The elements of drawing, in three letters to beginners

THE

ELEMENTS OF DEAWING. *

THREE LETTERS TO BE'JINISERS.

BY

JOHN RUSKIN, M.A.
n

Author of

" MODERN PAINTERS," " SEVEN LAMPS OF ARCHITECTURE,"

STONES OF VENICE," "LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING,"

"THE TWO PATHS," ETC. ETC.

WITH ILLUSTEATIONS

DRAWN BY THE AUTHOR.

T\ B « A ITy-
or rus

university
lotTTOn

SMITH, ELDEB, AND CO., 65 COENHILL.
1859

The right of translation is reserved.

hcvo

R"a

«^1

LONDON

FEINTED BT SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.

NEW-STBEET SQTJABE

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 succes-
sive 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.

A 2

86779

IV ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

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.

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 sub-
ject, and touch only on those points which may
appear questionable in the method of its treat-
ment.

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

A 3

VI PREFACE.

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 al-
lowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost
as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them.
If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains,
the colour-box may be taken away till it knows
better : but as soon as it begins painting red coats
on soldiers, striped flags to ships, &c, it should
have colours at command ; and, without restrain-
ing 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. In later years, the indulgence
of using the colour 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

PREFACE. Vll

a boy's reach : in these days of cheap illustration
he can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales
without good woodcuts in it, and should be encou-
raged 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 colours
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 invent-
ing 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 ;

A 4

Vlll PREFACE.

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 ; other-
wise 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.

Yet observe, that the method of study recom-
mended 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 im-
portant respects ; but I am sure the main prin-
ciples of it are sound, and most of the exercises
as useful as they can be rendered without a mas-
ter's superintendence. The method differs, how-

PREFACE. IX

ever, so materially from that generally adopted
by drawing-masters, that a word or two of ex-
planation may be needed to justify what might
otherwise be thought wilful eccentricity.

The manuals at present published on the sub-
ject of drawing are all directed, as far as I know,
to one or other of two objects. Either they pro-
pose to give the student a power of dexterous
sketching with pencil or water-colour, 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 mathe-
matical 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 Marl-
borough House, and in the branch Government
Schools of Design.

Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in
those schools, to the end specially intended, judg-
ment 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

X PREFACE.

itself. For instance, the skill by which an inven-
tive workman designs and moulds 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 inter-
fere 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 con-
venient 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 wwk you can, and the ablest hands,
irrespective of any consideration of economy or
facility of production. Then leave your trained

PREFACE. XI

artist to determine how far art can be popularised,
or manufacture ennobled.

Now, I believe that (irrespective of invention
and sentiment, which are un teachable,) the excel-
lence of an artist, as such, depends mainly on
accuracy and rapidity of perception, and that these
are especially what masters and schools 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.

Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the follow-
ing 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 ensure 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

Xll PREFACE.

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 un-
professional students, to know how to appreciate
the art of others, than to gain much power in art
themselves. Now the modes of sketching ordi-
narily taught are inconsistent with this power
of judgment. No person trained to the superfi-
cial execution of modern water-colour painting,
can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo ;
they must for ever remain blind to the refinement
of such men's pencilling, 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 begin-
ning 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

PREFACE. Xlll

perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery,
such as would repay him for much more labour
than I have asked him to undergo.

That labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irk-
some, 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 traveller. The system
followed in this work will, therefore, at first, sur-
prise 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 em-
barrassments 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 ;

XIV PREFACE.

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 * ; 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

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

PREFACE. XV

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 out-
line left to take, in due time, care of itself. I
call it outline, for the sake of immediate intelli-
gibility,— 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 out-
line, 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

XVI PREFACE.

considerations (as of softness, complexity, &c.)
are entirely excluded.

Both the system adopted at the Working
Men's College, and that recommended here,
agree, however, in one principle, which I con-
sider the most important and special of all that
are involved in my teaching : namely, the attach-
ing its full importance, from the first, to local
colour. I believe that the endeavour to sepa-
rate, in the course of instruction, the obser-
vation of light and shade from that of local
colour, 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 distinc-
tive one in my system, so far as it is a system.
For the recommendation to the pupil to copy faith-
fully, and without alteration, whatever natural
object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among
other reasons, just because it gets rid of systema-
tic rules altogether, and teaches people to draw,

PREFACE. XV11

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."

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 advance-
ment, 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 pain-
fully 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.

One task, however, of some difficulty, the stu-

XV111 PREFACE.

dent 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 perspec-
tive 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, natu-
rally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their
work rules which cannot help them in difficult ones.
It would take about a month's labour to draw im-
perfectly, by laws of perspective, what any great
Venetian will draw perfectly in five minutes,
when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a

PREFACE. XIX

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 dis-
dained 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. 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

a 2

XX PREFACE.

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 bodv-colour 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 cal-
culated for a sloping plane, while common perspec-
tive always supposes the plane of the picture to be
vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom

PREFACE. XXI

yourself to enclose your subject, before sketching
it, with a light frame of pasteboard held upright
before you ; it will show you what you may legi-
timately 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, &c.#

Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the fol-
lowing 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.

Lastly : If any of the directions given sub-
sequently 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 ap-
ply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under

* 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.

XX11 PREFACE.

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 embarrass-
ment ; 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.

CONTENTS.

LETTER I.
On First Practice - - - - 1

LETTER II.

Sketching from Nature - - - -• - 1 1 8

LETTER III.

On Colour and Composition - - - - 194

APPENDIX : Things to be studied - - - 335

THE

ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

LETTEK I.

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

My dear Keader, — "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 can-
not 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 de-
scribed 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 per-

B

2 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

ceptions 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 1 can help you, or, which is better,
show you hovv to help yourself.

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

letter I.] ON FIBST PRACTICE. 3

or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a
week, is not drawing at all. It is only the per-
formance of a few dexterous (not alwTays even that)
evolutions on paper with a blacklead pencil ; pro-
fitless 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 woodcut 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 woodcut
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 handi-craftsmen feel in
the work they live by.

B 2

4 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

Do not, therefore, think that you can learn draw-
ing, any more than a new language, without some
hard and disagreeable labour. 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 experi-
ments 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.

letter i.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 5

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 judgement 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.

Everything that you can see in the world around
you, presents itself to your eyes only as an arrange-
ment of patches of different colours variously shaded.1

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 expe-
rience. We see nothing but flat colours ; and it is only by a

B 3

6 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter t.

Some of these patches of colour have an appear-
ance 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 colour ; and the first thing to be

series of experiments that we find out that a stain of black
or grey 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 colour,
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 colour 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 colour. We should
try to gather some of them, and then find that the colour 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 colour
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 colours, we

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 7

learned is, how to produce extents of smooth colour,
without texture.

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 unpractised
hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first

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 him-
self as nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight.
He sees the colours of nature exactly as they are, and therefore
perceives at once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation
between the two colours 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 expe-
rience 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 colour, and
putting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvass.
The only obstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the
real colours are brighter and paler than it is possible to put
on canvass : we must put darker ones to represent them.

B4

8 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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 instru-
ment, in order thus to discipline their attention :
and a beginner must be content to do so for a consi-
derable period.

Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves
about differences of colour, we must be able to lay
on one colour properly, in whatever gradations of
depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try,
therefore, first to lay on tints or patches of grey, 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,

LETTER 1.]

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

9

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 enclosed by
straight lines.

Fi<r. 1.

Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed
lines, so completely and evenly that it shall look
like a square patch of grey 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

10 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

drying.) Then cover these lines with others in a dif-
ferent 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.

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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 11

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 de-
licately 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 even-
ness : 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

12 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 13

EXERCISE II.

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.

Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on
botany containing outline plates of leaves and flowers,
it does not matter whether bad or good.- Copy any
of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, fol-
lowing 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

14 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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
hard1 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

1 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.

letter I.] ON FIBST PRACTICE. 15

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 imi-
tate 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 approxi-
mations 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.

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 freedom1 ;

1 What is usually so much sought after under the term
u freedom " is the character of the drawing of a great master in

16 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

the real difficulty and masterliness is in never let-
ting the hand be free, but keeping it under entire
control at every part of the line.

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 firm-
ness 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 out-
lines; be content at present if you find your hand gaining
command over the curves.

letter I.] ON FIKST PRACTICE. 17

EXERCISE III.

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.

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

Fig. 2.

gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark tint passing
gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly all expres-
sion of form, in drawing, depends on your power of
gradating delicately ; and the gradation is always
most skilful which passes from one tint into an-
other 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, pass-

18 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

ing 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 skilful
enough, when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By
getting a piece of grey shaded riband, and compa-
ring 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 skilful, 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 con-
sider each pane of glass in the window you look
through as a piece of paper coloured blue, or grey,
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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 19

round and hollow l ; and then on folds of white
drapery ; and thus gradually you will be led to ob-
serve 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.

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 gra-
dated— as tenderly you cannot gradate it without
colour, no, nor with colour either ; but you may do
it as evenly ; or, if you get impatient with your spots

1 If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not
glazed, they will be useful models.
c 2

20 THE ELEMENTS OF DK AWING, [letter i.

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 colour,
are fond of the peculiar effect of light which may be
got in a pen-and-ink sketch, and in a woodcut, 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 woodcuts, 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 direc-
tions 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.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 21

EXERCISE IV.

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 oi;
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
c 3

22 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

are too pale to perfect evenness with the darker
spots.

You cannot use the point too delicately or cun-
ningly in doing this ; work with it as if you were
drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.

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 con-
siderable persecution from your artistical acquain-
tances 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.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 23

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.

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
c 4

24 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I."

touch of the India-rubber, than by an hour's labour
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

LETTER I.]

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

25

the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously, with
that only.

exercise v.

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

:\

/

^

f

X

Fig. 3.

ab, a c, Fig. 3., and then scratch in their shapes gra-
dually ; the letter A, enclosed within the lines, being
in what Turner would have called a "state of for-
wardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the

26 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

shape of the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly-
round the tint, as at df and remove any touches out-
side 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 ruled1, but the curved lines are to be drawn
by the eye and hand ; and you will sood find what
good practice there is in getting the curved letters,
such as Bs, Cs, &c, to stand quite straight, and come
into accurate form.

All these exercises are very irksome, and they are

1 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 practise 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 with-
out 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 ob-
served, draw every line but a straight one.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 27

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 con-
summate 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.

28 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

EXERCISE VI.

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 grey, or dull white. A wholly grey or rainy
day is the best for this practice.

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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 29

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 con-
tinually 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 con-
fused network or mist ; leave them all out1, 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 unneces-
sarily 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

1 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.

30 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 arrange-
ment 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 endeavoured to
represent the pencil shading within the outline, as I
could not easily express it in a woodcut ; 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

LETTER I.]

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

31

the outline as delicate, and draw the branches far
enough into their outer sprays to give quite as

Fig. 4.

slender ramification as you have in this figure,
otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of
them.

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 colour, one upon

32 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

another; as patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat
china (tiles, for instance), executed in two colours
only ; and practise 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 diffi-
culty of representing depth of colour by depth of
shade. Thus a pattern of ultramarine blue will have
to be represented by a darker tint of grey than a
pattern of yellow.

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 colour which you will want. If
you can, by any means, get acquainted with any
ordinary skilful water-colour 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 colour, 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 33

better. If, however, you have no opportunity of
seeing how water-colour is laid on by a workman
of any kind, the following directions will help you : —

EXERCISE VII.

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
colour gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two
teaspoonfuls of water to the colour you have rubbed
down, and mix it well up with a camel's-hair brush
about three quarters of an inch long.

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 colour you have mixed, and taking up as much
of the liquid as it will carry, begin at the top of

D

34 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

one of the squares, and lay a pond or runlet of
colour along the top edge. Lead this pond of colour
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
colour 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 bot-
tom, the colour 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 colour as you would with a sponge, till
it all looks even.

In leading the colour down, you will find your
brush continually go over the edge of the square, or
leave little gaps within it. Do not endeavour to
retouch these, nor take much care about them ; the
great thing is to get the colour to lie smoothly where
it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale patches ;

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 35

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 colour 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.

