EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 293

In the Van Eyck in the National Gallery all the brilliant lights are loaded; mere white, Mr. Eastlake himself admits, was always so; and we believe that the flesh-colour and carnations are painted with colour as opaque as the white head-dress, but fail of brilliancy from not being loaded enough; the white ground beneath being utterly unable to add to the power of such tints, while its effect on more subdued tones depended in great measure on its receiving a transparent coat of warm colour first. This may have been sometimes omitted, as stated at p. 389; when it was so, we believe that an utter loss of brilliancy must have resulted; but when it was used, the highest lights must have been raised from it by opaque colour as distinctly by Van Eyck as by Rubens. Rubens’ Judgment of Paris¹ is quoted at p. 388 as an example of the best use of the bright gesso ground;-and how in that picture, how in all Rubens’ best pictures, is it used? Over the ground is thrown a transparent glowing brown tint, varied and deepened in the shadow; boldly over that brown glaze, and into it, are struck and painted the opaque grey middle tints, already concealing the ground totally; and above these are loaded the high lights like gems-note the sparkling strokes on the peacock’s plumes. We believe that Van Eyck’s high lights were either, in proportion to the scale of picture and breadth of handling, as loaded as these, or, in the degree of their thinness, less brilliant. Was then his system the same as Rubens’? Not so; but it differed more in the management of middle tints than in the lights: the main difference was, we believe, between the careful preparation of the gradations of drawing in the one, and the daring assumption of massy light in the other. There are theorists who would assert that their system was the same-but they forget the primal work, with the point underneath, and all that is implied of transparency above. Van Eyck secured his drawing in dark, then threw a pale transparent middle tint over the whole, and recovered

¹ [No. 194 in the National Gallery.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]