and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers
in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for play, and
another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they
are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set themselves
to their main purpose. And rivers are just in this divided, also, like wicked and
good men: the good rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that
ships can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping irregularly under their banks
until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row over without being
twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells, which no one can get out of but the
water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in
having two kinds of sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason
therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great door
to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens through; a great arch for the
great current, to give it room in flood time, and little arches for the little currents
along the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect for the floods
of the great current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the
smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches
over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the same depth, are
cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that, where the current is shallow,
the village mason makes his arches many and low: as the water gets deeper, and it
becomes troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches

wider; at last he comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of
that, he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little one or so
gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they must be higher, or
they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen. And thus we
have the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch towards one side,
and a train of minor arches running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep
bank at the river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the
side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave towards this
flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or, if there is no steep bank,
still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep end of the bridge.
Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with the spirit of the river,
and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of
a bridge; and all endeavors to do the thing in a grand engineer's manner, with a
level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous; not only because all monotonous
forms are ugly in themselves, but because the mind perceives at once that there
has been cost uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.[57]

Fig. 34.

204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Turnerian bridge in Fig.
32 is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther interesting by having its
main arch crowned by a watch-tower. But as I want you to note especially what
perhaps was not the case in the real bridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will
find that though the arches diminish gradually, not one is regularly diminished—
they are all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in Fig. 32, but
in the larger diagram, Fig. 34, over leaf, you will with ease. This is indeed also
part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral currents near the shore are of
course irregular in size, and a simple builder would naturally vary his arches
accordingly; and also, if the bottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks
came. But it is not as a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble
composition, that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the
object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the greater unity
of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each different, each obedient,
and each in harmonious service.

4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.

205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of Turner's.
Not only does it slope away unequally at its sides, but it slopes in a gradual though
very subtle curve. And if you substitute a straight line for this curve (drawing one
with a rule from the base of the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in
Fig. 34, and effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
grievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects
whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where the
straight line is indispensable to their use or stability; and that when a complete
system of straight lines, throughout the form, is necessary to that stability, as in
crystals, the beauty, if any exists, is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out
the shape of any crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white
lily, and you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective of added
color, or other interfering elements of beauty.

Fig. 35.

206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is necessary to a
good composition that its continuities of object, mass, or color should be, if
possible, in curves, rather than straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the
simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful continuity of this kind is in the line
traced at any moment by the corks of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every
person is more or less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it is almost
always possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement or
boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of the net, are
actually connected with each other, but—and this is a still more noble and
interesting kind of continuity—among features which appear at first entirely
separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 32, appear at first
independent of each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35,
the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and harmony among
them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded by one grand curve, traced

by the dotted line; out of the seven towers, four precisely touch this curve, the
others only falling hack from it here and there to keep the eye from discovering it
too easily.

Fig. 36.

207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this kind: it is,
in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of
Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall into such a curve, but assuredly
the basalt rock on which they stand did; for all mountain forms not cloven into
absolute precipice, nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less
governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work
to produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to sketch
at all among mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself, carefully, the
outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where they are tolerably steep, or of
the woods which grow on them. The steeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead,
or any of the downs at Brighton or Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as
Addington Hills), is easily accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not
only how constant, but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is
distinguished from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation, that is to
say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course;[58] and, secondly,
by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining equal in degree at different parts
of its course.
208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.

Fig. 37.

A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line, from less to more
curvature, or more to less, so that no part of the line is a segment of a circle, or
can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever. Thus, in Fig. 36, a is a bad
curve because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monotonous throughout; but b
is a good curve, because it continually changes its direction as it proceeds.

Fig. 38.

The first difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs consists in
observance of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line b, as in Fig. 37, you
can immediately feel the springiness of character dependent on the changefulness
of the curve. You may put leaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find
you cannot make a right tree spray of it. For all tree boughs, large or small, as well
as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it is a point of
primal necessity that your eye should always seize and your hand trace it. Here are
two more portions of good curves, with leaves put on them at the extremities
instead of the flanks, Fig. 38; and two showing the arrangement of masses of
foliage seen a little farther off, Fig. 39, which you may in like manner amuse
yourself by turning into segments of circles—you will see with what result. I hope
however you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of tree boughs
carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in their most
complicated and lovely forms.[59]

Fig. 39.

209. B. Not only does every good curve vary in general tendency, but it is
modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the outlines of
a tree trunk are never as at a, Fig. 40, but as at b. So also in waves, clouds, and all
other nobly formed masses. Thus another essential difference between good and
bad drawing, or good and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement
of minor curvatures carried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking,
however, this is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves out
of small ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the beautiful element, but not a
change in its nature.

5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.

210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding
of our various objects into beautiful lines or processions. The
next point we have to consider is, how we may unite these lines
or processions themselves, so as to make groups of them.

Fig. 40.

Fig. 41.

Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in
which, moving more or less side by side, they variously, but
evidently with consent, retire from or approach each other,
intersect or oppose each other; currents of melody in music, for
different voices, thus approach and cross, fall and rise, in
harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they approach the shore,
flow into one another or cross, but with a great unity through
all; and so various lines of composition often flow
harmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But
the most simple and perfect connection of lines is by radiation;
that is, by their all springing from one point, or closing towards
it; and this harmony is often, in Nature almost always, united
with the other; as the boughs of trees, though they intersect and
play amongst each other irregularly, indicate by their general
Fig. 42. tendency their origin from one root. An essential part of the
beauty of all vegetable form is in this radiation; it is seen most
simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but
more beautifully in the complicated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays.
For a leaf is only a flat piece of radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all
sides, and even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation more or less
correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beautiful, because varied by the
freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has been ascertained that, in all
trees, the angle at which, in their leaves, the lateral ribs are set on their central rib
is approximately the same at which the branches leave the great stem; and thus
each section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf,
were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses of foliage. This force
in proportion to their age, and the lateral leverage upon them, bears them
downwards at the extremities, so that, as before noticed, the lower the bough
grows on the stem, the more it droops (Fig. 17, p. 67); besides this, nearly all
beautiful trees have a tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which
give a prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way up
the center. Fig. 41 may thus be considered the simplest type of tree radiation, as
opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary ramification is
unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but if we take one half of such a tree,
and merely give two secondary branches to each main branch (as represented in
the general branch structure shown at b, Fig. 18, p. 68), we shall have the form
Fig. 42. This I consider the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is
curiously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic

ornamentation, into the discussion of which, however, we must not enter here. It
will be observed, that both in Figs. 41 and 42 all the branches so spring from the
main stem as very nearly to suggest their united radiation from the root R. This is
by no means universally the case; but if the branches do not bend towards a point
in the root, they at least converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig.
43, the mathematical center of curvature, a, is thus, in one case, on the ground, at
some distance from the root, and in the other, near the top of the tree. Half, only,
of each tree is given, for the sake of clearness: Fig. 44 gives both sides of another
example, in which the origins of curvature are below the root. As the positions of
such points may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also
farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most part in a spiral
order round the tree, and at proportionate distances, the systems of curvature
which regulate the form of vegetation are quite infinite. Infinite is a word easily
said, and easily written, and people do not always mean it when they say it; in this
case I do mean it: the number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish
anything like a representative number of types, I should have to give several
hundreds of figures such as Fig. 44.[60]

Fig. 43. Fig. 44.