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 neutralise the increase
of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which
would otherwise take place from the ponding of the
colour.

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^

D 2

36 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

always to draw the brush from root to point, other-
wise 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.

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 colour is
exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two
teaspoonsfuls 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 unskilfulness.

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 ;

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 37

and then draw any simple shapes of leaves, ac-
cording to the exercise No. II., and fill up those,
until you can lay on colour quite evenly in any
shape you want.

You will find in the course of this practice, as you
cannot always put exactly the same quantity of
water to the colour, that the darker the colour is, the
more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. There-
fore, 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 colour is to do this, and how to prevent it;
not that it needs always to be prevented, for a great
master in water colours will sometimes draw a firm
outline, when he wants one, simply by letting the
colour dry in this way at the edge.

When, however, you begin to cover complicated

D 3

38 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

forms with the darker colour, no rapidity will pre-
vent 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 colour 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 colour, and lay some of it into
the middle of the liquid colour. It will spread gra-
dually 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.

Having thus obtained the power of laying on a
tolerably flat tint, you must try to lay on a gradated
one. Prepare the colour with three or four tea-
spoonfuls of water ; then, when it is mixed, pour away
about two thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale
colour. Sloping your paper as before, draw two pencil

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 39

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 colour, and led it down
a little, dip your brush deep in water, and mix up the
colour on the plate quickly with as much more water
as the brush takes up at that one dip : then, with
this paler colour, lead the tint farther down. Dip in
water again, mix the colour again, and thus lead down
the tint, always dipping in water once between each
replenishing of the brush, and stirring the colour on
the plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on
until the colour has become so pale that you cannot
see it ; then wash your brush thoroughly in water,
and carry the wave down a little further with that, and
then absorb it with the dry brush, and leave it to dry.
If you get to the bottom of your paper before your
colour 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 colour,

D 4

40 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

and go down in the same way. Then again, and then
again, and so continually until the colour 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.

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 reple-
nishing 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.

As you get more power, and can strike the colour
more quickly down, you will be able to gradate in
less compass1 ; beginning with a small quantity of

1 It is more difficult, at first, to get, in colour, a narrow gra-
dation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as
with the pen, to make the gradation go far.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 41

colour, 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 colour to shade as far as is
necessary for your immediate progress, which is to
be done thus : —

Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-
black, of cobalt, and vermilion ; and prepare gra-
dated columns (exactly as you have done with the
Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.1 Cut a
narrow slip, all the way down, of each gradated
colour, 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, &c. 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, accu-
rately enough for our purpose, balance in weight the

1 Of course, all the columns of colour are to be of equal
length.

42 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue
slip. Then, when you are drawing from objects of
a crimson or blue colour, if you can match their
colour by any compartment of the crimson or blue
in your scales, the grey in the compartment of the
grey scale marked with the same number is the
grey which must represent that crimson or blue in
your light and shade drawing.

Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt and
vermilion. You will find that you cannot darken
these beyond a certain point * ; for yellow and scarlet,
so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot ap-
proach 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 gam-
boge; 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

1 The degree of darkness you can reach with the given colour
is always indicated by the colour of the solid cake in the box.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 43

sky-blue, and through scarlet. By mixing the gam-
boge 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
colours. Then, supposing your scales properly gra-
dated and equally divided, the compartment or degree
No. 1 of the grey will represent in chiaroscuro the
No. 1. of all the other colours ; No. 2. of grey the
No. 2. of the other colours, and so on.

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 ser-
viceable ; 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
colours contain as it were a certain quantity of

44 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 grey, you
will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approxima-
tion by a glance of the eye, without any measuring
scale at all.

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, &c, as tenderly as you can, in
the darknesses that correspond to their colours ; and,
when you find you can do this successfully, it is time
to begin rounding. YVtfrWWU

EXERCISE VIII.

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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE.

45

fci)

46 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter 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.

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 round-

letter i.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 4*7

nesses; 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.

Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that
round stone, and you have won the battle.

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.

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

48 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

things about it, or of a different colour from them.
It is either seen as a patch of one colour 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 colour or shade of exactly
the same size, shape, and gradations as those on
the object and its ground, you will produce the ap-
pearance of the object and its groimd. The best
draughtsman — Titian and Paul Veronese them-
selves — 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 colours 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,

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 49

in fact, but the plain, unaffected, and finished tran-
quillity 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.

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.

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

E

50 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease
depends on early precision in the commencement;
much more in singing or drawing.

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 ; 6, in Fig. 5., is a beginning of this kind. Bather
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 practised 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 con-

letter i.j ON FIRST PRACTICE. 51

tour 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

E 2

52 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter i.

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 com-
pletion at last, than if half an hour had been spent
in getting a true outline before beginning.

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 colour
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 cir-
cular hole looks like one of the patches of colour 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 colour of the stone at any part of it, by tinting

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 53

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 sub-
dued greys.1

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 circum-

1 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.

E 3

54 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

stances, 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.

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 pre-
sent, 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 55

drawing, for the aspects of things are so subtle and
confused that they cannot in general be explained ;
and in the endeavour 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 desti-
tute 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 any-
thing, 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.

Generally, then, every solid illumined object — for
instance, the stone you are drawing — has a light side

E 4

56 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

turned towards the light, a dark side turned away
from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on some-
thing 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.

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.

Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edge-
ways, 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 57!

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 colour back in the light that it
reflects.

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 colours mixing all together form a neutral 1 light,
which lets the colour of your hand itself be more
distinctly seen than that of any object which reflects

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

58 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

light to it ; but if there were no reflected light, that
side of your hand would look as black as a coal.

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 colour of their light sides depends much
on that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides
on the colours of the objects near them. It is there-
fore impossible to say beforehand what colour an
object will have at any point of its surface, that
colour 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 colour will be changeful, and that a pic-
ture which gives them merely darker shades of the
colour of the light sides must assuredly be bad.

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 colour somewhat

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 59

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 grey.
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.

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

60 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

" shadow was darker than the dark side," he would
never think of the reflection from the glass, but paint
a dark grey 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.

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 colours 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 colours 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

letter i.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 61

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, there-
fore, if you get the surface of the object of a uni-
form 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 Tightness
of the drawing ; that is to say, on the evident corre-
spondence of the form of the shadow with the form
that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or any-
thing irregularly shaped, you will gain far more
by a little patience in following the forms care-
fully, though with slight touches, than by laboured

62 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of
shadow.

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 colour 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 whitish 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.

When you have once got the feeling of the way in
which gradation expresses roundness and projection,

letter i] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 63

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 sub-
ject ; 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

64 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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 Kheims, 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 Na-
ture, whether more gradation, or greater watchful-
ness 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 che-
quered 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 65

distortions and perspective modifications of it among
the folds with scrupulous care.

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.1 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

1 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. •

66 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery, well ren-
dered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet
bank.

Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bind-
ings of books, or other finely textured substances,
do not trouble yourself, as yet, much about the wool-
liness 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 colour ming-
ling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw
these reflections of the books properly, making them

letter i.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 67

dark and distorted, as you will see that they are,
and you will find that this gives the lustre 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 lustre ; you will frequently find a light which
puzzles you, on some apparently dull surface, to be
the dim image of another object.

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 colour, — 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.

F 2

68 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

EXERCISE IX.

Prepare your colour 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 colour. The lighter and faster
every dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry ;
and, as soon as it is dry, with little colour 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 colour, always trying to let the edges
of the first and of the newly applied colour exactly
meet, and not lap over each other. When your
new colour dries, you will find it in places a little
paler than the first. Ketouch it therefore, trying to
get the whole to look quite one piece. A very small
bit of colour thus filled up with your very best care,
and brought to look as if it had been quite even

letter i.] ON FIKST PRACTICE. 69

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 io 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.

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

F 3

70 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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 mul-
titude 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.1

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 colour, prepared
very pale, quite flat over all of it, except the highest
light, leaving the edge of your colour quite sharp.
Then another wash, extending only over the darker
parts, leaving the edge of that sharp also, as in

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

letter I.] ON FIEST PRACTICE. 71

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.

The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that
you may not trouble or vex the colour, but let it lie
as it falls suddenly on the paper : colour 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 colour can lay on the true
forms at once with a dash, and bad masters in water
colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, and

F 4

72 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

leave them false ; for people in general, not knowing
false from true, are as much pleased with the appear-
ance of power in the irregular blot as with the pre-
sence 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.

I have hitherto limited you to colour 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 colour 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 colour tolerably dark on your brush, only always
liquid (not pasty), and dash away the superfluous
colour on blotting paper, you will find that, touching
the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can,

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 73

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.1

As you get used to the brush and colour, 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 connexion, 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 de-
fine : and do not rush at any of the errors or incom-

1 William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour Society.

74 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

pletions 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 colour
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 colour is still damp on the paper, by drying
your brush thoroughly, and touching the colour 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 colour
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.

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 gra-
dations of shadow in any given group. When this

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 75

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 ink-
stand 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-coloured object with little light, and in a light-
coloured 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 what-
ever 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

76 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

any of the three. Understand, therefore, at once,
that no detail can be as strongly expressed in draw-
ing as it is in the 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 pro-
jection 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 ten-
dency towards flatness.

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 grey over everything in your picture
except on the extreme high lights ; even the piece
of white paper, in your subject, must be toned

letter I.] ON FIEST PRACTICE. 77

slightly down, unless (and there are a thousand
chances to one 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.1

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.2 And first, the

1 At Marlborough House, among the four principal examples
of Turner's later water-colour drawing, perhaps the most neg-
lected is 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.

2 I shall not henceforward number the exercises recom-
mended ; as they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty
of subject, not by difference of method.

78 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 struc-
ture at the fork of the branch. When once you have
mastered the tree at its armpits, you will have little
more trouble with it.

Always draw whatever the background happens to
be, exactly as you see it. Wherever you have fas-
tened 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

LETTER I.]

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

79

rightly had you tried. There is nothing visible out
of which you may not get useful practice.

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-coloured or white
paper behind it, so that
all the leaves may be re-
lieved 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 inter-
stices are right in shape
before you begin shading,
and complete as far as you FiS- 6-

can with pen and ink, in the manner of Fig. 6.,
which is a young shoot of lilac.

You will probably, in spite of all your pattern

80 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

drawings, be at first puzzled by leaf foreshort-
ening; especially because the look of retirement
or projection depends not so much on the per-
spective 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 diffi-
culty ; as slight exaggerations of force or colour 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 \ 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.

1 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.

letter l.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 81

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.

Draw first only two or three of the leaves ; then
larger clusters ; and practise, 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

G

82 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 accu-
rately 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 com-
plete manner. The mass is too vast, and too in-
tricate, to be thus dealt with.

You must now therefore have recourse to some
confused mode of execution, capable of expressing
the confusion of Nature. And, first, you must under-
stand 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 83

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

b

c

Fig. 7.

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 con-
dition at c, only with this farther subtlety in the
look of it, inexpressible in the woodcut, that the
stalk and point of the leaf, though they have dis-
appeared 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

G 2

84 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

leaf which remains visible, so that its perfect effect
could only be rendered by two layers of colour, 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.

This is the perfect theory of the matter. In prac-
tice we cannot reach such accuracy ; but we shall be
able to render the general look of the foliage satis-
factorily by the following mode of practice.

(rather 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 toge-
ther; this exercise is only to teach you what the

LETTER I.J

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

85

actual shapes of such masses are when seen against
the sky.

Fig. 8.

Make two careful studies of this kind of one
bough of every common tree, — oak, ash, elm, birch,
beech, &c. ; 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 sur-

G 3

86 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

face, and the side view of them, or profile, shows a
wholly different organisation 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

If S&

Fig. 9.

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.

When you have done a few branches in this man-

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 87

ner, 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 dis-
tance 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.

G 4

88 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 lustre
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.

All this difficulty, however, attaches to the render-
ing 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 89

more embarrassing kind ; for nearly all leaves have
some lustre, and all are more or less translucent
(letting light through them) ; therefore, in any given
leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper sha-
dows 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.

The consequence of all this is, that except now
and then by chance, the form of a complete leaf is
never seen ; but a marvellous 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 fac-

90 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWINGS [letter I.

simile, 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.

