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APPENDIX IV
I had intended in one or other of these lectures to have spoken at some
length of the quality of refinement in Colour, but found the subject
would lead me too far. A few words are, however, necessary in order to
explain some expressions in the text.
"Refinement in colour" is indeed a tautological expression, for colour,
in the true sense of the word, does not exist until it _is_
refined. Dirt exists,--stains exist,--and pigments exist, easily enough
in all places; and are laid on easily enough by all hands; but colour
exists only where there is tenderness, and can be laid on only by a
hand which has strong life in it. The law concerning colour is very
strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch
laid on canvas, if one grain of the colour is inoperative, and does not
take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The
grain of colour which does not work is dead. It infects all about it
with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We
acknowledge this instinctively in our use of the phrases "dead colour,"
"killed colour," "foul colour." Those words are, in some sort,
literally true. If more colour is put on than is necessary, a heavy
touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of colour
that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it
pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch.
The art of painting, properly so called, consists in laying on the
least possible colour that will produce the required result, and this
measurement, in all the ultimate, that is to say, the principal,
operations of colouring, is so delicate that not one human hand in a
million has the required lightness. The final touch of any painter
properly so named, of Correggio--Titian--Turner--or Reynolds--would be
always quite invisible to any one watching the progress of the work,
the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in
mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparently careless, nay, to
the painter himself almost unconscious. Great painters are so organized
that they do their best work without effort: but analyze the touches
afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth of the colour
laid mathematically demonstrable to be of literally infinite fineness,
the last touches passing away at their edges by untraceable gradation.
The very essence of a master's work may thus be removed by a picture-
cleaner in ten minutes.
Observe, however, this thinness exists only in portions of the ultimate
touches, for which the preparation may often have been made with solid
colours, commonly, and literally, called "dead colouring," but even
that is always subtle if a master lays it--subtle at least in drawing,
if simple in hue; and farther, observe that the refinement of work
consists not in laying absolutely _little_ colour, but in always
laying precisely the right quantity. To lay on little needs indeed the
rare lightness of hand; but to lay much,--yet not one atom _too_
much, and obtain subtlety, not by withholding strength, but by
precision of pause,--that is the master's final sign-manual--power,
knowledge, and tenderness all united. A great deal of colour may often
be wanted; perhaps quite a mass of it, such as shall project from the
canvas; but the real painter lays this mass of its required thickness
and shape with as much precision as if it were a bud of a flower which
he had to touch into blossom; one of Turner's loaded fragments of white
cloud is modelled and gradated in an instant, as if it alone were the
subject of the picture, when the same quantity of colour, under another
hand, would be a lifeless lump.
The following extract from a letter in the _Literary Gazette_ of
13th November, 1858, which I was obliged to write to defend a
questioned expression respecting Turner's subtlety of hand from a
charge of hyperbole, contains some interesting and conclusive evidence
on the point, though it refers to pencil and chalk drawing only:--
"I must ask you to allow me yet leave to reply to the objections you
make to two statements in my catalogue, as those objections would
otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that, in a given
drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), Turner's pencil did
not move over the thousandth of an inch without meaning; and you charge
this expression with extravagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much
within the truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of
fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is only
necessary to measure a piece of any ordinary good work to ascertain
this. Take, for instance, Finden's engraving at the 180th page of
Rogers' poems; in which the face of the figure, from the chin to the
top of the brow, occupies just a quarter of an inch, and the space
between the upper lip and chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of
an inch. The whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say one-
fiftieth of an inch, and within that space both the lips and the much
more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn and
rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle expression. Any
artist will assure you that in order to draw a mouth as well as this,
there must be more than twenty gradations of shade in the touches; that
is to say, in this case, gradations changing, with meaning, within less
than the thousandth of an inch.
"But this is mere child's play compared to the refinement of a first-
rate mechanical work--much more of brush or pencil drawing by a
master's hand. In order at once to furnish you with authoritative
evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. Kingsley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex
College, a friend to whom I always have recourse when I want to be
precisely right in any matter; for his great knowledge both of
mathematics and of natural science is joined, not only with singular
powers of delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen
sensitiveness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement
respecting Turner's work, is amazing even to me, and will, I should
think, be more so to your readers. Observe the successions of measured
and tested refinement: here is No. 1:--
"'The finest mechanical work that I know, which is not optical, is that
done by Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series ruled by him
on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and .000016 of an inch,
perfectly correct to these places of decimals, and he has executed
others as fine as .000012, though I do not know how far he could repeat
these last with accuracy.'
"This is No. 1 of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to No. 2:--
"'But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary for the
construction of the object-glass of a microscope such as Rosse turns
out.'
"I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the ten lenses
composing such a glass, 'each of which must be exact in radius and in
surface, and all have their axes coincident:' but it would not be
intelligible without the figure by which it is illustrated; so I pass
to Mr. Kingsley's No. 3:--
"'I am tolerably familiar,' he proceeds, 'with the actual grinding and
polishing of lenses and specula, and have produced by my own hand some
by no means bad optical work, and I have copied no small amount of
Turner's work, and _I still look with awe at the combined delicacy
and precision of his hand_; IT BEATS OPTICAL WORK OUT OF SIGHT. In
optical work, as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, and
one has to depend upon the feel; and when one has once learned what a
delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all coarse work, and is
ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, sooner than that boldness
which is akin to impudence. In optics the distinction is easily seen
when the work is put to trial; but here too, as in drawing, it requires
an educated eye to tell the difference when the work is only moderately
bad; but with "bold" work, nothing can be seen but distortion and fog:
and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same kind of
handling in drawing; but here, the boldness cheats the unlearned by
looking like the precision of the true man. It is very strange how much
better our ears are than our eyes in this country: if an ignorant man
were to be "bold" with a violin, he would not get many admirers, though
his boldness was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred
drawings one sees.'
"The words which I have put in italics in the above extract are those
which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner's was as refined as any
optical work, but had no idea of its going beyond it. Mr. Kingsley's
word 'awe' occurring just before, is, however, as I have often felt,
precisely the right one. When once we begin at all to understand the
handling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three
great Venetians, of Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something
greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For
the creation of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed
with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more
appalling manifestation of Infinite Power, than the making either of
seas or mountains.
"After this testimony to the completion of Turner's work, I need not at
length defend myself from the charge of hyperbole in the statement
that, 'as far as I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to
produce one sketch [footnote: A sketch, observe,--not a finished
drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each
other when they contain about the same quantity of work: the test of
their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of
touches. The assertion in the Catalogue which this letter was written
to defend, was made respecting the sketch of Rome, No. 101.] that shall
equal the chalk study No. 45, or the feeblest of the memoranda in the
71st and following frames;' which memoranda, however, it should have
been observed, are stated at the 44th page to be in some respects 'the
grandest work in grey that he did in his life.' For I believe that, as
manipulators, none but the four men whom I have just named (the three
Venetians and Correggio) were equal to Turner; and, as far as I know,
none of those four ever put their full strength into sketches. But
whether they did or not, my statement in the catalogue is limited by my
own knowledge: and, as far as I can trust that knowledge, it is not an
enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and considered one. It may
be a mistake but it is not a hyperbole."
Content of APPENDIX IV [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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