Fig. 45.

211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great relations of
stem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are regulated by still
more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate position between the form of
the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a flat ramification; the tree a completely
rounded one; the bough is neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly
balanced between the two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely
resembling in shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir
cone; by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves compose
the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general resemblance of
these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be more accurately
represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a very broad-headed and
flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a main branch,[61] as in Fig. 45, the
lines which its ribs will take, supposing them outside of its timbers instead of
inside, and the general contour of it, as seen in different directions, from above
and below, will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and
foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25 above, p. 89, is an
unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and, if you compare it
with Fig. 45, you will understand at once the action of the lines of leafage; the
boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly parallel to each other at the
sides, while the bough sends all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the
head, that it may accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet
always securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches
nearest the root bend most back; and, of course, throwing some always back as
well as forwards; the appearance of reversed action being much increased, and
rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective. Fig. 25 shows the
perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below; Fig. 46 gives rudely the look
it would have from above.

Fig. 46.

212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what subtleties of
perspective and light and shade are involved in the drawing of these branch-
flakes, as you see them in different directions and actions; now raised, now
depressed: touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to
show all the white under surfaces of the leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of
a boat rises white with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down under
oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by the way, is one of the best
for practice in the placing of tree masses; but you will only be able to understand
them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough and a few leaves placed
tolerably even, as in Fig. 38, p. 149. First one with three leaves, a central and two
lateral ones, as at a; then with five, as at b, and so on; directing your whole
attention to the expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like
arrangements, which, in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal confused,
partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of shade, or absolute
blackness of mass required in those studies.
213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the wood.
You see that in every generally representative figure I have surrounded the
radiating branches with a dotted line: such lines do indeed terminate every
vegetable form; and you see that they are themselves beautiful curves, which,
according to their flow, and the width or narrowness of the spaces they inclose,
characterize the species of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its
grace of youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her wildest
foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit; and marking a
unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from a

common root, but by their joining in one work, and being bound by a common
law. And having ascertained this, let us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf
structure which, I doubt not, you must already have observed in your earlier
studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with the unity of the
branches in the great trees. You must have noticed, I should think, that whenever a
leaf is compound,—that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,—those leaflets are not symmetrical,
as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side towards the point of the great
leaf, so as to express their subordination to it, and show, even when they are
pulled off, that they are not small independent leaves, but members of one large
leaf.
214. Fig. 47, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its minor
divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It is composed of a
central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is
lettered, B. Each of these masses is again composed of three others, a central and
two lateral ones; but observe, the minor one, a of A, is balanced equally by its
opposite; but the minor b 1 of B is larger than its opposite b 2. Again, each of
these minor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, A of A, is
symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsymmetrical, its largest side-lobe being
lowest. Again, in b 2, the lobe c 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to B) is larger than c
2; and so also in b 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger
than the other, and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass; the
lower leaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power, in
the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and always expressing,
therefore, its own subordination and secondary character. This law is carried out
even in single leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point of the
spray, is always the smaller; and a slightly different curve, more convex at the
springing, is used for the lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the
whole leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate
leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its confession of its own lowliness
and subjection.

Fig. 47.

215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles we have
ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great laws; and
that all perfect[62] vegetable form is appointed to express these four laws in noble
balance of authority.
1. Support from one living root.
2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in the root
or in some stated connection with it.
3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness according to
its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and its work, either stretching
out to get its required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some sufficient
breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to
get strength for any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any

stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither as the
fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided states of mind about
their future life.

4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits,
expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in its
neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power, magnitude, and
state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and
circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.
216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies of
these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be a little puzzled to see the meaning
of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human actions should
spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart motive; the most beautiful
systems of action taking place when this motive lies at the root of the whole
life, and the action is clearly seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful
secondary systems of action taking place from motives not so deep or central,
but in some beautiful subordinate connection with the central or life motive.
The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally significative;
and as you draw trees more and more in their various states of health and
hardship, you will be every day more struck by the beauty of the types they
present of the truths most essential for mankind to know;[63] and you will see
what this vegetation of the earth, which is necessary to our life, first, as
purifying the air for us and then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all
places of the earth,—what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as
we contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or spoken
for us, not in frightful black letters nor in dull sentences, but in fair green and
shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed brightness of odoriferous
wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality.
217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may be;
but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.
This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from, or
proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of composition,
the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws
make them forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in rendering them
beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in pictures, it is constantly obeyed by
the great composers; but, like the law of principality, with careful concealment
of its imperativeness, the point to which the lines of main curvature are
directed being very often far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a

system of curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the
value of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.
218. In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have seen,
the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of curvature
should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram Fig. 34, p. 145,
compared with Fig. 32, p. 137, will show how this is done. One curve joins the
two towers, and is continued by the back of the figure sitting on the bank into
the piece of bent timber. This is a limiting curve of great importance, and
Turner has drawn a considerable part of it with the edge of the timber very
carefully, and then led the eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and
indications of a ledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers
cannot be missed.
219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its
course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of the
figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats
begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point; and all are centralized
by the long reflection which continues the vertical lines.
220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun by
the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the rudder;
continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits, interrupted
forcibly beyond it,[64] but taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge
foot, and passing on in delicate shadows under the arches, not easily shown in
so rude a diagram, towards the other extremity of the bridge. This is a most
important curve, indicating that the force and sweep of the river have indeed
been in old times under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is
told us by a long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by
some minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a
landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of which
some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the great tower.
A common composer would have put these bales to one side or the other, but
Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his tower, adding to its
importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns a pillar; and he farther
increases the aspect of its height by throwing the reflection of it far down in the
nearer water. All the great composers have this same feeling about sustaining
their vertical masses: you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most

dexterously (see, for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great
tower, in the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the white group of figures
under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[65]); and Veronese, Titian, and
Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of pillars. Turner found
out their secret very early, the most prominent instance of his composition on
this principle being the drawing of Turin from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy.
I chose Fig. 20, already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because,
being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it will serve to
convince you of its being intentional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger
tree, is continued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller
trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the bushes radiate, under the
law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's head; but their outline curves
are carried on and repeated, under the law of continuity, by the curves of the
dog and boy—by the way, note the remarkable instance in these of the use of
darkest lines towards the light—all more or less guiding the eye up to the right,
in order to bring it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object of
the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy
climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction and character, with
these greater curves; thus corresponding as nearly as possible to the minor
tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law,
which we must consider separately.