Now I have led you to this conclusion by observa-
tion of tree form only, because in that the thing to
be proved is clearest. But no natural object ex-
ists 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 intri-
cate, 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 per-
fectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a
single grass blade perfectly, much less a grass bank ;

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 91

yet having once got this power over decisive form,
ycu may safely — and must, in order to perfection of
work — carry out your knowledge by every aid of
method and dexterity of hand.

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 cer-
tain 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, pos-
sess yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of
Eogers's Italy or Kogers's Poems, and then of about
a dozen of the plates named in the annexed lists.
The prefixed letters indicate the particular points

92 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter I.

deserving your study in each engraving.1 Be sure,
therefore, that your selection includes, at all events,

1 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, &c.
c clouds, including mist and aerial effects.
* foliage.

g ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
I 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.

a cfr. Arundel. afp~ Lancaster.

afl. Ashby de la Zouche. clmr. Lancaster Sands.*

alqr. Barnard Castle.* a g f. Launceston.*

fmr. Bolton Abbey. cflr. Leicester Abbey.

f g r. Buckfastleigh.* f r. Ludlow.

alp. Caernarvon. afl, Margate.

clq. Castle Upnor. a I q. Orford.

afl. Colchester. c p. Plymouth.

I q. Cowes. f. Powis Castle.

cfp. Dartmouth Cove.* I m q. Prudhoe Castle.

clq. Flint Castle.* fl m r. Chain Bridge over

afgl. Knaresborough.* Tees.*

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 93

one plate marked with each letter. Do not get more
than twelve of these plates, nor even all the twelve

m r. High Force of Tees.* m q. Ulles water.

afq. Trematon. f m. Valle Crucis.

From the Keepsake,
mp q. Arona. p. St. Germain en Laye.

I m. Drachenfells.* Ip q. Florence.

/ I. Marly.* I m. Ballyburgh Ness.*

From the Bible Series.

f m. Mount Lebanon. a c g. Joppa.

m. Rock of Moses at c I p q. Solomon's Pools.*

Sinai. a I. Santa Saba.

aim. Jericho. a I. Pool of Bethesda.

From Scott's Works.

p r. Melrose.* c m. Glencoe.

fr. Dry burgh. cm. Loch Coriskin.*

a I. Caerlaverock.

From the Rivers of France.

a q. Chateau of Amboise, dral and rainbow,

with large bridge on avenue on left,

right. a p. Rouen Cathedral.

Ipr. Rouen, looking down f p. Pont de l'Arche.

the river, poplars on flp- View on the Seine,

right.* with avenue.

a I p. Rouen, with cathe- a c p. Bridge of Meulan.

c g p r. Caudebec*

94 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

at first; for the more engravings you have, the
less attention you will pay to them. It is a ge-
neral 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 dis-
covering 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 hand-book know-
ledge.

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

letter l] on first practice. 95

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 Kogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work
can possibly be ; and it will be a great and profit-
able 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.

You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get

96 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

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 diffi-
cult 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 cer-
tain 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 labour

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 97

and skill of the engraver, and make yon understand
a little how people must work, in this world, who
have really to do anything in it.

Do not, however, suppose that I give you the
engraving as a model — far from it ; but it is neces-
sary you should be able to do as well l 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 /, 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 in-
structive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the
" Ludlow " and (t Powis " is also remarkably good.

1 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.

98 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter i.

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 Kembrandt
etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not land-
scape). 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 espe-
cially that Eembrandt's most rapid lines have steady
purpose ; and that they are laid with almost in-
conceivable precision when the object becomes at
all interesting. The " Prodigal Son," " Death of the
Virgin," " Abraham and Isaac," and such others, con-
taining incident and character rather than chiaro-
scuro, 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 know-
ledge of his system. Whenever you have an oppor-
tunity of examining his work at museums, &c, do so
with the greatest care, not looking at many things,
but a long time at each. You must also provide

letter I.] ON FIRST PARCTICE. 99

yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert
Durer'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 be-
tween these two masters, Rembrandt and Durer.
Rembrandt is often too loose and vague ; and Durer
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 perfec-
tion, and your style will be best formed, therefore,
by alternate study of Rembrandt and Durer. Lean
rather to Durer ; 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 Durer,
yet try every now and then a quarter of an inch
square or so, and see how much nearer you can

H 2

100 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy
crown of the " Melancholia" too often.

If you cannot get either a Eembrandt or a Durer,
you may still learn much by carefully studying any
of G-eorge Cruikshank's etchings, or Leech's woodcuts
in Punch, on the free side ; with Alfred Eethel's and
Richter's * on the severe side. But in so doing you
will need to notice the following points.

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

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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 101

Kethel and Kichter 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 J certain facte
not in quite the right way, but iil the- ordy pbs&ibfc'
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 short-
hand, and draw portions of the objects rightly.

And touching this question of direction of lines as
indicating that of surface, observe these few points :

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

102

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

Fisr. 10.

also its roundness, and the flow of its grain. And
Albert Durer, 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 deli-
cate forms), Albert Durer'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 com-
plete, even when they are sketching it most rapidly,

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 103

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 versa, 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 Leo-
nardo 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

H 4

104

THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter i.

by a great master
if you find round-
ed surfaces, such as
those of cheeks or
lips, shaded with
straight lines.

But you will al-
so now understand
how easy it must be
for dishonest deal-
ers to forge or imi-
tate scrawled sketch-
es like Figure 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 object drawn, and perceiving whether

Fig. 11.

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 105

the hasty handling is all conducive to the ex-
pression 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.

But farther observe, that this scrawled, or eco-
nomic, 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

106 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feel-
ings, 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.

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 occa-
sionally, 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 draughts-
man, and not to know how to apply his power eco-
nomically. 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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 107

sometimes necessary to draw pure outlines, as an
incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled
up afterwards with colour, 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.

Hence, the published works of Ketsch, and all the
English imitations of them, and all outline en-
gravings 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,

108 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others ; because

an outline can only be true so long as it accurately

represents the form of the given object with one of

its edges. Thus, the outline a and the outline b,

a i Fig. 12., are both true outlines of a

\_J \J ball; because, however thick the line

\J may be, whether we take the interior
c
Fig. 12. or exterior edge of it, that edge of it

always draws a true circle. But c is a false out-
line 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 tt force," as it is called, is gained by falsifi-
cation 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

letter I.] ON FIEST PRACTICE. 109

is afterwards to enclose 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 out-
line ; whereas this broad line is only the first instal-
ment of the future shadow, and the outline is really-
drawn with its inner edge.1 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 gene-
ral that shade will ultimately enclose them. The best
example of this treatment that I know is Eaphael's
sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel pur-
suing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left
eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate
,he nose and forehead towards the light are opposed
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 prin-
ipal dark lines, in the head and drapery of the arms,
being on the side turned to the light.

1 See Note 2. in Appendix I.

NIVERSITY
CALIFS*!

110 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

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 Durer 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

LETTER 1.1

ON FIEST PRACTICE.

Ill

one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on
copying that bit of Durer, 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 con-
tains 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

Fig. 13.

112 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

four or five years' practice you may be able to make
useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet ; ex-
cept 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 out-
line remains absolute. You see, in that woodcut
of Durer'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.

Understanding, then, thus much of the use of
outline, we will go back to our question about tree
drawing left unanswered at page 90.

We were, you remember, in pursuit of mys-

LETTER I.]

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

113

tery 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

Fig. 14.

are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful
woodcut of Durer's, the " Flight into Egypt." Copy

I

114

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter I.

these carefully, — never
mind how little at a time,
but thoroughly; then trace
the Durer, 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 Durer's can be displaced without
harm; that all add to the effect, and either ex-
press 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 num
bers of last year's Illustrated News or Times are
full of them), you will see that, though good an
forcible general effect is produced, the lines are

Fig. 15.

•e

d

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 115

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 fortu-
nate chance, nor anything but downright skill and
thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Durer's.
Yet there is considerable intricacy and glittering
confusion in the interstices of those vine leaves of
his, as well as of the grass.

When you have got familiarised 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. 102.)
This is facsimiled 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

I 2

116

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter i.

may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16.',
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

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

letter I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE. 117

noble shape, and you have faithfully followed the
same.

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 considera-
tions enter into the business, which are by no means
confined to first practice, but extend to all prac-
tice; these (as this letter is long enough, I should
think, to satisfy even the most exacting of corre-
spondents) 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. Kuskin.

i 3

118 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter h.

LETTEK II.

SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

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 ob-

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 119

jects 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.

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 ren-
dered with an approximation almost to mirrored por-
traiture. 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.

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 pre-
sent simple examples of the importance of leading
i 4

120 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii;

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 moun-
tain, 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 en-
dure 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 to-
gether with it, bending as it bent ; what winds tor-
ment 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 vapour is at any moment enduring in
its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or

letter II ] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 121

melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing distin-
guishes 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 stand-
ing 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, what-
ever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16.
(p. 116.) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the
brow of a crag at Sestri near Grenoa, 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

122 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 un-
given : depend upon it, their chief beauty is in these.
So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small,
you will notice that, though the boughs spring irre-
gularly and at various angles, there is a tendeDcy 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

letter n.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

123

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 ex-
tremity, so as to form a great 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

&

Fiff. 17.

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

124

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

bounding curve, so that the type of each sepa-
rate bough is again not a, but 6, Fig. 18.; approxi-

Fig. 18.

mating, 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

Fig. 19.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 125

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 approxi-
mates, 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

126 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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. 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.1 It is facsimiled
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 ad-
juncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
more tall and upright still, because their line is con-
tinued below by the figure of the farmer with his
i It is meant, I believe, for " Salt Hill."

Fig. 20.

128 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 Ra-
diation," 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 com-
position somewhat awkwardly.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 129

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 de-
pression in the ground all down the hill where the

130 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 to-
wards the valley, behind the roots of the trees ?

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. Eesolve 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

LETTER II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 131

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 sabre, or fused like a
glass bottle, or crystallised like hoar-frost, or veined
like a forest leaf: look at it, and don't try to re-
member how anybody told you to " do a stone."

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 Durer's work1, you must add a simple but equally

1 I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Durer
in their strength, that is to say, in their imagination or

k 2

132 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter n.

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. <3ret,
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.1 If you

power of design. But you may approach them, by perse-
verance, in truth of manner.

1 The following are the most desirable plates :

Grande Chartreuse. Little Devil's Bridge.

JEsacus and Hesperie. River Wye (not Wye and Se-

Cephalus and Procris. vern).

Source of Arveron. Holy Island.

Ben Arthur. Clyde.

Watermill. LaufFenbourg.

Hindhead Hill. Blair Athol.

Hedging and Ditching. Alps from Grenoble.

Dumblane Abbey. Raglan. (Subject with quiet

Morpeth. brook, trees, and castle on

Calais Pier. the right.)
Pembury Mill.

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.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 133

cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while,
any of these engravings, you must use a photo-
graph 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

4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.

5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower

of a church scene through them.

6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.

7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.

8. Rivaulx Abbey.

9. Wye and Severn.

10. Scene with castle in centre, 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 draw-
ing 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
marvellous 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

K 3

134 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [lktteb ii,

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

in a mountain stream, not in the published series ; and next
to it, are the unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crow-
hurst. 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, iEsacus, 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.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 135

labour 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 l ; 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 colour that matches that
of the plate2; working it with the point of the
brush as delicately as if you were drawing with pen-
cil, and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you
can touch the paper, till you get the gradations of
Turner's engraving. In this exercise, as in the

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

2 The impressions vary so much in colour that no brown can
be specified.

K 4

136 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter n.

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 re-
fused if you had not put it to severest work.
Nothing is more strange in art than the way
that chance and materials seem to favour 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 colour 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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 137

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 l of some general landscape sub-
ject, 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 colour, 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 ob-
scure 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 charac-
ters will be advantageous to you for future study,

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

138 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 grey, like those of the photograph.

