EASTLAKE’S HISTORY OF OIL-PAINTING 295

more brilliant and rich than a mixed one; nor is there doubt on the other hand that in some subjects such a tint is impossible, and in others vulgar. We have above alluded¹ to the power of Mr. Hunt in water-colour. The fruit-pieces of that artist are dependent for their splendour chiefly on the juxtaposition of pure colour for compound tints, and we may safely affirm that the method is for such purpose as exemplary as its results are admirable. Yet would you desire to see the same means adopted in the execution of the fruit in Rubens’ Peace and War?² Or again, would the lusciousness of tint obtained by Rubens himself, adopting the same means on a grander scale in his painting of flesh, have been conducive to the ends or grateful to the feelings of the Bellinis or Albert Dürer? Each method is admirable as applied by its master; and Hemling and Van Eyck are as much to be followed in the mingling of colour, as Rubens and Rembrandt in its decomposition. If an award is absolutely to be made of superiority to either system, we apprehend that the palm of mechanical skill must be rendered to the latter, and higher dignity of moral purpose confessed in the former; in proportion to the nobleness of the subject and the thoughtfulness of its treatment, simplicity of colour will be found more desirable. Nor is the far higher perfection of drawing attained by the earlier method to be forgotten. Gradations which are expressed by delicate execution of the darks, and then aided by a few strokes of recovered light, must always be more subtle and true than those which are struck violently forth with opaque colour; and it is to be remembered that the handling of the brush, with the early Italian masters, approached in its refinement to drawing with the point-the more definitely, because the work was executed, as we have just seen, with little change or play of local colour. And-whatever discredit the looser and bolder practice of later masters may have thrown on the hatched and pencilled execution of earlier periods-we

¹[§ 31, p. 288.]

²[No. 46 in the National Gallery.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]