Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 15, NIC-PAR

I. PAIN
avoid mentioning here an error which students are apt
1 to fall into.
“ He that is forming himself must look with great
caution and wariness on those peculiarities or prominent
parts which at first force themselves on view, and are
the marks, or what is commonly called the manner, by
which that individual artist is distinguished.
“ Peculiar marks I hold to be generally, if not al¬
ways, defects, however difficult it may be wholly to es¬
cape them.
“ Peculiarities in the works of art are like those in
the human figure ; it is by them that we are cognizable
and distinguished one from another j but they are al¬
ways so many blemishes, which, however, both in the
one case and in the other, cease to appear deformities to
those who have them continually before their eyes. In
the works of art, even the most enlightened mind, when
warmed by beauties of the highest kind, will by degrees
find a repugnance within him to acknowledge any de¬
fects •, nay, his enthusiasm will carry him so far as to
transform them into beauties and objects of imitation.
“ It must be acknowledged, that a peculiarity of
style, either from its novelty, or by seeming to proceed
from a peculiar turn of mind, often escapes blame 5 on
the contrary, it is sometimes striking and pleasing j but
it is vain labour to endeavour to imitate it, because no¬
velty and peculiarity being its only merit, when it ceases
to be new, it ceases to have value.
“ A manner, therefore, being a defect, and every
painter, however excellent, having a manner, it seems
to follow that all kinds of faults as wTell as beauties
may be learned under the sanction of the greatest au¬
thority.”
Sect. V. Of Colouring.
Colouring, though a subject greatly inferior to many
others which the painter must study, is yet of sufficient
importance to employ a considerable share of his atten¬
tion j and to excel in it, he must be well acquainted
with that part of optics which has the nature of light
and colours for its object. Light, how’ever simple and
uncompounded it may appear, is nevertheless made up,
as it were, of several distinct substances ; and the num¬
ber, and even dose of these ingredients, has been hap¬
pily discovered by the moderns. Every undivided ray,
let it be ever so fine, is a little bundle of red, orange,
yellow, green, azure, indigo, and violet rays, which,
while combined, are not to be distinguished one from
another, and form that kind of light called white ; so
that white is not a colour per se, as the learned Ha
Vinci t (so far, it seems, the precursor of Newton) ex¬
pressly affirms, but an assemblage of colours. Now
I4- these colours, which compose light, although immuta¬
ble in themselves, and endued w’ith various qualities,
are continually, however, separating from each other in
their reflection from and passage through other substan¬
ces, and thus become manifest to the eye. Grass, for
example, reflects only green rays, or rather reflects green
rays in greater number than it does those of any other
colour, one kind of wine transmits red rays, and an¬
other yellowish rays : and from this kind of separation
arises that variety of colours with which nature has di¬
versified her various productions. Man, too, has con¬
trived to separate the rays of light by making a portion
TING.
of the sun’s beams pass through a glass prism ; for after
passing through it, they appear divided into seven pure
and primitive colours, placed in succession one by the
other, like so many colours on a painter’s pallet.
Now, though Titian, Corregio, and Vandyke, have
been excellent colourists, without knowing any thing
of these physical subtleties, that is no reason why others
should neglect them. For it cannot but be of great
service to a painter to be well acquainted with the na¬
ture of what he is to imitate, and of those colours
with which he is to give life and perfection to his de¬
signs ; not to speak of the pleasure there is in being-
able to account truly and solidly for the various effects
and appearances of light. From a due tempering, for
example, and degrading, of the tints in a picture 5 from
making colours partake of each other, according to the
reflection of light from one object to another j there
arises, in some measure, that sublime harmony which
may be considered as the true music of the eye. And
this harmony has its foundation in the genuine prin¬
ciples of optics. Now this could not happen in the
system of those philosophers, who held, that colours
did not originally exist in light, but were, on the con¬
trary, nothing else than so many modifications which
it underwent on being reflected from other substances,
or in passing through them j thus subject to alterations
without end, and every moment liable to perish. Were
that the case, bodies could no more receive any hues
one from another, nor this body partake of the colour
of that, than scarlet, for example, because it has the
power of changing into red all the rays of the sun or
sky which immediately fall upon it, has the power of
changing into red all the other rays reflected to it from
a blue or any other colour in its neighbourhood.
Whereas, allowing that colours are in their own na¬
ture immutable one into another, and that every body
reflects, more or less, every sort of coloured rays,
though those rays in the greatest number which are of
the colour it exhibits, there must necessarily arise, in
colours placed near one another, certain particular hues
or temperaments of colour : nay, this influence of one
colour upon another may be so far traced, that three or
four bodies of different colours, and likewise the in¬
tenseness of the light falling upon each, being assign¬
ed, we may easily determine in what situations and how
much they would tinge each other. We may thus, too,
by the same principle of optics, account for several other
things practised by painters ; insomuch that a person,
who has carefully observed natural effects with an eye
directed by solid learning, shall he able to form gene¬
ral rules, where another can only distinguish particular
cases.
But after all, the pictures of the best colourists are,
it is universally allowed, the books in which a young
painter must chiefly look for the rules of colouring j
that is, of that branch of painting which contributes
so much to express the beauty of objects, and is so re¬
quisite to represent them as what they really are. Gi¬
orgio and Titian seem to have discovered circumstances
in nature which others have entirely overlooked j and
the last in particular has been happy enough to express
them with a pencil as delicate as his eye was quick and
piercing. In his works we behold that sweetness of
colouring which is produced by union, that beauty
which is consistent with truth 3 and all the insensible
transmutations.