Now observe; the perfection of work would be
tinted shadow, like photography, without any ob-
scurity 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 ex-
pression 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 deal-
ing with the most subtle natural effects; for the
firm etching gets at the expression of complicated
details, as leaves, masonry, textures of ground,

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 139

&c., 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 ordi-
narily 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' Insti-
tutes and other societies organised with a view to
public instruction, will not fail to possess them-
selves 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,"
lately photographed by Thurston Thompson from

140 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter n.

KaphaeFs 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 col-
lection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-
rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly de-
sirable, because all other modes of drawing, with
pen separately, or chalk separately, or colour sepa-
rately, 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 enquiry, 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 :

Take a small and simple photograph; allow
yourself half an hour to express its subjects with
the pen only, using some permanent liquid colour
instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly,
and laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 141

accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings ;
then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
grey, and tint it over, getting now the finer grada-
tions 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 unin-
telligible 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.
Practise in this way from one photograph, allow-
ing yourself sometimes only a quarter of an hour
for the whole thing, sometimes an hour, some-
times 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.

142 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

And now at last, when you can copy a piece of
Liber Studiorum, or its photographic substitute, faith-
fully, 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 grey or brown colour of any kind, reinforced
and denned with the pen.

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 Dureresque expression of the de-
tails. If the subject seems to you interesting, and
there are points about it which you cannot under-
stand, 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,

LETTER IT.] SKETCHING

FROM NATURE. 143

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 misin-
terpretation of your own work. If you have time,
however far your light and shade study in the dis-
tance may have been carried, it is always well, for
these reasons, to make also your Dureresque 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.

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 grey,
which will fix the pencil. While this fixing colour
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 grey paper so well ; for you can get
more gradation by the taking off your wet tint,

144 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

and laying it on cunningly a little darker here and
there, than you can with body-colour white, unless
you are consummately skilful. There is no objec-
tion to your making your Dureresque memoranda
on grey 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

Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful
study nor for Dureresque 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 colour again and again into the tints as
they dry, using every expedient which your practice
has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaro-
scuro in the manageable and moist material, taking
the colour 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, &c. Then, when the colour is
in, take your pen and mark the outline characters

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 145

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, &c. ; 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 endeavour to obtain velo-
city 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 per-
fectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed
and decision, while your continual course of practice
is such as to ensure your retaining an accurate judg-
ment and a tender touch. Speed, under such cir-
cumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and
you will find yourself always beguiled rather into
elaboration than negligence.

Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever
kind of landscape scenery you are passing through,

L

146 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 Dureresque 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

Fisr. 21,

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

147

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 grey ; wholly without indi-
cation 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, di-
minishing at last to a strange,
unintelligible, spider-like spot
of grey on the light hill-side.
A perfectly great painter,
throughout his distances, con-
tinually 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 ac-
curacy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
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 ensure your drawing delicately

Fig. 22.

l 2

148 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter it.

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 colour,
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.

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

letter n.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 149

which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar
instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all be-
ginners, 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 be-
ginner will dash at ; or, if not these, it will be some-
thing 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 protec-
tion against this evil genius of beginners, the fol-
lowing general warnings may be useful :

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 Jyou
will be continually led into some endeavour to make
your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal

L 3

150 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

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
parlour, 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.

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 every-
body ; 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 colour and a piece of Bristol
board : those materials are, for the present, of more

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 151

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.

2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished ; espe-
cially 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 exceed-
ingly 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

L 4

152 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

one thing is seen through another. You will con-
stantly 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 unmanage-
able 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

letter li.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 153

should think you had entirely mastered it. But
at first, and even for some time, you must be pre-
pared for very discomfortable failure ; which, never-
theless, will not be without some wholesome result.

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 land-
scapes. 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, &c. Nearly every
other mile of road in chalk country will present
beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides ; better in
form and colour 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.

154 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 porticos. Any old
English village, or cluster of farm-houses, 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 recom-
mended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rival-
ship 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 eglan-
tines, and bossy roses : you cannot have better prac-
tice, nor be kept by anything in purer thoughts.

Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your
neighbourhood, and study them ripple by ripple.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 155

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. Euins 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.

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 colour. 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.

When you have practised 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

156 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 diffi-
culties 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.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FEOM NATURE. 157

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 l ; and the second, that this divergence is never
formal, but carried out with endless variety of indi-
vidual line. I must now press both these facts on
your attention a little farther.

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,

1 See the closing letter in this volume.

158 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ir.

in which they are highly praised. They are de-
servedly praised, for they are the only works by
a modern 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, Eobert, and the other
lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether in-
ferior 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 r, 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

1 Bogue, Fleet Street. 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.

LETTER II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 159

young students renders it desirable that their real
character should be thoroughly understood.

You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons
on Trees, a pretty woodcut, 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
practise 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 uni-
versal in application; "all outlines expressive of
foliage," he says, u are but modifications of them."
They consist of groups of lines, more or less re-
sembling our Fig. 23. on the next page; and the
characters especially insisted upon are, that they
" tend at their inner ends to a common centre ; "
that "their ends terminate in [are enclosed by]

160 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

ovoid curves ; " and that " the outer ends are most
emphatic."

Now, as thus expressive of

>rf^£^T ^>s the great laws of radiation and

f^^^s^ /ft* enclosure, 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 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

LETTER II.]

SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

161

ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual indi-
vidual 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.

It does not matter how small or apparently sym-
metrical the cluster may be, nor how large or vague.
You can hardly have a more formal one than b in
Fig. 9. p. 86., nor a less formal one than this shoot

of Spanish chestnut,
shedding its leaves,
Fig. 24. ; but in ei-
ther of them, even
the general reader,
unpractised in
any of the pre-
viously recommended
exercises, must see

Fig. 24.

that there are wan-
dering lines mixed with the radiating ones, and
radiating lines with the wild ones : and if he takes

M

162 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

the pen, and tries to copy either of these ex-
amples, he will find that neither play of hand to
left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm
touch, nor any leamable or describable touch what-
soever, 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 con-
fusion 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. 25.1

1 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 woodcut.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

163

Fig. 25.

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
M 2

164 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

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 exag-
geration of their authority rather than in its denial.

Secondly, I say, we have to show the indivi-
dual 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 Kosa has great perception of the sweep
of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws
a single leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Si-
milarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has great
feeling for masses of form and harmony of colour ;
but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless

letter ii.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 165

touches; not even so much as the species of tree,
much less the variety of its leafage, being ever dis-
cernible. Now, although both these expressions of
government and individuality are essential to mas-
terly work, the individuality is the more essential,
and the more difficult of attainment; and, there-
fore, 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
m 3

166 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 spectres 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.

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

letter ii.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 167

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 colour, the severity of its forms, and the sym-
metry of its masses.

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

M 4

168 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter it.

you in one particular, or in any direction of enquiry.
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, fretful ness 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 illus-
trated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions
of line and colour ; 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.

The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, how-
ever, to the investigation of the higher branches of
composition, matters which it would be quite use-
less 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

letter n.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 169

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 cha-
racter, on which all excellence of portraiture de-
pends, whether of masses of mankind, or of groups
of leaves.

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 care-
lessness 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 cha-
racter; I will give him a friend who will entirely

170 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. letter ii.

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 deter-
mination 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 l ; and you may properly admire the

1 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 Prin-

LETTER II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 171

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 under-
stand the one and love the other more and more,
whether you can draw well yourself or not.

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.1

ciples and Practice of Art. There are many useful remarks,
however, dispersed through this latter work.

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

172 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature
complete as a type of the human nature. We
have, observed, first, Subordination ; secondly, Indi-
viduality; lastly, and this not the least essential
character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson,
in every serrated point and shining vein which es-
capes 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.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

173

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 iEsacus and Hesperie was

wrought out with the greatest possible care; and

the principal branch on the near tree is etched

as in Fig. 26. ^. M

8 Fjg. 26.

The work looks \ • -*

Vi

at first like a 1?q?-V>

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 com-
plexity results. Nay, even before the light and

174

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

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 mo-
notonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, be-
fore Turner's time, had been employed, even by
the best masters, in their distant masses. Fig. 27.

is sufficiently charac-
teristic of the manner
of the old woodcuts
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 deli-
neation of the foreground, kept their conventionalism
from degeneracy : but in the drawings of the Caracci

Fig. 27.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

175

and other derivative masters, the conventional-
ism 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 ig-
norant 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 con-
tracted 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

Fig. 28.

176 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappear-
ance, will be indicated.

One point more remains to be noted about trees,
and I have done. In the minds of our ordinary-
water-colour artists a distant tree seems only to be
conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly
with other masses, and giving cool colour 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 colour, but a more or less glo-
bular 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 dif-
ficult of all characters to reach, because it cannot
be got by mere scratching or roughening the sur-
face, but is always associated with such delicate ex-
pressions of form and growth as are only imitable

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 177

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 deli-
cately, 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.

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 con-
ventional lines, whose horizontality is supposed to

178 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 hori-
zontal lines of the images will be diffused and
broken, while the vertical ones will remain deci-
sive, and the oblique ones decisive in proportion
to their steepness.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 179

when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the
current plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle.
Take the greatest t 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 deli-
cacy : if your reflections are only soft and gradated
enough, they are nearly sure to give you a pleasant
effect.1 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

1 See Note 3. in Appendix I.

N 2

180 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

ripples are large, the reflections become shaken,
and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending
lines. .

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 1 ; 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 develope the curve mathematically would re-
quire a knowledge of the exact quantity of water
in the river, the shape of its bed, and the hard-

1 The student may hardly at first believe that the perspec-
tive of buildings is of little consequence ; but he will find it
so ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 181

ness 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.

If, after a little study from Nature, you get
puzzled by the great differences between the as-
pect 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 ap-
pearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and pre-
cisely the same in form and in relative position,
only all topsy-turvey. 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 watch-
ing how their reflections alter, and chiefly how their

N 3

182 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter ii.

reflected colours and shades differ from their own
colours 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.

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 com-
plexity; 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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 183

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 best1, and vice versa.
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 colour 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 colours
with which water is painted are an indication of the
position of the spectator, and connected inseparably

1 See Note 4. in Appendix I.
n 4

184 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter n.

with the perspective of the shores. The most beau-
tiful 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 colours 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 indescri-
bably lovely.

All this seems complicated enough already ; but if
there be a strong colour in the clear water itself, as
of green or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these pheno-
mena are doubly involved ; for the darker reflections
now become of the colour of the water. The reflec-
tion of a black gondola, for instance, at Venice, is
never black, but pure dark green. And, farther, the
colour 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 colour on

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 185

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-
coloured 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
colour, and partly that you may approach lakes and
streams with reverence *, 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.2
Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots,

1 See Note 5. in Appendix I.

2 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, &c. 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 espe-
cially 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.

186 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

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.

III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, be-
fore passing to the clouds, I say nothing special
about ground.1 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 struc-
ture 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

1 Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of tht
works of Prout in the Appendix.

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 187

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.

Passing then to skies, note that there is this
great peculiarity about sky subject, as distin-
guished 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 espe-
cially 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 ploughs or builds upon. But the clouds,
though we can hide them with smoke, and mix
them with poison, cannot be quarried nor built over,

188 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter II.

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 marvellous 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. 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 re-
collection will enable you to do. This, however,

letter II.] SKETCHINGS FROM NATURE. 189

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 sun-
rise will often stay without serious change for as
long. And in order to be the readier in drawing
them, practise 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

190 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

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 ; sculp-
tured 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 vapour 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 disadvan-
tage of light and shade than any others, the
force of light in clouds being wholly unattain-
able by art ; so that if we put shade enough
to express their form as positively as it is ex-
pressed 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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 191

them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
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 inex-
pressible 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 out-
lined ; — 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

192 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter ii.

shade, just as carefully as you do that of other
things, looking exclusively for examples of treat-
ment to the vignettes in Kogers's Italy and Poems,
and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have ac-
cess 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 Eogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you
need.

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

letter II.] SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 193

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 defence 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. KUSKIN.

194 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter in.

LETTEK III.

ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

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 ob-
serve closely such things as are beautiful in colour,
you had not longed to paint them, and felt consider-
able difficulty in complying with your restriction to
the use of black, or blue, or grey. You ought to love
colour, and to think nothing quite beautiful or per-
fect without it ; and if you really do love it, for its own
sake, and are not merely desirous to colour because
you think painting a finer thing than drawing, there
is some chance you may colour well. Nevertheless,

LErTEB in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 195

you need not hope ever to produce anything more than
pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive
sketches in colour, unless you mean to be wholly an
artist. XYou may, in the time which other vocations
leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful,
and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to
colour 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 colour to your work. For
the chances are more than a thousand to one against
your being right both in form and colour 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, colour is wholly relative.
Every hue throughout your work is altered by every
touch that you add in other places ; so that what was

O 2

196 THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter nr.

warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have
put a hotter colour in another place, and what was
in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant
as you set other colours 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 colourist.

But though you cannot produce finished co-
loured 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 colour only ; and
preserving distinct statements of certain colour 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 grey; 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 colour ;

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 197

but you may presume that you have this, if you
enjoy colour.

And, though of course you should always give
as much form to your subject as your attention
to its colour will admit of, remember that the
whole value of what you are about depends, in
a coloured sketch, on the colour merely. If the
colour 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 colour at all,
you must colour rightly. Give up all the form,
rather than the slightest part of the colour: 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 colours.
Of course, the discipline you have gone through
o 3

198 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

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 coloured memoranda. If you want
the form of the subject, draw it in black and white.
If you want its colour, take its colour, and be sure
you have it, and not a spurious, treacherous, half-
measured piece of mutual concession, with the co-
lours all wrong, and the forms still anything but
right. It is best to get into the habit of considering
the coloured work merely as supplementary to your
other studies ; making your careful drawings of the
subject first, and then a coloured memorandum sepa-
rately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in hue,
and entirely minding its own business. This prin-
ciple, however, bears chiefly on large and distant
subjects : in foregrounds and near studies, the colour
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 colour in each bit of moss pattern, and
then none of the colours will look right; but it

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 199

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.

Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail
respecting colouring, 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 in-
struction which, every year, our rising artists will
be more ready to give kindly, and better able to
give wisely.

And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colours,
not moist colours: grind a sufficient quantity of
each on your palette every morning, keeping a se-
parate plate, large and deep, for colours to be used
in broad washes, and wash both plate and palette
every evening, so as to be able always to get good

O 4

200 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

and pure colour when you need it ; and force your-
self into cleanly and orderly habits about your
colours. The two best colourists of modern times,
Turner and Eossetti l, afford us, I am sorry to say,
no confirmation of this precept by their practice.
Turner was, and Eossetti is, as slovenly in all their
procedures as men can well be ; but the result
of this was, with Turner, that the colours have
altered in all his pictures, and in many of his
drawings; and the result of it with Eossetti is,
that, though his colours are safe, he has sometimes
to throw aside work that was half done, and begin
over again. William Hunt, of the Old Water-colour,
is very neat in his practice ; so, I believe, is Mul-
ready ; so is John Lewis ; and so are the leading
Pre-Eaphaelites, Eossetti only excepted. And there

1 I give Rossetti this preeminence, because, though the
leading Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over colour
in the abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished
above the rest for rendering colour 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 harshne«. Rossetti's carelessness, to do him
justice, is only in water-colour, never in oil.

letter III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 201

can be no doubt about the goodness of the advice,
if it were only for this reason, that the more par-
ticular you are about your colours the more you
will get into a deliberate and methodical habit in
using them, and all true speed in colouring comes
of this deliberation.

Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with
your colours 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 colours
about with more ease; they will not damp your
paper so much, and you will be able to go on con-
tinually, and lay forms of passing cloud and other
fugitive or delicately shaped lights, otherwise unat-
tainable except by time.

This mixing of white with the pigments, so as
to render them opaque, constitutes body-colour
drawing as opposed to transparent-colour drawing,
and you will, perhaps, have it often said to you that
this body-colour is "illegitimate." It is just as
legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling
is concerned, the same process, only without its

202 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, [letter hi.

uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its inconve-
nience ; for oil will not dry quickly, nor carry safely,
nor give the same effects of atmosphere without ten-
fold labour. And if you hear it said that the body-
colour 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 colour,
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-colour and transparent colour in England, I am
now entirely convinced that the greatest things that
are to be done in art must be done in dead colour.
The habit of depending on varnish or on lucid
tints for transparency, makes the painter compa-
ratively lose sight of the nobler translucence which
is obtained by breaking various colours 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

LETTER ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 203

him to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous
ones *, and to enjoy, in general, quality of colour
more than grandeur of composition, and confined
light rather than open sunshine : so that the really
greatest thoughts of the greatest men have always,

1 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 colour. Any colour will do for
some people, if it is browned and shining ; but fallacy in dead
colour is detected on the instant. I even believe that when-
ever 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 dis-
tinguish between translucency and lustre. Translucency, though,
as I have said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place,
beautiful; but lustre 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
lustre 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 generalise too quickly in such matters ;
but there can be no question that lustre is destructive of love-
liness in colour, 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 ?

204 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

so far as I remember, been reached in dead colour,
and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and Veronese
are those which are likest frescos.

Besides all this, the fact is, that though some-
times a little chalky and coarse-looking, body-colour
is, in a sketch, infinitely liker Nature than trans-
parent colour: 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.

Against one thing, however, I must steadily cau-
tion you. All kinds of colour are equally illegiti-
mate, if you think they will allow you to alter at
your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is
no vehicle or method of colour which admits of al-
teration 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

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 205

spoiled. The secret of all good colour 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 colour ; 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 reinforce 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.
The drawing in body-colour 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-colour school of
art. There are sometimes places in which a skilful
artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain
conditions of dusty colour with more ease than he

206 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter III.

could otherwise ; and sometimes a skilfully rased
piece of paper will, in the midst of transparent tints,
answer nearly the purpose of chalky body-colour 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 grey paper
as smooth as silk ] ; and never disturb the surface
of your colour or paper, except finally to scratch out
the very highest lights if you are using transparent
colours.

I have said above that body-colour drawing will
teach you the use of colour 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 work-
ing with transparent tints in the best way. You

1 But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed
imperial, or grey 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.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 207

are not to think that because you use body-colour
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 re-
quired for the effect of the mist, the warm rock-colour
showing through the blue cloud-colour, 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 colour, from the warm
tints showing through and between the particles of
the other. When it is dry, you may add a little
colour 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

208 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or
by any untoward accident mix the under and upper
colours 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.1

This discussion of the relative merits of trans-
parent and opaque colour has, however, led us a
little beyond the point where we should have begun ;
we must go back to our palette, if you please. Gret
a cake of each of the hard colours named in the
note below2 and try experiments on their simple
combinations, by mixing each colour 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 colours in columns at the top and side ;

1 I insist upon this unalterability of colour 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.

2 It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with
few colours; 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 colour box in the

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

209

the mixed tints being given at the intersections,
thus (the letters standing for colours) :

b

c

d

e

f &c

a

a b

a c

a d

a e

a f

b

—

b c

b d

b e

b f

c

—

i —

c d

c e

c f

d

—

—

—

d e

d f
e f

e

&c.

order I have set them down, you will always easily put your
finger on the one you want.

Cobalt. Smalt. Antwerp blue. Prussian blue.

Black. Gamboge. Emerald green. Hooker's green.

Lemon yellow. Cadmium yellow. Yellow ochre. Koman ochre.

Raw sienna. Burnt sienna. Light red. Indian red.

Mars orange. Extract of ver- Carmine. Violet carmine.

milion.

Brown madder. Burnt umber. Vandyke brown. Sepia.

Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent
colours, 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 colour, 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 colour
for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into afterwards
with other colours.

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

210 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

This will give you some general notion of the
characters of mixed tints of two colours only, and
it is better in practice to confine yourself as much
as possible to these, and to get more complicated
colours, either by putting the third over the first
blended tint, or by putting the third into its inter-
stices. Nothing but watchful practice will teach you
the effects that colours have on each other when
thus put over, or beside, each other.

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
I^"1^™ ^™ pea; and supposing r is the

a %

Z^Jd room, a d the window, and you

are sitting at a, Fig. 29., hold

I this cardboard a little outside of

the window, upright, and in the

Fig. 29.

direction b d, parallel to the side
of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch

LETTER III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 211

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
colours 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
colour," "hill colour," "field colour," 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.1 When you have got
the colours 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.

1 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 colour beside one of the
circular openings. You will thus have no occasion to wash any
of the colours 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.

p 2

212 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 sun-lighted 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 ordi-
nary 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 colour 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 grey-^purple. The quantity of purple
and grey in Nature is, by the way, another somewhat
surprising subject of discovery.

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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 213

through the aperture in the paper brighter than
the paper, as sky, sun-lighted grass, &c. 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 dif-
ferences of hue without the help of the cardboard,
and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker,
as separate colours, preparing each carefully on
your palette, and laying it as if it were a patch
of coloured 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 grey round them on
the light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper
grey on the dark side, varied by reflected colours,
and, over all, rich black strips of bark and brown

p 3

214 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, [letter hi.

spots of moss. Lay first the rosy grey, leaving white
for the high lights and for the spots of moss, and
not touching the dark side. Then lay the grey for
the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy grey of
the light, leaving also in this darker grey the white
paper in the places for the black and brown moss ;
then prepare the moss colours 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 colours, and put them on each side
of the tree trunk, fitting them carefully to its edge.

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 colour 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 215

how ; but never mind ; it is of the greatest possible

importance that you should practise this separate

laying on of the hues, for all good colouring finally

depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and

sometimes desirable, to lay one colour 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 colour.

Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and

then your upper colour struck upon it in perfect

form, for ever, thenceforward, unalterable; or else

the two colours must be individually put in their

p 4

216 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

places, and led up to each other till they meet at
their appointed border, equally, thenceforward, un-
changeable. Either process, you see, involves abso-
lute decision. If you once begin to slur, or change,
or sketch, or try this way and that with your
colour, it is all over with it and with you. You
will continually see bad copyists trying to imitate
the Venetians, by daubing their colours 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 for ever. Had one line or hair of them
gone wrong, it would have been wrong for ever; 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 ;

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 217

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 condi-
tions : " If he say ' ay,' it will ; if he say ( no,' it
will ; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will."

3. Whenever you lay on a mass of colour, be sure
that however large it may be, or however small, it
shall be gradated. No colour exists in Nature
under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If
you do not see this, it is the fault of your in-
experience: you will see it in due time, if you
practise enough. But in general you may see it
at once. In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy
grey must be gradated by the roundness of the
stem till it meets the shaded side ; similarly the
shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Ac-
cordingly, whether by adding water, or white paint,

218 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

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 impos-
sible to meet with an ungradated piece of colour, 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 gra-
dated ? " 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 colour 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 colour should be gradated ; the

LETTER ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 219

preciousness and pleasantness of the colour itself
depends more on this than on any other of its
qualities, for gradation is to colours just what cur-
vature 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 colour, may be seen easily by laying
an even tint of rose colour 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 colour 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.

4. But observe, it is not enough in general that
colour should be gradated by being made merely
paler or darker at one place than another. Generally
colour 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

220 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

the darkest spot 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 dulness,
but there will almost always be both of them, how-
ever reconciled ; and you must never be satisfied
with a piece of colour 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, — greyish 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 colour is wet, mix with it the colour which is to
subdue it, adding gradually a little more and a little
more ; or else, when the colour is quite dry, strike a
gradated touch of another colour 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 tint-
ing the chess-board. Of each of these methods I have
something to tell you separately : but that is distinct

letter III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 221

from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit
without once more pressing upon you the preeminent
necessity of introducing it everywhere. I have pro-
found 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 colour, without securing a gradation.
You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, per-
haps six or seven feet long by four or five high,
find one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat
ungradated : and you will find in practice, that bril-
liancy of hue, and vigour of light, and even the
aspect of transparency in shade, are essentially de-
pendent on this character alone ; hardness, coldness,
and opacity resulting far more from equality of
colour than from nature of colour. Give me some
mud off a city crossing, some ochre 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 gen-
tian, snow for the light, and amber for the gold,

222 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, [letter hi.

you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep
the masses of those colours unbroken in purity,
and unvarying in depth.

