and analogous, the colourist may justly trust to advance and perfect his science by following wherever the others lead, and particularly so by adopting, as far as possible, the harmonic principles of the musician.

We must not quit our subject without remarking, that there is a vicious extreme in this branch of Painting, and it is that in which colouring is rendered so principal, as by the splendour of its effects on the eye to diminish all other powers of a work upon the mind, or by want of subordination in the general design to overlay the subject ;-no excellence of the mere colouring can in this case redeem from censure the performance of the painter. Add to which, there is a negative excellence which belongs to colouring, whence the painter is not always to employ pleasing and harmonious colours, but to take advantage of the powerful effects to be derived from impure hues, or the absence of all colour, as Poussin did in his 'Deluge,' thus well commented on by Opie :- "In this work there appears neither black nor white, neither blue, nor red, nor yellow; the whole mass is, with little variation, of a sombre gray, the true resemblance of a dark and humid atmosphere, by which every object is rendered indistinct and almost colourless. This is both a faithful and a poetical conception of the subject. Nature seems faint, half-dissolved, and verging on annihilation But this want of colour is a merit of colouring, and not its reproach. Vandyke employed it with admirable effect in the background of a Crucifixion, and in his Pieta; and the Phaëton of Giulio Romano is celebrated for a suffusion of smothered red, which powerfully excites the idea of a world on fire, although this artist, like his school, was deficient in the more subtile graces of colouring. In no case, however, is any thing legitimate in art that has not an authority in nature; and in Painting, as in Poetry, the imaginative must be founded on the true. Without this basis, effect falls into extravagance-grace into affectation-beauty into deformity-and the sublime into the ridiculous. Where truth and nature end, vice and absurdity begin; hence the moral influence of pure art, in which the habits of truth and honesty conduce to success, and are essential in a high degree to all the attainments of genius. The painter may, notwithstanding, deviate from the real into the ideal or abstract, even so far as in some instances to violate probability, but never to transcend possibility. To deviate successfully from objective truth presupposes, nevertheless, both judgment and genius in the painter; that is, the power of justly imagining and generalizing.

To conclude it is not in painting and decorating,-in the sentiments it excites, nor in the allusions of poetry that the value of colouring is comprised; it has an intrinsic value which, by augmenting the sources of innocent and enlightened pleasure, entitles it to moral esteem. We all know the delight with which music gratifies the ear of the musically inclined.The lover of art would not for worlds forego the emotion which arises from regarding nature with an artist's eye;-but he who can regard nature with the intelligent eye of the colourist, has a boundless source of never-ceasing gratification, arising from harmonies and accordances which are lost to the untutored eye;-rocks and caves,-every stone he treads on, mineral, vegetal, and animal nature,-the heavens, the sea, and the earth, are full of them; wherever eye can reach or optical powers can conduct, their beauties abound in rule and order, unconfounded by infinite variety; and to assert that colouring permeates and clothes the whole visible universe, incurs no hyperbole.

CHAP. II.

ON THE EXPRESSION OF COLOUR.

"Every passion and affection of the mind has its appropriate tint; and colouring, if properly adapted, lends its aid, with powerful effect, in the just discrimination and forcible expression of them; it heightens joy, warms love, inflames anger, deepens sadness, and adds coldness to the cheek of death itself."-OPIE'S LECT. IV. p. 147.

ASSURED as we must be of the importance of colouring as a branch of painting, colours in all their bearings become interesting to the artist. This subject, considered in the whole breadth of its survey, appears to refer to the material principles of colours, to their sensible relations, and to their intellectual effects, or highest purpose.

We will first discuss the latter of these, which is the prime object of colouring, comprehending the effects of colours and colouring on the passions, sentiment, and affections of the mind, and may therefore be termed the Expression of Colour; a subject which, if it has not been totally without light, has been involved in much obscurity: and if philosophers have hitherto argued respecting the causes and harmony of colours with little of the confidence of science, they have spoken of their expression and moral effects with more imperfect apprehension, or even with confusion. There may indeed be some who, from natural organic defect or uncultivated sense, will question these latter effects altogether. Yea,

The man

Whose eye ne'er open'd on the light of heaven

Might smile with scorn, while raptured vision tells

Of the gay-colour'd radiance flushing bright
O'er all creation

AKENSIDE.