6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.

221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested by Contrast.
Rest can only be enjoyed after labor; sound to be heard clearly, must rise out of
silence; light is exhibited by darkness, darkness by light; and so on in all
things. Now in art every color has an opponent color, which, if brought near it,
will relieve it more completely than any other; so, also, every form and line
may be made more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a
curved line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so on;
and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given color or form
would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[66]

In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice vulgarizes a
picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly, admit violent

contrast. They introduce it by stealth, and with intermediate links of tender
change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a surprise, but
not as a shock.[67]

222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35, the main current of the
lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped at the
lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly straight across them.
This adverse force sets off and relieves the great curvature, but it is reconciled
to it by a series of radiating lines below, which at first sympathize with the
oblique bar, then gradually get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the
great curve. No passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced
by a good artist without some slight counter current of this kind; so much,
indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will even do
things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their
well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's versification the so-called bad or
inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them better, but because
he feels that if all were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight
anywhere; if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing;
and he purposely introduces the laboring or discordant verse, that the full ring
may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his chosen
rhythm.[68] And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy their work by
giving too much of all that they think is good, while the great painter gives just
enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an
inferior state of enjoyment: he gives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely
wrought color, then passes away into slight, and pale, and simple color; he
paints for a minute or two with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the
spectator thinks, slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have taken any
more decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you: he
paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded and melting
tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you a bit as jagged and
sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite piece of subtle
contrast in the world of painting is the arrow point, laid sharp against the white
side and among the flowing hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular
how very little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms
interesting which would otherwise have been valueless. There is a good deal of
picturesque material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48, tiles and
stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would have been

unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron ring on the inner wall,
which by its vigorous black circular line precisely opposes all the square and
angular characters of the battlements and roof. Draw the tower without the
ring, and see what a difference it will make.

Fig. 48.

223. One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle break
in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also in
good illumination; the way in which little surprises of change are prepared in
any current borders, or chains of ornamental design, being one of the most
subtle characteristics of the work of the good periods. We take, for instance, a
bar of ornament between two written columns of an early fourteenth century
MS., and at the first glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way
up, composed of a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet
bud. Presently, however, we see that, in order to observe the law of principality,
there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly half-way up, which forms
a center to the whole rod; and when we begin to examine the order of the
leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A stand for scarlet bud, b for blue leaf, c

for two blue leaves on one stalk, s for a stalk without a leaf, and R, for the large
red leaf. Then, counting from the ground, the order begins as follows:
b, b, A; b, s, b, A; b, b, A; b, b, A; and we think we shall have two b's and an
A all the way, when suddenly it becomes b, A; b, R; b, A; b, A; b, A; and we
think we are going to have b, A continued; but no: here it becomes b, s; b, s; b,
A; b, s; b, s; c, s; b, s; b, s; and we think we are surely going to have b, s
continued, but behold it runs away to the end with a quick b, b, A; b, b, b, b![69]
Very often, however, the designer is satisfied with one surprise, but I never saw
a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any kind was
ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a snap somewhere.
There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for
a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster struck out of the
line, and showing the street below through the gap, simply makes the whole
composition right, when otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.
224. If you look back to Fig. 48 you will see, in the arrangement of the
battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole top of
the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a
continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat square
and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the tiles being seen on their
slopes. Both these groups being couples, there is enough monotony in the
series to make a change pleasant; and the last battlement, therefore, is a little
higher than the first two,—a little lower than the second two,—and different in
shape from either. Hide it with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the
other four battlements look.
225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the laws we
have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being square, it is
well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not only by the element of
curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of sharpness;
hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the projecting point of the roof. Also,
because the walls are thick and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with
weakness; therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks
between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting
shadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This shade,
with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass, necessary to the
first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior angle with your finger, and see

how ugly the other looks. A sense of the law of symmetry, though you might
hardly suppose it, has some share in the feeling with which you look at the
battlements; there is a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on
one side down to the left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think
the law of radiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the
extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow first the
low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you continue it, to the
point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve, the top of the tiles of the
wall, and it will strike the top of the right-hand battlement; then draw a curve
from the highest point of the angled battlement on the left, through the points
of the roof and its dark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower
radiates from this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these
main ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the
upper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and the stones
indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more extended at the bottom,
in order to get some less direct expression of sympathy, such as irregular stones
may be capable of, with the general flow of the curves from left to right.
226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are indeed
involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But, as you study longer, you
will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by the powerful
composers in every touch: that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil
which is not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind in twenty various
ways at once; and that there is as much difference, in way of intention and
authority, between one of the great composers ruling his colors, and a common
painter confused by them, as there is between a general directing the march of
an army, and an old lady carried off her feet by a mob.

7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.

227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces the
unity of opposite things, by giving to each a portion of the character of the
other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two masses of color, all the way
down—suppose blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal, partly on
one division, partly on the other, you will find it pleasant to the eye if you
make the part of the animal blue which comes upon the white half, and white

which comes upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of
perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of
color, since, in all ornamentation whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages
of good design.
228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts; as that,
after red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the other, red shall
pass to blue's side and blue to red's. This kind of alternation takes place simply
in four-quartered shields; in more subtle pieces of treatment, a little bit only of
each color is carried into the other, and they are as it were dovetailed together.
One of the most curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you
have drawn some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the
appearance of intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are
produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as long as
it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely at the spot where it
comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade and color,
is so great, that if you only follow her closely, every one who looks at your
drawing with attention will think that you have been inventing the most
artificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of shadow that could
possibly be devised by human wit.
229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by Prout in
his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems of all his principles of composition to
be the one he is most conscious of; many others he obeys by instinct, but this
he formally accepts and forcibly declares.
The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us how
opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each, as far as
they can, some impress or reflection, or imparted power, from the other.

8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.

230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while contrast exhibits the
characters of things, it very often neutralizes or paralyzes their power. A
number of white things may be shown to be clearly white by opposition of a
black thing, but if we want the full power of their gathered light, the black
thing may be seriously in our way. Thus, while contrast displays things, it is

unity and sympathy which employ them, concentrating the power of several
into a mass. And, not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of
man is continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of
exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives them
pleasantness, and by consistency value; by change he is refreshed, and by
perseverance strengthened.
231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by
aggregate force of color or line, more than by contrasts of either; many noble
pictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red, or gray, or gold,
so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or tender
coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by slight and subtle use of
contrast. Similarly as to form; some compositions associate massive and
rugged forms, others slight and graceful ones, each with few interruptions by
lines of contrary character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher
sublimity than those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a
special tale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand
compositions merely please the eye.
232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the works
of the greatest men; their separate pictures have all separate aims. We have not,
in each, gray color set against somber, and sharp forms against soft, and loud
passages against low: but we have the bright picture, with its delicate sadness;
the somber picture, with its single ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one
tender group of lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its
flank; and so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its impressiveness.
The principal bearing of this law, however, is on the separate masses or
divisions of a picture: the character of the whole composition may be broken or
various, if we please, but there must certainly be a tendency to consistent
assemblage in its divisions. As an army may act on several points at once, but
can only act effectually by having somewhere formed and regular masses, and
not wholly by skirmishers; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but
must be somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are
always associating their colors in great groups; binding their forms together by
encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexterities of expedient, what
they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large gathering of each kind of
thing into one place; light being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and
color to color. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights or false

