r OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/oursketchingclubOOtyrw OUR SKETCHING CLUB. LETTERS AND STUDIES ON LANDSCAPE ART. REV. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT, M. A. Formerly Student and Rhetoric Reader of Ch. Ch., Oxford. WITH AN AUTHORISED REPRODUCTION OF THE LESSONS AND WOODCUTS IN PROFESSOR RUSKIN'S 'ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.' MACMILLAN AND CO. 1874 \_All rights reserved ~\ OXFORD : BY E. PICKARD HALL AND J. H. STACY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. PREFACE. THE original introduction to this book may partly account for the heterogeneous nature of its con- tents. A carefully-made index rerum has been added to it, which may, I trust, atone for this in great measure, to readers in search of hints on English Landscape. But for further excuse, I should like to explain in a straightforward manner how the book came to be what it is. First, I received a kind invitation from Messrs. Roberts of Boston, and some American friends, to write a book on Landscape. It was to be very elementary as to practice, and to begin at the beginning, with the ordinary rules of drawing. It was also to be made palatable by means of descriptions and verbal sketches : and was to take the form of transactions of a Sketching Club, whose members were to exchange ideas by letter or conversation : this involved digressions into criticism and history of art. Then it appeared that though my friends on the other side approved the first part or two as useful to students of drawing, they wanted a little more description of the English country life and ways, with which I am partially acquainted ; and it was mentioned that as male and female characters existed in the book, they would have to make love to each other. Some excursuses on fox-hunting were also desired. These demands were accordingly supplied, I trust in moderation. a 3 vi PREFACE. This was variety enough, in all conscience ; and Mr. Macmillan having seen the first two parts of the book, undertook to publish it when completed, on this side the Atlantic. But it now further received the appro- bation of the Slade Professor of Art at Oxford, who, with a kindness which his friends have learned to take as quite a matter of course, gave me leave to use as illustrations of my various lessons, any or all of the wood-blocks first employed in his ' Elements of Draw- ing/ which he does not propose to re-issue. Further- more, he commissioned me to reproduce in my own way all such parts of his instructions in that book as might seem to suit my purpose. It had been all along to produce a book on practical art, which should not only direct adult students, educated in other matters, in an elementary course of drawing, but should deal in some degree with principles ; and if possible, give some amusement and interest by the way. On re-reading Elements of Drawing, I found, as may be expected, that I had repeated many of its lessons already ; it was now my object to omit as little as possible of the remaining substance of the book. And, as many of the Professor's observations and descriptions can only be given in his own language, it is quite possible that they will appear rather as purple patches in my own work. It cannot be helped, and is'by no means to be lamented. For the characters and narrative chapters of the book, all I can say is, that there is as little of them as possible, that they are a good deal from life ; and that the parts relating to flood and field are strictly after nature and experience. Art might very possibly be better and purer without field-sports of any kind. In theory, I suppose sport would mean the same thing as gymnastic exercise, PREFACE. vii and should be confined to the Pentathlum, with horse and chariot-racing. I cannot argue this, or the endless cognate questions, in this book, and have said my say on the subject elsewhere. But the chase in its wilder and truer forms is inextricably connected with the most de- lightful and romantic passages of Scottish and English landscape, and I do not believe they will ever be se- parated from it. For luxurious butchery of domestic pigeons, and multitudinous murder of tame pheasants, I have never shared in or witnessed either, and I loathe the idea of both. To quote a distinction made not long ago on a far more important matter, this book may be said to be a series of papers on Landscape Art — that is to say, on all works of art in which landscape is concerned — and to contain, as is hoped, a sound practical system of drawing and painting from Nature in water-colours. It has taken the form of a set of supposed letters, essays, and conversations on various Art subjects, such as are likely to be exchanged between fairly good critics and well- educated men and women in one of the Sketching or Drawing Clubs which are now growing so numerous in this country. It seems that these societies may at no distant time have a beneficial influence on education. They encourage the study of natural beauty, and quicken the senses to which it appeals. By ' natural beauty' I understand, pleasure derived from the external ap- pearance of things intended by Divine Law to sup- ply men with contemplative enjoyment. Further, the real relation between fine art and science is founded on the connexion between external form and inner structure, the outsides and insides of things. Art con- templates the one, Science investigates the other, and though art is and ought to be pursued for her own sake, viii PREFACE. she is the willing handmaid of Science. The great and increasing importance of illustration in various studies proves the value of graphic teaching. As long as form is connected with inner structure, Art must bear on education in the physics of the things that are. As long as the mind is capable of receiving clearer or fuller information by the use of symbol in form or colour, so long must Art bear on the histories of the things that have been. It has seemed best to have names and characters, and make them write or talk the matter of this book to each other. But the object, after all, is practical teaching or discussion, though descriptions are here and there inserted of the picturesque of ordinary English life, as far as any such thing exists. I do not think it necessary to have in any disagreeable person. Art has to do with what is beautiful : and in landscape, at least, beauty may be sufficiently well contrasted with grand, or melancholy, or even distressing objects, without using things or char- acters mean, base, or brutal, which the regular novelist may be justified in employing. It will, I think, be a sufficient guarantee for the edu- cational value of the present book, that it contains a reproduction of Professor Ruskin's lessons, in a yet more popular form than that in which they first appeared. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT. Ketilby, Oxford. CONTENTS. Introduction, Club and Critic 1-5 CHAP. I. — An Art Student in Oxford. Competition. Venice, Florence, and Baker-street. Art and Poverty. Shadow of Disappointment. Flora. Rules for a Sketching Club. The Professor. Drawing a jam- pot 6-24 CHAP. II. — The Great Master. Perspective made easy. Way into a picture. Transparent and body-colour. Form by shadow. How to learn Gradation. Over-ambitious subject 25-37 CHAP. III. — Flora and May. Deer-stalking. Sketches and studies. Natural realism and its value. Evenness of finish .... 38-51 CHAP. IV. — West Highland scenery and colours. Grouse. Squared glass and its uses. Hamerton on portrait as preliminary study to landscape. Thorough or professional work. Elementary exercises in form and colour. Grays 5 2_ 73 CHAP. V. — Eggs is eggs. A lecture on the Renaissance . . . 74- 102 CHAP. VI. — Hawkstone Holt and Susan Milton. An Autumn study. 103-1 28 CHAP. VII. — Tree-drawing ab initio. Harding and Turner. The Testudo. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 1 29-141 CHAP. VIII.— Oxford. Port Meadow. May and Charley. A day with the Heythrop. The Chase as a subject of painting . . . 142-158 CHAP. IX. — A Garden Chat. Tree-drawing. Art and Science. Leaves and branches from nature. Miniature and distance. Copying from Turner and A. Diirer. Examples 159-188 X CONTENTS. CHAP. X. — Landseer and Hunt, Diirer and Turner. Intelligent work. Graphic power. Spring. Going for the facts. ' Doing ' grass. How to study the Liber Studiorum. Organic laws. Radiation and liberty of foliage. Art and moral habit. Individuality .... 189-223 CHAP. XI. — A truant lover. Difficulties of colour and choice of subject. Rules and suggestions. Longing for mountains. Motives. Paint your impressions. A palette. Mixed tints. Matching landscape colours. Study of drapery and wild flowers. Blending wet colour. A parting. Lady Susan Cawthorne 224-252 CHAP. XII.— The Rev. Ripon. Club letters. Black and white as colours. Dress. 'Advancing' and 'retiring' colours. Turner's Ehrenbreit- stein. Laws of composition. Unity, Symmetry, Curvature, Radiation, Harmony, &c. Calais Sands. Bridges. Good and bad curves. Colour and finish. A galloping outline 253-298 CHAP. XIII. — Contrasts and harmonies from nature. Finish, technical and intellectual. Growing old. Spring. Landscape never fails. 299-3 1 5 CHAP. XIV. — Red Scaurs and Ravensgill Towers. Salmon-fishing. Razor Brigg Cast. Turneresque study from nature on gray paper . 316-330 CHAP. XV. — Home and doubts 33!-335 CHAP. XVI. — A Hawkstone dinner-party and a lover's quarrel 336-351 CHAP. XVII. — 'A cracker' with the Goredale. Redintegratio. Old Warhawk's grave 352-370 Index 371 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Frontispiece, ' Like Going,' V. Brooks, after R. St. J. Tynvhitt. See p. 295. PAGE 2 33 3 (Ruskin, Elements of Drawing, pp. 9, 17) . . . -35 4 » » P- 175 • • • • 133 5 » » P- 173 • • • • i.H 6 „ „ p. 79 . . . .171 7 » p. 85 .... 1 7+ 8 „ „ p. 86 ... . 175 9. „ „ p. 116 ... . 180 10 „ „ h p. 102 . . . . 181 11 „ „ p. in . . . . 182 12 „ „ p. 113 ... 183 13 .» » P- 114 • ... • 184 14 „ „ p. 104 .... 186 15 . „ „ P- 31 .... 187 16 „ , „ p. 83 .... 188 17 » » p. 123 .... 202 18 „ „ p. 124 ... 203 19 » „ p- 127 • • • . 204 20 „ „ p. 210 . . . .212 21 „ „ p. 211 .... 213 22 „ „ p. 161 . . 214 23 „ P- 163 • • • • 215 24 » » P- 243 .... 266 25 » « P- 253 . . ... 268 25 „ „ p. 249 .... 271 27 » » p. 261 .... 275 28 „ „ p. 268 . . . . 278 29 „ p. 271 . . . . 279 30, 3 1 » » P- 2 73 • • • • 282 32 „ „ pp. 274, 275 . . .283 33 » » P- 278 • . . . 284 34. 35 » » PP- 282, 283 . . .285 36 » „ p. 300 ... . 290 37 » » .... 296 ERRATA. Page 257, lines 5 and 6, transpose comma after 'white' and semicolon after 'greens.' line 22, for or read a. Page 258, line 17, for objective read subjective. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. INTRODUCTION. MANY persons who are interested in Art may not have heard of an institution of English town and country life in the middle and upper classes, which seems to give youths and maidens a good deal of pleasure and some instruction, and which their utmost ingenuity has hitherto failed to make in any degree mis- chievous. We mean the Sketching Clubs, which are. now extended all over the country. We suppose they must develop a certain amount of real manual skill in the operations of Art, and teach perhaps nearly all that water-colour can teach, at least in landscape sketching. As a natural consequence, they ought to improve press criticism a little ; further, they direct attention to good realist landscape, which is at pre- sent the best hope of English and American paint- ing, as far as we can see ; and then they seem to exercise imagination and fancy very pleasingly, and in almost every case to produce habits of close ob- servation, which make all the difference between eyes and no eyes to a student of a few months' standing. & / B ( 2 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. There can be no more valuable habit than that of no- ticing and observing, and nothing can form it much better than sketching ; for all knowledge is vision, after all, by natural eye or by mind's eye. If these societies only afforded intermission and relief from that sad idle- ness and emptiness which is one of the dangers of English middle life, they would be valuable ; but they do more, and really amount to a means of self-education and self-expression. To young women in particular they afford, under good criticism, just what they most want ; that is to say, help and encouragement to learn some- thing thoroughly, and in a standard or workmanlike manner. Working with the public art schools, which have long been heavily influenced by the higher criticism of Mr. Ruskin, and will probably fall more immediately under his guidance as he completes his forthcoming system of education in graphic art, the private clubs ought to make nature and art, or pictorial observation and record, something like a contribution to human happiness. Granting the members, viz. a sufficient number of people who will draw, nothing is easier than to estab- lish an art-club, and they all go by nearly the same rules. The sole property of the society generally con- sists of a portfolio with a leather case ; and their chief expense, for the most part, is the hire of a critic, who should also be protected by some strong outer covering. He is generally a professional workman, and it is under- stood that he is to be as irritating as possible in a letter once a month, or once in two months. But his real work is to examine each member's productions very carefully, and tell him or her what to do, which is by no means so easy. There must be a secretary to do all the work of collecting the drawings, etc. A lady is OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 3 best, because she will have more chance of being at- tended to, and she should have a committee to help her, who should never meet unless she asks them. Rules are generally to the following purpose: 1. Small annual subscription. 2. Everybody is to send one or more drawings per month, or every two months, to the secretary, carriage paid ; if that is not settled people invariably quarrel about it. 3. Everybody suggests a subject in turn, and three subjects are generally offered at a time, the members choosing one or more to illus- trate as they please. 4. Everybody has a number, and is known by that only, in the portfolio. 5. When the portfolio is made up (generally as a large book) it is sent to the critic, who returns it to the secretary, with his opinions ; and they are then sent round together to all the members. Like everything else, this is all either education, or pastime, or waste of time, according to the characters engaged in it ; but its advantages to thorough and will- ing people seem likely to be great. Much depends on the critic. Our own ideal, again, would be a lady thoroughly educated in art, and possessed of that verve, piquancy, and fluency in letter-writing which so many of our sisters rejoice in. She ought to gush abundantly over all the strong points, and vituperate faithfully about the weak ones, using all her tact and exposing the latent carelessnesses or ignorances which cause frailty in execution. The great difficulty is, to get people to see when their work won't do, and to try back, and attempt simpler things where they cannot do the more difficult. They must be led to understand that there is no such thing as amateur drawing, in any real sense. There is only good, bad, and indifferent work, and the good alone is worth B % 4 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. doiiig. But students' work on a system, or any pro- gressive labour, is to be counted as good, though it be ever so imperfect. Critic should have a fair knowledge of books, poetry in particular, but should beware of quoting much him- self. There is another reason for getting a lady critic if you can, that it prevents those postal flirtations, in which a zealous master, who answers questions, is not unlikely to be involved. All letters should go through the secretary, of course. This present book, or series of papers, is intended to contain a set of supposed letters, talks, and essays on various Art subjects, — nearly all practical ones, — such as would be likely to be exchanged between fairly good critics and well-educated men and women in one of the societies above described. The writer accepted the position of critic, never mind where in the English Mid- lands, a year or two ago. His letters, he is informed, are considered worth reading ; and he has succeeded in making all his club draw jam-pots, — an exercise which he has high authority for considering as a central pons asinorum in all drawing. He thinks it possible that clubs as good, and better critics, may soon spring up in America, — conceiving the pursuit of landscape art to be as well adapted to country life in the United States as it unquestionably is to that of England. And sketching combines so well with the athletic, or campaigning forms of travel, that it may be commended quite as heartily to the male sex as the female. The author thinks it better to have names and cha- racters, and make them talk or write to each other. To put them into a regular story would make an art-novel ; and his object is practical teaching, or discussion. But verbal sketching is to be the order of the work, and he OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 5 likes well-known figures with well-remembered land- scape. Letters on oil and water-colours from nature, — on Scottish, Norwegian, Swiss, and Italian scenery, — on drawing in Egypt, the Sinai Desert, and Holy Land, with references to standard works, to the French and Belgian schools, etc., are part of his plan, which must depend for its development on many circumstances as yet undetermined. CHAPTER I. CHARLEY CAWTHORNE always called himself a painter and glazier. He was a Yorkshireman, well-bred, and something more than well-looking, who had taken to art before it came into fashion, because he liked it very much. He had never been conscious of great abilities of any kind. Eton and Christ Church had, at all events taught him taciturnity, if not modesty, in his judg- ment of his own performances. Oil-painting, as a pur- suit, is in fact better countenanced in the world than in our ancient universities. Oxford education has come to be a money-scramble, like everything else, except that it is fairly conducted ; and nobody's contempt for culture and spiritual development can be much stronger than that of a lad of twenty, who has just tasted unearned money, and finds that he can get provided for for life if he makes a decent use of his school-work. The elder Mr. Osbaldistone himself could not have despised his son more for taking to poetry, than academic competi- tion-wallahs did poor Charley's aspirations. ' O, Caw- thorne's line is high art, his is,' was the pitying summary of many a thin-lipped little shark, in earnest expectation of firsts, fellowships, and mandarin promotion. Reading men scouted the action of any study which did not promise immediate pay. Nor did that abundance of happy idleness, which comes and goes in the old quad- rangles like an irregular tide, give him much more OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 7 countenance. He went out hunting now and then, and generally saw the best part of a run ; and he was always sailing and rowing ; but he hardly cared to be an authority in horse and dog talk, and was guilty of professing interest beyond four-oars and eight-oars. And he was almost entirely deficient in the vices. So hunting men and boating men took him pleasantly enough for his own sake, as the right sort of fellow that one could trust anywhere ; a regular bird, in fact, only given over to drawing and that sort of bosh. Once he published some hunting sketches, introducing a few friends in more or less critical positions, and the work gained him some profit and glory. But the under- graduate mind was soon after absorbed by the simpler forms of photographic art, which consist in representing the university authorities in general with immense heads, and rowing in eight-oars. As a graphic aggression on the Dons, Charley owned this to be admirable ; but he once observed that 'the lowly youths who practised it must be extremely mean cusses.' Some of his college pastors and masters gave Charley what encouragement they could. A safe passman, willing to read a little history, and able to talk on any subjects beyond the two Hinckseys, is always a comfort to his tutor, and well- regarded in common-room, especially if he ' belongs to a county.' His tutor, the Rev. Oliver Latchford, was a Shropshire divine, of equestrian as well as scholarly habits, and kindly regarded the pupil he did not pretend to understand. Like many Englishmen, he really cared for realist landscape only, in matters of art, and for that landscape which associated itself most nearly with his own tastes ; that seemed enough for him. Moreover, he was an Ireland scholar, and double-first, and about as keen, within his own pretty wide horizon, as the severest 8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. form of old Oxford work could make him. He was the best of all Philistines ; he knew what he knew so well as to despise half-knowledges, aspirations, emotions, intui- tions, and visions in general. You might have them if you liked ; it was the regular thing for nice lads ; only don't talk about them, at least when sober. ' There may be clouds,' he once said to Charley ; ' but as your tutor, I can only recommend you to keep out of them, and go to the bar.' Still his pupil knew himself to be well regarded, and the Dons in general liked him ; his pur- suits were allowed to give him an existence in the in- tellectual world. And indeed some very natural objec- tions to his throwing himself away by taking to painting, had been seriously made and quietly withdrawn at home, so that he had the inestimable advantage of starting in a then irregular line of life without quarrelling with the regulars ; and moreover without expecting very much of the world. He did not think himself a genius, nor calculate on being paid for genius ; he was simply very fond of painting, and thought he might make a livelihood by making pictures. So he left Oxford, as the better sort of men used to leave it in his day, who neither took orders nor made Oxford their trade ; that is to say, he came away better educated than informed. What one sees of the place now makes one fancy that a good many lads go off informed, or coached, for the present, beyond their capacity ; somewhat over-rewarded by the prizes offered through the competitive system, and consequently with attention fixed, generally for life, on the profits of learn- ing rather than on learning itself. They have taken in a stock-in-trade of information ; they expect a high price for it, and are not quite educated to work with, or for, or under other men. Cawthorne thought little about OUR SKETCHING CLUB. V profits ; he saw he would have to follow a profession mainly for its own sake, and he did not expect much from other men. They could give him little better, in fact, than he had already. He had the disadvantage, if it be one, of never having felt poverty himself ; but at all events he had seen enough to be thankful for his own place. He had been brought up in common Christian duties in the old country fashion ; he knew people were poor and ill, then liked to see them, and do something himself; he would get a couple of rabbits for a sick collier, and then go and read to him ; he tried to teach in a school, but they said he interfered with discipline ; he gave the parson some of his money ; he talked Yorkshire to the old men and women at home ; sub- scribed to Oxford schools and charities, and was liberal to his accustomed cads. The world seemed pleasant to him, as it well may to those who lead the English country life in health. On the whole he knew no state much more to be desired than his own, and would have said with Tennyson, ' Let me lead my life.' People told him all men were shams, and he only answered, that from his experience horses wefe often still worse. He had a year at Rome, and another at Florence and Venice, where hard work in some degree supplied the want of systematic teaching. And from a lodging on the Riva dei Schiavoni, with a mind full of Titian and Tintoret, he came home to settle in a Baker-street studio, and to ascertain how far the traditions of work which had contented the Grand Council would suit the tastes of the British public. He says he has never answered the question yet, at least not satisfactorily, but means to go on propounding it after his fashion. It did not take many months to teach him the dif- ference between a painter's student-life and his working- id OUR SKETCHING CLUB. life ; and how very unlike are the feelings of preparation for a doubtful struggle to those of the struggle itself. Instead of the life of observation, and admiring pupilage under men long passed away, who still live to their disciples in their greatest deeds only, he had to think and paint for himself ; and with independence, all the weight of self-mistrust came on him. Had he been really called to the work he had undertaken ? No- body seemed to think so, very much. It was real and serious enough to him ; he wanted, as he said, to give his life to art ; — but life is such a long and varied thing, and art is so hard to define, at least, so as to please your patrons. As a student he had only wanted success in the form of increasing skill ; now he wanted it in the shape of buyers. As one's faith in any fact is doubled or tripled as soon as one finds anybody to believe it with one, so in par- ticular with the belief in one's self; and it tried Charley's strength to find how few cared for him. He was not stimulated by poverty, for he wanted for nothing ; he was welcome in many houses besides his father's town abode ; he did not like to be thought sulky or priggish ; rode in the park ; went to a few parties, and looked up old Oxford friends. People said they envied him ; many of them really did, and ladies called him Clive Newcome. But he found it would take years to emancipate himself from the name of amateur and dillettante. The mere fact that he was not starving was against him ; but his being able to keep a horse made him quite unreliable in the trade. In fact, he was not poor enough to go regularly in a picture-seller's service, and it is hard to say what else a young man can do who wants a good commercial start in painting. Besides, not a few men who liked him well enough, but who had themselves laboured OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I T through years of poverty, if they did not envy him, would do nothing to help him to fame or commissions. Life is sadly unequal, and poor Charley's Yorkshire intuitions soon taught him that most men who have known want are apt to assume it as a virtue, and to hang together against the pleasantly nurtured. That is the worst of popularising a great profession ; you crowd it with people who cannot well be great ; it tempts them to undergo all sorts of trials ; they don't always come well out of them, and get to think that suffering alone ought to have its reward, and that poverty in itself naturally evolves genius. Heine was perhaps right about artistic envy, but he ought to have allowed the excuses of artistic suffering. It seemed odd, though indisputable, to our friend, that his Eton and Oxford education — irrespectively of its having taught him so little — should stand in his way with R. A.'s and dealers, and the British merchant, and everybody, as it seemed, whose bread or whose pleasure was in oil-painting. He talked of it to his two or three best-regarded masters. Classics and high subject and historical painting, — they had all tried them hard, and they smiled and stroked their beards. Phoebus pointed to a whole stratum of great cartoons, and said he had to live by portraits when his soul desired fresco. Stern- chase showed him a tremendous picture, alive with form and aflame with colour, and said he had been three years over that, doing pot-boilers all the time, and it might be ready in eighteen months more. De Vair's ideals of Arthur and Dante went off as fast as he liked to paint them ; but he was tired of them, and of most other things, and was going into literature. Grief had borne hard on these three, Cawthorne well knew, and he won- dered all the more how they clung to their work, — being 13 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. far too young to have experience of the stage when men labour because nothing is left them in the world but toil. He had just got a glimmering of the very practical truth that his strength was labour and sorrow ; he was to learn in due time that labour and sorrow might be his strength. Meanwhile he worked away with the true wolf's gallop, and could not be altogether passed over. One or two Leeds men knew his name and bought his work. He was heard of as far as Manchester, and a picture or two went thither ; and now and then an American would turn up in his studio, like an unimpassioned pilgrim from beyond the sea, remind him of friends made long ago in Rome or Venice, and perhaps order a bit of scenery from one or the other. You never find these people far wrong when they exert themselves to choose what they like because they like it. He went into decoration for a time, and felt something of the strange, dreamy delight of painting all day in a church-apse, among quiet hues and dim sounds, as the coloured lights describe slow arcs below their windows all day long, and the shadows lengthen and change till the place seems always another place and one's self never the same man. He was personally popular ; dealers did wish he would do nice genre things, like Witchpot, R. A., now, or get in with the great Mr. Tingrind, so as his things might 'ave a sale ; for after all he was a pleasant feller for a swell, with a deal of go, and could paint uncom- mon honest. But for all that he was beginning to see very early, and far ahead, as painters and writers do, the gray, varying shadow men call by the name of Disappoint- ment. If a man bought a picture he seldom wanted ■ another ; if the Academy hung one, they hung it very OUR SKETCHING CLUB. T 3 high. What was Giorgione or his followers to them? they wanted followers of their own. Here was a knot of young men, like Charley and his friends Hicks and Brownjones, who had not been taught in the R. A. school, and were taking a line of subjects not fancied in the school ; and, in short, they must be put down. Phoebus was alone and outvoted ; Sternchase and De Vair were in revolt ; Tingrind didn't care ; so Queen Elizabeth and the Vicar of Wakefield, bishops and Aphrodites, lord mayors and masters of hounds, white muslin and infant piety, made the mixture as before in Burlington House, and Cawthorne's Ariadnes and Per- sephones came back to Baker Street, and went north- ward to come back no more. Disappointment is a curious old ghost, and is often not unkind. Sometimes she vanishes, sometimes the light comes through her, and her grays are many- coloured. But one thing, Charley said, never could disappoint, and that was landscape from nature. The older he grew, the more pleasure there was in painting his own moors, and the woods he was used to. People wanted his sketches more than his pictures, as they always do ; but for a time he took to working from a hut with proper appliances, and finished faithfully on the spot, if not exactly out of doors. It seemed to give him a new start, and the student's freshness of increasing knowledge and dexterity of record came back to him again whenever he really strained all his science at a burn-side. And about this time, after a grouse drive on Grey- thwaite Scaurs, news of the artistic world came to him in the shape of the following letter from a fair and far-off cousin, a flirt of other days, older than himself, and settled long ago in the Midlands. 