ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 489

knew his business-Turner (an etching of Turner’s was here produced). This was done by Turner with the point of an old fork, he believed. The effect was beautiful. All these were first-rate specimens of outline. There was yet another specimen, executed by a noble fellow, a German-who had done some greater things than any other artist of the present day.¹ He was not so good as Albert Dürer, but he was mighty in his way, and ought to be universally known; and the woodcuts of Death the Avenger, and Death the Friend, were worthy of being known to the whole civilised world. He was glad to be able to make them acquainted with this example, for there was in it the effect of a sunset expressed with almost unexampled power, and in the sleeve of the principal figure, which was outlined with the most perfect accuracy, the strongest lines were those which came against the light.

16. Outline, then, was the production of certain effects in a certain way. It was opposed to light and shadow in this respect-that light and shadow altered, but outline, the statement of material form, did not alter. Many persons had the gift of seeing and producing effects in light and shadow, which did not exist in outline; while others had the gift of perceiving and expressing the contour of a thing in outline. They were aware that many people, before the invention of photography, gained their bread by cutting black-paper portraits. He had always been struck by the marvellous gift which had enabled these persons with a pair of scissors to cut out instantaneously and with the greatest accuracy the profile of a human face. Again, they knew how many people were enabled, with marvellous accuracy, to portray features, and even expression,-and this gift was frequent in children,-in outline upon paper. But these persons stopped short, partly from want of opportunity, and more frequently from a failing of character,-that was, they had not the disposition to go into the nicer subtleties of light and shade, not only because they were subtleties, and uncertain in their results, but because there was a peculiar delicacy in light and shade, the expression of which required enormous study and practice. Even to appreciate this delicacy and softness required a peculiar sympathy, almost an effeminacy, of mind; and those who loved it most, and followed it most,-those who attained the greatest eminence in expressing it,-had often been led into sensuality. To some extent sensuality was, though not necessarily so, the result of that peculiar state of mind; as in Correggio, who, though he had painted some of the most sublime of sacred subjects, had, in many of his works, displayed the grossest sensuality-sensuality of which any man ought to be ashamed.² He was not in this saying anything against light and shadow; but there was this difference between it and outline, that the love of outline was a pure love of truth, and assuredly it was better for those who possessed the gift of outline and had not the time, or

¹ [Alfred Rethel, born at Aix-la-Chapelle, 1816; studied at Düsseldorf and Frankfort; designed and partly executed the designs for the decoration of the “Kaisersaal” at Aix-la-Chapelle; made drawings for a “Dance of Death,” to which Reinick wrote verses; died in an asylum at Düsseldorf, 1859. For other references to him, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. viii. § 8, where these same woodcuts are described as “inexpressibly noble and pathetic grotesques”; Elements of Drawing, Appendix ii., § 257 (“Things to be Studied”); and Art of England, § 100.]

² [See Modern Painters, vol. ii. (Vol. IV. p. 197 and n.).]

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