colors, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining
breadth by rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton
treatment of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
all black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the circumstances
which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown in another.
Generally speaking, however, breadth will result in sufficient degree from
fidelity of study: Nature is always broad; and if you paint her colors in true
relations, you will paint them in majestic masses. If you find your work look
broken and scattered, it is, in all probability, not only ill composed, but untrue.
233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of light
and color, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally introduced with
exquisite effect by good composers.[70] Still it is never the mere scattering, but
the order discernible through this scattering, which is the real source of
pleasure; not the mere multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken
lights in the work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
unshepherded, speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad painter fall
like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving it to be wished they
were also of dissolution.

9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.

234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition as of
truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore, to be stated in
this place.
Good drawing is, as we have seen, an abstract of natural facts; you cannot
represent all that you would, but must continually be falling short, whether you
will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your means
and time do not admit of your giving the depth of color in the scene, and that
you are obliged to paint it paler. If you paint all the colors proportionately
paler, as if an equal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them,
you still obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible, statement of
natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally, and leave some tints
nearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much subdued, you have
no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the observer, "Fancy all those
colors a little deeper, and you will have the actual fact." However he adds in

imagination, or takes away, something is sure to be still wrong. The picture is
out of harmony.
235. It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to darken
the whole system of colors, than to make them paler. You remember, in your
first studies of color from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light which
were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But, in completing the picture, it
becomes necessary to put color into them; and then the other colors must be
made darker, in some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately,
though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking
at the reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints, you
leave others undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give the
impression of truth.
236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the colors so much as to relieve
the lights in their natural degree, you would merely sink most of your colors, if
you tried to do so, into a broad mass of blackness: but it is quite possible to
lower them harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the picture than in
others, so as to allow you to show the light you want in a visible relief. In well-
harmonized pictures this is done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture
towards the lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the very dark
parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large masses of
middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen
the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It is easy to lower the
tone of the picture by washing it over with gray or brown; and easy to see the
effect of the landscape, when its colors are thus universally polluted with black,
by using the black convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for
falsifying Nature and degrading art which ever was put into an artist's hand.[71]
For the thing required is not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with it, but
to deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing black with it, but
by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the required effect could only
be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass of the color of every object in your
landscape, and of every minor hue that made up those colors, and then could
see the real landscape through this deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You
cannot do this with glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to
say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in
the proportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you choose, but

your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or
Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of painting.[72]

237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to prepare in order to
show you the relations of color to gray, were quite accurately made, and
numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a
deeper tone in any given mass of color, than to substitute for each of its hues
the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted, that is to say, if you
wanted to deepen the whole two degrees, substituting for the yellow No. 5 the
yellow No. 7, and for the red No. 9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of
any object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to
admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole
matter clearly by taking a group of colors out of your scale, arranging them
prettily, and then washing them all over with gray: that represents the treatment
of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group of colors, with the
tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and that will represent the
treatment of Nature by Titian.
238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the thing by
working from Nature.
The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a good
thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in it. Paint the
clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the sky a bold full blue,
bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and leaves grandly dark against all,
but in such glowing dark green and brown as you see they will bear.
Afterwards proceed to more complicated studies, matching the colors carefully
first by your old method; then deepening each color with its own tint, and
being careful, above all things, to keep truth of equal change when the colors
are connected with each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object.
Much more aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with
which you observe the relation of colors in dark sides and light sides, and the
influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added depth in
independent colors.
239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most important of
those which the artist has to regard. But there are all kinds of harmonies in a
picture, according to its mode of production. There is even a harmony of touch.

If you paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and another part slowly and
delicately, each division of the picture may be right separately, but they will not
agree together: the whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony.
Similarly, if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day, and
another by a gray light in a cold day, though both may have been sunlight, and
both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows truly cast, neither will
look like light; they will destroy each other's power, by being out of harmony.
These are only broad and definable instances of discordance; but there is an
extent of harmony in all good work much too subtle for definition; depending
on the draughtsman's carrying everything he draws up to just the balancing and
harmonious point, in finish, and color, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral
feeling, and style of touch, all considered at once; and never allowing himself
to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing at the expense of
another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in another. If you have got some
of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of
harmonious treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them with any of
Richter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books lately published at
Christmas, with all the German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often
incomplete in character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is perfect in
harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his
thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivaled, as far as I
know, by any other work executed with so few touches. His vignettes to
Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most remarkable in
this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are of a very high stamp as
respects understanding of human character, with infinite playfulness and
tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of
harmony, violent blacks in one place being continually opposed to trenchant
white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the
local color hardly felt anywhere. All German work is apt to be out of harmony,
in consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its willful
refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of excitement, which
dwells violently on particular points, and makes all the lines of thought in the
picture to stand on end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work
is always as quiet as a couchant leopard, and as strong.

240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to me
as capable of being illustrated or defined; but there are multitudes of others
which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which
I never hope to define; and these the most important, and connected with the
deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have thought of them more, to be able
to explain some of the laws which relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that
ignobleness especially which we commonly call "vulgarity" and which, in its
essence, is one of the most curious subjects of inquiry connected with human
feeling. Others I never hope to explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on
simple matters; but, for that very reason, more influential than any others.
These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are; it being
just as impossible, I think, to show, finally, why one succession of musical
notes[73] shall be lofty and pathetic, and such as might have been sung by
Casella to Dante, and why another succession is base and ridiculous, and would
be fit only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to explain why we like
sweetness, and dislike bitterness. The best part of every great work is always
inexplicable: it is good because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening as
the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.
241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself
more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline which you
generally give to your character, and this especially with regard to the choice of
incidents; a kind of composition in some sort easier than the artistical
arrangements of lines and colors, but in every sort nobler, because addressed to
deeper feelings.
242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette to Rogers's
Poems, the plow in the foreground has three purposes. The first purpose is to
meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it brighter by opposition; but
any dark object whatever would have done this. Its second purpose is, by its
two arms, to repeat the cadence of the group of the two ships, and thus give a
greater expression of repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its
third and chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the
vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of human
labor closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the hand leans are
brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief dark of the picture,
because the tillage of the ground is required of man as a punishment: but they
make the soft light of the setting sun brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil.

