DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18732#0183
t 20 ]
their lights | and all this with the greateft propriety,
But if you apply this practice to clofet or portrait
painting, what is an excellence in them, becomes a
defect in you. This picture which you have copied
with fo much fuccefs, I dare fay has an admirable
effect where it hangs; but near the eye, or in a ftrong
light, it is hard and over-done. On the other hand,
if your portrait was to be hung at a great diftance, or
in an obfcure place, the delicate touches I now admire
would efcape the fight. The ftyle proper for the
church is improper for the clofet, and the contrary.
The great painters were in the right then, in painting
beyond nature; but let us not imagine that fuch figures
and characters are therefore the moft beautiful. No
painter can invent a figure furpafllng the fineji of na-
ture: for character and form, nature is the juji and
only ftandard. He fhews his genius more by properly
affociating natural objects, and expreffing natural cha-
racters, than by exaggerating them, or by inventing
new ones,
LETTER XX,
;c f^VERY one feems to be fatisfied that warm
«*—' coloring is effential to a good picture: but
what is warm coloring is not determined. Some have
joined the idea of warmth to yellow, others to red,
others to the compound of both, the orange—they
alfo differ in the degrees of each. A warm picture to
fome, is cold to others; and vice verfa. Lambert's
idea of warmth was, to make his pictures appear as if
they
their lights | and all this with the greateft propriety,
But if you apply this practice to clofet or portrait
painting, what is an excellence in them, becomes a
defect in you. This picture which you have copied
with fo much fuccefs, I dare fay has an admirable
effect where it hangs; but near the eye, or in a ftrong
light, it is hard and over-done. On the other hand,
if your portrait was to be hung at a great diftance, or
in an obfcure place, the delicate touches I now admire
would efcape the fight. The ftyle proper for the
church is improper for the clofet, and the contrary.
The great painters were in the right then, in painting
beyond nature; but let us not imagine that fuch figures
and characters are therefore the moft beautiful. No
painter can invent a figure furpafllng the fineji of na-
ture: for character and form, nature is the juji and
only ftandard. He fhews his genius more by properly
affociating natural objects, and expreffing natural cha-
racters, than by exaggerating them, or by inventing
new ones,
LETTER XX,
;c f^VERY one feems to be fatisfied that warm
«*—' coloring is effential to a good picture: but
what is warm coloring is not determined. Some have
joined the idea of warmth to yellow, others to red,
others to the compound of both, the orange—they
alfo differ in the degrees of each. A warm picture to
fome, is cold to others; and vice verfa. Lambert's
idea of warmth was, to make his pictures appear as if
they