Yet the enlightened artist acknowledges these effects from having seen and felt them; and having felt them, it becomes a purpose of his art to produce

them to the feelings of others gifted by nature or attainment to enjoy them. This alone is sufficient to render these powers of colours the subject of his serious inquiry, and to give value to hints and suggestions which may assist in realizing them in his practice, when, according to the expression of Addison, he is obliged to put a virtue into colours, or to find out a proper dress for a passion," &c.—Treatise on Medals, Dial. 1.

For evidence of the natural expression of colours, we need not look beyond the human countenance, that masterpiece of expression, in which are acknowledged-the redness indicative of anger and the ardent passions, and the blush of bashfulness and shame betraying a variety of consciousness, the sallowness or yellowness of grief, envy, resentment, and the jealous passions, the cold, pallid blueness of hate, fear, terror, agony, despair, and death; with a thousand other hues and tints accompanied by expressions readily felt, but difficultly described or understood.*

If we turn our view from the face of man to that of nature in the sky, we find colour equally efficient in giving character, sentiment, and expression to the landscape, indicating the calm and the storm, and in infinite ways betraying the latent emotions of the spirit of nature.

It is by this influence that the greenness of spring indicates the youth, vigour, and freshness of the season; that the light, bright, warm, yellow hues of summer express its powers; that the glowing redness of fruits and foliage denote the richness of autumn,—

Yon hanging woods that, touch'd by autumn, seem
As they were blossoming hues of fire and gold.

COLERIDGE.

and that blue, dark gray, and white tints express the gloom and wintry coldness of nature.

The analogy of the natural series of colours, with the course of the day and the seasons, coincides with the ages of man or the seasons of life, and adapts it to express them in the hues and shades of draperies and effects; from the white or light of the morn or dawn of innocuous infancy,

* Whether these colours of the human countenance are to be variously ascribed to the agency of nerves, blood-vessels, or lymphatics;--whether the warmth and redness expressing active feeling be not attributable to arterial action, and the cold hues of passive suffering to venous re-action; and whether the passions denoted by the sallow or yellow hue are not biliary affections—are questions we leave to the anatomist.

through all the colours, ages, and stages of human life, to the black or dark night of guilt, age, despair, and death.

Throughout all seasons, and in all countries, it is by the colour of his crops that the hopes, fears, acts, and judgments of the husbandman are excited; nor are the colours of the ocean and the sky less indicative to the mariner; nor the colours of his merchandise to the merchant, so universal is this language of colour, the sole immediate sign to the eye, which is the chief organ of external expression and intelligence.

Whether it be the face of nature or of man that is tinged with the varied expression of the gloomy and the gay, it reciprocates corresponding sentiments in the spectator, and we even form judgments of the disposition, temperament, and intentions, as well as of the youth, vigour, age, and race of individuals by colour and complexion; hence colours have been made symbols of the passions and affections, denoting by a sort of tacit consent their connexion with moral feeling, all of which is transferable to the

canvas.

Of these popular symbols, black denotes mourning or sorrow; gray, fear, &c.; red is the colour of joy and love; blue, of constancy; yellow, of jealousy; green, by a physical analogy, of youth and hope; and white, by a moral analogy, of innocence and purity.

These remarks do not apply merely to the more positive colours individually, but extend with even greater force to the more neutral or broken compounds, every hue and shade having its corresponding shade of expression and reciprocation, affording materials for the cultivation of feeling and taste; the sublimest expression vibrating in all cases to the most delicate touch. The subject is fertile, but enough has been said to confirm the fact, if it can be disputed, of the general, moral, sentimental, and natural expression of colours, analogous to that of musical sounds; and of the expression of colours individually we shall take further occasion to speak under their distinct heads.

By what mysterious power colours and sounds thus vibrate and reflect these affections, is beyond our present inquiry; if the fact be established, by investigating its instances we may induce or generalogize a theory, or advance our practice, in which we already acknowledge the powers of colours to soothe and delight by gradation of hue and shade, to excite and animate by their various contrasts, and to distract and repel by infraction and discordance.