These thoughts may never occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design;
and yet their under current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the
painter meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.
243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have
marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which falls
from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some
force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Turner has
here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull at a dog, who yelps at it,
drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot
of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element,
and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us
of the ceased labor of the day.
244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of this
kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the whole subject,
that the mind of a great composer is known. A single incident may be
suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading of
a chapter. But the great composers so arrange all their designs that one incident
illustrates another, just as one color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham,"
of the Yorkshire series, which, as to its locality, may be considered a
companion to the last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster Sands,"
presents as interesting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling in this
respect. The subject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of
Morecambe Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are no
pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the rustic
doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a single street of thatched and chiefly clay-
built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line, the roofs so green with
moss that at first we hardly discern the houses from the fields and trees. The
village street is closed at the end by a wooden gate, indicating the little traffic
there is on the road through it, and giving it something the look of a large
farmstead, in which a right of way lies through the yard. The road which leads
to this gate is full of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken
banks of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which
surround the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed fragment
or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line, with some clothes on
it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of
some stunted willows; a very small haystack and pig-sty being seen at the back

of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair
of horses with huge wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun,
sideways on the leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being
about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house, with
three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of stone
shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt the
clergyman's: there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from any
other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at the back,
evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire not having been long
lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's house, nearer the shore, is
the church, discernible from the cottages only by its low two-arched belfry, a
little neater than one would expect in such a village; perhaps lately built by the
Puseyite incumbent:[74] and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two
fragments of a border war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its
brow deep into edges and furrows by the feet of the village children. On the
bank of moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog
barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle white one,
which turns its head to her, expectant of a handful of fresh hay, which she has
brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with
her pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she has a neat bodice,
and pretty striped petticoat under the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us,
the cowherd, bare-footed, stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the
ground is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);—whether boy or girl we are
not sure: it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair
of ragged trousers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to
keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed cows among the
moorland hollows, and helps us at present to watch (holding the bonnet's edge
down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long
stick, we allow to proceed without any interference. A little to the right the hay
is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just taken her apronful to the white
cow; but the hay is very thin, and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks;
we must glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneeling against
the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart without dropping any. Beyond
the village is a rocky hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of
limestone emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in
russet and mossy mounds against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden

as the moss, stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just
shows its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps one of the
village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it there, that his
mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs into the bay. Then
under the hill, and beyond the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves
flowing in over the sand in long curved lines slowly; shadows of cloud, and
gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating—miles away; but no sail is
visible, not one fisher-boat on the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet
horizon. Beyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy
light on all their crags.
245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there is in
this composition; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the impression of
wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless
waves, patient and enduring as the rocks; but peaceful, and full of health and
quiet hope, and sanctified by the pure mountain air and baptismal dew of
heaven, falling softly between days of toil and nights of innocence.
246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by instinct; you
cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject; you may see it, and seize it, at all
times, but never laboriously invent it. And your power of discerning what is
best in expression, among natural subjects, depends wholly on the temper in
which you keep your own mind; above all, on your living so much alone as to
allow it to become acutely sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of
modern days is wholly incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty.
If you go down into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel,
and explore the hills with merry companions, however much you may enjoy
your tour or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much
as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into the depth of any. But take
knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's journeys,—ten or
twelve miles a day—taking a week from some starting-place sixty or seventy
miles away: sleep at the pretty little wayside inns, or the rough village ones;
then take the hills as they tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye
glances or your heart guides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of
everything which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do. Never
force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humor; but never
force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of anything
better; and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world will unfold

themselves to you in still increasing fullness of passionate power; and your
difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose subjects, but only to choose
one from among the multitude of melodious thoughts with which you will be
haunted, thoughts which will of course be noble or original in proportion to
your own depth of character and general power of mind; for it is not so much
by the consideration you give to any single drawing, as by the previous
discipline of your powers of thought, that the character of your composition
will be determined. Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement
and modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life
will make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient
comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they will
make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in your living
spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon the works of your
hands.—Faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading Pre-Raphaelites have all about
equal power over color in the abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for
rendering color under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a
deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness. Rossetti's
carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color, never in oil.

[42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise of the Dutch school, by
asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced
to work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is browned and shining; but fallacy in dead
color is detected on the instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to wish that he could touch
any portion of his work with gum, he is going wrong.

It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish between translucency and luster.
Translucency, though, as I have said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but luster or
shininess is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood
to attach to both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day to persuade me that
luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it was only the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain
streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point to him. One is apt always to
generalize too quickly in such matters; but there can be no question that luster is destructive of loveliness
in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge

that her eyes shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she would be sorry if her
cheeks did; and which of us would wish to polish a rose?

[43] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial, or gray paper that feels slightly
adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse, gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers; no
good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on a thin tough paper, dead in surface;
rolling up his sketches in tight bundles that would go deep into his pockets.

[44] I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I address you as a beginner, or an
amateur: a great artist can sometimes get out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet
even Titian's alterations usually show as stains on his work.

[45] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few colors: it saves time to have enough
tints prepared without mixing, and you may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them
in your color-box in the order I have set them down, you will always easily put your finger on the one you
want.

Cobalt Smalt Antwerb blue Prussian blue
Black Gamboge Emerald green Hooker's green
Lemon yellow Cadmium yellow Yellow ocher Roman ocher
Raw sienna Burnt sienna Light red Indian red
Mars orange Extract of vermilion Carmine Violet carmine
Brown madder Burnt umber Vandyke brown Sepia

Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but you need not care much about
permanence in your work as yet, and they are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more
fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color, put in the box merely to save you loss of
time in mixing gamboge and Prussian blue. No. 1 is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble color for
laying broken shadows with, to be worked into afterwards with other colors.

If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's "Chromatography" at once; only do
not attend to anything it says about principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements of practical
serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each other when mixed, etc.

[46] A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly prolix way, is to cut a square
hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of
cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each color beside one of the
circular openings. You will thus have no occasion to wash any of the colors away. But the first rough
method is generally all you want, as, after a little practice, you only need to look at the hue through the
opening in order to be able to transfer it to your drawing at once.

[47] If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have many more good painters. If I
were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except black,
Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for students. I don't say this
jestingly; I believe such a tax would do more to advance real art than a great many schools of design.

[48] I say modern, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors, which is the perfectly right one, is not
understood now by any artist. The best color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not quite right.

[49] See Note 6 in Appendix I.

[50] The worst general character that color can possibly have is a prevalent tendency to a dirty
yellowish green, like that of a decaying heap of vegetables; this color is accurately indicative of decline
or paralysis in missal-painting.

[51] That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The gradations of color in the various shadows
belonging to various lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colorist can ever draw forms perfectly
(see Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end); but all notions of explaining form by superimposed
color, as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is
prettier because it is striped, but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because it is flushed,
but you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape
from another, as in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance of projection, and
whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly
or just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colors are of equal depth. The blue ground will not retire the
hundredth part of an inch more than the red one.

[52] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more point connected with the
management of color, under the head "Law of Harmony."

[53] See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. viii. § 6.

