288 REVIEWS AND PAMPHLETS ON ART

the picture boldly thrown in with the brown pigment, it became matter of great improbability that the force of such a prevalent tint could afterwards be softened or melted into a pure harmony; the painter’s feeling for truth was blunted; brilliancy and richness became his object rather than sincerity or solemnity; with the palled sense of colour departed the love of light, and the diffused sunshine of the early schools died away in the narrowed rays of Rembrandt. We think it a deficiency in the work before us that the extreme peril of such a principle, incautiously applied, has not been pointed out, and that the method of Rubens has been so highly extolled for its technical perfection, without the slightest notice of the gross mannerism into which its facile brilliancy too frequently betrayed the mighty master.

31. Yet it remains a question how far, under certain limitations and for certain effects, this system of pure brown shadow may be successfully followed. It is not a little singular that it has already been revived in water-colours by a painter who, in his realization of light and splendour of hue, stands without a rival among living schools-Mr. Hunt; his netural shadows being, we believe, first thrown in frankly with sepia, the colour introduced upon the lights, and the central lights afterwards further raised by body colour, and glazed.¹ But in this process the sepia shadows are admitted only on objects whose local colours are warm or neutral; wherever the tint of the illumined portion is delicate or peculiar, a relative hue of shade is at once laid on the white paper; and the correspondence with the Flemish school is in the use of brown as the ultimate representative of deep gloom, and in the careful preservation of its transparency, not in the application of brown universally as the shade of all colours. We apprehend that this practice represents, in another medium, the very best mode of applying the Flemish system; and that when the result proposed is an effect of vivid colour under bright cool sunshine, it would be impossible to

¹ [See, for further notices of William Hunt’s artistic method, Academy Notes, 1859 (“Water Colour Societies”), and Notes on Prout and Hunt.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]