502 APPENDIX TO PART II

is no harmony except between red and green.” That was very odd, Mr. Ruskin replied, for his impression was, that Titian, and some others who knew something of the matter, had used red and blue. “No,” said the philosopher, “it will not do-Titian is all wrong.” On asking him whether there was any picture in the Academy which came up to his views of harmony in colour, the philosopher said that he had been carefully through the whole collection, and had only found one picture which was painted on scientific principles. That picture the lecturer had seen; he would not mention its name, but it was one of the chief daubs in the collection in the Academy. The worst of all this intermedding of science was, that not only the artist derived no help from it, but it prevented science from doing the work which really came within its own province. Science could not give the artist the colours which it told him to use. We had no crimsons or scarlets which would stand; but (producing an illuminated MS.) there were pieces of scarlet which had stood upon that page for more than 500 years, and still remained perfectly bright. On the best modes of working in gold and preparing colours, which was the work of the scientific man, no attempt was made to help the colourist.

33. But if not by science, how was skill in colouring to be obtained? Only by instinct. Man is a being differing from the lower animals, he having two kinds of instinct, one which aimed at higher, and the other at baser ends; and he had also his noble reason, to enable him to find out which of his acts would elevate the one or depress the other. The most efficient mode by which a knowledge of colour could be obtained by the artist was by casting all rules behind his back, and trusting to his own instincts when in a calm and healthy state. Watch for everything, look carefully for everything in nature which was beautiful. Whenever any combination of colours or a colour particularly beautiful was found, note it carefully. If this kind of work be enjoyed and continued in, depend upon it, the student would soon begin to invent, and having put down two or three colours, others would soon suggest themselves as necessary. Pass not a single thing, however small or despised, for no colour was so contemptible but that it might furnish some hint, and there was no hour of the day in which something might not be learned. Fettered by rules, all these opportunities of gaining knowledge would be lost to the student. He was most anxious, in any remarks which he had made, that he should not be understood as depreciating the value of any of those ably illustrated works of Mr. Owen Jones¹ and others who had studied the subject of the law of colour-a subject, in the abstract, of great interest. All he meant to convey was, that these rules would never teach any one to colour; and the artist who submitted himself to the law of these three primaries was lost for ever.

34. In connection with colouring there were, however, three necessities which should never be lost sight of by the student. They were the necessity of gradation, of subtlety, and of surprise; and these it would be found were most sedulously and carefully acknowledged by the most successful of colourists, whether ancient or modern. No colour was really valuable until

¹ [Owen Jones (1809-1874), architect and ornamental designer; author of Plans of the Alhambra (1842-1845), The Polychromatic Ornament of Italy (1846), and The Grammar of Ornament (1856). For a reference to the former work, see Stones of Venice, vol. i. (Vol. IX. p. 469 n.).]

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