[54] See Note 7 in Appendix I.

[55] "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peaceful things, associated with the
idea of quiet succession in events; that one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of
another history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity and non-succession are results
of interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its
repetition of the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence also the
feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a cuckoo."

[56] This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so delicate that they are confused among the
lines of reflection. In the original they have orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.

[57] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is always lost, for you must get up to the height of the
central arch at any rate, and you only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and
pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted money in building an
unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the
necessary slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and not
pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only rational excuse for doing which is that
when the slope must be long it is inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any
restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment. To this I answer: first,
it is not more dangerous in reality, though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective
parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a useless rail; and secondly, that it is
better to have the slope on the bridge and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite safe,
because a little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your wide embankment at the side loses good
ground; and so my picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again
some day instead of the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the
pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.

[58] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other books; but the reader ought, if
possible, to refer to the notices of this part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap xvii.; and
Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.

[59] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without having gone through any previous
practice, turn back to the sketch of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4, p. 17, and examine the curves of
its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated under the heads A and B.

[60] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these figures is itself one of varying
curvature, and cannot be drawn by compasses.

[61] I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely facsimiles of the sketches I make at
the side of my paper to illustrate my meaning as I write—often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to
something else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would take more time and trouble to make a
proper drawing of so odd a boat than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is.

[62] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature dependent, as in runners and
climbers; or which is susceptible of continual injury without materially losing the power of giving
pleasure by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course, space here to explain
these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply to all the more important trees and shrubs likely
to be familiar to the student.

[63] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves upon the ground; shadows
which are the most likely of all to attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine them,

you will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that, through each interstice, the
light falls, at a little distance, in the form of a round or oval spot; that is to say, it produces the image of
the sun itself, cast either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of the ground.
Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they fall through any small aperture: but the
openings between leaves are the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to attract his
attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think what this type may signify respecting the greater
Sun; and how it may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth receives light is too
small to let us see the Sun Himself, the ray of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still
bear with it His image.

[64] In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this interruption is caused by a cart coming down to
the water's edge; and this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the
picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary
to the explanation of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the curve it
begins being indicated by the dashes only.

[65] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.

[66] If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing a coat-of-arms with a skull in the
shield, note the value given to the concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage
carried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in opposing the rich folds of the
dress.

[67] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to oppose a full dark, without some
intervening tint. His suns never set behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's
edge.

[68]

"A prudent chief not always must display
His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
But with the occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
Essay on Criticism.

[69] I am describing from an MS., circa 1300, of Gregory's Decretalia, in my own possession.

[70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is little more than a field of
subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe

great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being marked through this division.

[71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by considerable power of effect, which
prevails in modern French art, must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but
scientifically, through the veil of its perversion.

[72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in their bearing on the ideal of
painting, in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.

[73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned by their mode of succession is entirely
inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any
refractory person into liking it, if they do not: and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a
good taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.

[74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made; but the kindly and helpful
influences of what may be called ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition,
forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"—I use this word regretfully, no other existing which
will serve for it,—had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long before.

APPENDIX.

I.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

Note 1, p. 42.—"Principle of the stereoscope."

247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists, that they can, in some
degree, imitate in a picture the effect of the stereoscope, by confusion of lines.
There are indeed one or two artifices by which, as stated in the text, an
appearance of retirement or projection may be obtained, so that they partly
supply the place of the stereoscopic effect, but they do not imitate that effect.
The principle of the human sight is simply this:—by means of our two eyes we
literally see everything from two places at once; and, by calculated
combination, in the brain, of the facts of form so seen, we arrive at conclusions
respecting the distance and shape of the object, which we could not otherwise
have reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once the two views of the
object as seen from these two places, though only an inch and a half distant
from each other, as it would be if they were a mile and a half distant from each
other. With the right eye you see one view of a given object, relieved against
one part of the distance; with the left eye you see another view of it, relieved
against another part of the distance. You may paint whichever of those views
you please; you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between you and
this page of the book, about six inches from your eyes, and three from the
book; shut the right eye, and hide the words "inches from," in the second line
above this, with your finger; you will then see "six" on one side of it, and
"your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the right without moving
your finger, and you will see "inches," but not "six." You may paint the finger
with "inches" beyond it, or with "six" beyond it, but not with both. And this
principle holds for any object and any distance. You might just as well try to
paint St. Paul's at once from both ends of London Bridge as to realize any
stereoscopic effect in a picture.

Note 2, p. 59.—"Dark lines turned to the light."

248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the inclosure of the light by
future shadow is by no means the only reason for the dark lines which great
masters often thus introduce. It constantly happens that a local color will show
its own darkness most on the light side, by projecting into and against masses
of light in that direction; and then the painter will indicate this future force of
the mass by his dark touch. Both the monk's head in Fig. 11 and dog in Fig. 20
are dark towards the light for this reason.

Note 3, p. 98.—"Softness of reflections."

249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care which is necessary
in giving the tender evanescence of the edges of the reflections, when the water
is in the least agitated; nor on the decision with which you may reverse the
object, when the water is quite calm. Most drawing of reflections is at once
confused and hard; but Nature's is at once intelligible and tender. Generally, at
the edge of the water, you ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection
begins; as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and varied
veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge. Practice as much as
you can from the reflections of ships in calm water, following out all the
reversed rigging, and taking, if anything, more pains with the reflection than
with the ship.

Note 4, p. 100.—"Where the reflection is darkest, you will
see through the water best."

250. For this reason it often happens that if the water be shallow, and you are
looking steeply down into it, the reflection of objects on the bank will consist
simply of pieces of the bottom seen clearly through the water, and relieved by
flashes of light, which are the reflection of the sky. Thus you may have to draw
the reflected dark shape of a bush: but, inside of that shape, you must not draw
the leaves of the bush, but the stones under the water; and, outside of this dark
reflection, the blue or white of the sky, with no stones visible.

Note 5, p. 101.—"Approach streams with reverence."

251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents or waterfalls, as I
do not consider them subjects for beginners to practice upon; but, as many of
our younger artists are almost breaking their hearts over them, it may be well to
state at once that it is physically impossible to draw a running torrent quite

rightly, the luster of its currents and whiteness of its foam being dependent on
intensities of light which art has not at its command. This also is to be
observed, that most young painters make their defeat certain by attempting to
draw running water, which is a lustrous object in rapid motion, without ever
trying their strength on a lustrous object standing still. Let them break a coarse
green-glass bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with all their
undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on the table; if they cannot,
of course they need not try the rushing crystal and foaming fracture of the
stream. If they can manage the glass bottle, let them next buy a fragment or
two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a common and cheap mineral, and presents,
as closely as anything can, the milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if
they can conquer the opal, they may at last have some chance with the stream,
as far as the stream is in any wise possible. But, as I have just said, the bright
parts of it are not possible, and ought, as much as may be, to be avoided in
choosing subjects. A great deal more may, however, be done than any artist has
done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and lovely coloring of stones
seen through clear and calm water.
Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing by
frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges of common roofing slates, of
their real size.