5. Next, note the three processes by which gra-
dation and other characters are to be obtained :
A. Mixing while the colour 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 colours dis-
tinctly 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
harmonise 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 223

separate at first. Whereas it often happens that
the whole beauty of two colours 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 grey, or purple and
scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such instances
the most beautiful and truthful results may be
obtained by laying one colour 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-colour ; only observe, never
mix in this way two mixtures ; let the colour you
lay into the other be always a simple, not a com-
pound tint.

B. Laying one colour over another.
If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and
after it is quite dry, strike a little very wet car-
mine quickly over it, you will obtain a much more
brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and
vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark colour
first, and strike a little blue or white body-colour
lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful

224 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

grey than by mixing the colour 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
colour. I should like you to depend on little
more than the dead colours, simply laid on, only
observe always this, that the less colour you do
the work with, the better it will always be 1 : so
that if you have laid a red colour, 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 re-
quired purple ; and if you want a green hue over
a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the

1 If colours 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 colours 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.

letter in.] ON COLOUK AND COMPOSITION. 225

blue, but a little yellow, and so on, always bringing
the under colour into service as far as you possibly
can. If, however, the colour beneath is wholly op-
posed 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 colour
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 colour. This is better, in general, than
laying the upper colour itself so thick as to con-
quer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a trans-
parent colour, 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 ochre, 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

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226 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

mix the warm colour 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.

C. Breaking one colour in small points through
or over another.

This is the most important of all processes in
good modern l oil and water-colour 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 :

(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 colour,
with other colours afterwards put cunningly into
the interstices. The more you practise this, when
the subject evidently calls for it, the more your

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

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 227

eye will enjoy the higher qualities of colour. The
process is, in fact, the carrying out of the prin-
ciple of separate colours to the utmost possible
refinement ; using atoms of colour in juxtaposition,
instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up
minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the
colour 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 colour 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.

(6.) If a colour is to be darkened by superimposed
portions of another, it is, in many cases, better to
lay the uppermost colour 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 colours together is
pleasant to the eye ; the second, that much expres-
sion of form may be got by wise administration of
the upper dark touches. In distant mountains they

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228 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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-colour drawing by these
two expedients, interlacing the colours, or retouch-
ing 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.

(c.) When you have time, practise the production
of mixed tints by interlaced touches of the pure
colours 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-colour Society, in
this respect, continually, and make frequent memo-
randa of the variegations in flowers; not painting
the flower completely, but laying the ground colour
of one petal, and painting the spots on it with

letter in. J ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 229

studious precision: a series of single petals of
lilies, geraniums, tulips, &c., 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, fox-
gloves, and the like; and work out the odd, inde-
finite hues of the spots themselves with minute grains
of pure interlaced colour, 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
colours as I have told you to be of yours. You would
think, by the way she paints, that her colours 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 grey, or green, or purple, or every
colour in the world at once, only a single gleam
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230 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter m.

or streak of pure blue in the centre of it. And
so with all her colours. Sometimes I have really-
thought her miserliness intolerable : in a gentian,
for instance, the way she economises her ultramarine
down in the bell is a little too bad.1

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 colourist, you must lay a tax on them your-
self when you begin to use true colour ; that is to
say, you must use them little, and make of them
much. There is no better test of your colour tones
being good, than your having made the white in
your picture precious, and the black conspicuous.

I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean
merely glittering or brilliant : it is easy to scratch
white sea-gulls 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

1 See Note 6. in Appendix I.

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 231

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 colours. 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 grey, except at a few points of
chief lustre.

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 colour, — 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 centre of masses of shadow. Shadows of abso-
lutely negative grey, 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

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232 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and
enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the
gold colour and the white which it relieves. Of all
the great colourists Velasquez is the greatest master
of the black chords. His black is more precious than
most other people's crimson.

It is not, however, only white and black which you
must make valuable ; you must give rare worth to
every colour you use ; but the white and black ought
to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while
the other colours should be continually passing one
into the other, being all evidently companions in the
same gay world ; while the white, black, and neutral
grey 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 colours ; 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 colouring, like fine drawing, is delicate;

LETTER ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 233

and so delicate that if, at last, you see the colour
you are putting on, you are putting on too much.
You ought to feel a change wrought in the general
tone, by touches of colour which individually are
too pale to be seen ; and if there is one atom of any
colour in the whole picture which is unnecessary to
it, that atom hurts it.

Notice also that nearly all good compound colours
are odd colours. 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 colour too warm or too cold — no colour 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 colour.

As to the choice and harmony of colours in
general, if you cannot choose and harmonise them
by instinct, you will never do it at all. If you need
examples of utterly harsh and horrible colour, you

234 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

may find plenty given in treatises upon colouring, to
illustrate the laws of harmony ; and if you want to
colour beautifully, colour as best pleases yourself at
quiet times, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as
if it were clever or difficult to colour in that way,
but so that the colour 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 colours are " discordant,"
make a note of the two colours, and put them
together whenever you can. I have actually heard
people say that blue and green were discordant;
the two colours 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
coloured world of ours. If you have a good eye for

lettkr in.] ON COLOUK AND COMPOSITION. 235

colours, you will soon find out how constantly Nature
puts purple and green together, purple and scarlet,
green and blue, yellow and neutral grey, and the
like ; and how she strikes these colour-concords for
general tones, and then works into them with innu-
merable subordinate ones; and you will gradually
come to like what she does, and find out new and
beautiful chords of colour 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
colour does not give you intense pleasure, let it
alone ; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the
eyes and senses of people who feel colour, whenever
you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.
You will find, also, your power of colouring depend
much on your state of health and right balance of
mind ; when you are fatigued or ill you will not
see colours well, and when you are ill-tempered you
will not choose them well : thus, though not infallibly
a test of character in individuals, colour power is
a great sign of mental health in nations ; when they

236 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

are in a state of intellectual decline, their colouring
always gets dull.1 You must also take great care
not to be misled by affected talk about colours 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 colour-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.

Take care also never to be misled into any idea
that colour can help or display form ; colour 2 always
disguises form, and is meant to do so.

1 The worst general character that colour can possibly have
is a prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of
a decaying heap of vegetables ; this colour is accurately indica-
tive of decline or paralysis in missal-painting.

2 That is to say, local colour inherent in the object. The
gradations of colour in the various shadows belonging to
various lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a
colourist can ever draw forms perfectly (see Modern
Painters, vol. iv. chap iii. at the end) ; but all notions
of explaining form by superimposed colour, as in archi-
tectural mouldings, are absurd. Colour 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 237

It is a favourite dogma among modern writers
on colour that " warm colours " (reds and yellows)
" approach," or express nearness, and " cold colours "
(blue and grey) " 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. Colours, as such, are
absolutely inexpressive respecting distance. It is
their quality (as depth, delicacy, &c.) which ex-
presses 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

prettier because it is flushed, but you would see the form of
the cheek bone better if it were not. Colour 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 im-
perfectly relieved, as long as the colours are of equal depth.
The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch
more than the red one.

238 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

distance ; but that is not because blue is a retiring
colour, but because the mist in the air is blue, and
therefore any warm colour 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 colour," than brown is a retiring colour,
because, when stones are seen through brown water,
the deeper they lie the browner they look ; or than
yellow is a retiring colour, 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 express-
ing either nearness or distance : they express them
only under the peculiar circumstances which render
them at the moment, or in that place, signs of near-
ness or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is
a sign of nearness, for if you put the orange a great
way off, its colour will not look so bright ; but vivid
orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you
cannot get the colour of orange in a cloud near you.
So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of near-
ness, because the closer you look at them the more

LETTER III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 239

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 grey. It may, indeed, be gene-
rally assumed that a tender or pale colour will more
or less express distance, and a powerful or dark colour
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 colour 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 re-
flections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate,
pale, and faint ; while the distance, when it is in
shadow, may relieve the whole foreground with in-
tense 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 " aerial
perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set

240 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING- [letter ill.

them down as fully as you can, and as faith-
fully, and never alter a colour because it wo'n't
look in its right place. Put the colour 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 in-
tends you always to enjoy her colouring, 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 " aerial perspective."

There is, however, I think, one law about dis-
tance, which has some claims to be considered a
constant one: namely, that dulness and heaviness
of colour are more or less indicative of nearness.
All distant colour is pure colour : 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 colour, purify or harmonise
it; hence a bad colourist is peculiarly incapable
of expressing distance. I do not of course mean

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 241

that you are to use bad colours in your foreground
by way of making it come forward ; but only that
a failure in colour, there, will not put it out of
its place ; while a failure in colour in the distance
will at once do away with its remoteness ; your
dull-coloured 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.

I have only one thing more to advise you, namely,
never to colour petulantly or hurriedly. You will
not, indeed, be able, if you attend properly to
your colouring, to get anything like the quantity
of form you could in a chiaroscuro sketch ; ne-
vertheless, 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 slo-
venly and obscure one. If you determine well
beforehand what outline each piece of colour is

R

242 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi;

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 sur-
prised 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 preci-
pitation. 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 colours. 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 grey, 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.

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

243

Fig. 30.

Here, then,
for I cannot
without colour-
ed 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-colour drawings accessible to you;
or from any of the little treatises on their art
which have been published lately by our water-
colour painters.1 But do not trust much to works
of this kind. You may get valuable hints from
them as to mixture of colours ; 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,

1 See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one
more point connected with the management of colour, under
the head " Law of Harmony."

r 2

244 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

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 generalisation, when all the foundations of
power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.

And now, in the last place, I have a few things to
tell you respecting that dangerous nobleness of con-
summate 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 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 cer-
tain relations ; a poet composes a poem, by putting
thoughts and words in pleasant order ; and a painter
a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colours
in pleasant order.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 245

In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must
be the result of composition. A paviour 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 deter
mined place, perform an intended part, and act, in
that part, advantageously for everything that is con-
nected with it.

Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the
type, in the arts of mankind, of the Providential
government of the world.1 It is an exhibition,
in the order given to notes, or colours, 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 pro-
longed, 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

1 See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv.
chap. viii. § 6.

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246 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

benefited by, its exaltation : no note, however low,
is overpowered; the others prepare for, and sym-
pathise 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, il
would instantly be deprived.

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 recognise it.

Much more in a great picture; every line and
colour is so arranged as to advantage the rest. None
are inessential, however slight ; and none are inde-
pendent, however forcible. It is not enough that
they truly represent natural objects ; but they must
fit into certain places, and gather into certain har-
monious groups : so that, for instance, the red chim-
ney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a
chimney, but that it may affect, in a certain way

letter in.] ON COLOUK AND COMPOSITION. 247

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 impos-
sible to determine what the colours 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.
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 de-
light in rhythm and metre, 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, remem-
ber it: powers of reflection and investigation are
also common to us all, so that the decision of in-
feriority in these rests only on questions of degree,
A. has a better memory than B., and C. reflects more

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248 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

profoundly than D. But the gift of composition is
not given at all to more than one man in a thou-
sand ; in its highest range, it does not occur above
three or four times in a century.

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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 249

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.

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.

This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamenta-
tion. Thus the group of two leaves, a, Fig. 31., is
unsatisfactory, because
it has no leading leaf;

^0

but that at b is prettier,

a h c

because it has a head or Fig. si.

master leaf; and c more satisfactory still, because

the subordination of the other members to this head

250 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

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 orna-
ment, and such others.

Thus, also, good pictures have always one light
larger and brighter than the other lights, or one fi-
gure more prominent than the other figures, or one
mass of colour 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 trace-
able; and you will generally find they are vulgar
pictures in which the law is strikingly manifest.
This may be simply illustrated by musical melody
for instance, in such phrases as this,

ft

^

i^-rjyirr rffmfMi

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

251

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 subordi-
nated compositions in painting, are apt to be weari-
some 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 arrange-
ment; so that in the grandest compositions, such
as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or Eaphael's
Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the prin-
cipal figure ; and very commonly the figure which is
really chief does not catch the eye at first, but is

252 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 prin-
cipal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose por-
trait it was evidently the painter's object to make
as interesting as possible. But a grand Madonna,
and a St. Greorge with a drifting banner, and many
figures more, occupy the centre 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.

