The artists repository and drawing magazine: exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches (3.1789)

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sords the mod; extensive range for the imita-
tions of art.
Views are confined to fidelity and resemblance:
the portraits of places. The artist, therefore,
recurs to the happy application of scientific
principles for that variety, and that interest,
which the objedts themselves may not assord:
but which, if nature has bellowed on the fub-
je£t of his piddure, impart to his produdlion
a superior importance over every effort os crea-
tive imagination.
A Landscape, as a pidlure, may be divided,
I apprehend, with propriety, into four parts;
firsl, the Sky and its appendages; secondly, the
Distances ; thirdly, the Middle Dislance, or Off-
scape; and fourthly, the Front os the pidlure.
A few remarks on the disferent requisites of
these divisions will, I hope, enable us to form
a pretty jusl and applicable estimate of the
treatment proper to each.
The Sky is that immense canopy, which,
extended all around us, is perpetually within
our notice, and condantly forms a part of that
pidlure which nature exhibits to our inspection.
As it was originally intended for this purpose,
it is happily adapted by the sobriety and mode-
ration os its colour, to be surveyed without
pains and to occaston no indisposition to the
organs