Note 6, p. 125.—"Nature's economy of color."

252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other day, by a young
lady, that it was not through economy that Nature did not color deep down in
the flower bells, but because "she had not light enough there to see to paint
with." This may be true; but it is certainly not for want of light that, when she
is laying the dark spots on a foxglove, she will not use any more purple than
she has got already on the bell, but takes out the color all round the spot, and
concentrates it in the middle.

Note 7, p. 138.—"The law of repetition."

253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful picture of Vandyck's
in the Manchester Exhibition, representing three children in court dresses of
rich black and red. The law in question was amusingly illustrated, in the lower
corner of that picture, by the introduction of two crows, in a similar color of
court dress, having jet black feathers and bright red beaks.
254. Since the first edition of this work was published, I have ascertained
that there are two series of engravings from the Bible drawings mentioned in
the list at p. 50. One of these is inferior to the other, and in many respects false
to the drawing; the "Jericho," for instance, in the false series, has common
bushes instead of palm trees in the middle distance. The original plates may be
had at almost any respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions, whether
of these or any other plates mentioned in the list at p. 50, will be quite as useful
as proofs: but, in buying Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the best
impressions that can be had, and if possible impressions of the original plates,
published by Turner. In case these are not to be had, the copies which are in
course of publication by Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel Street, Russell Square) are good
and serviceable; but no others are of any use.—[Note of 1857.]
I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's College) some
photographs from the etchings made by Turner for the Liber; the original
etchings being now unobtainable, except by fortunate accident. I have selected
the subjects carefully from my own collection of the etchings; and though some
of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the photographs, the student will
find these proofs the best lessons in pen-drawing accessible to him.—[Note of
1859]

II.

THINGS TO BE STUDIED.

255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is that
of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his difficulties, as his
tastes, which he must set himself to conquer: and although, under the guidance

of a master, many works of art may be made instructive, which are only of
partial excellence (the good and bad of them being duly distinguished), his
safeguard, as long as he studies alone, will be in allowing himself to possess
only things, in their way, so free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can
seriously mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which he
knows to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will therefore set down, in
clear order, the names of the masters whom you may safely admire, and a few
of the books which you may safely possess. In these days of cheap illustration,
the danger is always rather of your possessing too much than too little. It may
admit of some question, how far the looking at bad art may set off and illustrate
the characters of the good; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always
on quite wholesome food, and that our enjoyment of it will never be made
more acute by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste the
ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course the works of the great
masters can only be serviceable to the student after he has made considerable
progress himself. It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young
persons, to drag them through picture galleries; at least, unless they themselves
wish to look at particular pictures. Generally, young people only care to enter a
picture gallery when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other
end of it; and they had better do that in the garden below. If, however, they
have any real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests them, and
never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the least use to young
people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones), but what interests them; and
therefore, though it is of great importance to put nothing but good art into their
possession, yet, when they are passing through great houses or galleries, they
should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to
them as art, it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art
can interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it represents
something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart filled by the life of
some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what
he was like, that is the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of
portraiture; if he loves mountains, and dwells on a Turner drawing because he
sees in it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the
wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's
mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an

Angelico because she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way
for her to begin the study of religious art.
256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and every
picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own work, it is of
great importance that he should never look, with even partial admiration, at bad
art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the following
advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I will quit the
indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being the more convenient.

First, in Galleries of Pictures:
1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian, Veronese,
Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the authenticity of the picture
being of course established for you by proper authority.
2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right and
wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da
Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and
the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better look at no other painters than
these, for you run a chance, otherwise, of being led far off the road, or into
grievous faults, by some of the other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael,
and Rubens; and of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as
Murillo, Salvator, Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may
look, however, for examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation,
being sure that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the Carracci,
Bronzino, and the figure pieces of Salvator.
Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds, Turner,
and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting especially fond of any
of the others, leave off looking at them, for you must be going wrong some
way or other. If, for instance, you begin to like Rembrandt or Leonardo
especially, you are losing your feeling for color; if you like Van Eyck or
Perugino especially, you must be getting too fond of rigid detail; and if you like
Vandyck or Gainsborough especially, you must be too much attracted by
gentlemanly flimsiness.

257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you may be
able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops, the works of the
following masters are the most desirable, after the Turners, Rembrandts, and
Dürers, which I have asked you to get first:

1. Samuel Prout.[77]

All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value, wholly
unrivaled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of architectural
subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though not to be imitated in
your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally copied, for discipline's
sake, with great advantage: it will give you a peculiar steadiness of hand, not
quickly attainable in any other way; and there is no fear of your getting into
any faultful mannerism as long as you carry out the different modes of more
delicate study above recommended.
If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief study,
you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the architecture
itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation, only keeping the
shadows of due paleness,—in photographs they are always about four times as
dark as they ought to be,—and treat buildings with as much care and love as
artists do their rock foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains
upon them. But if, without caring to understand architecture, you merely want
the picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it fast, you cannot do
better than take Prout for your exclusive master; only do not think that you are
copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at the end of them. Get first
his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have most hills, and least architecture in
them, with chalk on smooth paper, till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and
get his gradations of light, which are very wonderful; then take up the
architectural subjects in the "Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of
figures, etc., in his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and Shadow." After
that, proceed to copy the grand subjects in the "Sketches in Flanders and
Germany;" or "in Switzerland and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to Proutize
Nature, by breaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only drawing what
you see, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't copy his colored

works. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk and pencil drawings; and
you will become a mere imitator, and a very feeble imitator, if you use color at
all in Prout's method. I have not space to explain why this is so, it would take a
long piece of reasoning; trust me for the statement.

2. John Lewis.
His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get them,
if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think, altogether) of
wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago; they are very precious
in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is rather slight, and few of the
subjects are lithographed by himself; still it is well worth having.
But let no lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it, nor even
look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.

3. George Cruikshank.
If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of "Grimm's German
Stories," which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them instantly;
the etchings in them are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I
know, have been done since etching was invented. You cannot look at them too
much, nor copy them too often.
All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on the
worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a curiously
mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the mouth and eyes
and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set about two thirds up, instead
of at half the height of the head. But his manner of work is always right; and
his tragic power, though rarely developed, and warped by habits of caricature,
is, in reality, as great as his grotesque power.
There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal work lies
among art of so totally different a character as most of that which I Have
recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good by copying
almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only his illustrations,
lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the Bean-stalk," and "Tom

Thumb," which are much overlabored, and confused in line. You should get
them, but do not copy them.

4. Alfred Rethel.
I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance of Death," with text
by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London bookseller
for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six plates full of
instructive character; the other, of two plates only, "Death the Avenger," and
"Death the Friend." These two are far superior to the "Todtentanz," and, if you
can get them, will be enough in themselves to show all that Rethel can teach
you. If you dislike ghastly subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.