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
analyse 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. is a rude sketch of the arrangement of
the whole subject ; the old bridge over the Moselle

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

253

Fig. 32.

at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the right,
Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or mas-
ter feature is, of course, the tower on the bridge.
It is kept from being too principal by an impor-
tant group on each side of it; the boats, on the
right, and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are
large in mass, and more forcible in colour, but they
are broken into small divisions, while the tower
is simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreit-
stein is noble in its mass, but so reduced by ae-
rial perspective of colour that it cannot contend
with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and

254 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

becomes the key of the picture. We shall see pre-
sently how the very objects which seem at first
to contend with it for the mastery are made, oc-
cultly, to increase its preeminence.

2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.

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 composi-
tion ; and I think it is even more authoritatively
present in the minds of most great composers than
the law of principality.1 It is quite curious to see
the pains that Turner sometimes takes to echo
an important passage of colour; in the Pembroke
Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats,
one with a red, and another with a white sail.

1 See Note 7. in Appendix I.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 255

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 ob-
tain an expression of repose: in my notice of the
plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbours
of England, I have already had occasion to dwell
on this point ; and I extract in the note l 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.

1 " 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."

256 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter hi.

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.1 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 rud-
der that lies half in the water, and half aground.

1 This is obscure in the rude woodcut, 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.

LETTER III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 257

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.

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 op-
position, in a symmetrical object, is of like things
reflecting each other : it is not the balance of con-
trary 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 sym-
metry is only permitted in animals, because their
motions secure perpetual difference between the
balancing parts. Stand before a mirror ; hold your

s

258 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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.

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,
&c, will furnish you with notable instances of it.
The Madonna of Perugino in the National Gallery,
with the angel Michael on one side and Eaphael 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 259

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 dif-
ficulty 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.

Another important and pleasurable way of ex-
pressing 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 con-
nected 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

s 2

260 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 indi-
vidually free, and able to escape, if they liked, from
the law that rules them, and yet submitting to it.
I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for
a moment to take up another, still more expres-
sive of this law. It is one of Turner's most
tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sun-
set; 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 woodcut; 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 re-
pose, together with the enchanted, lulling, mono-
tonous motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

261

Fig. 33.

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

s 3

262 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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.

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 centre. 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.

All rivers, small or large, agree in one charac-
ter, they like to lean a little on one side: they
cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 263

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 child-
like, and another steep shore, under which they
can pause, and purify themselves, and get their
strength of waves fully together for due occasion.
Eivers 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

S 4

264 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter hi.

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 eco-
nomy 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

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 265

his largest arch over it with a leap, and with an-
other 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 to-
wards 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, sympathising, 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 endea-
vours to do the thing in a grand engineer's man-
ner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are
barbarous; not only because all monotonous forms

266 THE ELEMENTS OF DE AWING. [letter hi.

are ugly in themselves, but because the mind per-
ceives at once that there has been cost uselessly
thrown away for the sake of formality.1

Well, to return to our continuity. We see that
the Turnerian bridge in Fig. 32. is of the absolutely

1 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 un-
necessary embankment. Of course, the bridge should not be
difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, what-
ever 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 ef-
fective 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 propor-
tion, 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 in-
stead of the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are
fine, and accept from the pontifical rigidities of the engineering
mind.

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 267

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 in-
deed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the
lateral cm-rents 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 intro-
duced 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.

LETTER III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 269

4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.

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, ex-
cept 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 colour 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

270 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter hi.

in its purity, irrespective of added colour, or other
interfering elements of beauty.

Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight
lines, it is necessary to a good composition that its
continuities of object, mass, or colour 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 arrange-
ment 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 sepa-
rate. 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

271

Fig. 35.

perceive that there is a subtle cadence and har-
mony 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
back from it here and there to keep the eye from
discovering it too easily.

And it is not only always possible to obtain con-

272 THE ELEMENTS OF DK AWING, [letter hi.

tinuities of this kind : it is, in drawing large forest
of 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 Maiden-
head, 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 grace-
ful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distin-
guished from ungraceful by two characters ; first is
its moderation, that is to say, its close approach to

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 273

straightness in some part of its course * ; and,
secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never
remaining equal in degree at different parts of its
course.

This variation is itself twofold in all good
curves.

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

Fig. 36.

because it is part of a circle, and is therefore mo-
notonous throughout ; but b is a good' curve, because
it continually changes its direction as it proceeds.

1 I cannot waste space here by r epnnJng 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.

274 THE ELEMENTS OF DKAWING. [letter hi.

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

4^ll nn \--Jp^r^ springiness of character de-

*~*z.. /?...*- pendent on the changefulness

Fig. 37.

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 cha-
racter; 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
b N^ on them at the extre-

mities instead of the
flanks, Fig. 38. ; and two
Fig. 38. showing the arrangement

of masses of foliage seen a little farther off,

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION.

275

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 va-
riations of curvature in their
most complicated and lovely
forms.1

B. Not only does every good
curve vary in general tendency,
but it is modulated, as it pro-
ceeds, by myriads of subordi-
nate 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

1 If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, with-
out having gone through any previous practice, turn back to
t 2

276 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

other nobly formed masses. Thus another essential
difference between good and bad drawing, or good
and bad sculpture, depends on the quantity and re-
finement of minor curvatures carried, by good work,
into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
this is not variation in large curves, but compo-
sition 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 OP RADIATION.

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.

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

the sketch of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4. p. 31., and
examine the curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by
the conditions here stated under the heads A and B.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 277

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 com-
position often flow harmoniously through and across
each other in a picture. But the most simple and
perfect connexion 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
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 arrange-
ments 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

T 3

278

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

view of it, which presents a radiation more or less
correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beau-
tiful, because varied by the freedom of the sepa-
rate 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 ap-
proximately 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. 123.); be-
sides this, nearly all beautiful trees
have a tendency to divide into two
or more principal masses, which
give a prettier and more compli-
cated symmetry than if one stem
ran all the way up the centre.
Fig. 41. may thus be considered

letter Hi.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 279

the simplest type of tree radiation, as opposed to
leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary
ramification is unrepresented, for the sake of sim-
plicity ; 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 struc-
ture shown at b, Fig. 18. p. 124.), we shall have the
form Fig. 42. This I consider the per-
fect general type of tree structure ; and it
is curiously connected with certain forms
of Greek, Byzantine, and Grothic orna-
mentation, into the discussion of which,
however, we must not enter here. It will Fig. 42.
be observed, that both in Figures 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 dcr not bend towards a point
in the root, they at least converge to some point
or other. In the examples in Fig. 43., the ma-
thematical centre of curvature, a, is thus, in one
case, on the ground, at some distance from the root,

T 4

280

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter Hi.

a J*" J-

.'/>.

%

Fig. 44.

Fig. 43.
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

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 281

types, I should have to give several hundreds of
figures such as Fig. 44. l

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 ba-
lanced 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 resem-
blance 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-

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

282 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to

the end of a main
branch ', as in Fig.
45., the lines which
Fig. 45. its ribs will take

supposing them outside of its timbers instead of in-
side, and the general contour of it, as seen in dif-
ferent 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. 163., is an unharmed and unrestrained
shoot of a 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 ramifica-

1 I hope the reader understands that these woodcuts 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.

letter III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 283

tion 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 ren-
dered more striking and beautiful, by perspective.
Fig. 25. shows the per-
spective of such a bough
as it is seen from below ;
Fig. 46. gives rudely the
look it would have from
above. Fig'46-

You may suppose, if you have not already dis-
covered, 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

284 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter iit.

.with spray at the surge-crest ; or drooping in quietness
towards the dew of the grass beneath them in wind-
less 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. 274.
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.
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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 285

curves, which, according to their flow, and the width
or narrowness of the spaces they enclose, charac-
terise 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 con-
nected 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, di-
vided 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

286

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

show, even when they are pulled off, that they are
not small independent leaves, but members of one
large leaf.

Fig. 47., which is a block-plan of a leaf of colum-
bine, without its minor divisions on the edges, will

•,B

Fig. 47.

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,

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 287

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 6 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

288 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

throughout the tree is made to depend on its con-
fession of its own lowliness and subjection.

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 l vegetable form is appointed to ex-
press these four laws in noble balance of authority.

1. Support from one living root.

2. Kadiation, or tendency of force from some one
given point, either in the root, or in some stated
connexion with it.

3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own liveli-
hood and happiness according to its needs, by irre-
gularities 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

1 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.

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 289

breathing-place among the other branches, or knot-
ting 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 unde-
cided states of mind about their future life.

4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop
within certain limits, expressive of its kindly fel-
lowship and fraternity with the boughs in its neigh-
bourhood ; 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 cir-
cumferent stateliness of the whole tree.

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

u

290 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 connexion with the cen-
tral 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 l ; and

1 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 291

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 contem-
plate 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.

Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, what-
ever 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

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.

U 2

292 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 com-
posers ; 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, how-
ever, 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.

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. 268., compared with Fig. 32.
p. 253., 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 293

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.

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 centralised by
the long reflection which continues the vertical lines.

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 *, but taken up again
by the water-line leading to the bridge foot, and

1 In the smaller figure (32.), it will be seen that this inter-
ruption 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.

u 3

294 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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,

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION

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 Augsburg1); 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 HakewelPs 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 con-
vince you of its being intentional. There, the verti-
cal, 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

1 Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.

U 4

296 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

— 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.

Of course the character of everything is best
manifested by Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed
after labour; sound to be heard clearly, must rise
out of silence ; light is exhibited by darkness, dark-
ness by light; and so on in all things. Now in art
every colour has an opponent colour, which, if
brought near it, will relieve it more completely than
any other; so, also, every form and line may be

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 297

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 colour or form would have
uncombined, is given to each by contrast.1

In this case again, however, a too manifest use of
the artifice vulgarises 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, in-
deed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a
surprise, but not as a shock.2

Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35., the
main current of the lines being downwards, in a

1 If you happen to meet with the plate of Durer's represent-
ing 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.

2 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.

298 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 sympathise with the oblique bar, then gradually
get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the
great curve. No passage, however intentionally mo-
notonous, 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 un-
satisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their
well-doing in other places. In a skilful poet's versi-
fication 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 la-
bouring or discordant verse, that the full ring may be
felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness

^

LETTER III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 299

in his chosen rhythm.1 And continually in paint-
ing, 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 colour, then
passes away into slight, and pale, and simple colour ;
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

1 "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.

300

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 Correg-
gio'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 pic-
turesque material, for instance, in this top of an old
tower, Fig. 48., tiles and stones and slooping roof not

Fig. 48.

disagreeably mingled ; but all would have been unsa-
tisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron

lettkr in ] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 301

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.

One of the most important applications of the law
of contrast is in association with the law of con-
tinuity, 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 14th 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 centre to

302 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 :

6, 6, A ; 6, s, b, A ; b, b, A ; 6, 6, A ; and we think
we shall have two 6's and an A all the way, when
suddenly it becomes 6, A ; 6, r ; 6, A ; 6, A ; 6, A ; and
we think we are going to have b, A continued ; but
no : here it becomes 6, s ; 6, s ; 6, 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 6, 6, A ; 6, 6, 6, 6, ! l Very often, how-
ever, 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 intro-
duced by a great composer in a painting without a
snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's
drawing of Kome with the large balustrade for a

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

letter III. J ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 303

foreground in the HakewelPs 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.

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.

There are in this figure several other simple illus-
trations of the laws we have been tracing. Thus the

304 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 plea-
sure 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 de-
crepitude. 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 :

letter III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 305

but if you take the extreme point of the black
shadow on the left for a centre, 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 high-
est 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 ca-
pable of, with the general flow of the curves from
left to right.

You may not readily believe, at first, that all
these laws are indeed involved in so trifling a piece

x

306 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

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 lite-
rally, 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 au-
thority, between one of the great composers ruling
his colours, 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 OP INTERCHANGE.

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 colour, 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

letter m.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 307

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 in-
telligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in
interchange of colour, since, in all ornamentation
whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of
good design.