14 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Hawkstone, Bristlebury, Sept. 12. My Dear Charles, It seems hardly respectful to call you Charley, although I never can find anybody who knows you by any other name ; and we have all been talking of your pictures all last week ; that is to say, we women have : men at this time of the year are always quarrelling about central-fire and pin-fire, or else they are deep in dogs. You must know I have a great favour to ask for myself, and a good many others, apropos of our Sketch- ing Society. Don't be angry, and talk about the im- pudence of these creatures ; we want you to be our critic. Only just be good a moment while I coax you about it, — only by letter, — and think of how you would have done anything, so long ago, when you were little ! There are a great many of us, you know ; some swells, and some good artists, I really think, in an amateur, or ladies'-exhibition sort of way ; though, by the bye, we have our share of gentlemen. There is no keeping them out, and really, if we did, I do not think the girls would like it. But we are rather tired of dear old Mr. Hog- badger, the Bristlebury art-master, and so he is of us ; and he says he wants to paint a little for himself and the Royal Academy. Besides, he does not laugh at us enough, and being only scolded is nothing, by post. He used to point out wrong perspectives and bad draw- ing very well. But now most of us avoid great offences ; or else he is tired of telling us about them, and he does not tell us what to do enough. I suppose it is hard to bring regular studio drawing to the help of us poor sketchers ; but really I do not think he has seen much scenery. And we wrote to young Mr. Verditer, and he OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 15 said he had to paint, and did'nt care for talking about it ; and Mr. Martel told us we had better read his books, which we do, I am sure. Then at last, when I was in despair, I was introduced to your Oxford Pro- fessor, and asked him whom I could ask, and he said you, and that you were to write to him about it, and to be good to us. Now do : and think it well over, and make us some rules for our work. We really do want to get on and to do right ; you know the only woman's rights I ever cared for (except being courted and mar- ried) were that my girls and I might learn something as men learn it, out and out. And I think that the higher the amateur clubs can get in their work, the more likely people are to ask for good subjects and spirited things in exhibitions, — which will be good for you. This is quite a business letter, so I will only send all our love, and say that they have got two hundred and fifty brace of partridges already, strictly over dogs ; that they are all very good-tempered and nice when awake, which, happily, they seldom are, except at meals ; that all the boys and girls are well, and that John has shot very f airly, and hopes to reduce himself to thirteen stone by hard labour. Do write soon and tell us something ; we will give you £30 a year. Ever your old cousin, Flora Lattermath. P.S. Margaret Langdale is here, and is one of us ; she really looks very grand, and works very hard. Whereto, after due consideration and correspondence, Charley made answer thus : — i6 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Hellifield Tarn, Sept. 20. My Dear Florence (long and respectful for Flora, I presume), This is to be a business letter, of course ; so accept my assurance that we are all right, and have got a thousand brace by this time, driven grouse. Also re- member me faithfully to Margaret, whom I put in my first sentence, probably for the same reason that you put her in your P.S. I have no doubt she will derive material advantage from pursuing her studies with me. Well, I have written to the Professor ; and he says I am to criticise you, if you will abide by certain additional rules, generally speaking. (He says, moreover, if you will not, not.) By criticising, I mean telling you what you ought not to have done in the sketches before me, and also what you ought to do to them. This last, you know, will require more or less illustration in my own hand, so that you will give a fair amount of trouble for your money. Your usual rules about being anony- mous numbers, and of one drawing a month, or fine, are good ; but I want a number of others, all in the way of discipline ; and, in fact, I can't undertake without them. If you think you really are going to improve public taste, — which I am sure seems possible, and you can't by any effort or chance make it worse, — you must really learn to draw above the popular standard. Now do you be good too, and remember when you were little, — in your own eyes. These are my rules, whereby I mean to stick. 1. Drawings sent me for criticism shall be landscape only, unless I write to anybody permitting and request- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 17 ing him or her to do figure subject. By this last, I mean any subject where the chief interest depends on the attitude or expression of figures, or on skill or labour bestowed on them. I allow interiors, but consider that they ought to • have for their motives either study of light and shade combined with perspective, or still life ; and that figures should be introduced unsentimentally, and only as objects reflecting light. I object to Mother being Bad (especially in drawing), and utterly protest against Helping Mother, and all illustration of the domestic affections or rural virtues ; still more against the corresponding vices. 2. This is not to prevent anybody's introducing small figures wherever force, or incident, or distance, or local colour is wanted ; or wherever accidental colour is noticed or wanted in a landscape sketch, as a pink and white striped skirt in a hay-field, or a red coat on a winter's evening. (I'm so glad you go on wearing and distribut- ing scarlet cloaks ; give my love to old Polly at the West Lodge, and say as sure as ever I come to Hawkstone I'll take her head off.) For the kind and use of figures I mean, see the Liber Studiorum. 3. There may be three subjects a month as usual, but I must dictate one of them, and that must be done somehow by everybody. I never scold, and always praise where I can ; and after the first time or two, I will give you pretty things to do. 4. Except by special license, everything is to be done on white paper, not too rough : unless where a single object or small group is done in the centre of a sheet by way of study, the white paper should be covered into the corners. I wish you would all use hot-pressed paper, or Bristol-board, invariably 1 . 1 There is a fine-grained paper of Whatman's, which seems to C i8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 5. Without prejudice to old members of the club, new ones ought either to produce tolerable drawings of their own, or do one for qualification ; or undertake on honour to go through a certain course of practice, till I pass them into full membership. Honorary, or inactive, or literary members you may have, but they are not my business. I will look at photographs, but can't promise to criticise them. 6. Last and irrevocable. Every active member of the club is to send me, by any date within this year, a drawing of a white jam-pot on white paper, in stippled chalk, or in sepia, or pencil shading, or pencil washed with water-colours (sepia or gray), which last I recom- mend. I will give a small landscape sketch of my own to the best drawing ; and I had rather not criticise any- body who does not send me one. To be done as a study, the whole paper need not be covered. The Per- fessor has seen these stipulations, and approves ; and any backslider or blasphemer may expect to be swallowed whole, with some abruptness. Respect this accordingly, my dear Flora ; and whatever you do, don't let me guess which are May's works. The money will do. Love to John and the creatures. Ever yours, affectionately, C. C. Letter LIL. My Dear Charley : At last they all seem good and submissive, on the whole, and our first portfolio of jam-pots will be duly forwarded to you in November. But oh, I do wish you and the P. knew what a life I shall have, meanwhile, unite the advantages of roughness and smoothness, by the regularity of its unevenness. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 3 9 with all the club. Do send a decisive allocution about the drawings, answering these questions from various members. (The men are worse than the girls.) 1. May they group anything with the White Wessel, as they call it ? 2. May they substitute Jamaica-ginger-pots ? 3. Or brown glazed pickle-jars with reflections ? 4. Or any sort of red pottery ? 5. Or old china in any form ? 6. Or use gray paper and Chinese white ? Don't be too hard. Affectionately yours, F. P.S. — As if you wouldn't know ! What hypocrites some people are ! Letter IV. My Dear Flora : No, to all the questions. Do it in sepia or pencil as fine as you can ; the gooseberry vessel of our child- hood, and nothing but it. / have done you a nice prize, though I say it. Affectionately yours, C. C. P. S. — I don't know her's from Adam's. Letter V. Baker Street, October 1. My Dear Flora: I have received twenty-six jam-pots in your portfolio. I quite agree that the quarter-sheet should be your largest size, and the eighth your smallest. Those who use the latter henceforth ought to do so as students C 2 20 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. of Turner, and to them, for that purpose, I concede gray paper. But it is no use drawing at that small size except under his guidance ; and I hardly know how you can get it, without visiting Oxford, Cambridge, or South Kensington. If you have any very patient, keen and skilful water-colourist among you, and you seem to have one or two, it would be a great thing to get her or him to go to Oxford for a month and copy, let us say, Combe Martin, and the Coteaux des Mauves in the Gallery there, under Mac-Diarmid and the Professor. No pains should be spared, for the object will be to produce such fac-similes, touch for touch, as shall be fit to be circulated and used by the club as copies. They should be signed by Mac, if they can be got up to that point, and the club should make the artist some acknowledgment in proportion to the severe labour involved. But now to these drawings. Everybody has done her best I really think. One or two are confused and messed a little ; some are washed and sponged and rubbed. I wanted all to be done with repeated washes or patches laid on strictly in planned form, leaving the edges in the first instance, and stippling and hatching them into mass afterwards. There is one way to make a study in light and shade : — to mark the highest lights and leave them blank, then to run the faintest coat of shade over everything else ; then the next coat, and so on seriatim. It is rather curious that three of these studies, which I really think are the three best, represent very fairly the three pillars given in ' Modern Painters ' as examples of Rembrandt's, Turner's, and Veronese's systems of chiaroscuro. I wish you would all read that chapter (vol. iv, part v, chap, iii, p. 34) very carefully ; but for those who regret that they can't take the trouble, I will send my own abstract of it, and here it is. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 2i I'll trouble any member of the club, or of society, to tell me what ' white ' means in a picture ? It expresses either light, or local colour; and in your drawing you have only the paper-whiteness to stand for both. And paper is not very white. You all thought me very brutal because I would not let you use tinted paper ; I would not, because white paper, the very whitest, is tinted, or darkened enough already. Consider, the sheet on which a picture is painted is an opaque white surface, upright, in side-light and out of sunshine. Pictures are always supposed to be seen under those circumstances, you know ; and if you bring a sheet of white paper close to a window, side on, and hold it vertically out of sunshine, you will have as white a surface as you possibly can have over any part of your picture. Now, hold that sheet so that half shall cut against the window-sill or wall, and half against the sky. Then it is white against the wall, and ever so dark against the blue sky ; ever so much darker against the unlighted white clouds ; and utterly black or blank against their bright parts which are full of light. For the paper possesses opaque white- ness, as of chalk ; the clouds possess brightness, as of white fire. Now just consider, when you do a sunshiny landscape, the whitest light you can get on your paper is really darker than the darkest part of the clouds you want to put in your picture ; and also, than the distance of your picture, if you have a five or six mile distance in it. Now, on comparing white paper in a room, looked at as a picture is looked at, with a jam-pot looked at as a copy, you see, at all events, one is as white as the other, or very nearly so, so that the jam-pot is easier than the landscape in the sense of being possible, while the landscape, strictly speaking, is not. And it is highly expedient for me to judge of all your work by 22 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. giving examples quite within your powers. I know the greatest power is shown by contending with the greatest difficulties ; but if you all possessed that, why you know you would be a-improving of me, and not I you. Now, in this jam-pot, a very good one, the artist, whom I must call No. I, has hit on, or been taught to follow, Rembrandt's, or Leonardo's system. And that system is very well adapted for drawing a simple study like this. No. i sees that her crockery has a small, high light ; that high light is just the tint of her paper; therefore, all the rest of her white wessel has to be darkened and made gray to relieve, and so express the brightness of that high light. For it is glazed, and has caught the light, and all opaque local whiteness yields to a flash. And now you know what a flash, a glint, a reflection on armour, embroidery, or glass, is to Rembrandt ; and you know how valuable he makes it. And this flash on the white glaze gives this drawing value, as a bit of reality : the artist is not wrong in darkening the whole paper for its sake ; but the whole local colour is sacrificed. But now, is this well-drawn and rounded cylinder, with only one touch of real absolute white upon it, and the rest all gray, and a very black shadow, and a rather black dark side, — is it as like a white jam-pot as No. 2, which is so much less black? I should say not. It is rather rounder, and so has more form. But the eye feels that if it was a part of a picture, it would not look so like what it is as No. 2, because that not only possesses a fair amount of roundness, but is, beyond all dispute, white in colour, while No. I has only one white flash on it. No. 2 economises the darkness for the sake of colour. No. I lays on the shade for the sake of form. No. I loses some of his form in darkness ; the other loses form in light, but gains far more in colour. A landscape with OUR SKETCHING CLUB. *3 distance would be hopelessly heavy and dark in all its near objects on the first principle ; the other is Turner's ; and he (as I observe No. 2 has done) makes his extreme shadow as black as he can ; his lightest surface tint a very thin, local colour, approaching white, and reserves white itself for brightness, or a single flash of actual light in some principal place in his picture. So I bracket these two together as best, and must send a sketch to each of the artists ; only I beg No. 1 to copy No. 2's work, and vice versa. Each will then fully understand all this tirade. The whole club may do a brown pickle-jar now, on white, as before. No flash of light allowed on it ; con- sequently, no pure white anywhere on it ; sepia only ; and carry a pale tint over all to begin with ; then lay on the shadows. Choose your own subject for the other drawing, but make it as simple a thing as you can per- suade yourselves to do. And don't use Chinese white in these studies. I should say, do not use it at all on white paper ; never, certainly, till a work is nearly done ; and never till you clearly see your way to an effect with it, which you could not possibly produce without it. But do justice to your own subject in your own way this time. I should like in the first portfolio to see everybody's taste and fancy, and so I give leave for tinted paper, any. subject, and body colour in all forms, on this occasion only. [I give you notice of the following subject, which I wish the club would do very carefully this autumn ; I have tried the colours, and they come very prettily. A thrush 1 , with yellow feet, and yellow about his bill, pick- ing coral-red berries in a dark yew ; purple branches, Or blackbird. 24 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. and masses of heavy green, small interval of blue sky through, all quite near the eye.] Good-bye, my dear Flora, and tell the club I really think very highly of the work. I have numbered the six best drawings, besides the prizes. Ever yours, C. C. I can come after Christmas, if you like, and will send old Warhawk, whom M. knows. I am only a one-horse man ; but I dare say John will have something for me to ride ; Catapult, for choice, if t'ard mare is still going. But I am very busy now on a big desert subject, which Sternchase approves ; and a canter in the Park before breakfast is all I have time for. CHAPTER II. Letter VI. C. C. to F. L, Tombuie, Gairloch, Ross-shire, October, 186-. My Dear Flora : I suppose that you and your club will not do very much drawing in the open air till next spring. I have always thought the sketching season, for students of landscape, like the one crack lesson of the week in a school, in drawing or music ; when the great master whom everybody really believes in, comes and takes every one's work in hand. I dare say you may have found in music, that one lesson of Benedict did your piano-hands more good than several weeks' practice under somebody you were not afraid of. It did so, of course ; because all the practice of those weeks was really done in faith and terror about Benedict ; and that made you really prepare for your lesson. I want you all to do the same, till green leaves come again. Sketch- ing — what we call sketching — is taking lessons of Nature. As to the many meanings of the word ' sketch,' we '11 talk of that another time. Old Ripon's book is generally supposed to give a neat account of them. I have often talked it over with him, and can tell you what will hold good. But now, you must make up your minds (as far 26 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. as I am concerned with what you do) to draw indoors in winter, as you would read music and take piano exercise, with a view to the great Teacher's instructions in spring. Which things are an allegory ; but that 's not my business just now. Those who are most advanced among you will do well to choose some favourite simple subject, with as little in it as possible, and with not more than two pre- vailing colours, and paint it as strongly and thickly as possible in oils ; or you may use egg or some of the water-colour media in foreground, and white with the dis- tance colours. In fact, if you paint with a transparent medium in front and body-colour farther off", you pass out of pure water-painting into distemper-painting ; and this is what all the English water-colour school are doing. It enables you to use the red sable brush, with all its ad- vantages over the rough hog- hair tool ; and yet you have much of the additional power and depth of oils. But I only commend this to numbers ■ . For the rest, this is what I want them to do till next spring, chiefly to wit : — First, your perspective is shaky all round, except the above-mentioned numbers ; and there are two things you can all do to improve it. Of course you ought to get the Professor's little book 1 on the subject, and work through it ; and of course you all regret not to have time. But get a piece — say six inches square — of window-glass, and a fine brush, and mix a little red up with white. Then hold up your glass against a box, or an open book, a house, trees and small landscape, and a succession of such subjects or objects, and accustom yourself to trace the main lines of each subject on the glass, with the 1 ' Elements of Perspective/ by John Ruskin. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 27 point of the brush and body-colour. Of course the nearer you hold it to your eye, the larger space it will cover. Then copy said lines carefully on paper. That will be the true perspective of the subjects. Do this for a short time, — once a day for a while, — and your per- spective will not be far wrong in your club work. That 's one thing. Then set a square block on a table before you, six feet off, and make its nearest edge parallel with the edge of the table : sit with the block a little to your left ; then you can see its right side, and its top 28 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. foreshortened. Hold your drawing-paper perpendicular for a moment, covering the object as the glass did ; then draw its nearest face (see the left of diagram) quite flat, in as good proportion as you can judge ; that 's the front of your block which faces you, — the 'eleva- tion ' they call it. But you can also see its top and right side. Therefore draw its top and fit that on to the front ; and then draw its side and fit that on to the top and front ; and that is drawing your block in perspective. Draw it on and through the glass, and you will see that its lines converge in just the same way. Then produce or lengthen the sides of your block and the lines of its top with a ruler : they will meet some- where ; the pairs of lines will run into one. The point where they do that is their vanishing point, and all practical perspective consists in getting lines to their right vanishing points. (See diagram at C and H.) If you will draw an open work-box, with a lid hanging back, and its corner turned towards you, — first by your eye, then through the glass, — you will have examples of perspective lines in all sorts of directions, with the vanishing points where they run into each other. The theory of the thing you can get from lots of books ; but this is the best practice for you. Then you will ask : How am I to judge the relative length of lines? How much longer is a front line to be on my paper than a perspective line of equal length ? This leads to the very foundation of all sketching ; that is, the habit of accurate measuring by the thumb-nail on your pencil. Sit upright and stretch out your arm at full length, holding your pencil perpendicularly between your fingers, two on each side and the thumb uppermost. That gives you an upright ruler or standard ; and on that you can measure com- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 29 parative lengths of objects, by sliding your thumb-nail up and down : and it will do just as well horizontally. You must practise this ; for drawing is all measuring : and all measuring of relative lengths may be done most correctly in this way. For instance, to draw a statue by heads, you take the perpendicular height from crown to chin, as your unit of length, and measure it off thus on the body, — say about seven and one half heads long, as we say ; or, if the head is not convenient to measure by, you may take the waist horizontally, — about five and three-fourths to the whole stature. Try it on your block. I have one before me six inches square, two thick, and to the left of my eye. Sitting over it at the table, I can see its thickness and the whole upper surface ; but, when I hold up my pencil, I find that the whole six inches of retiring surface in the drawing must not be so broad as the two inches of perpendicular thickness facing me. That is what fore- shortening means ; and, the lower your eye is, the more you will have to foreshorten, for the less of the surface at top will you see. But always keep in mind that you must not look on this surface as receding space, which it is, but as all in the same plane as the front elevation or near face ; for so it will be in your picture. If you will only practise measuring heights and dis- tances with thumb and pencil, whenever you sketch, and make good use of the square of common clear glass, I will answer for your landscape perspective not being far wrong \ ' And, when spring comes round, you must draw a few leaves and sprays as you see them : you will be 1 The glass had better be held like the pencil, or fixed at arm's length from the eye. The distance is easily ascertained ; and a slight 30 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. surprised to find how one really sees leaves edge on and foreshortened. All this is very dull ; but it is a great thing to get some common ready rule of thumb about perspective ; and, do you know, you most of you need one ? The art schools in London have a small model of a flight of steps, which is, I think, the best example you can have. You can make one by piling up a heap of books of the same size. When you see and show in your drawing, not only that the walls on each side the steps converge towards the top, but that the outlines of the steps converge, then you see like a draughtsman. I hope this may be my stupidest letter ; but please con- sider the nature of the subject, and it 's all for your good. What's worse, I Ve not done yet. If I wrote about composition, you naturally wouldn't read it. I had rather you would draw from Nature, and pick composition up as you go on. But the sense of perspective has a great deal to do with composition. For instance, one of the first things a man looks for in a picture, especially a landscape, is a way into it, — some- thing to destroy the impression of flat surface. It is contrived in many ways. There is always a road, and people on it at different distances ; or a flock of sheep ; or a foreshortened figure right in front, pointing or squaring his elbows ; or a river serpentining into distance ; or several things converging ; — anything to lead the eye in among the objects on the canvas. That is all perspective. Turner uses tree trunks very artfully, crossing and diminishing them, one behind frame might be added, for the convenience of setting the glass up before the student, who will find it easy enough to trace lines on it with a long-handled fine brush and colour. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 31 another, to show a way through a wood. But the most curious thing is the peculiar melancholy of the perspective curves of a quiet river. They seem to lead the eye away into distance with a feeling of infinity, and give such an impression of the wandering unreturning flow of the stream. You must have noticed it, parti- cularly in the evening or morning. All this is about linear perspective, obtainable by fair drawing. Aerial perspective is really a matter of colour ; though mistiness and obscurity may be had in all manner of ways. And now there are a few things I want you all to consider about water-colours. All the colours in the box are either transparent or opaque, — at least the semi-opaques are generally used thinly, and made transparent. Opaque, solid, and body colour all mean the same thing. Chinese white, or any tint well mixed with it, is solid : you can't see through it more than through a plate of metal ; and it does not grow whiter when you put on another coat of the same. It shines for itself, as colour, and has a fixed place in the scale of light and dark ; and if you put it over another colour, it does not modify it, but conceals it. Now gamboge or rose madder are transparent. If you put or two coats of either, they are darker than if you put on one ; and, if they be carried over other hues, they change them, but do not hide them ; as, gamboge over blue turns it into green, and does not substitute yellow, as thick chrome would do. Now, as students, you must all use transparent colour, or the semi-opaques as if they were transparent. As with the jam-pot, so with everything else : you work from light to dark ; that is to say, from the white paper to violet-carmine, or lamp-black. You get light by adding shadow, and form by definition in shadow. Before your 32 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. picture is begun, it is all high light — white paper ; and you paint in coloured shadow, or rather your palest and brightest hues first ; and their (also coloured) shadows afterwards, in shar'p, defining form. Having an oak- branch in spring to paint, I should first paint in emerald green all over its outline form. With a bank of heather, I should put on rose madder with a little blue nearly all over, and work the greens, etc., into that, — lighter and purer first, deeper and browner afterwards. It is quite difficult enough, as I said, to go on this way; because, even here, you have to consider which of the hues is lighter in tint 1 and which darker: for example, you have to judge whether the heather flowers are lighter than the green heather tops, and so on. [The only way to calculate this by the eye is to look at the two objects with half-closed lids. There is a point of dim- ness at which the lighter tint is recognisable with certainty.] To translate hue into tint, or colour into grammatical light and shade, is hard enough. But you must do it, or you lose so much form : and you should only think, in drawing from Nature, how you are to get the forms right by painting on right-coloured shadows. The idea is, in water-colour, to get the correct outlines, by painting coloured shade all round them, and complete them by painting coloured shade into them correctly. Whatever you have to colour, take these questions in succession, and answer them in your work : — i. What hue, and how dark, is the colour of my highest light, — the nearest tint to white in all my subject ? (Absolute white is very rare.) 1 ' Tint ' means pitch of shade, lighter or darker ; ' hue ' variety of colour. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 33 2. What hue, and how dark, is the tint of the next darkest shadow ; and what kind of shape has it on the object : in other words, hue, tint, and form of second degree of shade? Then third, fourth, and all of them, — the lighter first, O T 2 3 4 Fig. 2. the darker after. Take a figure like this : — you want to paint it in water-colour with those degrees of shade- Well, it is better to begin with tint No. I, the lightest. Carry I all over spaces 2, 3, and 4, and let it dry. Then carry 2 over 3 and 4, and so on, carefully drying be- tween each. Then you will have all your edges quite sharp and clear, which is the soul of water-colour. If you had begun with the darkest, 4, it would have run more or less into the others ; at all events, the out- lines would have been muddy. That is the principle of water-colour, from light to dark. I suppose you are all pressed for time. That is what every body says. The inference is, that you ex- pect to learn to paint in no time ; and you can't do it. And mind, there is no such thing as amateur work, and allowance for amateurs. I should rather think I was an amateur or lover of painting ; I've given all I had to give to it for fifteen years. And I should say that you were professionals, or had made a profession of intending to learn to draw things right. But work is right or wrong ; and, in so far as it is wrong, it is nothing, except for the caution you learn by it. Now if you D 34 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. look at the different patches in the second diagram, you will see how they are done, — in pen and ink, with crossed lines, and with an even hand. Now any of you in any spare five minutes (and I've always found that time really runs away from one in grains of about that size) can draw something like that, and practise shading by even lines, first like those at I, then i crossed with other lines diagonisingly, as old Jagger, our keeper, says. Practise that when you can, with anything you like, on anything you like, — pen and ink, HB pencil, chalk, or, best of all, a fine brush and sepia ; the smoother the paper, the better. It is workman's work ; engravers shade things so. Of course you will do the light parts, as your pen gets empty. When you can do steady lines, try to get gradation in pen and ink, so as to pass imperceptibly from light to dark with as many degrees of shade as possible. To do this you must use little dots, which painters call stippling, in between your lines and everywhere ; and in working at speed — and you ought not to be too slow — you will have to scratch out a little with a penknife at last. You may use a steel crow-quill, or a broad driveable steel pen. The whole secret is filling up the little white interstices between the crossed lines. Of course it is tiresome at first ; but you need not do it for long at a time ; and your eyes will grow nicer every day (if that be possible for ladies' eyes). You may see how to do it from the diagram, and I shall ask you here- after to practise the crossed lines on a larger scale, so as to gain freedom of hand. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 35 Here you have the first two figures from 'Elements of Drawing ;' do the flat shade b first, beginning as at a, Fig. 3, then the gradated exercise c from light to dark. Practise both in all ways, that is to say, in pencil, in sepia, and in chalk on a large free scale, and of all sizes, and work, above all things, for skill in cross-hatching lines evenly into a perfectly flat surface. And, do you know, some of you had much better spend your time in this way than do the sort of drawings I have just received from subjects of your own choosing. As a teacher, one is always told that by making people do simpler and simpler work, one will get them down at last to something they can do right. Well, it may be, if they care for drawing for its own sake. But many of you seem to think of it only as a vehicle of sentiment, and also that it does not matter how ungrammatically sentiment is expressed. You have all read the Profes- sor's sentence (Modern Painters, vol. i. pp. 9, 10) about the early painters ; and think that because you have a pretty thought in your heads, you are as good as Cimabue. You forget that there is a whole renaissance of study and discovery and correct work between you, and that what is excusable and pathetic in a person who has to teach himself is just the contrary in a D 1 36 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. lady who won't take pains. Merely from want of will and methodical practice, some of the numbers seem not to know what right is. I set — — simpler things to do ; and they have done them worse. All the effort and attention are gone : they seem not to be able to get on without excitement ; whereas the essence of all practical art is self-possession. When inclined to gush, try to express your emotions on the piano. If you were to play in the style of some of these drawings, your music-master would flee howling into the wilderness. Or write earnest poetry in shocking bad grammar ; won't the effect border on the grotesque ? Here's a specimen drawing, — a self-chosen subject from Goethe, — Mignon doing something; a little figure out of drawing, with immense eyes which are not a pair, supported by two left legs and feet without any phalanges (ask John what that word means), in a room out of per- spective, and moving about like Wordsworth in a world of background not realised. It 's all sponged and rubbed and smudged and grimed ; in fact, it is a mess. If this sort of thing is sent me any more — Lady Flora, hear me speak, — I mean exactly what I say, — 1 shall unquestionably seek A large addition to my pay. Ever yours, and May's, affectionately, C. C. P. S. Remember me to May very particularly, and tell her I want to draw her in several capacities. We have been felling the deer on the Cairn-breac ; and I got a big Royal. Rather a rough finish with him : he wasn't OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 37 so dead as he ought to have been ; and, when he felt Duncan's knife, he rose up and jammed Duncan against a rock. He happily clung on to the horns with all his might ; and I threw my jacket over the beast's head, and struck him just right with the skean-dhu at the root of the neck. Duncan just said, 'Ye're a maan to hoont with ; ' and I think the gillies are keener with me now. CHAPTER III. Flora. Well, May, you have seen a great deal for twenty-three, — almost everything you've any business to have seen, except — May. Except what, Floy, — a lover ? F. Yes ; for you never will look at anybody in that light. M. What sort of light, dear — couleur dn rose, like toilet curtains? F. Yes ; most girls would look more kindly at men. At least, you always were kind enough to everybody ; but you do take them so coolly. M. Oughtn't somebody to come, and make me look the right sort of way at him ? I really think I should learn very soon, if I got the right master. You're thinking of Charles, I suppose. Well, so do I, some- times,— often, if you please. But he is like all the others ; he does not think quite enough about it. His life is all pictures ; and I am only one of his foreground figures. I should like a canvas all to myself. It is men who take us so coolly. At all events, they all pretend not to care ; and we must pretend, too. F. Well, I wish you'd look at him once as I've seen him look at you. M. Would he see it, too, do you think? I never did. This pithy dialogue took place over afternoon tea at Hawkstone. The ladies had ridden to a near meet of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 39 hounds ; but a short run had ended without a kill, and heavy autumn rain had sent them home alone. They were old friends and dear, with perfect confidence in each other (it is really possible in the country). Yet this was the first time Flora had ever talked to Margaret either about men or any man. She had plunged at the subject with ready good-will, feeling or making her opportunity with dark May, whom she liked all the better because her own decisive spirit could not alto- gether rule her friend's meditative indolence. I have had to make their conversation very staccato ; but inter- esting talks often are, as moments of profound confidence are, but moments, between the best friends ; and they are apt to flash or snap questions and answers at each other as in a French novel. This pair liked, but did not quite comprehend each other. A curious reserve and languor, the more unintelligible to others because she obviously couldn't understand it herself, was one of Miss Langdale's most provoking attributes. People were half afraid of her, she was so tall and grand, and had more in her than met the eye ; and she was tender enough to be vexed about it, more with herself than others. An immense soft-heartedness and pity was one of her qualities ; and early experience had taught her to be very silent about it ; so people thought her a coldish, rather benevolent young lady of business, as Flora said, 'till they knew her form.' I have read several square yards of various description by eminent hands, in hopes of finding one, or rather two portrait sketches for Florence and May as they sat in the former's room — sanctum or boudoir it could not be called, — because she let anybody into it who was not actually smoking, and who ' respected the threshold in the matter of boots. For furniture and decoration; see 40 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. novels, passim. The ladies are an artistic subject, and will do very well for a book on colour and form. They say beauty is leaving the old houses in England, and going to the timocracy or democracy. Perhaps so. Neither of these latter were ever a very plain generation ; and the standard is high, from John o' Groat's to San Francisco. But if you see a muster of the North Country at York, you won't think altogether ill of the looks which go with ancient names. And this pair had been pronounced ' crackers ' by highly competent judges at many hunt balls in the glad old city. They were not exactly dark and fair : for both were dark-eyed : but Flora rejoiced in black-brown locks, and that high unchanging colour which depends not on thickness but extreme fineness of skin. May was purple-haired and rather pale, with an occasional brunette blush of the true vermilion tint, which only dark cheeks wear, and they not always. They were cousins ; and the blood and form of the same ancestress of yet unforgotten beauty were in both. They were like and unlike : both had keen, aquiline beaks, and soft, half-humorous faces ; both pairs of eyes were sharp or tender as you took them ; both had tall, rounded figures, with the same look of power in repose ; both liked black and rose, or ivy green and dark brown. One always managed the other in society ; the other always in- fluenced the one in serious matters. They could hardly have done without each other ; and Flora's great object in life, she said, till her girls were out (their present ages were two and four), was to get somebody for May whom she liked herself. This was both a grave home matter and a matter of society ; and it was not easy to see whose taste of the two would be consulted in the end. May was an orphan, — a very independent one in fortune OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 41 and all other matters. She had a faint remembrance of many kisses from her father, swarthy and splendid, in red uniform and epaulets, before he went away so many years ago ; also of a dreadful day not long after, when a letter came that mamma never read to the end. It brought news that papa had died in his saddle, among mutinous Sowars, making many follow on the way he went. Then she had grown up to bring back something of happiness to the sad mother whose whole life was in her, and had learned to care for little else. Lady Langdale had never gone into the world after her husband's death. As she said herself, half of her had died that day ; but enough was left to have May well drilled in many things not often known to ladies of her age. The girl waxed strong in shade. In the presence of a great praying, uncomplaining grief, she learned endless patience, and seemed to grow easily into the experience of a regular , nurse, in the care of her mother's strong mind and broken frame. Not that the sufferer was exigeante or selfish : her daughter was her only hope in the world ; and all her remaining powers went to make the most of her. So May did not want for acquirement. She early found out, that nothing did mamma so much good as her getting on with lessons. So with steady home-work, travel, and good instruction in Rome and Dresden, she had been fairly grounded in what we call education. I take that to consist, for man or woman, in learning the Christian faith, — one's mother-tongue undefiled, a quantum of mathematics, a little Latin, two modern languages be- sides one's own, an art, and a craft. He or she who is grounded in these things will not be helpless ; and May was supremely helpful by the time she was twenty. She would work for people ; she comforted people ; she 42 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. had fits of humour and said things which made every- body laugh ; she did so herself, — rather loud, I fear, sometimes ; ' with a great deep sound like a man,' as Flora complained. Both were in square-cut black velvet gowns, with maize ribbons, and heavy gold ornaments of an old Holbein design which May had contrived with a drunken genius of a working goldsmith, whose wife she had nursed. And they sat in a deep olive- greenish room (if you must have something about it, as a background for them), with dark old oak, some black and dead gold, and blue and white china, and no other colour ; some good and highly-finished water- colours on the walls ; comfortable chairs and ottomans ; a rack near the door of feminine whips, umbrellas, spuds, garden shears ; a dainty description of bill-hook, and something very like a. salmon-rod. Books ad libitum^ a good piano, and a space before the fire for the chil- dren, filled up the large low room ; and Sir John had just such another on the other side of the great door of Hawkstone Holt, — a big house, in a big park, which is all I have to say of it now. The blue and white tea-service was in full action during the conversation held above ; and the pair were hungry : so that (except an odious comparison on Flora's part of herself and friend to Sarah Gamp and Elizabeth Prig), little else was said before the desired arrival of the evening boy and letter-bag. And then they got Cawthorne's letter just written, and read it, sitting close to each other, on a broad ottoman by the fire, with one great waxlight in a standing candle-table, and all sorts of flashing reflections on their eyes and hair and necks and silk, and all over the room. To- wards the end, Flora invoked her Goodness ; and May laughed her great contralto laugh. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 43 'Will they stand this sort of lecture, do you think?' she said. ' Oh ! they must ; and it's fair enough. Rather hard on poor Susy Milton : but she adores you ; and you can smooth her over to-night.' She stays here over to- morrow, and ought to be here now.' Horses, bell,, and arrival of a little person in a habit. The rest is too dreadful. Letter VII. F. L. to C. C. Oct. — , rS6- My Dear Charley : You are more formidable than I thought ; and probably I ought to know, as we have certainly quar- relled in our time. But really, now, — ' Oh, hold up your hands, Lord Charley, she said ; For your strokes they are wondrous sore ! ' You are like all critics, gifted with an extraordinary taste for tormenting those who feel it most ; and poor little Miss Milton, who is too eager and aspiring, I know, but very simple, shed tears extensively under the lash about that unlucky picture of Mignon. She came in on May and myself just as we were reading your letter ; and we thought it better to break it to her. She took it and read it, and said something about not having- known it was so bad, and then quietly began to cry. But old May took her in her great arms, and made her sit in her lap, habit, spur, splashes, and all, and put their cheeks together, and said nothing ; and her immense comfortable laziness quite soothed the little party in no time. She only wants to do what's right, she says, and quite insists on your remarks going 44 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. round (I suppose by your putting them on a separate leaf, you meant to leave me the choice of suppression, after I had had the fun ; by all means be as discreet on all other occasions). I think the perspective instruc- tions do make the subject clearer in a practical way : the pen-and-ink lessons will certainly make us all very slow and absent over our letters. But at all events they will be a great help to those who really mean to take pains, and have enough enthusiasm to attain to method, — quite an oracular sentence, isn't it ? I am delighted at having said something like the Professor. Tell us more about your deer-stalking. What do you mean about the Royal ? What is a Royal ? A fabulous animal like a king's arms? And what is striking him all right at the root of the neck ? Did it hurt him ? and if so, how should you like it yourself? And where do you expect to go to, generally speaking? Yours, as you behave yourself, F. Letter VIII. In the same envelope. My Dear Charles : Flora is in a great hurry with her guests ; and I am glad she has asked me to write to you about an idea of Ellen Gatacre's. She reads a great deal, you know, and has a high idea of your learning, as well as your execution ; and she says you write well. I am sure she is right, as far as invective goes. But she wants you to write us a nice long letter about the Cinque Cento, or the Renaissance, and to give us, if you can, a clear notion of what the words mean ; or rather to pick out their various uses, and tell us what all the people mean who write OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 45 about the words. It seems to me as if you would have to write quite a book on it, if you once begin ; but you might do it bit by bit, in a series of letters. All of us, I think, make notes of things you tell us; and most of us would gain a good deal by this, if it did not take up too much of your time. There is so much quarrelling about the religious painters and the naturalists ; and one set of people talk about the Renaissance being an anti- religious movement, as if they thought atheism the main object of art ; and others seem to think Masaccio quite wicked, because he is not like Perugino ; and then they say art and criticism have no object but pleasure. I'm sure I don't think so ; for I like drawing very much : and I have generally found pleasure rather disagreeable, at least, in town. We all want you to write us some- thing on this subject ; and I want you further to do something to comfort Susan Milton, who is in a rather desponding way about her drawing. She has never been taught on any system, and seems to have quite a passionate delight in beautiful things, with a blind sort of eagerness to imitate them, which certainly brings her to grief occasionally. She says, till she saw your letters, nobody had ever told her what to do, and promises obedience henceforth. Could you write her a little note through Flora? Please don't be too rash deer-stalking : I suppose that sort of thing does not often happen ; but Mr. Hobbes has written quite a sensational account of Duncan's and your danger, strength, and valour ; and some of us are rather frightened. He is such a cool, plucky person himself, that one thinks more of what he says. It must be such dreadfully wet, cold work, too ; one of the ladies here said she ' supposed deer-stalkers always wore go- loshes.' Suggest the idea to old 'Tuncan,' whom I 46 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. remember well at Glen Monar, and remember me kindly to him. We were out yesterday with the Gorsehampton- shire, and had a nice little run, keeping a safe place in the third flight. Old Billy Moody showed us our way beautifully ; and. Flora and I quite raced ; she teases me about being a champion of heavy weights. Mariquita galloped and jumped beautifully, and took better care of me than I could of her. Jagger is ill at Red Scaurs ; and two or three of your collier friends want to see you. Do you know, with a little persuasion from you, Mr. Ripon thinks he could get them to sing in the choir ? Bolton must be lovely now : we are going to have an expedition there before leaves are quite gone. Can you write me some verses, — not about myself in particular, anybody will do ? Good-bye ; the children rather want me to play to them. Ever your affectionate cousin, May. Letter IX. My Dear May : Concerning the Renaissance, I must take time and get home to a library. I have written a line to Ripon, who is a fair historian and critic, and can draw a little, as so few critics can ; they really write about painting as Mr. Gambado did about riding, — 'desiring to add as much as possible to the theory, without resorting to practice !' He, not Mr. Gambado, will tell me what books to look at, and perhaps what to look for and say to you. Then as to Miss M. (whom I remember as a little fair thing, who rode a great deal), I have taken much trouble, and paid, never you mind OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 47 how many shillings, to do a correct drawing from a little Anglo-Highland maid here, whom I think a great beauty. We (her mother and I) stood her up in a dark- blue frock and gray plaid, in just the same pose as poor Mignon in the condemned picture ; and I send the Milton a copy of the outline I made. She may keep it if she likes ; but she had better copy it exactly, and send it and the copy to me (she may get it correct with tracing paper, if she can't any other way ; but dividing her paper into numbered squares, by lines corresponding to those marked I, 2, 3, and a, b, c, along the edges of my copy, will be best). Then, if her outline is passable, I will put the first coat of not too many colours on my sketch ; and she may on hers, and so on. I think that may help her along. She must condescend to method. Genius, you know, does not mean impatience of trouble, but a transcendent capacity of taking trouble. I do assure her I have worked very hard, and by strict dictated method for great part of my time. The 'Fessor's system of instruction, from first to last, with folio illustrations and copies, will be out in a few weeks : and then, if she will follow it, she will get on every day : but that eagerness always thwarts even the most willing and docile people. Of course, where they are conceited too, it is likely to spoil their work altogether ; but she seems very nice and good. You don't suppose I have forgotten Bolton ? Tell me when you go ; it will take you a day to get there from the Shires ; and I shall be coming south in about a week. Old Hobbes is delightful, and has asked Ripon up here for a day or two at the deer. I have got three more since I wrote, two killed quite clean. The other it took us a long day's tracking to get ; and Haco, the Norway terrier (the gillies call him ' Hack,' I'm sorry to say), distinguished himself greatly. He 48 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. held the scent of the wounded beast straight through the tracks of a large herd, and for many miles after, and brought us to him next morning. He lay dead not a quarter of a mile from where we had turned from him (to go to the Rattachan bothy, where we slept), and was as stiff as a biscuit, with a glazed eye like malachite. It took us all day to get a pony to him, and bring him down to the lodge. We grilled and ate some of him on the way, at Rattachan ; but I was glad to get back to dinner with his liver as a bonne bouehe for Hobbes. There are some other miscellaneous things I wanted to say about the collection in your first portfolio of subjects of your own choosing. One is, that ideas are altogether my aversion ; and I shall be pleased with literal studies or sketches from nature, or the object, and with those only. By a study I mean, generally speaking, a finished drawing of some part of a picture ; by a sketch, an outline, or light and shade drawing, to give a general idea of the intended effect of the whole of a picture. One is a portion complete ; the other a whole unfinished : and that is, I think, the correct meaning of the words. By a picture from nature I mean one from something not made by man ; by one from the object, I mean all studies from casts, or copies of models, or ele- vations of steam engines, if you like. Do these — at least do the first two classes of drawings — from any natural object in, or nearly in, its natural state, and you will certainly make progress. But if you work now at ideal groups, or scenes you haven't seen, you never will do any good at all. And consider that appreciation is not origi- nality or novel invention ; and that what you have just understood and feel as pathetic may have been felt and represented a hundred times over ; so that, unless you can do it again with yet unknown vigour or skill, you OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 49 are in fact wasting time. How many Margarets and Mignons are done every year in a professional and commercial way, but very skilfully ! Verditer, the art- master, or Miss Sienna, the pupil-teacher, know how to paint better than you, because they never do anything else. They get a pretty brunette or blonde to sit to them, and go to South Kensington to copy an old bric- a-brac spinning-wheel ; and what do you suppose is the use of doing the things, or the worth of them when done ? They are useful to the painter, just in so far as he does every touch faithfully from nature or object ; their value to the buyer is just technical, as good or bad painting. And you see, all the feeling in the world will not pre- vent their drawing being more decisive, and their colours better laid on than yours. But you have the advantage of seeing much more natural beauty than they. You can learn to do historical sketches from nature, to the effect that such and such a rock or tree looked beautiful thus and thus, at such a time. That is realism ; and has true worth : every such sketch is a record of your intelligent delight in God's work ; it has its value, though per- haps no great market value. Of course, in some instances, its worth is obvious. Here is a very good Nile sketch, — sunrise, some maize, desert beyond, and pelicans. All that is new information, fresh, realist knowledge of facts. The things are like that ; and many don't know it till they see the picture. If closely painted, and really true, such a thing is worth more than any ideal figure can be, which is not technically perfect, and an absolute model of hand-skill ; in that it is only for persons of intense passion, and geniuses of heavy calibre to attempt to interpret great poetic ideals pictorially. Stick to your work from nature ; and she will give you E 50 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. genuine inspirations of your own now and then : you can't be Goethe by admiring Goethe. Flora told me which were yours ; and they are like yourself, tender and strong. They are second best of all, nearly first. No. — , which I put foremost by a neck, is as good as I could do, and better. It is a pity that damosel will do nothing but trees and lanes and quiet water ; and she will assuredly go off if she does not learn new subjects. But, as the thing stands, it is more perfect than yours ; for yours is unequally finished. You attempt more, and partly do it ; but she knows exactly what she can do, and tries no farther : hence an even- ness of touch and equality of tone and finish all over, which yours has not quite got. Look well at hers, and you can beat it next time. Ever yours, affectionately, C. C. Inclosure. — I wrote these last September, at Bolton, when you were at Tavistock. I suppose I must call them a Fescennine, as they're not in any metre to speak of. i. There 's now and then a red leaf flying, But the birches are hardly growing sere ; In the pines there 's a gentle southern sighing ; And we revel in the strength of the year. There are late roses lingering, not fading: But all through the long sweet day We weary for a {'long' scratched out, but left legible) tall, sweet maiden ; And she rejoices in the name of May. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 5 1 ii. It is autumn brown ; and the heather All bronzed and purple with the sun, Sends it strong birds of dark-red feather, To rattle up, and crow before the gun. Pereunt, like the hours, et imputantur : They get shot and counted all the day; But, still in spite of all the sport, we want her : We can't anyhow get on without our May. III. She walks by a southern river : Her feet are deep in southern flowers ; She hears not the birches' scented shiver, Or the honied whisper of the moors. No ; she gets on well enough without us ; But, swallow, swallow, fly to her, and say, Though she may not condescend to think about us, We 're all of us a-dreaming about May. IV. What's that springs between the stream and heaven? — Would you tell me now, O salmon, newly run? Dc you think you 're in a certain stream in Devon ? And did you jump to see the Lovely one ? You don't say so — fish are uncommunicative; Let me put twenty yards of line your way; Now show your pluck ,and enterprise, you caitiff, And rise at me, as I would rise at May. E 2 CHAPTER IV. ' T3 EADY ! 'ave a care then ! ah, would you, ye brute ? AV Ready, wor' are then!' Crack of keeper's whip. ' Ready,' a black-and-tan setter, stands looking unutterably dismal, and slobbering after the 'blue,' or mountain hare — now beginning to show signs of change in his white winter fur— which has just started before his nose. Charley steps on a tussock, catches one glance of the victim in the line of a peat-drain, keeps holding where he ought to be for a moment or two, and catches him neatly in the next angle. Bang ! The quick timid thing rolls over unconscious, struck by quick death and onrushing dark- ness invisible. May it be no worse with any of us as to duration and method of the change in question ! Down to charge go ' Ready ' and ' Kiss,' the black-and- tan beauties of the Lewis, pride of the Old Trapper, who may well be proud of them. Charles is reloaded in three seconds from his shot. Pause, hare picked up. ' Hold up, good dogs ; bother to stop for a hare.' ' Fun to hear old Clegg's English rate up here in Ross-shire,' says Dick Ripon, the Oxford divine, endi- manche for six weeks' sport by kind invitation of the mighty Hobbes, who makes grim answer, — ' Yes, Rip ; but don't talk, and spread a little. We haven't shot this ground this year : grouse will lie this warm morning. I want to send off forty brace.' It was where the coast-road made a turn towards the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 53 sea, at the beginning of their home-ground at Tom- buie, on Loch Tulla, a bay of the larger Loch Hourn, in West Ross-shire (those lochs are not exactly there ; but their names are very good names, and will do). Looking seaward, the hills of the north of Skye lay purple-gray with gray-golden lights, on a strange steel-blue mirror of sea, dead-still itself, with the magic calms of refraction in distance here and there. The Isle of Mist wore its thin delicate shroud of fair-weather vapour, silver on the golden hills, visible for once in their brightest autumn colours, with every crag and hollow on their sides defined in azure. The spaces of moor were glowing russet : the grassy slopes were pale rich masses of light : the glens lay mostly in deep and viewless blue under the long hill- shadows. Here and there was a reflection on the quiet sea : and far onward were spaces of calm and faint un- dulation, with the heave of the great Atlantic under all, keeping up its undertone of days that were, and days to be, against the mainland rocks below their feet. Green, clear, and unstained, in slumber not of peace, the heavy, unbroken tide washed and sucked, and rolled sinuously along, searching every cranny and recess of the cliffs of pink granite ; and scornfully they let it come and go. The challenge of the northern trumpets, and the endless onset of their white breakers, were nearly due : as it had been, so it would be. Meanwhile, it was a sunshiny morning : and crimson felspar against a green sea made a pleasant contrast enough. In the further offing there was the line of the Long Island, far away to the Butt of the Lewis, with many a jagged dike and seam and horn and beaked promontory, ending in that mightiest pre- cipice of all, which is so specially impressive from the mainland (when you can see it) because of its abrupt perpendicular dive, at that great distance, from high 54 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. mountain-level in a leap to the Atlantic. All round, and far away to where gray light of heaven met gray light of sea, ' the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, moaned round the melancholy Hebrides,' in the restless faith and hope of overwhelming and devouring them at last ; and gulls and terns, cormorants and guillemots, wailed, sailed, and clanged on the edge of the tide ; and two great black whales were playing and spouting just outside the bay. And Charley and the Reverend Ripon took note of every thing, while the former prepared to go off to take an upper hillside by himself, and the latter to fol- low their mighty host over the grouse sanctuary, — the favoured beat by the sea l . 1 These were Charley's plans for a water-colour, some day, on the scene as he saw it that afternoon, during luncheon on the higher moors : — A long-shaped picture, rather narrow. Paper washed with yellow ochre and light red first ; then blue sky, faint ultramarine and white, to edges of cumulus clouds, their shadows ultramarine and rose-madder; then all shaded parts of distant hills same, but deeper and bluer than cloud-shadows. Let dry, and gradate on lights of distance with rose and yellow ochre. Draw on all detail, — in the shadows with ultramarine ; in the lights with carmine. Glaze rose and cadmium, or yellow only, till all falls together. Repeat detail, and stipple where necessary. Middle distance is all sea. Gradate on cobalt and emerald-green ; glaze yellow ochre over in lights ; deepen darks with rose and ultra- marine ; work in indigo and Indian red to darken further, towards back and foreground. A small island, purple shadows, carmine and cobalt first, golden lights over them (yellow ochre, rose, and a little white) ; then coloured lights and shadows in subdued contrast, with faint purple-grey reflection in green sea. Foreground. — Lights first, pink granite ; then, to get rid of papery look, go over the whole, leaving lights, with warm gray shadows, — raw sienna, light red, and indigo. Dark parts decidedly stronger than darkest parts of sea. Leave forms of foreground rocks, — cobalt, light red, and a little yellow ochre (black or lake may be added to this grey, in the smallest quantity). Draw rock forms ex- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 55 They had a fair middle distance and foreground. This is a painter's book, and a kind of painter wrote it for such kind of people ; and it pleases him to have as many pictures in it as he can. Wherefore think of the sea-distance as all gray, and the middle distance as all sea. By gray I mean gold and purple veiled in gray mist and light, toning deeper from the sea-hori- zon into heavy purple and green ground-swell, with white foam breaking out here and there indolently ; then pink granite meeting the surf, and swart heather and blaeberries clothing the granite with rolling swells of heather. There were, last, spurs of great moun- tains inland, enclosing sheltered lawns and larger or smaller 'waters,' thrust north and south by the ribs of the hill in their westward course, and whispering or thundering to the sea, according to the state of the rain- gauge. In and out of these little glens, or bays, gnarled Scotch firs, and old birch, and stunted little oaks, grew, or, at all events, persisted in asserting their existence, and proclaiming their obedience to the usual laws of vegetation. There the roe-deer lay warm all day, and the early cocks rested first in autumn ; and the heron stood at ease on whichever leg he liked ; and the ouzels cut in and out, black and white, like hard-working curates ; and seal and otter harboured in the sea-caves, and the badgers among boulders and oak-roots. They were blessed places, all short sweet grass and honeyed heather. And where the rough road crossed the upper end of one of them ; by a gray lichened bridge with a actly, and be very careful with their perspective, to get solidity and distance. Two stags ; near one rather exaggerated in light and shade,— light red and burnt umber, perhaps darkened with violet carmine. Study heather and stones carefully, — pink, green, and gray, but not too much varied. 56 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. broken parapet ; above a brown and white torrent, whirl- ing like black oil in its last pool before a tormented course of rapids ; and under a great flat-headed pine, whose roots held the granite in the grip of a vice for ten feet perpendicular to the water's edge — the shooting- party divided till luncheon. Cawthorne went inland with Duncan and a gillie, Duncan consenting to awake from his usual dream of deer, and shoot grouse like a shentle- mans : fair second-rate shots both. Hobbes, who was first-rate, took Ripon with him, because he could'nt shoot at all, but was safe, obedient and good company. He was an excitable sort of over-quick man, who either missed clean or killed dead. ' I don't much care which he does,' Hobbes used to say ; ' one or other is all right ; only don't let us have any mere cutting and wounding.' Nature had certainly supplied the Rev. Richard Ripon with an unusual amount of nervous vivacity ; and a life of considerable variety— between short delight, heavy grief, travel, and scholar- work — had landed him, at forty, in a big town parish, where dirt, distress, distraction, ringers, singers, and clerk, charities, choir, church-war- dens, and mephitic old ladies, had pretty well drawn on the remnant of his heart and brains. The latter, he said, all went into sermons : the former had come to an end long ago ; and now he had no more than Me- phistophiles : his work and his digestion were all that was left him. He was pretty well alone in the world. He wanted to live between High Church and Low Church, and had become a kind of ecclesiastical Ishmael, except that men liked him for a certain quickness of sympathy, which made him a good listener, and perhaps somewhat of a humbug. So it was, that many whom he much regarded first left him, and then abused him by way of finding a reason. He sent a little money to OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 57 the Rev. Damascenus Ignifer ; and so one section of his parish went off to the Rev. Allfire Hammerantongs. He went and talked to the Rev. Allfire's school about a trip to Mount Sinai ; and the scandalous fact was duly notified to his High Church friends by the Rev. Dama- scenus's sisters, and guilds, and acolytes, and preaching fathers. Finally, he went and preached his usual sort of sermon for Mr. Newbroom, who was suspected of intellectual scepticism. Newbroom's adherents thought him conventionally orthodox : in fact, he was pronounced a Laodicean on all hands. It does no good to be over- independent, unless you show it by universal aggression. If you try to work with everybody, people think you are trying to court everybody. But as the Rev. Rip had a quick eye for character, and a tolerably sharp tongue on occasion, a sufficient income for his limited wants, and a pretty free hand, — why, they tolerated him, as a rule, or abused him strictly behind his back ; and he had read the ' Arabian Nights ' to far too good purpose ever to look round. Finding himself little regarded by anybody except his own poor and the boys in general (he was great at school-treats and prizes for swimming), the Reverend by no means refused sport when he could get it. He rode a good horse, mostly in Port Meadow : till very lately he had never shot or hunted south of Tweed, except now and then at a Yorkshire grouse-drive ; and he had no home-amusement except landscape- painting, of which he had a fair student's knowledge. But salmon-fishing, or a day at the deer, he said, would have been his heart's delight, if he had had any heart, or been capable of delight And so the great Hobbes, who was the kindest of men to everything he considered a man, used to ask him to Tombuie late in 58 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. the season. Charles and he were near connections, and were held together by a dead hand and dear. So the three were sufficiently merry men, and made the most of a golden October in the West Highlands. It was a pleasant time : Ripon said he knew how good it must be ; for he caught himself nervously holding on to the hours, and wishing they would not go so fast. This day, at all events, the hours and the dogs were quite fast enough for him. Grouse-shooting on rough moors, where birds lie scattered, is one of the hardest exercises that can be taken. The effort of sticking to wide-ranging fast setters, through deep heather, and up long slopes, is severe, to say the least ; and the excite- ment of shooting tells on a stranger, though his condition and skill be ever so good. None of the party were ill pleased as they crossed the last ridge, or beallach^ as the Gael have it, and saw the scattered trees and thin smoke which indicated that Tombuie Lodge was within a mile or so, and that dinner was preparing at Tombuie. 'Down hill all the way now, and first-rate ground, not touched this year,' said the host. 1 Have a good nip of sherry, old man, and shoot your best now : kill dead, or let 'em go. It would be heart-breaking to have to follow up ; and we can't spare time to look for runners. Twenty- five brace, you said, Clegg ? ' ' That, and five hares, three teal, two couple snipe, two and a half black game, seven plover,' said the keeper. ' Very well : let Ready and Kiss loose again then, and take up the young dogs.' A few more grouse were realised ; then there was a pause till they reached a small tarn near home. Clegg was beginning to look blank — when first one and then the other setter stopped as if they had been shot. 'To ho ! 5 low and steady. Hobbes gets round, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 59 heading the dogs, who are stiff and bristling, with starting eyes. Whirr-cock-cock-cock-cock ! The two old birds and a well-grown young one rise and fall promptly. T Master is as usual ; and Rip holds straight this time. Whirr-r-r-r-r ! five more close to- gether. Rip's first barrel slays two ; his second goes, he has never ascertained where ; the long one kills with his right, and is just too late for his left barrel. How many 's that ? ' Hold up, Kiss ! ' Kiss won't move. ' There 's anither, sir.' The ither gets up at Rip's feet, who fires too soon, and misses clean, seeing the bird fall to Hobbes' shot a second after. ' Seek dead ! ' and the dogs bestir themselves. Seven birds down before they moved : pretty, to finish with. Of all fun, there is nothing like breech-loaders and an accommodating covey of grouse; and the picking- up afterwards has its charms for tired men and animals. But few more shots were fired before they reached the long straggling woods, a sanctuary of roe-deer ; and there they gave over shooting, with thirty brace of grouse, and et cceteras. As they passed the kennels, they heard Charley's voice and whistle, and watched him and his men skipping and splashing among the black and green channels of a peculiarly deep bog, which had existed time out of mind close to the road and shooting-lodge, undrainable and ill to pass. Charley presents himself, however, looking browner and leaner than usual, in a jerkin of Fraser green, like bent-grass, with the small glass and compass he always affects, and a saw-backed skene-dhu attached to the same ; all stained and ' sore with travel,' — the sort of man who has trodden the hills, and felled the deer, ever since the bronze age, or thereabouts. He has got thirteen brace of grouse, and four of ptarmigan, sparing hares for a 6o OUR SKETCHING CLUB. general beat at the end of all things. All are tired and hungry, and right little is said till dinner, and then still less for a considerable period ; that is to say, till loch oysters, hare-soup of extreme density, salmon steaks, and a glass of chablis, with a circulating pewter, have per- formed their orbits, and a red-deer haunch takes their place. It is the hunter's mess. None of them have touched beef or mutton for three weeks, except the Sunday steak, which is regularly forwarded from Inver- ness — as a matter of ritual. 1 And hereon ' (as we believe it is written somewhere in the Morte d'Arthur, or other ancient chronicles) ' the knights ate strongly by the space of an hour or thereabout, until they wellnigh swooned,' but were revived by a snipe apiece, apple-pie, sherry, oat-cake, and butter, and the final pewter. Then there were two tumblers and a cigar each ; Rip was lectured about his shooting ; the dogs and their doings were exhaustively discussed ; and they would all have been fast asleep in five minutes more, if tea and the late letter-bag had not arrived. ' Your club's at you, Charley. I see Lady Latter- math's hand and seal,' said Ripon, who had soon dis- posed of his limited correspondence, — one letter from his curates ; another, in large text, from Master Walter Ripon at school ; and a bundle of proofs which he put in his pocket ' for the next wet day, if the river wouldn't fish.' ' Well, it concerns you, rather. They want me to write them a paper on the Renaissance. Just the thing for you : they all believe in you to any ex- tent.' ' Might as well write a history of modern Europe : that's what it means.' ' Haven't you got any old lectures or talks about OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 6] Holbein or Michael Angelo, or old reviews, or anything of the sort?' ' Well, I've got proofs of a lecture on the " Cinque Cento" up stairs: that means the same thing in com- mon language, you know. There's no reason they shouldn't have it, except that " The Oracle of Crotona " is sure to be down on it ; and I suppose they won't care for it after that.' ' None of us read " The Oracle," that I know of : that's the best cure I know ; like Persian powder for fleabites.' ' Well,' said Hobbes, with a mighty yawn and stretch, ' it seems I must go and stump Gorsehamptonshire on 3rd November; and I shall want to be home a week before. Let's all go south on the 28th at latest : Glas- gow steamer calls then. We really ought to leave off salmon-fishing soon ; the stags will be getting too far on ; the cocks won't be here in time for us ; besides, the fine weather can't go on for ever. Come home with me, either or both of you ? You'll be of use if there's much talking to do ; and there are some pheasants. It's nice to have you.' ' Thank you ever so, but there are my old women ; and Charley has his young ones to lecture,' quoth Rip. ' I think you had better not have men to speak who don't belong to your county ; nest-ce pas ? I should like to write anything for you, though.' ' Halloo, here's the Susanette been breaking her heart because I abused her picture. How was I to know it was hers ? ' 'You're always falling out with Miss Milton,' Hobbes observed. ' Don't you remember how angry she was when you told her her apron-pockets made her look marsupial ? You'll be falling in love with each other next.' 62 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. ' You think that likely ; don't you now ? But I must write her something pleasant, or, rather, write it to Flora. What's to be done to-morrow?' ' Hark, there's heavy rain ! Fish the Blackwater, if it clears enough by the afternoon ; try and drive Slioch Muick if it don't: — a half- day or off-day anyhow. You'll have time to write.' ' Well, I had a club letter nearly ready ; but I think I must write another to go before it, and address myself to a lot of their mistakes.' ' There's Rip gone to sleep. Wake up, old man ; have some soda-water; and let's all to bed.' Exetint. Charley's letter next day has already been reported at Hawkstone : his earlier one was nearly to the fol- lowing purpose : — Letter X. TOMBUIE, Oct. 12. My Dear Flora : There was an omission in my last letter about your learning practical perspective by drawing outlines of things on and through a square of glass ; or rather, I have thought of a new dodge with the said glass. When you have got it, wash one side of it over with strong, clear gum-water, and let it dry thoroughly. Then take a steel crowquill, or a mathematical pen, or anything fine, and draw on the film of gum a scale of squares, quarter-inch size, — say a dozen each way, — numbering each square. Then, if you hold that up against any object, and have your paper squared in pencil, in half-inches, inches, or more, you will be able, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 63 first, to alter, the size of anything you are drawing, and draw it again to scale in exact proportion. You cannot think how your eye will gain in accuracy by this means. And then, secondly, you will be able to practise por- traits all this winter. You see, if you hold up your squared glass at your sitter, and get the corner of his eye on one of the lines, you can determine all his distances at one view : it will show you on your squared paper where all the points and corners of his face are. It will be good practice for all the best of you. I find the following passage in Hamerton's ' Thoughts about Art.' I always held that a certain knowledge of figure-drawing was necessary to every landscape-painter, and indeed to every draughtsman. I believe I got the notion from Armitage's ' Evidence to the Royal Aca- demy Commission' : if that did nothing else, it drew out a number of good ideas. But this sort of dictum from one crack landscape-man, and through another, is of importance to you, and to all the club. I will make you a set of instructions for portrait as soon as I can ; but Ripon's Renaissance lecture, or essay, must come next after this. The Stray Rook, as Hobbes calls him, was ready in a minute. What he does, he can generally do quickly. But thus says Hamerton : — { The study of landscape is not a good initiation into the technical art of painting. Mr. Peter Graham, one of the most thoroughly accomplished landscape-painters the world has ever seen, told me that, in his opinion (and I am profoundly convinced of the truth and justice of the opinion), landscape does not afford good material for early study, on account of its extreme intricacy, and the difficulty of determining the exact value of what you have done. He believes, and so do I, that the shortest road to good landscape-painting is an indirect road ; 6 4 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. and that he himself got his first initiation into the mys- teries of landscape-effect through constant observation of the delicate play of light and shade in a gallery of statues. He earnestly recommends the practice of pro- traiture as the best of preliminary training. It is a com- plete mistake to go to landscape under the impression that it is easy. The naked figure, difficult as that also is, is a simple object in comparison with a forest or a mountain. We ought to proceed, in study, from sim- plicity to intricacy ; and the great difficulty in landscape is to find anything that is simple enough for early study.' This is, of course, particularly directed to those who want to study landscape in good earnest I am sure it will be good for all such persons to begin by learning to draw the figure ; though as to difficulty, you will hardly persuade me that a figure in action is not worse than any mountain. But now, if you don't mind, I think I must talk in this letter about very common things and opera- tions in pencil or water-colour. You know, as I told you, there is no such thing as amateur art ; only skilful or unskilful, good or bad. And much of the work you send me is so far unskilful as not to be quite good. Things are brought nearly right at last ; the desired effect is so far produced, that I know what the artist meant to do. The work was intended to express an idea, and it does express that idea : many of you get so far as that. But the eye of a skilled critic (I suppose I am that to a certain extent) demands to be pleased with the working as well as the work. Things are sent me which have been patched, re-done, and worked out, sometimes well and conscientiously ; and I give all credit to their authors for doing their best. But there are a few of the strongest among you who often do things quite right, without undoing or re-touch ; and that is a higher state of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 65 things. And one or two have got so far that I can really rely upon them ; that is to say, I know their minds follow their brushes. I can see every touch ; and all their touches mean something, or are part of a meaning. That is good painting : but very few of you ever keep it up through a large drawing ; whereas, many of you want methodical certainty of operation, and nothing but practice will give it. Watch any good workman in water-colour. How the paints always mix and flow from his brush ! what clean lines and touches ! he has so few accidents or messes ; he seems to get the right pitch of shade, and the right hue of colour, all at once. How fast he gets on, from never having to do a thing twice, and so on ! All that strikes one in look- ing at anybody pushing on some part of his picture when he has studied it before, and knows all the ropes. This is what you really want, most of you, and what makes the difference between what we, or the papers, call 'professional' work, and 'amateur' work, — that the professional is certain, methodical, and, perhaps, rather cool and easy, about all minor and preparatory opera- tions ; while the amateur is uncertain and excited. Nothing but practice will give you certainty ; and I have written down certain practices for you all. EXERCISE I. First, in chalk, or broad pencil. Get a board, — a black one, or white one, whichever you like. Put it on an easel, and draw a square on it with a piece of chalk or charcoal ; then draw a circle round the square. Draw from the shoulder, without resting your hand : never mind how difficult or impossible it seems. Do it on a large slate, if you like, or on the wall, or anyhow ; only F 66 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. hold your charcoal as you would your umbrella, and use it freely from the shoulder. What you can't do one day, you will begin to do the next, and do well in a week. (N.B. — It is easiest to draw a circle in two halves, upper and under.) So all curves : whenever you can, draw them by pairs or halves. Always do so in copying decorative patterns. Second, draw a square six inches in diameter on the wall, and shade it, from the shoulder, to a flat surface, by even parallel lines