5. Bewick.
The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly thing
ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is worked just as Paul Veronese would have
worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in
execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show, nevertheless,
intellectual power of the highest order; and there are pieces of sentiment in
them, either pathetic or satirical, which have never since been equaled in
illustrations of this simple kind; the bitter intensity of the feeling being just like
that which characterizes some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the
Burns of painting.

6. Blake.
The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in certain
characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of obtaining certain
effects of light it will also be a very useful example to you. In expressing
conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.

7. Richter.

I have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I am a
little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this catalogue at
all; but the imaginations in them are so lovely and numberless, that I must risk,
for their sake, the chance of hurting you a little in judgment of style. If you
want to make presents of story-books to children, his are the best you can now
get; but his most beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations to
the Lord's Prayer.

8. Rossetti.
An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts from drawings
by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are terribly spoiled in
the cutting, and generally the best part, the expression of feature, entirely lost;
[78] still they are full of instruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But
observe, respecting these wood-cuts, that if you have been in the habit of
looking at much spurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are
borrowed or artificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine
work, which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as
Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that you will
not care about it; but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud" or "Aurora
Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in painting, are sure to
offend you: and if you cease to work hard, and persist in looking at vicious and
false art, they will continue to offend you. It will be well, therefore, to have one
type of entirely false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's
outlines to Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood
and feebleness which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in thought, to
commit or admit, both in design and execution. Base or degraded choice of
subject, such as you will constantly find in Teniers and others of the Dutch
painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against; you will simply turn away from
it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble drawing, which makes mistakes in every
direction at once, cannot teach you the particular sort of educated fallacy in
question. But, in these designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling, and
fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm setting down of lines, all applied in the
foolishest and worst possible way; you cannot have a more finished example of
learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with a steady hand.
[79] Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them than Flaxman's,

occasionally showing true fancy and power; in artistic principle they are nearly
as bad, and in taste, worse. All outlines from statuary, as given in works on
classical art, will be very hurtful to you if you in the least like them; and nearly
all finished line engravings. Some particular prints I could name which possess
instructive qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them, and the best
way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.[80] If you happen to be a
rich person, possessing quantities of them, and if you are fond of the large
finished prints from Raphael, Correggio, etc., it is wholly impossible that you
can make any progress in knowledge of real art till you have sold them all,—or
burnt them, which would be a greater benefit to the world. I hope that, some
day, true and noble engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great
schools, which the restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign
galleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have nothing whatever in
common with the good in the works they profess to represent, and, if you like
them, you like in the originals of them hardly anything but their errors.
258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by your taste
in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest taste in
literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me
not a little; but I have never known any one with false taste in books, and true
taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest importance to you, not only for art's
sake, but for all kinds of sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the
salt swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a
spring and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of
your library to you: every several mind needs different books; but there are
some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer,[81] Plato,
Æschylus, Herodotus, Dante,[82] Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much as you
ought, you will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left of
them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern books avoid generally
magazine and review literature. Sometimes it may contain a useful abridgment
or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances are ten to one it will either
waste your time or mislead you. If you want to understand any subject
whatever, read the best book upon it you can hear of: not a review of the book.
If you don't like the first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to
understand the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially
that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all.
Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe; it may

contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts
haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love something with your
whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the satire of the venomous race
of books from the satire of the noble and pure ones; but in general you may
notice that the cold-blooded, Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at
sentiment; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the
more you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history,
and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your mind will
become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe,
Tennyson, the two Brownings, Thomas Hood, Lowell, Longfellow, and
Coventry Patmore, whose "Angel in the House" is a most finished piece of
writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet modern domestic feeling;
while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh" is, as far as I know, the greatest poem
which the century has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside,
as sickly and useless; and Shelley, as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your
taste is fully formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from
the wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world already.
259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps. Carlyle is
hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners," because his teaching, though to
some of us vitally necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you understand and
like him, read him; if he offends you, you are not yet ready for him, and
perhaps may never be so; at all events, give him up, as you would sea-bathing
if you found it hurt you, till you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles
Grandison," Scott's novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady,
Madame de Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making these, I mean, your
constant companions. Of course you must, or will, read other books for
amusement once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of
perpetuity in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while their peculiar
quietness and repose of manner will also be of the greatest value in teaching
you to feel the same characters in art. Read little at a time, trying to feel interest
in little things, and reading not so much for the sake of the story as to get
acquainted with the pleasant people into whose company these writers bring
you. A common book will often give you much amusement, but it is only a
noble book which will give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of less
importance to you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be

clever than that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively
instructive; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings
they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the wittiest or the most
suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear what is already known, and
may be simply said. Much of the literature of the present day, though good to
be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to agitate rather than confirm,
and leaves its readers too frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the
worst possible state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may,
indeed, become necessary for you, as you advance in life, to set your hand to
things that need to be altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to what
must be pitied in it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the safest temper is
one of reverence, and the safest place one of obscurity. Certainly at present,
and perhaps through all your life, your teachers are wisest when they make you
content in quiet virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which point
out, in common life, and in familiar things, the objects for hopeful labor, and
for humble love.

[75] I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in saying that this second class of painters
have questionable qualities. The greatest men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a
part of their greatness; but such men are not, of course, to be looked upon by the student with absolute
implicitness of faith.

[76] Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the Old Water-color, who, take him
all in all, is the best painter of still life, I believe, that ever existed.

[77] The order in which I place these masters does not in the least imply superiority or inferiority. I
wrote their names down as they occurred to me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of him
was connected with other subjects; and one or another will appear to you great, or be found by you useful,
according to the kind of subjects you are studying.

[78] This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first illustration to the "Palace of Art," which
would have been the best in the book had it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up
again, and done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite designs, with which no
other modern work can bear the least comparison.

[79] The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in the "Seven Lamps," and elsewhere,
refers wholly to his studies from Nature, and simple groups in marble, which were always good and
interesting. Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and it is generally to be remembered that, in
speaking of artists whose works I cannot be supposed to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will

always be on the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be given when the thing praised is
above one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge increases, such things may be found less
praiseworthy than we thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing blamed is below one's
level of sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything until I have got well past it, and am certain that
there is demonstrable falsehood in it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy, having
never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory word that I have ever written, while I have often
found that, with respect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far by sudden admiration,
helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or other deceptive accidents; and this the more, because I never
care to check an expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if mistaken, it will do more
good than harm; but I weigh every word of blame with scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a
strong passage of blame from second editions of my books; but this was only when I found it offended the
reader without convincing him, never because I repented of it myself.

[80] Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are conspicuous. Small vignettes in line
are often beautiful in figures no less than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's drawings in
Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended the vignettes to Tennyson to be done by line
engraving.

[81] Chapman's, if not the original.

[82] Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which are the best translations of Plato.
Herodotus and Æschylus can only be read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like
these for "beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for all ages; and an intelligent and rightly
bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.

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