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 alterna-
tion takes place simply in four-quartered shields; in
more subtle pieces of treatment, a little bit only of
each colour 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 in-
tentional artifice with which contrasts of this alter-
nate 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

x 2

308 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

precisely at the spot where it comes against a dark
hill, and similarly treat all her masses of shade and
colour, 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 ar-
tificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of
shadow that could possibly be devised by human wit.

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.

It is to be remembered, in the next place, that
while contrast exhibits the characters of things, it

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 309

very often neutralises or paralyses 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.

Hence many compositions address themselves to
the spectator by aggregate force of colour or line,
more than by contrasts of either ; many noble pic-
tures are painted almost exclusively in various tones
of red, or grey, 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

X3

310 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

compositions associate massive and rugged forms,
others slight and graceful ones, each with few inter-
ruptions 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.

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, grey colour set against sombre,
and sharp forms against soft, and loud passages
against low . but we have the bright picture, with its
delicate sadness ; the sombre 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

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 311

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 some-
where formed and regular masses, and not wholly
by skirmishers ; so a picture may be various in its
tendencies, but must be somewhere united and co-
herent in its masses. Grood composers are always
associating their colours 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 colour to colour. If, however, this be done by
introducing false lights or false colours, 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 natu-
x 4

312 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter in.

rally 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 colours
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 com-
posed, but untrue.

The opposite quality to breadth, that of division
or scattering of light and colour, has a certain
contrasting charm, and is occasionally introduced
with exquisite effect by good composers.1 Still it
is never the mere scattering, but the order dis-
cernible 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

1 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
division ; order being marked through this division.

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 313

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.

This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one
of composition as of truth, but it must guide com-
position, and is properly, therefore, to be stated in
this place.

Grood 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 colour in the
scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
If you paint all the colours proportionately paler,
as if an equal quantity of tint had been washed
away from each of them, you still obtain a harmo-
nious, though not an equally forcible, statement of
natural fact. But if you take away the colours
unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as

314 THE ELEMENTS OF DBA WING. [letter ill.

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 colours 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 har-
mony.

It will happen, however, much more frequently,
that you have to darken the whole system of colours,
than to make them paler. You remember, in your
first studies of colour 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 colour into
them; and then the other colours 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.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 315

It is not, indeed, possible to deepen all the
colours so much as to relieve the lights in their
natural degree, you would merely sink most of your
colours, 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-harmonised 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 pic-
tures 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 with-
out dirtying or obscuring them. It is easy to lower
the tone of the picture by washing it over with grey
or brown ; and easy to see the effect of the land-
scape, when its colours are thus universally polluted
with black, by using the black convex mirror, one
of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying Na-
ture and degrading art which ever was put into an

316 THE ELEMENTS OF DK AWING, [letter ill.

artist's hand.1 For the thing required is not to
darken pale yellow by mixing grey 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 colour of every object in your landscape, and of
every minor hue that made up those colours, 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

1 1 fully believe that the strange grey 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 scien-
tifically, through the veil of its perversion.

letter III.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 317

Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of
painting.1

Supposing those scales of colour, which I told you
to prepare in order to show you the relations of
colour to grey, 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 colour, 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 nume-
rous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
mechanical a process. Still, you may see the prin-
ciple of the whole matter clearly by taking a group
of colours out of your scale, arranging them prettily,
and then washing them all over with grey : that

1 Various other parts of this subject are entered into, espe-
cially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.

318 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

represents the treatment of Nature by the black
mirror. Then arrange the same group of colours,
with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale ;
and that will represent the treatment of Nature by-
Titian.

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 com-
plicated studies, matching the colours carefully first
by your old method ; then deepening each colour
with its own tint, and being careful, above all things,
to keep truth of equal change when the colours 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

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 319

observe the relation of colours in dark sides and
light sides, and the influence of modifying reflec-
tions, than by mere accuracy of added depth in
independent colours.

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 grey
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

320 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

subtle for definition ; depending on the draughts-
man's carrying everything he draws up to just the
balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and
colour, 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 com-
paring them with any of Kichter'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 treat-
ment in this respect, are quite unrivalled, 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

LETTER in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 321

this quality. Kichter's illustrations, on the contrary,
are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of
human character, with infinite playfulness and ten-
derness 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 colour hardly felt any-
where. All German work is apt to be out of har-
mony, in consequence of its too frequent conditions
of affectation, and its wilful 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.

I have now stated to you all the laws of com-
position 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,

322 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 igno-
bleness ; that ignobleness especially which we com-
monly 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 l 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

1 In all the best arrangements of colour, the delight oc-
casioned 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 tasle and bad taste respecting it, as
also in music.

letter m.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 323

only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom, as to ex-
plain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
The best part of every great work is always inexpli-
cable : it is good because it is good ; and innocently
gracious, opening as the green of the earth, or falling
as the dew of heaven.

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 colours, but in every sort
nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.

For instance, in the " Datur Hora Quieti," the last
vignette to Kogers's Poems, the plough in the fore-
ground 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 what-
ever 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

Y 2

324 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ill.

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 labour 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 in-
creases, as the painter meant it should, the impres-
sion of melancholy, and of peace.

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 seagull at a dog,

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 325

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 plough told
us of the ceased labour of the day.

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 sub-
ject, 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 head-
ing of a chapter. But the great composers so ar-
range all their designs that one incident illustrates
another, just as one colour relieves another. Per-
haps the " Heysham," of the Yorkshire series,
which, as to its locality, may be considered a com-
panion to the last drawing we have spoken of, the
" Lancaster Sands," presents as interesting an ex-
ample 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

Y 3

UN

326 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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 monoto-
nous 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, an.d 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, suc-
ceeding immediately to the few enclosures 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 pigstye
being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 327

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 chim-
ney 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 incumbent1 : and

1 " Puseyism " was unknown in the days when this draw-
ing 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

t 4

328 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

beyond the church, close to the sea, are two frag-
ments of a border war-tower, standing on their cir-
cular 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 vil-
lage coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty
striped petticoat under the blue apron, and red
stockings. Near us, the cowherd, barefooted, 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 trowsers on ; probably the first, as the old

" 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.

letter ill.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 329

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 vil-
lage 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

330 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter hi.

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.

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 suc-
cession 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.

All noble composition of this kind can be reached

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 331

t

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 mo-
dern days is wholly incompatible with any true per-
ception 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 knap-
sack 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

332 THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter III.

as your eye glances or your heart guides, wholly
scornful of local fame or fashion, and of every-
thing which it is the ordinary traveller's duty to
see, or pride to do. Never force yourself to admire
anything when you are not in the humour ; 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 fulness of pas-
sionate 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 dis-
cipline 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 colours

letter in.] ON COLOUR AND COMPOSITION. 333

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. Kuskin.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX

I.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.

Note 1. p. 80. — " Principle of the stereoscope.'1

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

z

338 APPENDIX I.

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 realise any stereo-
scopic effect in a picture.

Note 2. p. 109. — " Dark lines turned to the light."

It ought to have been farther observed, that the en-
closure 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 colour 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

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 339

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. 179. — " Softness of reflections."

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. Practise 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. 183. — " Where the reflection is darkest,
you will see through the water best."

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,
z 2

340 APPENDIX I.

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. 185. — " Approach streams with reverence"

I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents
or waterfalls, as I do not consider them subjects for
beginners to practise 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 lustre 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 run-
ning 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

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 341

and cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything
can, the milky bloom and colour 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 colouring
of stones seen through clear and calm water.

Students living in towns may make great progress in
rock-drawing by frequently and faithfully drawing bro-
ken edges of common roofing-slates, of their real size.

Note 6. p. 230. — " Natures economy of colour."

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 colour 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 colour all
round the spot, and concentrates it in the middle.

Note 7. p. 254. — " The law of repetition"

The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful
picture of Vandyck's, in the Manchester Exhibition, re-

z 3

342 APPENDIX 1.

presenting 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 colour of court dress, having
jet black feathers and bright red beaks.

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. 92.
One of these is inferior to the other, and in many respects
false to the drawings ; 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 im-
pressions, whether of these or any other plates mentioned
in the list at p. 92., 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 im-
pressions 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. 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

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 343

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 photo-
graphs, the student will find these proofs the best lessons
in pen-drawing accessible to him.

z 4

344 APPENDIX II.

II.

THINGS TO BE STUDIED.

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 allow-
ing 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

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 345

, 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 pre-
cisely 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

346 APPENDIX II.

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 whole-
somest way in which he can begin the study of land-
scape; 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 re-
ligious art.

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 import-
ance that he should never look, with even partial admi-
ration, 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, how-
ever, question of right and wrong1, at Van Eyck, Hol-

1 I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in
saying that this second class of painters have questionable

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 347

bein, Perugino, Franeia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci,-
Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough,
Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.1 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 Caracci,
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 espe-
cially 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 colour; if you
like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be get-
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.

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

348 APPENDIX II.

ting too fond of rigid detail ; and if you like Vandyck
or Gainsborough especially, you must be too much at-
tracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.

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 Durers, which I have asked you to get
first :

1. Samuel Prout.1

All his published lithographic sketches are of the
greatest value, wholly unrivalled in power of compo-
sition, 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 man-
nerism as long as you carry out the different modes of
more delicate study above recommended.

If you are interested in architecture, and wish to

1 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.

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 349

make it your chief study, you should draw much from
photographs of it ; and then from the architecture it-
self, with the same completion of detail and gradation,
only keeping the shadows of due paleness, — in photo-
graphs 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 archi-
tecture 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 architec-
tural subjects in the "Rhine," and draw again and again
the groups of figures, &c, in his " Microcosm," and
" Lessons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed
to copy the grand subjects in the sketches in " Flan-
ders 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 Proutise Nature, by breaking smooth build-
ings into rough ones, but only drawing what you
see, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't

350 APPENDIX II.

copy his coloured 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 colour 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 Eembrandt'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 disagree-
able when they touch on the worst vulgarities of modern

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 351

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 copy-
ing almost anything of his that may come in your way ;
except only his illustrations, lately published, to " Cinde-
rella," and " Jack and the Bean-stalk," and " Tom
Thumb," which are much over-laboured, 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 " Todten-
tanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in them-
selves to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you
dislike ghastly subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.

352 APPENDIX II.

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
equalled in illustrations of this simple kind ; the bitter
intensity of the feeling being just like that which cha-
racterises 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 nickering light,
Blake is greater than Rembrandt.

7. Richter.

I have already told you what to guard against in look-
ing 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

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 353

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
woodcuts 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 l ; still they are full of instruction,
and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respect-
ing these woodcuts, 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 " Maude " 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

1 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, per-
fectly ; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite designs, with which no
other modern work can bear the least comparison.

A A

354 APPENDIX II.

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 out-
lines 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 dis-
gust ; 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 feel-
ing, and fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm setting
down of lines, all applied in the foolishest and worst pos-
sible way; you cannot have a more finished example of
learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing

with a steady hand.1 Retsch's outlines have more real
i

1 The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculp-
ture 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, there-

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 355

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.1 If you

fore, 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 trustworthy, 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, per-
haps, 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 convinc-
ing him, never because I repented of it myself.

1 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

aa 2

356 APPENDIX II.

happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them,
and if you are fond of the large finished prints from
Raphael, Correggio, &c., 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.

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

Stothard's drawings in Rogers's Italy ; and, therefore, I have
just recommended the vignettes to Tennyson to be done by
line engraving.

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 357

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 Homer1, Plato, .ZEschylus,
Herodotus, Dante2, 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 gene-
rally 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 un-
derstand 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 with-
out 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

1 Chapman's, if not the original.

2 Carey's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know
which are the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and
iEschylus 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.

358 APPENDIX II.

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. Ne-
ver read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry
yourself ; there is, perhaps, rather too much than too
little in the world already.

Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and
Helps. Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for

THINGS TO BE STUDIED. 359

11 beginners," because his teaching, though to some of us
vitally necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you un-
derstand 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 Edge-
worth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de Genlis',
the French Miss Edge worth ; 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 :

360 APPENDIX II.

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 neces-
sary 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 con-
demned ; 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 labour, and for humble love.

THE END.

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