Part 8 (1/2)

XC

You pleasethat no other fault is found in your picture than the roughness of the surface; for that part being of use in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of painting knows an original fro the touch of the pencil which is harder to preserve than smoothness, I as of that kind, than to see an eye half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drahen viewed at a proper distance I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person to put his nose close to the canvas and say the colours sh the paint lies; for one is just asthe effect and drawing of a picture

_Gainsborough_

XCI

The picture[2] will be seen to the greatest advantage if it is hung in a strong light, and in such a manner that the spectator can stand at some distance from it

_Re of Samson”]

XCII

Don't look at a picture close, it smells bad

_Re and in colour; give things their full relief;which can be seen at a distance; this is indispensable

_Chasseriau_

XCIV

If I ht point out to you another defect, very prevalent of late, in our pictures, and one of the same contracted character with those you so happily illustrate, it would be that of the _want of breadth_, and in others a perpetual division and subdivision of parts, to give what their perpetrators call space; add to this a constant disturbing and torturing of everything whether in light or in shadow, by a niggling touch, to produce fulness of subject This is the very reverse of e see in Cuyp or Wilson, and even, with all his high finishi+ng, in Claude I have been warning our friend Collins against this, and was also urging young Landseer to beware of it; and in what I have been doing latelyreat masters succeeded so well in, namely, that power by which the chief objects, and even thethat is meant to be subordinate in their pictures Sir Joshua had this remarkably, and could even , however strongly painted I find that repose and breadth in the shadows and half-tints do a great deal towards it

Zoffany's figures derive great consequence froht and shadow the most never appear to fail in it

_Wilkie_

XCV

The commonest error into which a critic can fall is the remark we so often hear that such-and-such an artist's work is ”careless,” and ”would be better had more labour been spent upon it” As often as not this is wholly untrue As soon as the spectator can _see_ that ”more labour has been spent upon it,” he may be sure that the picture is to that extent incomplete and unfinished, while the look of freshness that is inseparable from a really successful picture would of necessity be absent If the high finish of a picture is so apparent as immediately to force itself upon the spectator, he may _know_ that it is not as it should be; and fro a labour, he may depend upon it it will be without freshness, and to that extent without the h it had been done with ease, however elaborate; e see should appear to have been done without effort, whatever onies beneath the surface M Meissonier surpasses all his predecessors, as well as all his conteh finish, but what you see is evidently done easily and without labour I re a certain chapter in one of his books that the critics agreed in accusing of carelessness; ”Careless? If I've written that chapter once I've written it a dozen times--and each time worse than the last!” a proof that labour did not assist in his case When an artist fails it is not so much from carelessness: to do his best is not only profitable to hiiven to every man--not, indeed, to any--to succeed whenever and however he tries The best painter that ever lived never entirely succeeded more than four or five times; that is to say, no artist ever painted eneral average may have been, for such success depends on the coincidence, not only of genius and inspiration, but of health and encies For my own part, I have often been laboured, but whatever I am I am never careless I may honestly say that I never consciously placed an idle touch upon canvas, and that I have always been earnest and hard-working; yet the worst pictures I ever painted in my life are those into which I threw rieve were half ht choose the half to go

So laborious; but as soon as I detect any evidence of that labour I paint the whole thing out without more ado

_Millais_

[Illustration: _Millais_ LOVE _By permission of F Warne & Co_]

XCVI

I think that a work of art should not only be careful and sincere, but that the care and sincerity should also be evident No ugly smears should be allowed to do duty for the swiftness which co practice, or to find excuse in the necessity which the accomplished artist feels to speak distinctly That necessity must never receive iallery: there is_un_consciously in the accomplished artist, _consciously_ in the student