only. Then try it diagonisingly, this way, and that way. You can do this for five minutes at a time, and it will soon give you such clearness, courage, and neatness of work in your drawing, as will cheer you all through it ; you have drawn enough to know what it means to feel stronger at your work. The fact is, that nothing exer- cises the connecting nerves between the eye and hand, whatever they are, so well as this practice from the shoulder. It is a step towards the real painter's para- dise on earth, — being able to do what you want. You may be sure that the terms ' brilliancy of touch,' ' fresh- ness,' ' abandon,' and the rest of it, express real things. May's study of eggs now before me has these qualities. It means that the performer saw with pleasure, as she did her work, that it was going right, doing well ; and, so to speak, let her hand fly. Well, then her hand put on the right force of touch, and just squoze the right quantity of colour out of the brush in the right place : I'm sure I can't say how. Confidence, quickness, pre- cision, — all those words and things have something to do with it. Well, ponder hereon, and rejoice therefore, and all that. But now, half of you do not know how to lay washes of colour on in gradation. It is a mere matter OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 6 7 of practice : nobody does it by nature. If anybody could, some of you might do it ; for you have all enough feeling, which means wish to do it. You all think in your hearts that you have so much more feeling and aspiration and passion than working-artists have. Of course you have. Your art is play, or, at most, holiday work. Not but that it is real exertion while you are at it ; but you don't live by it, and its failure would only vex you, and not half starve you. You do it with all your heart, as children run and jump with all their hearts ; but, if children were obliged to run and jump all day for their bread and butter, they would not be so hearty. You see it is a greater and more difficult thing to get enthusiasm into one's life's work than it is into one's life's recreation. Now as to gradating colour. All the club, except Nos. 1-5 on enclosed list, ought to practise something of this kind with a good red sable, and not on rough paper, which I object to altogether. EXERCISE II. Get a quarter-sheet of paper properly stretched on a board ; or a good sketching-block (only with this latter you must use as little water as possible, for fear of wetting the gum with which the sheets are fastened one to an- other) ; moisten the surface with a flat brush and water ; do not drench it, but wet the whole. Slope it, and let it dry till colour will not run on any part of it. Mean- while prepare a small saucer half full of a light tint of sepia. Have clean water by you, besides that which you have used, and two rather large brushes (I am always for red sables). Fill one of them nearly full, mixing your tint up to the last moment ; and begin to lay it on across the paper at top, in light steady strokes, 68 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. diagonally downwards from right to left, or any way you like ; only make them flow evenly into each other, so as to spread the tint without lines or spots. (When you find a wash of colour dry in blotches or clouds, it is always because your tint was unevenly mixed in the brush, so that there were more particles of sepia in one part of the brush than another ; or because your brush was fuller in one place than another, and therefore laid more particles on there : so do not fill your brush too full at first, and feed it again before it is empty. Never allow yourself to be careless in this, when you are laying on broad surfaces of colour) . Well, when your first brushful is nearly gone, take the other brush with clean water, and drop two or three drops of it into the tint ; then mix up all with the working-hmsh., and lay that on, carefully running it into what you have on already : the result will be gradation into a lighter tint. Go on that way all over the paper, dropping clean water into the tint with the clean brush, and always mixing up with the working-brush. You ought to get to the bottom of your paper with clean water in your working-brush, and a perfect gradation from shade to light all over your paper. It will surprise you to see what a luminous effect the brown wash will give by mere gradation : it will be quite transparent, so that you can look into the paper. Let it get quite dry, and do it again — as with the others which are coming. Then try it with any sunset-blue tint, — say cobalt and rose-madder. Go over your paper with it as above. Then let it get quite dry. Don't hurry it at the fire, but let it dry of itself. Meanwhile mix up some yellow ochre and rose, or cadmium yellow, if you like. I think myself there's more light in yellow ochre. When you have got the pale crimson or warm yellow you fancy, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 6 9 slope the paper the other way up, and go over it from the bottom the other way, over the blue. The result ought to be a perfectly bright and flat sunset sky. Now you ought all to practise skies thus. As you get more skilful, try it this way : Lay on the cobalt and rose-madder for about an inch of your paper ; then drop in the clean water as above, and also, with the point of the working-brush, take up a little more rose-madder ; mix up, and lay on, thus substituting that hue in the brush for the cobalt. Do it again and again till your wash is pink instead of blue ; then, if you have room, substitute yellow in the brush for pink in the same way; dipping the working-brush slightly in yellow ochre every time you drop in the clean water with the clean brush, and thoroughly mixing up each time. Of course I don't want to limit you to sunset colours, or any colours in particular. Here are some sky and cloud gradations. For clouds, you can always paint them on to your gradated sky, or take their lights out (always to planned form), with a firm short-haired brush. (N.B. — Have long-haired and pointed sables to lay on with, short ones to take off with.) FLAT SKIES FOR PRACTICE : FAIR WEATHER, GRAY ON HORIZON. PROCESSES. a. Flat wash of yellow ochre and a little brown madder (or light red). Lay on evenly all over the paper. Let dry. b. Mix cobalt and white. Gradate as above, coming to clear water two-thirds down the paper. That will be your horizon. Let dry, and slope the other way. c . Rose-madder, cobalt, and a little white. Begin at horizon, and gradate rapidly, so as to go over the cobalt with a very light tint. Let dry. d. Then, if you want light, fair-weather clouds, take out their forms with brush and clean water, and beware of taking off too much, or anything except in a planned form. Never think of inventing clouds, whatever you do : they won't stand it. 70 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. e. Having got the bright sides of your clouds, put in their faint shadows with rose madder and cobalt. You cannot be too cautious in these two last operations. The main difficulty, and it is considerable, is to take off and put on little enough at a time. If you do either too much, your cirrus comes pushing forward out of heaven right in your eye. You see we have already got out of flat practice-washes of colour into forms ; and those sadly difficult ones. I could not make and send you drawings of cloud-forms, without much time and labour, — more than I can afford at the price. But you can all of you try to draw with pencil only, the forms of white cirri or small lower clouds, sometimes. You won't have much to show for it, for which I hope you will not care ; but you will learn very much. If you want copies on paper, none are nearly so good as those at pp. 120, 122, 125, vol. v. of 'Modern Painters.' Study those cloud-chapters with all your hearts. (The club ought to have at least three strongly bound copies of vols. iv. and v., and send them about for reference.) I must give you another sky, or beginning of a sky : the forms you must observe, and put in for yourselves ; or find them in ' Modern Painters/ or in Turner's ' Liber Studiorum,' where you can find anything in landscape, if you look. STORMY TOWARDS EVENING. EXERCISE III. From top of paper to half down it, mix, and gradate to nothing, light red, cobalt, a little indigo (or lamp- black). Let dry, and slope the other way. Begin again from about one-fourth down the paper as it lies reversed. Now gradate over the gray to nothing with a little ver- milion and yellow ochre; you will see how it will lighten and warm up the gray. Then put some rolling forms OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 71 into the clouds, with both the tints mixed together, — faint, faint everywhere, but faintest towards the light. To know the forms, you must look for them — in Nature, in 'Modern Painters,' or in Turner, or any good modern work you can get at. I cannot send you them in wood- cut ; and, after all, I do not care very much to do so, as it is utterly inadequate. As sketchers, you are vowed to the duties of observation as well as imitation : in- deed, you may be called an Observantine Sisterhood ; and it will do you all the good in the world to draw cirri or cumuli in pencil outline. One more gradation exercise. Ripon was after deer on some very green hills the other day. He got a tolerable stag of eight points after a long stalk, and came home without a dry thread, of course, having been in that state from nine to nine, or thereabouts. The forester got a touch of rheumatics, and Rip lost his voice. When he got it again, he told me that he had been in some degree comforted, while lying on wet brackens, and being rained upon, by seeing the beautiful grada- tions of green hills looming through volumes of gray mist. He made me a nice note of the colours, — cobalt, light red, and indigo gradated to nothing first for mist ; then a wash of vermilion and yellow ochre all over (drying between, of course, for light on mist) then upside down ; and emerald green and yellow ochre, gradated to nothing from the bottom of the paper, till it vanished in the gray mist. He put in a firm sort of purple-gray rock-foreground, with green ; and it made a very good sketch indeed. He has written what we consider a screamer, about the Renaissance, with new lights of course ; and read it to Hobbes and me, after shooting. We all went to sleep ; Rip first, I think. But in the morning I thought his paper worth reading: it is Pr a 72 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. lecture somewhere. But he has let me copy it for you, and I will send it in my next. If you will do these exercises faithfully, they will teach you the use of water-colour, used thinly and in distance ; and, further, you will get a notion from some of them what an advantage it gives a picture in breadth and impression, when there are only two or three colours in it, well varied in tint and tone. To give a notion of this I add two very plain contrasts. EXERCISES IV AND V. One is the gray, as above (cobalt, light red, and a touch of indigo), slightly gradated, and left in faint streaks, with the faintest yellow ochre, and some light- red gradated on at the bottom. That would make a nice beginning for a picture of rain over sands. I wish some of you would take up that subject, and see what you can do with the above colours. The other is the first stage of a sketch of frost-fog in the evening, with the tint of a sheet of ice below. Do it in this order : Gradate on the gray as usual ; then invert, and do same with rose-and-cobalt purple at bottom, leaving a space between very light ; let dry ; then begin at top with water, taking in a little rose and yellow ; make it a telling pale crimson on the lightest part ; and then gra- date off to nothing at horizon. A few half-drawn figures, or a sleigh, or some wild geese, with some white touches on the ice, would make this quite a picture. I want to see if you can make these exercises of use. You need not have copies of them sent round, that I see, if you will take them one by one, read them de- liberately, and get your colours and things all ready to your hand before you begin them. The handiness. of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 73 water-colour is a great temptation and difficulty in the long-run : one is always being led into rash beginnings before one is ready, from pure impatience to be at it, and because one can hit the right tint easily. Take all these skies seriatim, as soon as you have learnt to gradate with sepia : it will be, at least, first-rate practice for you all ; not only because it will make you neat-handed, quick, and methodical with brushes and saucers, but because it will educate your eyes, and you will see so much more gradation in all hues. You all want more of that faculty ; very few painters have ever had enough of it. So be content, go to work with the mixed tints as I have written them, and you will see how they come out. Then, as you gain exactness of hand, begin to draw rain as clouds, cumuli or those great heaped-up masses one sees after thunder. Cobalt for sky round them, with, perhaps, a little emerald green, and white in it ; faint Indian red and indigo for the cloud shades. Be very care- ful about the forms ; never mind their changing, which they do every minute. Make an outline, settle where the high lights shall be, and run your palest shade over everything else ; then you must look at the sky again for forms to suit what you have got ; for the first will be gone for ever. All that's bright fades ; but a cloud is never the same for ten seconds together. If you must have copies, ' The Liber Studiorum ' is the book for you, with 8 Modern Painters,' vol. v. Ever your cousin, C. C. CHAPTER V. Letter XL TOMBUIE, Oct. 20. My Dear Flora : I enclose Rip's paper on the ' Cinque Cento ; or, Renaissance.' The old Rook has made it very long ; but, as he says, the word may mean any thing in the mental and spiritual history of Europe since Theo- doric : so it might have been worse. How jolly Lady Ellen will be spelling out his periods, in that cursive hand one never can read ! It saves me writing any more now, except about what you call ' a study of eggs,' which you have just sent : at least, it has just come to hand. When you send that sort of thing by post this way, please don't write any thing extra on the cover. For come reason or other, ' Not to be forwarded ' was written on your envelope ; and the post-master here, who is a literal-minded man, never sent the packet up to the lodge accordingly ; and only ' wondered,' as he said, when we blew up about it, 'that it iver cam this far.' Now, about these eggs : it seems to me you ought all to remember the episcopal observation recorded by Sam Weller, that eggs is indisputably eggs, and that, consequently, a study of eggs ought to be a study of eggs, and have nothing to do with a nest. Two or three OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 75 of you have sent pretty drawings of green nests, red berries, feathers, &c., and not studied the eggs at all, which altogether avoids the real intention of the subject. If I had given it, I should have said what sort of eggs, — a hen's and a duck's, with a plover's or rook's, I think. But here is a large gull-egg with strong black markings on it ; and I like it very much, because the artist has kept the white very white indeed, with delicate shades of rounding, and has, moreover, gradated the black marks on Turner's system, mentioned in my first letter, as you may remember. I said there that Rembrandt or Leonardo would have made the shaded side of the white egg quite black, to secure its looking as round as pos- sible, not caring to keep it as white as possible. They would have had the black marks all round it scarcely darker than the shade. Veronese would have had his white ever so bright, even in the shade ; but his egg might have looked rather flat, and he would have painted his black marks quite black, evenly all round. Turner would keep his white carefully up, but slightly gradate his black for the sake of roundness ; and his is, after all, the truest way. One or two of you have odd notions of size. Here are some eggs specified as Brahma, very nice and clear in colour ; but it has apparently pleased Brahma to make his hens lay eggs no bigger than rooks, unless, indeed, the basket is intended to be the size of a clothes- basket. Then somebody puts some very good eggs in a pan with too much red reflection on their lower sides ; and somebody else puts hers in a cabbage-leaf with no green reflection at all. What an odd arrangement, — all one upon another! Something must have excited the chicks, or the eggs are going cracked. My American friends have just sent me some autumn 7 6 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. leaves from Vermont, of the most intense and wonderful colours. I shall have some of them mounted on card- board, and send them round for studies. Respect this. Ever yours affectionately, C. C. MR. RIPON ON THE RENAISSANCE. I was once an Oxford tutor of what is now the old school ; and I remember we used to say, when newer lights forced on our minds the fact that 'Aldrich's Logic ' was full of mistakes, that the book and its errors ought to be preserved, because they led to 'necessary explanations.' I can't say much for this defence ; but I am inclined to think that the use of the words ' cinque cento ' can only be excused in the same way. As most of us know, it is an equivocal term. In the first place, one has to stipulate that it shall mean fifteen hundred instead of five hundred ; then, when one has got leave to mean three times as much as one says, one is involved in the tiresome confusion which always results on our accu- rate habit of ticketing the ages by what human nature must for ever consider the wrong figures. To us the fifteenth century means all the years from 1400 to 1500. To an Italian the C. C. means from 1500 to 1600, be- cause all those years begin with fifteen, as they are written. We are right, of course ; but the Italian way seems to me more pleasant somehow. It" is the way of a painting nation, which thinks by eye and by symbol, not always by grammatical words. The visible symbol 5 has prevailed over thought and memory : it seems that the century which is distinguished by 5 must be the fifteenth, and not the sixteenth. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 77 ' Cinque cento,' then, says the Imperial Dictionary, •'literally five hundred, is used as a contraction for fifteen hundred, — the century in which the revival of the architecture of Vitruvius took place in Italy ; and it is applied to distinguish the architecture of the Italo-Vitru- vian school generally. In decorative art, a term applied to that attempt at purification of style, and reversion to classical forms, which was introduced towards the middle of the sixteenth century, elaborating the most conspicuous characteristics of Greek and Roman art, especially the acanthus scroll and grotesque arabesques. . . . The term is often loosely applied to ornament of the sixteenth century in general, properly included in the term " renaissance." ' So let us get rid of the term 'cinque cento,' and plunge into the various meanings of the term 'renaissance,' ' renascence,' ' revival,' ' renewal,' as various writers are variously pleased to call it. The disputes about the word, and the ideas which are connected v/ith it, have made it a thoroughly equivocal word. Everybody speaks of the renaissance of art according to his notion of what true art is. On that question, men are unhappily of many minds and of all shades of difference. For the present, the narrowest sense of the word must be the one we have had ; that is to say, the Vitruvian revival. The word may be said to be used in that sense in Professor Ruskin's works, especially the third volume of the ' Stones of Venice.' To the opinion of it there expressed, he and his followers, including myself, have always adhered, and still adhere ; and I shall not go on about an architecture of entirely derivative nature and merits. In as far as the Vitruvian system deigns to use the round arch and the cupola vault, its best constructive features, they are derived from Rome ; and the study of Roman architecture is 78 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. open. Its beauties of proportion and decoration come from Greece ; and it is better for English students to go to the British Museum, and look at the Elgin marbles, than to try to get up decoration from the works of gentlemen who consider acanthus scrolls and grotesque arabesques the especial and most conspicuous charac- teristics of Greek and Roman decorative art. In the definition we began with, sculpture is ignored : as if the Olympian Jupiter had been considered a necessary dis- figurement to Elis, and the frieze of hate-filled Amazons, and heroic youths, and the knights of Athens rolling in their saddles (or without them), on those little horses every one of whom would have carried Attica, were, on the whole, not decorative, or the reverse of orna- mental. Then the next limitation of the Renaissance is that adopted by M. Taine, among many others ; though he limits his favourite period to the last twenty-five years of the fifteenth century, and the first forty years of the cinque cento, or sixteenth. It is the common idea, I presume ; and the fact is, I should call it a period of maturity, not of fresh birth or revival, as the latter years of the sixteenth century are a time of decadence, and not of renascence. Of course, if the period of Michael Angelo and Rafael be a living period, that of Ghirlandajo and Perugino cannot be a dead one ; and as Ghirlandajo certainly studied Masaccio, as everybody has done ever since, that takes the Revival back to his death, in 1429. Then one cannot say that art' was dead, and wanted fresh life in the period of Angelico, who was born in 1387, nor in Orcagna's, nor Giotto's, nor that of the Pisani. In short, the renaissance of art had best be taken as beginning at Pisa, and with Niccola, worker in that city under certain Byzantine Greeks. Art revived OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 79 in them, and grew to maturity in their successors for three hundred years. This putting back of the beginning of the great European movement called renaissance, agrees with the view taken by Mr. Bryce in his essay on the German Empire, and with that of the charming studies of Mr. Pater : it has just been announced again by Mr. Ruskin in his last course of lectures. These works are popular works ; that is to say, they are very easy and pleasant to read ; but all alike are formed on the strictest and hardest work, and on examination of nearly all accessible docu- ments, written or painted. It is not the same thing to say a man is a popular writer as to say he is a false or superficial writer ; and this confusion seems to me pur- posely made in many cases by the duller part of the intellectual school. These views, however, are confirmed by the authority of Drs. Liibke and Woltmann, Ger- man art historians, to whom we are all deeply indebted. We must never forget, of course, that the Revival is the revival of all the activities of the many-sided mind ; that it is literary, legal, musical, poetic, artistic, all together : all these writers are careful to point this out. And I say, that the true period of renascence is marked by the meeting of the classical and the mediaeval mind. For art, that meeting or combination is marked by Niccola Pisano's beginning to study the great Chase of Mel- eager, a bas-relief brought from Greece in Pisan galleys, and placed in the Campo Santo. 'It is not possible now,' says Mr. Bryce, 'to enter into the feeling with which the relics of antiquity were regarded by those who saw in them their only mental possession.' He speaks for the renaissance of literature, but refers to art directly after : ' With us, the old has been overlaid by the new till its origin is forgotten : to them, ancient 8o OUR SKETCHING CLUB. books were the only standard of taste, the only vehicle of truth, the only stimulus to reflection.' He insists greatly on the vast importance, to the Gothic mind, of collision with the Greek or Roman, especially with the former. ' It is to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that we are accustomed to assign the new birth of the human spirit with which the modern time begins. The date is well chosen ; for it was then first that the tran- scendent influence of Greece began to work upon the world in literature (in art, it had begun two centuries before). It had certainly begun before at Florence, in art,' says Mr. Bryce ; * and even in learning, and zeal for learning, what may be called the Roman Renaissance begun with the passionate study of the Institutes of Justinian.' Mr. Pater, too, takes his earliest study from the passionate writing of 'Aucassin and Nicolette,' also a work of the later twelfth century, as I under- stand him. Provence studied that ; the graver Flo- rentines took up the Institutes. Then Mr. Bryce puts the rise of the scholastic philosophy in the thirteenth century as its revival-period ; and I have already said that art distinctly revives then by the Gothic Niccola's study of Greek. ' In the fourteenth century arose in Italy the great masters of painting and of song ; ' or they began to arise. Let us adopt this, and repeat it once more : there is a Roman renaissance in the twelfth century with the study of law, a philosophical or metaphysical renaissance in the thirteenth, soon to be set aside for Platonism in Italy ; then thought breaks out into colour and song in the next age ; and the fifteenth century shows art matured, and the revival of Greek prepared. There is no doubt that the Lombard or Etrurian ancestors of the Pisans and Florentines had done much OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 8 I bas-relief of great merit before Niccola. It was merito- rious ; and he found life in it : but, when he saw the Greek work, he saw beauty also, face to face, and joined the Greek interpretation of Nature to the Gothic. I may mention in passing, what most of us are aware of, that the church of S. Zenone in Verona is the noblest and most complete example of this Lombard Roman- esque work ; that is to say, of the sculpture of the noblest race of Northern Barbarians, instructed in the relics of Italo-Byzantine art and skill. Let us have no mistake about the difference between old Greek models and new Greek. Old Greek means Attic ; new Greek means Byzantine; and Niccola began the renaissance of art when he left his Byzantine masters to study the older work. Till his day, the most artistic races in Italy were only instructed in fragments, and faint, faded traces of Latinized-Greek art. Old Rome had learnt from Old Greece (Attica) all she ever knew of art, except her great constructive gifts of the round arch, cupola, and wagon vault. Till the thirteenth century, the Lom- bards, who began by the eighth century to be the chief students among Northern races, were taught through old Rome in her ashes, and by new Greece or Byzan- tium as centre of the Christian empire and the Church, which preserved the sad relics of the graphic sciences. They were a Scandinavian, wood-carving, and iron- welding race, hammermen all ; and as soon as they saw bas-relief carvings, and got access to the marbles of the Italian Alps, they went to work with hammer and chisel as naturally as with hammer and anvil of old. Renaissance, then, means the spring of the Gothic mind into delighted life on getting fresh lessons from the Greek. I say, Gothic and Greek ; if you like, let us say, classical and mediaeval : and this holds good in G OUR SKETCHING CLUB. literature and art alike. But let us just notice Professor Liibke's division of the renaissance of architecture, which I think both illustrates and confirms what has been already said. This is from his history of Renaissance architecture. The former word, as we saw at first, has a peculiar meaning in architecture ; that is to say, the revival of Italian-Greek, or classical building, as against Gothic. Yet here, also, it is a movement through Roman work, back to Greece ; through the round arch and vault, back to the lintel. In Early-Renais- sance architecture, too, the effort is back to Greek work : the difference is, that the older Pisan Goth, so called, sympathized with the Greek in working from Nature ; the Cinque-Cento man worked as a copyist from Rome or Greece, not seeking Nature. Dr. Liibke's division is into Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, and Baroque Renaissance. And this is not different from Mr. Ruskin's division of the classicized architecture of Venice, into Byzantine or Gothic Renaissance, Roman, and Grotesque. The third, and great part of the second, of these periods appear to him, and to me, to be decadent instead of renascent. It seems as if the High Renaissance failed where old Roman architects failed, — in trying to combine Greek ornament of com- paratively low lintel or flat architecture (and not the best part of it) with their own round - arched con- struction. The Roman round arch re-appears in Gothic work, you know, in the matchless piazza of Orcagna in Flo- rence, before 1376. But it is agreed on all hands that Brunelleschi, the builder of the great Duomo