DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0489
CH. VIII RELATION OF COLOUR TO OUTLINE 488
constituted Academy, or Society of Painters, than a howling
dog into a concert.
7. I say, observe, that Colour-Law may be ascertained
by accurate to it; not by theories concerning it.
No musical philosophy will ever teach a girl to sing, or
a master to compose; and no colour-philosophy will ever
teach a man of science to enjoy a picture, or a dull painter
to invent one. Nor is it prudent, in early practice, even
to allow the mind to be influenced by its preferences and
fancies in colour, however delicate. The fust thing the
student has to do, is to enable himself to match %7M/ colour
when he sees it; and the effort which he must make con-
stantly, for many a day, is simply to match the colour of
natural objects as nearly as he can.
And since the mightiest masters in the world cannot
match these nor any ^7%^ the mightiest match them,
even nearly; the young student must be content, for many
and many a day, to endure his own deficiencies with reso-
lute patience, and lose no time in hopeless efforts to rival
what is admirable in art, or copy what is inimitable in
nature.
8. And especially, he must for a long time abstain from
attaching too much importance to the beautiful mystery by
which the blended colours of objects seen at some distance
charm the eye inexplicably. The day before yesterday,
as I was resting in the garden, the declining sunshine
touched just the points of the withered snapdragons on its
wall. They never had been anything very brilliant in the
way of snapdragons, and were, when one looked at them
close, only wasted and much pitiable ruins of snapdragons ;
but this Enid-like tenderness of their fading grey/ mixed
with what remnant of glow they could yet raise into the
rosy sunbeams, made them, at a little distance, beautiful
beyond all that pencil could ever follow. But you are not
* [See "The Marriage of Geraint" in "Then she bethought
her of a faded silk," etc.]
xv. 2 E
constituted Academy, or Society of Painters, than a howling
dog into a concert.
7. I say, observe, that Colour-Law may be ascertained
by accurate to it; not by theories concerning it.
No musical philosophy will ever teach a girl to sing, or
a master to compose; and no colour-philosophy will ever
teach a man of science to enjoy a picture, or a dull painter
to invent one. Nor is it prudent, in early practice, even
to allow the mind to be influenced by its preferences and
fancies in colour, however delicate. The fust thing the
student has to do, is to enable himself to match %7M/ colour
when he sees it; and the effort which he must make con-
stantly, for many a day, is simply to match the colour of
natural objects as nearly as he can.
And since the mightiest masters in the world cannot
match these nor any ^7%^ the mightiest match them,
even nearly; the young student must be content, for many
and many a day, to endure his own deficiencies with reso-
lute patience, and lose no time in hopeless efforts to rival
what is admirable in art, or copy what is inimitable in
nature.
8. And especially, he must for a long time abstain from
attaching too much importance to the beautiful mystery by
which the blended colours of objects seen at some distance
charm the eye inexplicably. The day before yesterday,
as I was resting in the garden, the declining sunshine
touched just the points of the withered snapdragons on its
wall. They never had been anything very brilliant in the
way of snapdragons, and were, when one looked at them
close, only wasted and much pitiable ruins of snapdragons ;
but this Enid-like tenderness of their fading grey/ mixed
with what remnant of glow they could yet raise into the
rosy sunbeams, made them, at a little distance, beautiful
beyond all that pencil could ever follow. But you are not
* [See "The Marriage of Geraint" in "Then she bethought
her of a faded silk," etc.]
xv. 2 E