EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 283

after we have stated what we suppose to be the advantages or disadvantages of the process in its earlier stages, guiding ourselves as far as possible by the passages in which any expression occurs of Mr. Eastlake’s opinion.

The reader cannot but see that the eminent character of the whole system is its predeterminateness. From first to last its success depended on the decision and clearness of each successive step. The drawing and light and shade were secured without any interference of colour; but when over these the oil-priming was once laid, the design could neither be altered nor, if lost, recovered; a colour laid too opaquely in the shadow destroyed the inner organization of the picture, and remained an irremediable blemish; and it was necessary, in laying colour even on the lights, to follow the guidance of the drawing beneath with a caution and precision which rendered anything like freedom of handling, in the modern sense, totally impossible. Every quality which depends on rapidity, accident, or audacity was interdicted; no affectation of ease was suffered to disturb the humility of patient exertion. Let our readers consider in what temper such a work must be undertaken and carried through-a work in which error was irremediable, change impossible-which demanded the drudgery of a student, while it involved the deliberation of a master-in which the patience of a mechanic was to be united with the foresight of a magician-in which no licence could be indulged either to fitfulness of temper or felicity of invention-in which haste was forbidden, yet languor fatal, and consistency of conception no less incumbent than continuity of toil. Let them reflect what kind of men must have been called up and trained by work such as this, and then compare the tones of mind which are likely to be produced by our present practice,-a practice in which alteration is admitted to any extent in any stage-in which neither foundation is laid nor end foreseen-in which all is dared and nothing resolved, everything perilled, nothing provided for-in which men play the sycophant in the courts of their humours, and hunt wisps in the marshes of their wits-a

[Version 0.04: March 2008]