Sta. Maria dei Fiore of Florence, is the great typical master of the first classical renascence in architecture (1 377-1444). Study of old Roman work, with its gigantic power of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 83 scale and great constructive merits, taught him to com- bine the grand proportions and perfect finish of classical workmanship with the inventiveness and rich passion of the Gothic. And he, moreover, with the earlier and mightier architects of the Renaissance, had the sense to abide by the round arch. I repeat, that the modern classicism failed where the earlier Roman architecture failed, — in trying to adapt the Greek ornament of the low lintel to their own round-vaulted constructions. Had Rome clung faithfully to her arch, her buildings would have had far greater beauty ; such as is possessed by the Casa Grimani (by Sanmicheli) and the works of Sansovino in Venice. At all events, the modern, or rococo grotesque, or irregular derivative styles, would have had something in them beside proportions and five orders ; and our streets would have been some- thing more than tiers of boxes with square holes. The Reform Club in Pall Mall is copied from the Farnese Palace : that is the model of our modern street archi- tecture, regardless of expense. Harley Street is the economical type. Somehow, the classical renascence of architecture has brought us to that, and even now we are by no means sure whether we care to change it or not. Though I think it is far better for me to speak of the renascence in its graphic or artistic aspects than in others, it is impossible to separate the progress of the fine arts, in Italy or anywhere else, from the progress of the other activities of the human mind. And this is shown us with absolute conclusiveness as soon as we cross the Alps, and observe the development of the German mind. With England and Germany, the Re- naissance means, first, the Reformation, then the Baconian method of experimental induction, and the G 2 8 4 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. study of Nature to the uttermost ; the modern spirit, as Professor Matthew Arnold calls it. One great name dominates all Northern art here : I mean Holbein's. Diirer is the last of Mediaeval Germans, and most German of great painters. Holbein is the greatest of German painters, perhaps of German men ; and he and the Reformation, in which he took most serious and effective part, force upon us certain questions on what is called the religious or anti-religious character of the Renaissance. We are forced to understand that the new birth of knowledge synchronizes with the deca- dence of a form or system of the Faith. When know- ledge has to contend, not with religious persecution, but irreligious, and that from the hands of the titular chiefs of the Christian religion ; when Leo X or Alex- ander VI can declare, as pope, that he is the Faith, as Louis XIV said he was the State, — then the pursuit of truth will be non-religious, and, probably, become irre- ligious. The death of Savonarola in 1497, by command of Alexander VI, seems to me to mark one of the most distressing turning-points in the history of Italy and the world. At that date, Italy, divided against herself, and bereft of counsel, decided that reform in religion could not and should not be. In 1492, Rafael and M. Angelo are young, Lionardo in his prime, Lorenzo the Magnifi- cent is dying, the Borgia is pope, the renascence is at its culminating point. Well, five years after this, the man most powerful to restore and renew the faith is slain by the titular head of the faith, who avowedly believes nothing. Italy gives up hope of divine rule on earth or anywhere. Then, and soon, the natural con- sequence is convulsive and reckless energy in all the brilliant pursuits of the Renaissance. Christian, Neo- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 85 Platonist, and Neo-Pagan try altogether to make what they can of this world, since the other is closed to them. They go back to the time when art and song were religion in Greece, when the theatre was the temple of Dionysus, and the Parthenon contained the beauty of the world. Pope or no pope, the sense of right, valour, truth, temperance, was yet left to all who would have it. Some cast all off, like Cellini or Giulio Romano : others tried to hold by morals according to rules of heathen philosophy, falling back, as heathen, on what God had taught heathen from of old. Yet even now, the greatest men held by the faith, and were all Christian men; but they were against the cen- tral religious system. Dante, Savonarola, Michael Angelo, Holbein, were all members and movers of this move- ment ; but it would be profoundly unhistorical to try to give account of any of them without his Christianity. And to an artist historian, or, rather, a student of art and history, the Renaissance divides best at the Re- formation ; for that is the time when art lost her true and ancient alliance and service, and was set against religion in the minds of all earnest artists. In the early renascence it was considered that a man's religion — what he thought of the spiritual world, and his own share in it — was the chief, best, and highest subject for his mind to be employed on, whenever he could so employ it. Under that mediaeval, and, perhaps, not entirely obsolete view of things, painters of high and passionate spirit, in the intervals of fierce life and sin, possibly cared most to work on the subjects of the spiritual life; rejoiced in imaginations of them with great joy; did in some sort, 'within their heads,' and with the inner eyes of the soul, see ' angels whitening through the dim, that they might paint them.' And 86 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. when such men, like the Pisani, like Ghirlandajo, like Botticelli, trained in all the inherited science of the Lorn bard race since Alboin, came in their strength to see what Greeks had done before them, adding the Hellenic love of beautiful humanity to their own delight in free fields and green leaves, they became the world's wonders, while their works last. And Michael Angelo is great among these, in spite of his gloom and jealousy, and the science which spoiled his life. At all events, he was born into the faith ; he held it ; he desired its reform and renewal ; he died in it, confessing it with his last sonnet and last breath, seeming to find rest, at last, in turning his face to the wall, away from the arts he had followed so passionately. I could not name him or any other man as chief in the Renaissance : Pisani, Giotto, Botti- celli, Rafael, Titian, and Tintoret, mightier than any, are only the centre of a great cycle of greatness. But I really wonder that there is such a conventional admiration of Michael Angelo. It seems to be, in fact, surgical, and not artistic. I should say that the highest quality of his work was the least likely to be attractive in our own day; for it is Awe. That is a spiritual influence, if there be any spirit. I am justified in saying that what we call awe is closely allied to the religious sentiment ; that it is the chief effect of certain great works of his ; and that these works — the Duke Lorenzo, Day and Night, and even the Moses — consti- tute Michael Angelo's chief title to be held so great in art, They give the world assurance of a man with a soul ; and materialism, probably, will scorn them for ever accordingly, or go on for ever praising their thews and sinews, and wrinkles and calves. It is a very loose employment of our native tongue to talk about the Renaissance as irreligious. Personi- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 87 fication is a good enough trick of rhetoric ; but it often gives people absurdly confused ideas. Really, there never was a beautiful, very learned, rather ill-conducted, sceptical live lady of the name of Renaissance, who never went to church or said her prayers, but taught everybody the religious principles of Leo X. We mean by this word, as we use it, not only the revival of art and literature, but all the men and women in and for whom they were revived. Now, these were not all, or a majority of them, unbelieving or even non-religious persons. Of course, their technical skill was technical, and their science was scientific. A great deal of every artist's life, and every other man's, has to do with things and facts which are secular, and not religious. If you want to learn art, you must study technical and natural facts ; if you want to be a good critic, you must study history, literature, and technics ; and they are not found in the Bible. Yet you cannot separate religion from the two former, and, if you be a Christian man, these studies will assuredly tell you of Christ. But what account can be given of Sandro Botticelli, without mention of his picture of the Nativity, and his being a Piagnone, or follower of Savonarola ? Would he have painted that picture, or done it so well, if he had been one of the Compagnacci, or Evil Companions, or Mohocks of Florence? Buonarotti, Bellini, Holbein, Diirer, Bacon, Milton, — if religion be nothing, it was nothing to them ; if it be false, it was an element of falsehood in them : and on those suppositions only can you leave their faith out of account when you think about them. So, if you are to have an account of the Renaissance without Holbein, and an account of Hol- bein without the Reformation, why, both your accounts will be eminently imperfect. 88 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. On this matter, I think it should be observed, that the function of a critic differs greatly from that of an artist. I think, certainly, that a man who writes a book to weaken the hold which others have on their creed, or lessen the restraint which the laws of chastity exercise over other men, is guilty of sin, and does a bad deed : he need not have chosen such a subject or manner. But, supposing his work, to have qualities which cannot be passed over, you cannot blame his critics for giving account of him. They can but say what they find in him : the only question for them is, Shall they examine him at all ? £ Aucassin and Nicolette ' is a Provencal tale of the twelfth century, and if it be really of that date, of which Mr. Pater appears convinced, there is nothing to say against him for writing a charming essay upon it. The little hero's quaint outburst about not wanting to go to heaven is a curious repetition or parallel of a story in Gibbon, which Kingsley makes use of in describing old Wulfs refusal of baptism, in ' Hypatia.' Aucassin declares that he would much rather go to hell, because all the nice persons and things he knows — warriors, clerks, maidens, gold, jewels, 1 vair et gris ' — go there, and Nicolette will go with him too. Gibbon's tale is somewhat less silly, at all events. Let Canon Kingsley tell the story of Wulf the Lombard- Goth : ' The old warrior was stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop, and asked where were the souls of his heathen ancestors. ' In hell,' answered the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw his bear-skin cloak around him : he preferred, he said, if Adolph had no objection, to go to his own people.' No doubt, as Mr. Pater says, sentiment in Provence appealed to but a small circle of cognoscenti ; and their ideas were Antinomian. Scott tells us, in OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 8 9 ( Anne of Geierstein,' that the Provencal tone of morality was lax. I suspect that good knights and true ladies called this by worse names than Antinomianism at the time, in less privileged lands. The lay of Thiebault, the troubadour, about the lady who ate her paramour, or some portion of him, thoroughly scandalizes Arthur, the young English knight, in 'Anne of Geierstein.' Corruption is corruption in all ages : it is not peculiar to the Renaissance or to Pro- vence ; but this Antinomian literature belongs to the decadence of mediaeval life, rather than to the revival of accurate scholarship, and skilful painting from Nature. At all times, passionate and unhappy people have been Antinomian, let us call it. That the south of France has had so much of this quality may account for the insignificance of the south of France in French history. But the Romaunt of ' Aucassin and Nicolette ' is harm- less, as far as its immorality goes, because no im- morality is really intended by the author or authors. And we do not find, either, when we consider the scientific part of the renascence, that it was specially irreligious, or an element of irreligion. It was a new method of inquiry into truth ; and, in so far as the faith is true, the results of the new inquiries could not but agree with it. This the inquirers of that day felt, and, for the most part, submitted to and accepted it, though this age is apt to think that they ought to have rushed at the conclusions of the French Encyclopedic Men in that day could be real inquirers, and suspend negative conclusions, instead of anticipating them. Like St. Thomas, not knowing how to believe, they still re- mained with the brethren. And I really think Mr. Pater is simply right, when he says that it is the part of the aesthetic critic, and of all of us, I suppose, when we 90 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. admire a thing, to consider this alone concerning it, — what pleasure, of what kind and derivation, we are get- ting from it. He who is honest and keen with himself on this matter, if he make a bad choice, will, at least, have to own it to himself, and be led to examine what there is in himself which makes this or that, which others are perhaps ashamed of, pleasant to him. Mr. Pater does not mean that mere immediate gratification is the end of art or of life, but that the critic must speak with clearness and sincerity from his own interior, and distinguish what the true charm, to him, of this or that beautiful sight, sound, or thought, may be. The word £ pleasure ' has too often unpleasant associations ; and I hardly think it can apply to the emotions caused by the Duke Lorenzo (Michael Angelo's greatest work) in the mind of a spectator competent to admire it. But I think Mr. Pater means, that every critic must be accu- rate and faithful in his analysis of what it is in a work of art which pleases him. If we all were so, there would be fewer to look at immoral work : they would have to own to themselves why they liked it ; and there would be less self-delusion, and fewer vain attempts to cheat the Devil. In any case, the Reformation is a part of the Renais- sance ; and, in any case, the Reformation was a religious movement ; and Holbein's art was one of its motive- powers. You have heard of his great polemical wood- cuts of ' The Indulgence-Mongers,' and ' Christ the True Light.' The latter is the German protest against the Aristotelian philosophy which governed the doctors, who governed the pope, who governed the world. Schoolmen have taken the place of Scripture, and Ger- many calls for the written word. The Pardon-shop is the practical protest that there is personal repentance OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 91 of the man towards God, and that that is of avail. It is more necessary than ever, in these days, to be careful of the word ' Protestantism.' There is the Protestant- ism of personal religion, and of personal irreligion ; of faith in Christ, and denial of Christ and of God. The former is the older meaning of the word, and the only one which I can recognize ; and in this woodcut Hol- bein preached it to all Germany and all mankind. The cardinals and friars are selling God's forgiveness of sins to those who can pay for it. and denying it to those who cannot. The sting of the picture is not, that the rich sinner is fined, or that the monk gets the money, but that the beggar entreats the priesthood to consider his bodily misery, and let God have mercy on his soul, and can get no mercy because he has no money. Holbein and Luther, if the hand of the former did not fail him in Luther's portrait, were physically like each other : both seem to have been men who would be glad enough of a rich man's admission into heaven ; but that a poor man should be shut out for not being rich was a notion they could not bear. Let us have a slight sketch of Holbein's life, as repre- sentative artist of the Northern Renaissance. It extends from 1495 or 1498 to 1543, when he died in London, of the plague. He is a portrait-painter, the son of a portrait-painter, digressing into metal-work ; not trained as a goldsmith, like Verrochio, or Diirer, or Lionardo, or Ghirlandajo. He learns character and expression from knights and ladies and burghers of Augsburg and of Ulm. He went to England first in 1527, — the year before Diirer died ; and Florence made her last effort for liberty, with Michael Angelo for her chief engineer. Garret and Clarke, and the poor ' Christian brothers ' from Cambridge, were in great danger of their lives 92 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. about that time in Oxford. This is what Holbein had done up to this time, — portraits innumerable, notably that of Erasmus ; the Praise of Folly, and the great polemical woodcuts ; he had illustrated a Bible mar- vellously, and done grand Old Testament wall-paintings at Basel : had painted or restored the Dance of Death (or one of them) on the cathedral cloister at Basel ; and had issued his woodcut version of it, whereof more. In 1529 he returns to Basel to find bitter fruit of the Re- formation. That was the great and grievous year of German Iconoclasm ; when all the churches were strip- ped, not only of idolatry, but of beauty and the precious records of seven hundred years. He saw what he saw, and returned to England in 1532, only to leave it before his death for a short visit to Brussels and the Low Countries. James V died of Solway Moss in 1542 ; and Holbein died of the plague in London next year. He is the great realist of the renascence, the first master of Northern Cinque-Cento ; his is the greatest Northern realist imagination in sacred history and allegory : he is master of grotesque, and prince of portraiture : the world has few greater names. And as the Dance of Death in woodcut is the work by which he is most generally known, and which, perhaps, contains most of his soul, we will speak of it now. Most of us have read the third volume of the ' Stones of Venice,' and from that formed an idea of the way in which Renaissance sculptors treated the subject of death. There had been in Venice a system of sepul- chral ornament, expressive of Christian hope in the simplest way. Its arrangement was this in the fifteenth century, — a sarcophagus with canopy above ; on the canopy a small figure of the knight as he rode in arms, under it a full-sized statue of him as he lay dead. He OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 93 is dead ; but he had valour and worth, and they and he are Christ's : that is all the sculptor says. This treat- ment is derived straight from the Catacombs, where the larger tombs are formed by the hollowed-out arcosolium, or half apse above the sarcophagus, or flat-topped tomb, on which celebration of Holy Communion may take place, if the tenant be a martyr. This had given place, by this time, to heaven knows what pompous paganisms in Venice, described in the volume above-mentioned. They expressed no Christian hope, and symbolized no Christian doctrine ; they betrayed a threefold vanity of state, money, and science ; they and their degenerate imitations in this country are the very petrifaction of undertaking. The overpowering fun of Charles Dickens prevents our understanding his intense irony. Do you remember Mr. Mould descanting on what wealth can really do to console a man in the presence of death? ' It can give him the plumage of the ostrich ; it can give him any number of mutes carrying batons tipped with brass,' &c. This marks the decadence of art and religion together : the costly tomb, cut with contemp- tible skill, takes the place of all other consolation in death. It really is just like Mr. Bumble's notion of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, who went to heaven in an oak coffin with plated handles. The principle is just the same : he is well who is well buried. Against all this, the rough German breaks in with his first moral of the great equality of death. O just, mighty, subtle, and searching one! welcome to the weary, the brave, and the faithful, to all who will fear God, and consider the end. It is this contented, open- eyed acceptance of the well-understood terrors and victory of the last enemy that is the brighter side of the Dance of Death. Holbein's mind is that of the North, 94 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. both grave and reckless, excited by the sight of so great a thing as death. For the just, there is salvation ; but there is a great shock to bear, and a dark way to go first. They know what is beyond ; but they know it as in a glass, darkly, by symbol and figure, and they do not know what it is like. They are represented in the great frontispiece of the Judgment, rejoicing before God, and they only. ' If you must fear,' quoth the painter, ' fear not too much : this cup passes not from us without drinking. Death has his day and his victory, then cometh the end.' But then, again, he turns on the luxurious and careless, and yet more fiercely on the false and cruel : ' The Lord hath seen that your day is coming. Are you beautiful?' says the Spectre, who is no respecter ; ' woe to you if you care for nothing but your beauty : lean arms shall clasp it like a bride's. Are you eloquent ? look you be faithful and true in words ; for I am with you, Death, the unquestionable, the sincerest thing on earth ; come with me, and beware of the lie in your right hand. Are you kingly or noble ? Such as you do cruel oppression from London to By- zantium, and elsewhere ; come with me, and reap as you have sown. Are you rich ? Come straightway, and we will see how you got your money, and what you have done with it.' The call of death is harsh and heavy to all ; but since he comes to all equally, and One has overcome him for us, anyhow, it is madness to forget him. Holbein's mood is not that of democratic envy. The poor are as frightened as the rich ; the little child is led away weeping ; and the women stay behind refusing to be comforted ; the poor peddler has the greatest objection to be parted from his heavy pack ; the fool makes foolish resistance to the assailant who violates his privileges, just as the old noble, the edel Degen, or good OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 95 sword of many combats, does fierce battle once more, not for life, but because it is his way. ' Each dies in his vocation ; but for all this,' saith Holbein, ' there re- maineth a rest for the people of God.' And he rightly refuses to set forth anything else in the Last Day, except their joy. This is the difference between dif- ferent men's views of death in the Renaissance. One view is not religious, the other is roughly so ; one has produced the later Renaissance tombs, which seem to me monstrous ; the other, the Dance of Death, which seems to me grand. But if we are asked according to (what I hold to be) the wrong interpretation of Mr. Pater's canon of criticism ; or if we are to ask ourselves what kind of pleasure we get from the Dance of Death, from the pictures of the Passion, from Michael Angelo's Thought of the Duke Lorenzo (or rather, Giuliano), — I think we must say, we do not and ought not to get any. The school called the Noble Grotesque requires some other word than pleasure to express the emotions obtained from its great works. Let us recapitulate a little. The revival of art began when men began to study, not Nature only, nor Greek models only, but Nature as Greeks had studied her before. Then along with art revived the study of law, twelfth century, the school-philosophy of the thirteenth, the poetry of the fourteenth ; and the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth see their maturity and great glory. With all this revival comes that of Greek literature, which is the motive-power of the Reformation ; and in the sixteenth century we have physical science, properly so called, and the modern processes of inquiry into natural facts. There is a new spirit of fresh seeking, new thought, new appeal to Nature. It is religion in men who hold the faith earnestly ; in others, it is simply 9 6 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. desire of fresh knowledge. In many painters, it is thirst for beauty only ; and art, strangely, first debauches, then withers in their hands. In men of science, it is simply determination to turn the light of their reason faithfully on their study, and prove all things. Men rose up and said, We, and a number of things in which we will have truth, if God will, are not rightly explained by the Aristotelian categories. We will have new arrangements for new phenomena. Let us look at facts, — at the facts of antiquity and present nature, at the Greek language, and its literature and art, and at what God has given us to know on earth of earth. In an evil hour, theology was set, for base worldly reasons, against all this ; and the quarrel has never been healed. But men are begin- ning to see that theology and science, as things of the many-sided mind, have their mutual limits; and their dispute is fast settling, I trust, into a general boundary question, so far adjusted, by this time, that rival pro- fessors will admit that physical experiment and spiritual experience are, after all, both real things ; and, when that is granted, firm ground is reached. For ourselves, the Greeks studied Nature faithfully : so let us do what they did, not only copying them, but imitating them. The real hope of English art now is the pure love of nature, observation, and imitation. Labour on that, and imaginative power will follow or be given you, and the spirit of wisdom and invention will be new born in you. We have models enough, and systematic teaching enough ; we have learnt enough about learning ; we have copies of pictures, and books about books : but nothing will help art, and the people through art, so much now as honest drawing of landscape and portrait. Let everybody try, with such teaching as he can get, to draw the scene or the person he loves best. