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APPENDIX V
I can only give, to illustrate this balcony, fac-similes of rough
memoranda made on a single leaf of my note-book, with a tired hand; but
it may be useful to young students to see them, in order that they may
know the difference between notes made to get at the gist and heart of
a thing, and notes made merely to look neat. Only it must be observed
that the best characters of free drawing are always lost even in the
most careful facsimile; and I should not show even these slight notes
in woodcut imitation, unless the reader had it in his power, by a
glance at the 21st or 35th plates in _Modern Painters_ (and yet
better, by trying to copy a piece of either of them), to ascertain how
far I can draw or not. I refer to these plates, because, though I
distinctly stated in the preface that they, together with the 12th,
20th, 34th, and 37th, were executed on the steel by my own hand, (the
use of the dry point in the foregrounds of the 12th and 21st plates
being moreover wholly different from the common processes of etching) I
find it constantly assumed that they were engraved for me--as if direct
lying in such matters were a thing of quite common usage.
Fig. 2 is the centre-piece of the balcony, but a leaf-spray is omitted
on the right-hand side, having been too much buried among the real
leaves to be drawn.
Fig. 3 shows the intended general effect of its masses, the five-leaved
and six-leaved flowers being clearly distinguishable at any distance.
Fig. 4 is its profile, rather carefully drawn at the top, to show the
tulip and turkscap lily leaves. Underneath there is a plate of iron
beaten into broad thin leaves, which gives the centre of the balcony a
gradual sweep outwards, like the side of a ship of war. The central
profile is of the greatest importance in ironwork, as the flow of it
affects the curves of the whole design, not merely in surface, as in
marble carving, but in their intersections, when the side is seen
through the front. The lighter leaves, _b b_, are real bindweed.
Fig. 5 shows two of the teeth of the border, illustrating their
irregularity of form, which takes place quite to the extent indicated.
Fig. 6 is the border at the side of the balcony, showing the most
interesting circumstance in the treatment of the whole, namely, the
enlargement and retraction of the teeth of the cornice, as it
approaches the wall. This treatment of the whole cornice as a kind of
wreath round the balcony, having its leaves flung loose at the back,
and set close at the front, as a girl would throw a wreath of leaves
round her hair, is precisely the most finished indication of a good
workman's mind to be found in the whole thing.
Fig. 7 shows the outline of the retracted leaves accurately. It was
noted in the text that the whole of this ironwork had been coloured.
The difficulty of colouring ironwork rightly, and the necessity of
doing it in some way or other, have been the principal reasons for my
never having entered heartily into this subject; for all the ironwork I
have ever seen look beautiful was rusty, and rusty iron will not answer
modern purposes. Nevertheless it may be painted, but it needs some one
to do it who knows what painting means, and few of us do--certainly
none, as yet, of our restorers of decoration or writers on colour.
It is a marvellous thing to me that book after book should appear on
this last subject, without apparently the slightest consciousness on
the part of the writers that the first necessity of beauty in colour is
gradation, as the first necessity of beauty in line is curvature,--or
that the second necessity in colour is mystery or subtlety, as the
second necessity in line is softness. Colour ungradated is wholly
valueless; colour unmysterious is wholly barbarous. Unless it looses
itself and melts away towards other colours, as a true line loses
itself and melts away towards other lines, colour has no proper
existence, in the noble sense of the word. What a cube, or tetrahedron,
is to organic form, ungradated and unconfused colour is to organic
colour; and a person who attempts to arrange colour harmonies without
gradation of tint is in precisely the same category, as an artist who
should try to compose a beautiful picture out of an accumulation of
cubes and parallelepipeds.
The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods
depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colours palpitate and
fluctuate; _inequality_ of brilliancy being the _condition_ of brilliancy,
just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in
sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators in books,
and the Indians in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of colour
to gradate other colours, and confuse the eye, is the first secret in their
gift of splendour: associated, however, with so many other artifices which
are quite instinctive and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell
upon them. Delicacy of organization in the designer given, you will soon
have all, and without it, nothing. However, not to close my book with
desponding words, let me set down, as many of us like such things, five
Laws to which there is no exception whatever, and which, if they can
enable no one to produce good colour, are at least, as far as they
reach, accurately condemnatory of bad colour.
1. ALL GOOD COLOUR IS GRADATED. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush
itself), is the type of rightness in arrangement of pure hue.
2. ALL HARMONIES OF COLOUR DEPEND FOR THEIR VITALITY ON THE ACTION AND
HELPFUL OPERATION OF EVERY PARTICLE OF COLOUR THEY CONTAIN.
3. THE FINAL PARTICLES OF COLOUR NECESSARY TO THE COMPLETENESS OF A
COLOUR HARMONY ARE ALWAYS INFINITELY SMALL; either laid by immeasurably
subtle touches of the pencil, or produced by portions of the colouring
substance, however distributed, which are so absolutely small as to
become at the intended distance infinitely so to the eye.
4. NO COLOUR HARMONY IS OF HIGH ORDER UNLESS IT INVOLVES INDESCRIBABLE
TINTS. It is the best possible sign of a colour when nobody who sees it
knows what to call it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else.
Even among simple hues the most valuable are those which cannot be
defined; the most precious purples will look brown beside pure purple,
and purple beside pure brown; and the most precious greens will be
called blue if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside pure
blue.
5. THE FINER THE EYE FOR COLOUR, THE LESS IT WILL REQUIRE TO GRATIFY IT
INTENSELY. But that little must be supremely good and pure, as the
finest notes of a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a
great colourist will make even the absence of colour lovely, as the
fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred.
Content of APPENDIX V [John Ruskin's essay: The Two Paths]
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