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 97 That is art, however simple, the symbolic expression of our delight in some work of God which He has given us to be delighted with. We have distinguished, and partly classified, the periods of the Renaissance. For its great artists, it will be found better, in order to have a connected memory of how they come, to take them in groups, ticketing each group with the name of its greatest men. Thus you have the cathedral of Pisa, built by Buschetto, with Byzantine decorations in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Niccola begins the Greek Renaissance in the thirteenth. You begin the fourteenth with the Arnolfo- Dante-Giotto-Orcagna group ; and Van Eyck, the ultra- montane. Brunelleschi, Angelico, Masaccio, begin the fifteenth. Botticelli's life is contained in it ; and it ends with Angelo, Rafael, Columbus, Diirer, Holbein, and Bellini in Venice. Then art migrates to the Lagunes. Remember Tintoret was Titian's pupil, and was born the year before Flodden 15 12, and Veronese died in the Armada year 1588. In the Flodden year, moreover, Diirer published the Knight and Death ; and Rafael finished the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. Two years before (1510) he, Michael Angelo, and Luther had been in Rome together. Velasquez was born eleven years later; and Hogarth a hundred and two years after that. Blake may have seen Hogarth, Turner must have seen Blake. Reynolds was thirty years younger than Hogarth. It is a rough kind of chart, but may be useful. For the architectural periods of the Renaissance, we took up with Dr. Liibkes division, — Early Renaissance, High Renaissance, and Baroque Renaissance ; take with these the names of Brunelleschi and Bramante ; and, for the third, whoever you please. Agostino Busti is named H 9« OUR SKETCHING CLUB. in the architectural article which we began with. With these periods we compared those of Venetian architec- ture as given by Prof. Ruskin, — Byzantine Renaissance, Roman, and Grotesque. They answer exactly to each other, only that in Venice, men so able as Sanmicheli and Sansovino rightly adhered to the round arch, and their work retains much grandeur and beauty. Then we said the Renaissance was not to be called a religious or irreligious movement, because movements are not religious or irreligious things. Men are ; and all through the ages, from Nicolas of Pisa to Ruskin of Oxford, their contest between faith, doubt, and denial, has gone on — with what fortune who knoweth save God only ? This much seemed certain, that in Italy, at the time of the Reformation, which marks the High Renais- sance period, the representatives of the Christian faith seemed to need great reformation ; and, as they were able to tread it out on their side the Alps, the pursuit of knowledge and art took a less religious form there. North of the Alps, the Renaissance means the Reforma- tion ; that is to say, a distressing struggle on matters of faith. For the scientific or modern method of inquiry into truth it is religious or irreligious exactly according to the character of every individual person who pursues it. We chose Holbein as our representative artist for the Reforma- tion period, as its greatest workman, an adopted English- man, and the author of the Dance of Death, which has an archaeological connection, through Orcagna's Triumph of Death in the Campo Santo at Pisa, with the mosaic work of the early, almost the Primitive Church. But this is a matter which requires a whole course of lectures to itself. Yet it is a part of the history of the art renaissance to consider how we ourselves, in our disputes between OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 99 Gothicism and classicalism, have lost sight of the real continuity of art history. One man is given to the pro- motion of German or French Gothic architecture : he cannot bear to think of the instructions or the traditions of art, as they were first communicated, by Byzantium or by Italy, to the ancestors of West Franks and East Franks alike. Another is devoted to modern utilities, — porticos, pediments, proportions, and square windows: he wants Capitols and Parthenons to look at, and Gower Street and Baker Street to live in. Both alike lose sight of the fact that Greece studied Nature in men and animals, and, ornamenting her architecture from that source of beauty, made it the world's example to this day ; and that the great merit of Roman architecture has been to observe and preserve Greek beauty with her own constructive power. Both forget that all that was right or beautiful in either comes from the delighted study of God's work, which we call Nature. Again : the continuity of art history is lost sight of on the Christian side. We keep contending for Gothic architecture as ecclesiastical, and forget that it is also domestic, and that, in mediaeval times, people lived in mediaeval houses. We forget, also, that, in primitive Christian days of the Roman empire, people lived in Roman houses with Graeco-Roman ornament. There was no Gothic in the early Church, and no Byzantine even for at least four hundred years of the Church. The earliest works of Christian art, alike in painting and in sculpture, are simply Graeco-Roman. The martyrs and confessors of the first days seem gladly to have accepted the aid of heathen workmen in the decoration of their tombs and retired places of worship, and to have been willing enough to have ordinary subjects for orna- ment upon their walls, if they could only refer to them H % 100 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. in their own minds as Christian symbols with Christian meaning. Hence the constant use of the vine. It was, of course, a common subject for Gentile decoration ; and it attracted no special notice from the Gentile : to the Christian it was the Vine of souls, the Lord's chosen emblem of Himself. Scenes of pastoral life delighted the middle-class Romans : the Christians would have such scenes, also, painted in their catacombs, if one figure bearing the sheep that is lost, the Shepherd of souls, would stand for them at the centres of their vault- ings, expressing silently the Lord's other parable of Himself. They used the myths of Hesione and Andro- meda, substituting Jonah. Noah took the place of Deucalion on some of their walls. They seem, indeed, to have desired to Christianize such myths as these, and especially that of Orpheus, partly for the sake of in- dulging hope concerning their Gentile ancestors. If these tales were foreshadowings of the kingdom of God, then these our fathers may not have been far from- the kingdom. Then for the original and scriptural subjects of Christian ornament, which ought to have been faith- fully and jealously handed down to us from the second century, tradition and legend have obscured them, and the Renaissance has thrown utter oblivion over them. The subjects of church-decoration, symbolic or historical, were once both strictly and amply defined. Scriptural emblem and scriptural history were thought to give wide enough range for the painter or sculptor : all his mind and skill were to be given to show how the law and the prophets alike testified to the fulfilled and com- pleted faith. The earliest cycle of ornament, in the Catacombs, is called the Ciclo Biblico by the Com- mendatore De Rossi, our leading Italian authority. It is not too much to say that there is a tradition of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 101 Christian teaching by painting and sculpture, illustrative of Holy Scripture, which begins with the catacomb frescoes and sarcophagi, and is carried on in the great mosaics of Rome, and more particularly those of Ra- venna. It consists in scriptural records of the Old and New Testament, of prophecies of our Lord and their fulfilment : it continues, in one shape or another, till Holbein ; and with him it ends. It all but perished in the ninth century, except for the MSS. which still con- tinued to be produced (or perhaps only preserved) in the scriptoria of such monasteries as escaped destruction by Goth or Lombard, and in the new Rome. But, before this, the iconoclasm of the eighth century drove the artists of Byzantium, with many of their most precious works and relics, by sheer unreasoning, undistinguishing persecution, westwards and northwards. The embers of art, in short, were cherished in the monasteries till the great Teutonic migration had fairly settled in the re- distributed provinces of the empire. They were pre- served ; but they were mingled with legend ; and their centre is not the Lord's life on earth so much as His passion and death. Yet the picture-teaching of scrip- tural history was continued in Florence and Venice, and in many French and German temples, till at last, with the Reformation, the Arts were made to break with the Faith. The senseless splendour of the decadent renais- sance took the place of the passion and thought of the Italian-Gothic revival ; and Puritanism cast out form, colour, and imagination from all sincere religion in the north of Europe. What the new mediaeval renaissance of our own day may bring forth, we know not : it seems, at present, more zealous of the minor matters of the laws of deco- rative beauty than of the greater, more anxious about 102 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. robes than frescoes, and addicted to ceremonial rather than sculpture. It seems, too, to have provoked an architectural reaction, of which the new public buildings opposite Whitehall are a really grand result. But for Church work, until history be followed back to the original examples and documents of the primitive faith, it seems to stand to reason that nothing like primitive decoration can ever be had ; still its subjects are ascer- tainable and ascertained ; and perhaps the truest renais- sance of all, for us, will be the return of English painters to sacred work in sacred places, on the subjects of primitive days. The great work of Mr. Holman Hunt is now open to the public, uniting in itself the two ideals of the form of our Lord, which have been preserved in the Christian mind from the third century. He is spoken of as the fairest of all men, also as possessing no form or comeliness in the ascetic sense ; and the painters great skill and singular happiness in the selection of his model have enabled him, in a great degree, to combine the ascetic and the beautiful ideal. The renascence of the highest and most spiritual, as well as the most powerful forms of art, is not to be despaired of in the nation, or at the time, which has produced such a picture as this. CHAPTER VI. IT was a warm late October morning at Hawkstone : the tergiversations of an English autumn were going on as usual ; and a southerly wind and a cloudy- sky had succeeded a few days' slight frost. Leaves were snowing down in the park ; and the pale green turf was beginning to be varied with yellow and red where they had drifted ; while russet and gold gained on the autumn green above. Let us ' do this gentleman's seat on our way,' as Moore says. Hawkstone Holt near Bristlebury, then, was a fair type of the midland or northern house and park, of the second or third order of size. The Latter- math family had enjoyed one great privilege from father to son in successive generations, — they never overbuilt themselves. The old house was not very old ; and the family conviction always was, that it was big enough, and, moreover, that it was good taste to keep one's house within one's rents, rather than beyond them. It is surprising, if one happens to know any thing of a county, to think what havoc is wrought by architects and builders in the ranks of the Squirearchy. The bills are not the worst, though they are what they are : the really fatal thing is the infallible certainty, 104 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. that, when you have built a habitation a little above your fortune, you will proceed to live in it a great deal beyond your income. But we are concerned with some small part of what the knight and lady of Hawk- stone did, not with any thing they didn't do. This morning, like other people, they came down to breakfast. The ways of the house were punctual ; but breakfast was kept for late-comers up to any date, and you could have it in your room, if you liked ; but nobody ever did. Even foreign visitors liked to come down by nine, and join in the endless chatter and goings-on of that big breakfast -table. There were prayers early, in the hall, which was on the Yorkshire principle, — large, low, and in the middle of the house. It was divided from the front-door by a great porch, — a hall in itself, — dedicated to sticks, great -coats, umbrellas, and all odoriferous water-proofs, with some lemon verbenas and cape-jessamines to maintain a balance of scents. This was mostly plate-glass : within the hall all was black oak, portraits, furs, antlers, Persian rugs, armour, curiosities, two or three pet breech-loaders in a glass case, books, newspapers, and infinite stationery. Flora did most of her vast letter-writing here. She said it was no use shutting herself up with a dictionary, or retiring at all : people were so sure to come after her, that she preferred being ready for people. Nothing ever seemed to interrupt her. She was young, and keen on her leading idea always, so as to be able to ' throw her tongue' whenever she liked, without losing it, — such was the expression of her admiring husband. At all events, Lady Lattermath could and did talk and write with considerable piquancy on two subjects at once, or in the rapidest succession. Well, her rooms were on one side of the hall, as we OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 105 said, — on the west side of the house ; and she had a conservatory, which worked round the corner to the drawing-room on the south, and so on to the dining- room. Jack had a large study, dressing-room, and bed- room on the other side of the front-door, — of course I don't mean the outside — and his private department ended in a sort of gun-room, studio, workshop, and smoking-room, with a lathe, a small forge, and a large adjacent billiard-room. He hated all games on the cards, and never would have any thing at Hawkstone except whist, at decent hours, if he could help it ; and this he was generally quite able to do. When they danced, it was in the hall or the large library; where there was an oak floor, and every thing ran on noiseless castors. All the rooms were large, and rather low : drawing-room white, pale turquoise, and paler crimson, with much dead gold to relieve the old oak; Eastern water-colours; a John Lewis and a Holman Hunt, the pride of that realist household ; Cairene sketches by Charley, and some by Walton in the Sinai Desert ; one or two snow-scenes, for contrast ; altogether the room had interest and breadth of effect. Flora avoided bric-a-brac, and liked pictures, even beyond decorative unity. One of the ideas she had gathered unawares, from the perfectly unconscious May, was to go in for ornament with definite meaning. She would have facts, she said ; and they must be facts of a high order, if possible ; and the consequence was, that Jack and she, with May and Charles, were all grievously suspected of sentiment and imagination, and all sorts of things, which they were wise enough to repudiate in general terms. They maintained relations with the Intellectual World. ' Bore on, I will endure,' was Flora's impertinent quotation about its organs. Unsoiled copies of the ' Chanticleer' and the £ Scholasticus ' always lay on OUR SKETCHING CLUB. the table for those who liked them ; but they enjoyed more rest in the household than they allowed to the remainder of society. The Hawkstone dining-room was oak, dark green and gold, — long, low oak mirrors, big table and sideboard of the same, an old Greek marble relief of a chariot-race let into the wall, a Vandyke, two Sir Joshuas, a dis- puted Holbein, an undoubted Gainsborough, and a Jordaens, which held its own with them all. It was a Sir Roland Lattermath, who had served in Holland, — black-gray armour with gold studs, and an orange scarf, painted as by a Dutchman with a taste for colour ; gold sword-hilt, belt and dagger, with wonderful gleams on a dark-green background. Ceiling painted in gray, and pale crimson-tinged clouds, with birds flying up into the bed-rooms in perspective. I don't know how many bed-rooms there were in the house. The children used to be audible now and then in far distance, and servants always liked going there : so I suppose there were plenty. The chief part of Jack's building had consisted in alterations in the upper regions, for the comfort and good regulation of men and maids. He did not say much to his people ; but he cared for them, and they knew it, and they either vanished from his service rather early, or ' hung up their hats ' in their several departments. For stables and kennel, they were kept down strenuously as to scale ; but men, horses, and dogs knew their very sufficient work, and did it. Hard days and good living were their rule of existence, and holidays were not few. There was a servants' library. The house was open all the year ; and the children were healthy and pretty, and well taught in gentle manners from the cradle. Jack's bite was worse than his bark ; for he never barked at all. He was as OUR SKETCHING CLUB. much master as he cared to be : in fact, he liked his people, and they liked him. The ' public ' rooms faced the large rough park, pur- posely kept rough, to suit the weather-stained walls, which were the chief outer attraction of the plainly- built Holt. It was a sort of Elizabethan concern, with no architectural pretensions except bay-windows and stone mullions, and was as compact as a portmanteau, and very much of the same shape. There was a herd of deer; and plenty of Highland beasts were always en- joying a rest before their fate, — ' feeding,' as Flora was wont to explain to strangers, ' entirely on the thick fogs which prevail over the north of this island in autumn' (deep autumn grass always goes by that name in York- shire). There were broad oaks and beeches, ancient yews and thorns, and great gnarled Scotch firs, with old larches, squirrel-haunted. All the house delighted in squirrels, excepting Diver the retriever, whose privileges were respected by every other creature, and utterly denied by the vicious little things. The old dog felt he did not get the better in his contentions with the active enemy, and, worse still, felt that he did not carry public feeling with him. He heard people laugh. One ought not to laugh at an old dog or horse ; but human nature can't stand it when an ancient and crafty rough spaniel, after long pretended unconsciousness under a tree, makes a grab at a squirrel who incontinently jumps on his back, pulls off his weather-bleached curls with an obvious view to his own and family's bedding, sets up his tail, and chatters loudly to a large party in the breakfast-room. Susan Milton sat next the window : she gave a wild screech of delight, and pointed out of it. Flourish (of spoons and napkins). Alarums. Excursions. Urn nearly 'shot off' the table. Flora shakes her fist, io8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. but joins the rush into the great bay. Diver howls for very shame, and bolts under a tree : squirrel instantly projects himself on to a low branch, thence to a high one, where he sits across a spray like a sparrow, and contemplates existence and Miss Milton, who has a habit of leaving almonds and raisins in that direction on his account. Row subsides, and breakfast resumed. ' Well, it's a comfort not to have to go out hunting,' says Mr. Reresby, Flora's uncle, and one of the straightest goers in the shires, further making petition for another large cup of tea. ' You'll have to give it up altogether soon, if you drink all that small liquor,' said Jack, handing the new supply. ' Why, aren't we going to walk over the moors to Hawcliffe school-meeting? and won't that take half a stone off us at least?' ' Then do have a few more eggs,' cried Flora, with a gushing air of sympathy, and sending a sort of rack, or battery, of immense turkey's eggs in the direction of the Customer — Reresby went by that name in his county. He was one of the old Holderness breed, not very young, but much modernized, and little the worse for it — not unlike one of the big hounds which are supposed to belong to those parts, and much better bred than he looked. 'You never read "The Arabian Nights," did you, Flora?' 'Why not?' ' Because there's a fellow there that gets into trouble about eating roc's eggs, and you seem to indulge in them.' ' Oh, Aladdin ! He had an uncle, a conjuror, and I haven't. And he had dealings with geniuses, and I OUR SKETCHING CLUB. ICQ. never see any. Rather impertinent, I'm afraid ; but I can't help it : you put it right into my hands.' ' Won't be offended this time ; but you really are terrible this morning.' 'Why, you almost upset my urn, and shattered my nerves, and cast dastardly imputations on the eggs.' ' No, I'm without fear of them ; and they are without reproach.' ' How nice it must be on the Nile,' said Susan, with great earnestness, 'where one can get crocodile's eggs for breakfast regularly ! Only one must feel very nervous about the bad ones. Fancy just chipping the shell for a strong chicken, — they begin to snap directly, I'm told, — and what a smell of musk! 5 ' Ah, Miss Milton, you ought to have been with us in Abyssinia ! — Such ostrich omelette ! What ideas you all have, to be sure ! ' 'Well, you began with the roc's egg — but here come the letters.' 'An official voice from Tombuie.' 'Tom what?' 'The Yellow Hill, it means; Mr. Hobbes's shooting- lodge, where Charles is staying.' 'What a jolly long letter!' said the chatelaine. £ Charley must be getting quite above himself. Doesn't it make you rather nervous, Susy?' ' Horribly : let's put it off till May comes back this evening.' 'Where's H.R.H. gone off to?' asked Reresby. ' Oh ! we sent a lot of pheasants to the Rothercliffe Infirmary, and she went over in charge : she walks the place quite regularly. The doctors say she is quite of use. She reads and talks, and is good at work ; and all the people take their physic better when she's there ; no OUR SKETCHING CLUB. and they say she flirts dreadfully with the old bed- ridden people ; and the clergy are all after her, of course ; and her nerve, — you know that, — and then the sight of her is good for most people,' concluded John, meditatively. 'In moderation,' said his wife, taking up her gibeciere, full of keys and letters, and girding it on in a manner highly becoming her figure. 'Well, we are to have a quiet autumn day. Any lady what likes to ride or drive will please give her orders, and lunch at half-past one.' Mrs. Reresby, the Customer's wife, who resembled nobody so much as ' the grave and beautiful damsel, called Discretion,' in the ' Pilgrim's Progress,' — the one who conducted that rather business-like conversation with Christian, before he got into the house Beautiful, — said she should like a drive after lunch. Susan said she was very stiff, and her horse wanted rest ; which there is every reason to suppose he did, much oftener than he got it ; and it was agreed between her and Flora to go and begin a study of autumn leaves, somewhere by the long water at the bottom of the park, — an undertaking likely to last through several other mornings. Jack and Reresby were already lighting wooden pipes, and pro- pitiating Diver on the gravel ride. It was, as it has been many a century, — latis otia fundis, — quiet times in big country houses, where folly does not rule. There was a pretty group about the door, with its lawn-grass and flower-beds still bright with red geranium : the heliotropes were done for. Flora always sheltered and kept up her borders till the last possible day, and then gave up flowers for the winter : she said chrysanthe- mums only made her dismal. She stood there, — all in olive-gray with a dark-green cord and small hat of the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I 1 1 same, — all broad folds to her feet, not having yet tucked up her long-tailed gown for the day. She had mastered the rare art of doing so effectively and becomingly. Mrs. Reresby was next her, small-headed and grandly- formed, kind, silent, and simple in spite of forty years of town and country, enjoying a nice passive holiday of utter rest, as all women do who have headed a large household for twenty years. Little Susan was showing her her sketch-book : her red and gold hair was drawn into a large, hard, unchignon'd crown ; her willowy neck kept moving soft and quick as she held her head down somewhat before the older lady, giving short, pithy answers with a little air of deference. Fine as a fay, rather deficient in height, though nobly formed, full of nervous intense life, passionate and tender-hearted, timid and daring, outspoken to her own confusion, well-trained, and needing every bit of her training : she was a person, who, as Charles said, and Hobbes thought, interested one in a manner beyond her size. She possessed a step-mother who was really fond of her, not without reason or return. But one of them was rather high- church, and the other rather low-church ; and the Fates themselves would fall out, if they read religious news- papers on opposite sides. Well, Susan was pretty enough ; but just opposite her, by way of contrast, was the great Reresby in knickerbockers and leggings, with a hairless face all burnt to one clear dark red, a cavalry mustache, fair and heavy, showing the form of his thin well-arched lips. (I am afraid to use the word 'chiselled,' Professor Arnold was so angry about it. I suppose, when the word is let into the language again, it will be allowed to mean statuesque, or well cut, and to be applicable to a finely-shaped mouth.) Anyhow, Reresby was looking 112 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. his best, for the three women before him were all pleasant to him, and his wife most of all. But his general impression was one of considerable hardness ; and his equestrian exploits, and a certain severity in the pursuit of all that he considered humbug, went far to sustain it. He liked Charles decidedly as a clever, honourable lad, who rode to hounds very well, and was smart and popular as a yeomanry officer ; but without that, I fear he would have scouted him altogether for taking to pictures : that might do for little Susan, whom he admired, as most long men do short girls ; but how anybody who could dig was not ashamed to draw passed his comprehension. Jack was all in light gray, extra- bleached with rain ; his countenance much darker than his dress ; with big black whiskers, and eyes which twinkled now and then as he played with Diver and the children. The last-mentioned we do not describe, as it is laid down by German sestheticians, that children possess no beauty, and are not legitimate objects of art ; and we have no time to discuss that astounding state- ment just at present. What a thing a fine autumn day is in the Midlands or North Country, whenever you are within reach of moors, and manufactures are far enough off to let the leaves and grass bear their right colours ! Dewdrops leave a black smear in the neighbourhood of Halifax, to my experience ; and I remember once in Tivydale, well out of sight of chimneys, that one quite fine day's shooting in cover spoilt me a new jacket. But here they were clear of smoke and soot, and the commercial elements in general : one cannot be unaware of their value ; but they will not come into pictures (always excepting some of Turner's grand night-infernos of forge and foundery). Here there was a silvery mist, which had risen with the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 113 chill of early morning, and was now melting and flicker- ing away as the sun gained power : it softened all out- lines, made every thing look restful and grand, and kept the distance massive and broad, and blue as sapphire, particularly over the high moors, which were just visible from where they stood, looking far down the long wide dale. It was full of great oaks, growing over iron and coal beds as yet happily undisturbed, and lessening in number as small fields gave way to wide enclosures, and corn and roots gained on the pastures. Sir John Latter- math was an easy-going man, who laughed a good deal ; but he had a very strong sense of duty and a clear head ; so that he always went ahead easily in the same direction, and had his way, as a quiet river has its way. All through his ground you saw better build- ings, cleaner fields, smaller fences, and less hedgerow timber. He went in hard for improvement of land, and all that grows on it, — labourers first, — and chose and humoured his tenants accordingly. ' Clean, drain, muck, high wage, and hard work,' were his brief agricultural code, — all he would say, sometimes, at a farmers' dinner. He gave his tenants the rabbits and hares he preserved, at their request, because it helped them to keep off tres- passers ; but he never battue'd or butchered. He had schools and libraries, and co-operative stores ; he backed every working parson within reach, and gave the boys and girls enormous treats without distinction of de- nomination. He was not in parliament : Hobbes re- presented him quite well enough, and was often ready to quote his authority. In short, he was a crack country gentleman, — a class of men which possesses the quality of dying hard, at least as a class. Threatened men are said to live long ; and they are a good deal threatened. I U4 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Flora and Susan put on all manner of wraps, and walked along the path by the water, at the bottom of the park, looking for nice vistas and calm reflections. Coots and moor-hens would hardly move for them ; rabbits stood at attention on their hind-legs as they passed ; a pet doe came trotting up for some bread ; and the unanimous rookery gave a loud cheer as the pair passed below. Lastly, there was a hollow sound of hoofs on the old turf; and a great, long, brown mare came up at a gallop, with mane and tail erect ; passed them, fell into a trot, and turned round ; whinnied and wouldn't come any nearer ; turned away, and round again ; finally came close up, putting her soft tan nose into Flora's hand, and consented to have it stroked, with an expression which seemed to say, ' Somehow you're not the one I mean ; but you will do.' 'Why, old Catty!' Catty was short for Catapult ; and this was ' May's old one,' so called by all her friends, just going to begin perhaps a fourteenth attempt or so at hunting condition. Nobody quite knew how old she was. May would only say that the sum of her years and her mare's amounted to three figures ; which seemed open to dispute on arithmetical and physio- logical grounds. She was called Catty ; and the other — Mariquita, a little bay with black points — was called Kitty. Shortening names is a terrible habit : I don't know whether women or young men do it worst. There was a bear in Ch. Ch., in my time, whom Frank Hart- land, his proprietor, insisted on calling Tignath Pelezer, for no other reason than that, in the very unlikely event of the bear's ever learning to answer to any name, it would cut down so admirably into Tig. But that was nothing to the Merton men : they always called their OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 115 stroke - oar Tom Bolton ; his Christian name being Charles. People asked why, and never got any answer, except, ' Of course ; don't you see ? His brother's name was Bob.' Anyhow, for the purposes of my tale, the horses got to know themselves by their abbreviations ; and so it came right, generally. Catty's affections soon betrayed her into the hands of two or three stablemen, who led her off to clipping and singeing, fresh box and paddock new. Susan put up a gentle, though, as she said, perhaps a rather impudent petition, to be allowed to give her her gallops now and then ; and Flora only deigned to answer, that, the sooner May came home to sit upon some young ladies, the better. Then they came on just the spot for a woodland and water drawing. There are a thousand such, accessible to all the sketching world, in old parks all over England ; and the question arises, Where will dwellers in towns go for subjects, when they have turned the parks into building-lots? as the first proceeding of builders is invariably to cut down every green tree, like Jewish reformers. Echo answers, as usual, that she don't know: meanwhile the woods and waters will last our time. Flora and Susan sat down near the water's edge, in a place where they got a foreground perspective of big stones along the bank, leading into their proposed picture. The ground was all covered with the greenest autumnal moss and red whinstone, with patches of fine gravel here and there. Great beeches spread hands all round, fringed with scarlet and orange, yet massively green : now and then they admitted a glint of mild sunshine ; but, generally speaking, there were soft, mottled clouds, which prevented that additional complication. The pool was one brown unbroken mirror, though a tolerably quick stream ran through it from the moors. It was the last I 2 n6 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. of a series ; and its outlet was closed by a strong dam, with a streak of orange gravel walk on its top, backed by great trunks and heavy foliage. Big trout moved occasionally, as if on purpose to make nice long lazy ripples. All round it, except for a break of sky through large trunks at the lower end, stone met stone in reflec- tion, and gnarled roots twisted on to infinity, and the water-flag bent over her own image, and one stratum of boughs below another led where height met depth in the little mere. All was red and green on varied olive ; and all the lines seemed to radiate from it as a centre : so the sketchers recognized the great advantage of having a picture ready composed to their hands. This is one reason why advanced students of landscape should always look for subjects among calm waters and clear reflections, — first, that in such places Nature gives them a lesson, not only in form and colour, but in that uncon- scious faculty of arrangement and selection which makes up or composes a picture out of Nature. You can't put in every thing : you must take a little, and leave much ; and reflections are well-marked characteristics, which are sure to assist you in your choice. Secondly, nothing calls for or rewards faithful diligence and patience so much as this kind of subject. You have to do every thing twice, and are comforted for it by seeing your work get better for every right touch you put on. 'How am I to begin this, dear?' asked Susan. ' Take the boat-house first : that yellowish thatch and green moss come very nicely in the water, and the tarred sides ; and their reflections are capital. Draw them in first, towards the middle of your paper, not right in the middle. Make its size about one-sixth of your picture, height and length. Yes, that'll do ; now measure by OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 117 that one-sixth, as if you were drawing a cast by head- lengths, and see how much you can get in. Not room for much sky, but quite enough. Make it very gray when you put it in, no white or blue, and no sunshine in your picture, there is so much variety already. Now draw in those branches that are drooping down near us on the right, and reach down to the boat-house, only main outlines in right proportion up to the edge of your picture. There are some others opposite, like them ; just put in their ends. There ! that frames your picture in radiating lines. Now the water-lines, now those reflections of the farther-off trees, that come in so nicely, then sky-line, tree-tops, stems, and principal forms. Map the thing out, and let's have a look before you begin to colour.' Susan pondered and measured, and sung to herself in little abstracted snatches, and at last produced a firm pencil-sketch in lines in which (under catechetical ex- amination) she was able to point out a signalement of stem for stem, mass for mass, and reflection over against reflection. ' Now, right or wrong, — and nothing ever seems right that represents lines as one sees them, — just put in • all the dark stems strongly with the brush to your out- line. They must be your landmarks ; and you will see by them where you are in your work, and look on Nature and it as things really related to each other.' ' Goodness, Floy ! who ever taught you to talk that way ?' ' Charley and Mr. Ripon, of course. I've drawn this place with them two or three times ; and I quite know it by heart on a day like this. It is one of the autumn favourites ; and they quote Tennyson about it quite rampageous. 5 n8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 'What lines — " When the rotten woodland drips, And the leaf is stamped in clay"? — That's too rough.' ' No, that may do at the cover side in February, but let me see, — "A spirit haunts the year's last hours, Dwelling among these yellowing bowers : To himself he talks; And all day listening earnestly, At his work you may hear him sob and sigh In the walks ; Earthward he boweth the heavy stalks Of the mouldering flowers " ' — quoted Flora, as if she never meant to stop. 'Is that morbid, I wonder?' said her friend. 'It's very nice and very sad, and more like dreaming than drawing.' 'Well, look at this sketch — six hours' drawing last year, and about half done. I think there is steady work in it, and only felt tired after it, not demoralized.' ' Yes, that is very like to-day. Tell me the steps, if you will, dear.' 'Without coaxing. I've got their notes and descrip- tion at home, and you can see them this evening, with May, who knows more than I do. Look, it is just as it was last year. The frost hasn't done much in this sheltered place ; and the beeches are green with red fringes. So this will be a red and green picture, and you must not think of having sunshine in it. When the sun comes out, there is nothing to be done, except draw in foreground forms. A picture with sunshine in it is mainly a picture of sunshine ; and you have to give OUR SKETCHING CLUB. up form and colour for it. Now just see where your red jewels are to come in the green. Have three sprays on one side, and four on the other, no more ; just outline them. Ready ? ' 'All right.' ' Now run emerald-green and yellow ochre (or gam- boge for the brightest parts) right away over every thing but the red — thin and bright. And, while you are mixing that, mix some raw sienna, light red, and indigo, rather in a scale warmer or colder (i. e., with more or less of the red and yellow). Go over every thing with the pale green. Don't take too full a brush, and puddle it or flood it, but have plenty of the tint ; take it with a moderately full brush, and always mix it well in your brush, then it flows evenly, and that's half the battle. That runs nicely : now it's nearly dry. Now take some of the dark mixture, and touch it on where you mean to have masses of shade : it saves time, and you get an idea of what the thing is going to be. It is such a change from outline to colour, that one loses one's head along with the pencil-lines almost to a certainty. Leave the red points only, and let dry ; then put the red on, orange-vermilion — you can "take it down" easily enough after. Mind you let it all dry enough/ (Industrious pause, Susan reports progress.) ' Well, that's a good beginning. Can you see your pencil-lines still ? Now take a good piece out of the middle of it, and try to finish that as a specimen to give tone to the rest. Match the tints of principal masses, and leave blots on the margin, to try others over them. Now you have on pale emerald and yellow ochre, here and there gamboge : that is only for the ends and edges, after all. Now take some indigo and light red with the gamboge, or, if you want it colder, crimson lake instead 120 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. of light red. Mix it up well, a thin tint : try it on the green blot in your margin. About right. Now put it on in proper form, so as to begin to round the masses of leaves, as if you were putting the first coat of rounding-shade on a jam-pot, — all over, except edges and points and the high lights, as you see them. No, you mustn't leave that edge because it looks pretty, accident- ally on your paper. It is not there in the actual thing, and, if you keep it, it will put you out in working from the actual thing. Look at the boughs themselves, and think of nothing but the solid, rounded, projecting form of the actual masses. It is very difficult to see ; but in fact every mass of leaves has its high light, and all the rest of it is darker than that high light ; and so with every tree. You can't give all the lights, or their infinite distinctions ; and the only chance is to leave the high light of every tree or mass, and go slick over every thing else.' This harangue was partly delivered from notes on the back of Flora's old drawing ; and 'at the end of it Susan felt — or said she felt — very respectful, and, like obedient Yamen, answered ' Amen ! ' and did as she was bid. ' Carry it all over the water. You can't have any high lights there, or second ones, indeed, as it is now in dry light without sunshine. Let dry, and then do the reflections as you see them, adding shade over shade, broadly, and without detail : keep that to the last. The third coat will improve it beyond any thing you can expect ; and the dark stems and deep shades behind will do every thing when you put them in in good form. Have faith : it's going on very well, because you're doing very well. You see where you are in it : there's your tree, and there's its reflection. Take a little time now : you're quite flurried and tired.' OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 121 ' No. Let me only get on with it.' ' Then take up that foreground stone. A greenish gray first (all over), cobalt, light-red, and yellow ochre. There is some red on it ; and nothing does so well as vermilion for whinstone. Try and hatch it on in faint lines, — you can't make them too faint. Dry the tint out of your brush on my blotting-paper. Now, then, ever such light lines there where the gray turns to red on the top and side. It will be dry in a moment. Now the dark side of the stone firmly with the same gray, only twice as strong. There ! your stone looks solid : it is just like drawing Charley's block in his perspective letter. Now put on the moss in patches, as it grows : first coat, emerald and chrome ; second, raw sienna and indigo, with a little of any red ; third, add a little crimson lake to the last, with some more indigo ; and keep some black touches in reserve, — sepia or violet- carmine. Let me just do a bit. This is what I mean.' ' Dear, how the forms and lights come out as you put in the darks ! ' ' Of course. One must not care too much for form in the first two or three coats : it will always come after- wards, if one knows enough of form ; that is to say, if one is used to draw the detail of the sort of subject one is working at ; as we all ought to be, and are not. Cover the paper first, and get a general tone of right colour, and the shapes of the masses ; then you begin to cut the forms out accurately by the darker shadows, — from light to dark always ; and get forms by outlines of your shadows : that's the principle.' ' Won't this be a very green picture ? ' 'Well, isn't this a very green place? But why shouldn't it, after all ? If you come to that, it will be a green and red picture. Put some more vermilion on 122 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. those red sprays in the green setting : you can't have a pleasanter contrast than that ; and it is nearly as simple as black and white. If we hadn't those sprays, we would put in a raw-sienna fawn, drinking, with brown- madder points, I think, and a little white on him. Stop ! we'll have one anyhow : you can put him in there against the dark. Draw him in first in pencil, and take his outline off with brush and blotting-paper. Look, now, how all the reds flash on the green, like lights on dark : that is real opposition in colour. 5 ' I should say you were a wonderful and exemplary person, if you weren't so good to me.' ' Well, now, to-morrow we go to Blackbourton Grove ; but next day, or whenever you get this sort of day, come down here again for three hours or so, and carry it all out this way : after that you will see what you've done, and what it is really like. I think really it is turning out capitally. You can't possibly enjoy it your- self till you have got indoors, out of sight of the original. Nature is a rum 'un ; and you can't like your copy in her presence.' Half-past one, I declare ! and there's the bell for lunch. We began at half-past ten : let's do no more now, but let well alone. You won't want the fawn : the red leaves are enough. Landscapes ought always to be exercises in two colours, or three at most. Charley says that is the one important thing we are all learning from French landscape now, — the keeping a picture in one consistent opposition of colour, properly composed and opposed, in green and red, as it would be in light and shade.' ' Ah, that was a good example he sent us, of gray rain-streaks over a mere wash of light red and yellow ochre, that passed for sea-sands, with the black cor- morants and white gulls blown about over that long OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 123 heap in the foreground, with a suggestion of dark-blue rags : that was a picture somehow, though there was no form in it, or colour either.' ' There was fact in it, or genuine sentiment of fact.' £ Why does that sort of hint affect one so much, and so particularly in a mere sketch? The lines and tints themselves have a plaintiveness about them, like sound from strings, you know.' ' Well, the thing suggested or symbolized death, you know, with some beauty, and no disgust, only sorrow. I suspect Charles has really a dash of genius in him. But really, you know, suppressing detail in a picture is often like a judicious use of asterisks in a literary catastrophe : it is an appeal to the audience's imagination. All sym- bolisms or comparisons are that ; and it may be made ably or stupidly. It is just the same sort of appeal, made in an empty, vulgar way, to say that Mr. So-and- so rode, or shot, or did any thing, like Old Boots : it is only telling whoever it is that he knows what you mean better than you can, or care to, express it.' ' Charley and you get very philosophical sometimes ; and you give your reasons so, — why, and because, or the curious child answered.' ' Come in to lunch.' 124 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. LETTER XII. COMMENT BY CHARLEY ON THE ABOVE SKETCHES. TOMBUIE, ROSS-SHIRE, Oct. 20. These are both good drawings, so good, that I re- commend Nos. the most advanced of our club, to take up some subject of this kind. A portion of the work, or at least the central part and foreground of it, should, if possible, be finished in colour at the first sitting. I think subjects like this can be found easily enough anywhere in England or America, — simply calm water, reflected trees, one or two stones, little or no sky, and clear pale light, without sunshine or sharp shadow. For the rest of the club, my next letter or two will be about tree-drawing, beginning with a little discussion as to what character is in things in general, and, consequently, what it is in trees. Perhaps, I had better get that preliminary talk over now ; but first let's have a short analysis, or log, of this woodland and water subject. It will save much time, in this and other sketches, if you prepare your paper at home by washing it over, first with yellow ochre, very pale at the top, and deepening towards foreground, and then vice versa, with gray from foreground to distance and sky, deepening towards the top of the paper. These paints, then, come first, — yellow ochre, cobalt, light red, yellow ochre, merely to tone the paper. On this flat ground draw all the principal lines firmly in pencil. Some of these lines, in wood-scenery, are sure to be either the stems or the bright fringes of the prin- cipal trees. For the present, the stems will be your landmarks, and, by comparing them with your view of the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. subject, you are to know where you are in your picture. So put them in firmly, — say in burnt umber and a little indigo, — and let dry. Settle where you will have the red sprays, or rather, let Nature settle it for you. Then go over every thing, except those sprays, with emerald- green and gamboge or yellow ochre. Then all your paper will be green-leaf colour, all the brightest highest light. If you have in any sky, let it be gray, 1 and not interfere with the green picture, jewelled with red, which you are going to have. Never mind how bright the green is now : it is always easy to take it down, never to get it up again. Put in the red with orange vermilion. Next, Remember how you treated the jam-pot. Consider the various masses of foliage as rounded masses, and model them accordingly, — first, with broad light coats of shade, without much outline, only omitting the bright- est greens, then with deeper tints of the same shade- colour. About three successive coats of shade will be enough to give a great deal of form to the outlines, and some considerable resemblance to the subject. Almost any gray you like will do for shade-tints ; but it should be always mixed with the original green, and made colder, i.e., bluer in distance. Do not use cobalt in your sharp foreground shades : indigo is more transparent, and the rule of opaque colours in distance, transparent in foreground, holds good in water-colour as well as oil. In this subject there is no distance ; and indigo will predominate. [Shade-tints, all mixed with the first green ; middle distance. No. i. Indian-red and indigo : for browner green, raw sienna and indigo (first coat). 1 Gray, in this drawing, is to mean a mixture of yellow ochre, light or Indian-red, and cobalt or indigo. 126 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. No. 2. Indian-red and indigo. If you want warmer shade, increase the red and yellow ; if colder, use crim- son-lake instead of Indian-red with the indigo. No. 3. Same again, deepened with lake and indigo. Shade-tints. Foreground. — On gray stones, burnt umber and indigo ; moss to be shaded as a green, with No. 1 tint. On green or bright yellow green, sharp touches of lake, indigo, and gamboge. Tree-stems, originally put in with cobalt and umber, will now look much lighter. Pick them out with characteristic touches, using brown mad- der, or violet-carmine, or some deep purple.] Repeat the same in the water, giving the doubles of the various trees and stones as you see them. When you have got the forms of the reflections in, glaze the whole over with gamboge and burnt umber, adding a little indigo where you want it colder. You have now violet-carmine and sepia in reserve for the extreme darks, and chrome and cadmium for the highest or richest lights. All I have to say is, be very canny in the use of either, and meditate every touch of them you put on. It will save time in the end ; for nothing takes so long as undoing a mistake, and the attempt to approach natural effect by force of colour, at last, risks many errors. The commonest thing in a faithfully worked drawing is to find that it looks spotty, and that you have 'made it out' too much, and tried to draw every thing. Your picture, then, requires what we call ' bringing together ; ' and that is best done by a wash of gray-green (yellow ochre, emerald, and a little gray) all over the masses, or, in fact, all over the whole work. You may try thus to bring the lighter masses together with decidedly coloured shadow. But do not think of doing it by grey coatings over the whole : that OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 127 is sacrificing colour altogether. The last strong fore- ground touches ought, by rights, to bring the whole picture into tone. Do not try to ' wash-down ' or out, or use sponge or pumice, for effect. Let all your finish be in adding fresh facts by fair drawing. It is wonderful how a thing is softened and toned, and all that, by simply bringing parts into their real relation to each other, as you see it in Nature. The dark part of the water here will pro- bably have to be hatched and stippled (i.e., done in fine lines or dots) down into soft darkness ; but that is ad- ditional fact, because it is soft and dark there. You can, in fact, repeat this kind of wood and calm water subject with any manner of well-studied lines and forms of your own. 1 An reste, we are all coming home together in a few days. Rip goes back direct to his Oxford work, the more willingly, he says, because I am to take May to stay a week with the Prseses of St. Vitus, and we mean to work hard at Turner in the Randolph for some time. Hobbes will come and see you, and take council with Jack as chairman of his committee. He gets abstracted and eager for the stump, I think : we hear occasional outbursts in the watches of the night, which make us think he is rehearsing in his sleep. We got a few wood- cocks yesterday, and send them all to you. It would be a glorious act of self-sacrifice, if we hadn't seven couple of snipe for ourselves. I feel as hard as a gorilla, and quite willing to come back to sedentary life ; though, as I don't sit much, but stand at an easel, mine ought to be called stationary. Tell May we have lots of 1 Throughout this book, line means outline of form, which is light and shade representation. Outline is not imitation, but limitation. 128 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. wings and feathers for her and you, including four herons and a capercailzie, and no end of guillemots, also some deer and otter skins. Our ball to all the country came off brilliantly three days ago ; we have all done the handsome thing to the schools at Monar ; and the Meeninster is well pleased, especially with Rip, who has given him lots of his sermons ; rather pluckily, I think, as the Highlander preaches extempore, and has nothing to offer in return except pattern trout-flies. The Club had better work on at trees till the leaves are gone : after that, I will give them a study of fruit for the winter, which I hope will be agreeable, and care- fully done throughout. Ever yours, C. C CHAPTER VII. Letter XIII. C. C. to M. L. My Dear May: Flora says she has a houseful, and that you are to be her art-departmental secretary, for the present. I am to write you a business letter, and, in this instance, business is certainly not unmingled with pleasure : where- fore give ear. This tree-drawing business we are going into will be a long affair; and I fear it may tire out some of the more impatient spirits in the club ; but there is no help for it. The pretty wood-and-water subject sent round with the last portfolio — the pool at Hawkstone, I mean — is too complicated for some of your members, even with the analysis and directions. That is to say, they will get on faster by beginning with simpler exercises on trees. Indeed, the best of us have to go back from time to time to outline, and to simple elementary light and shade : one's memory always wants refreshing with typical forms in any sub- ject. No figure-painter ever leaves off studying the figure, or limbs, in different kinds of action. If you mean to do clouds, you must fill portfolios with memoranda of cloud form. And even the exhaustive Lady Latter- math, and the suggestive Miss Milton, ought to draw simple groups of trees, and sprays of leafage, every now and then, to keep their notions and feelings of growth, K 130 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. spring, and character of vegetation, quite 'cute ; nor do I except you, and, least of all, myself. Now, I think the way into tree-drawing is by a series of technical hand- exercises, taken along with a sustained habit of obser- vation, and mental or actual note-taking, — first from Nature, secondly from other men's pictures, or work from Nature. You have not done full justice to a copy or book-exercise in tree-drawing till you have found where its author got it, or till you have found some- thing in Nature like it. It is a comparison of good models with Nature which will raise you to the level of your models, and make you imitators, instead of copyists only. This is the way out of school work into original work ; out of the Professor's school, as he would say, into his Master's school. I said we would begin with a talk about character in trees and other things ; but let me first tell you my line of teaching. Character is everything ; and our studies of tree-character, I think, must come in this order. 1. Hardingesques : you know Harding's 'Lessons on Trees.' He gives you broad and correct characteristics of various trees for first hand and eye exercises, to give you a general idea of masses and their outlines, and freedom of hand in drawing from the shoulder : this is preparatory. 2. Then you must draw single leaves from Nature. 3. Then boughs and leaves from Turner, or Hatton's photographs, or the 'Fessor's examples. 4. Then trees in winter for trunk and branch anatomy. 5. Then masses of trees, in middle distance, from Turner; especially from the Liber Studiorum, or from other good naturalist models, which may be had or seen almost everywhere. 6. Same from Nature, at various distances ; comparing OUR SKETCHING CLUB. with her touches the way your master-painter (for the time) does his work from her. The best thing I see for you, at least for the less ad- vanced, is to do the copies sent round first ; and then, others like them from Nature, in pen and sepia, or in hard pencil washed over with gray. You can't help getting on that way. All exercises are to be done in pure light and shade first ; sepia, or any gray you may like better : sepia is rather hot to my eye. We are studying cha- racteristic form, and are not to be distracted with colour. You know the word 'character' is derived from yapaaau), which means to plough, engrave, or mark deeply, and is, I suppose, the original word for harass also. The deeper significant impressions one sees on anything are mostly connected with its history, and show what it is, and how it came so : they are its character. You are a great physiognomist, so are all women ; and you judge of a man's x a P aKT VP by the score that is written in his face. Well, I suppose greater beings than we do the same. I don't really know what it means, the seal of God, or the contrary mark, on the forehead ; but I'm sure faces do bear marks of one service or the other. The Persians say a man's fate is written on his forehead : of course it is, he does it himself all his days. All natural objects have their history ; and their external character is its record ; which, at present, only painters can read. You ought all to know about the growth and building up of a tree, because you should all have read 'Modern Painters,' vol. v. chaps, i-x. The fact is, theory like that will teach you practical drawing. It gives you principles, teaches you what to look for in Nature, and to draw with understanding, not waste life in uncomprehended imi- tation. So many quick-eyed people draw marks in without knowing what they mean. It is the habit or K % 132 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. power of intelligently seizing on features, combining them, remembering them, reproducing them, which makes great poets or painters of those who possess it in its highest degrees, and good sketchers of all who will try for it faithfully ; for everybody has the capacity of intelligent drawing, in the first instance, who knows one tree from another. Now, Harding's books, Lessons on Trees in particular, ought to be in the club library : you haven't one, I know, but you should have. It is very easy to copy and fol- low, and that is not all ; for it is always right as far as it goes. But you must try to go farther ; for you have to learn, not so much to draw from him, as to draw from Nature as he did. His abstracts of chief forms of oak, elm, and all trees, are capital ; but, when you go into a wood to sketch, you will find it very difficult to do anything from Nature like Harding. He passed many years in observation, and in working out a method of execution of the chief facts he observed in Nature ; and that with a precision of judgment, and skill of method, which makes everybody see the broad differ- ences in a moment. Then he gives you exercise after exercise for the hand, like scales on the piano : I don't think any one else has done it better; and he did it first. A certain play of hand in doing outlines is ne- cessary, though conventional : the great danger is to rest in it, and think that you need not look at Nature because your master did. If you do not go from him, or with him, to Nature, you will get into a way of doing nonsense-foliage, which you may think like his, but which really is not so, because his had knowledge behind it, and yours has not. This bough is a common hand exercise. You should practise it on a board or on your blotting paper, always OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 133 from the shoulder. But it is good or evil as you use it, — good to steady your hand, to give confidence, to teach you to work freely and evenly from left to right, as well as the other way. It means, in fact, nothing but radiation in ovoid form. There is no more sense in it than there is melody in a scale : but a certain readiness of hand is necessary to playing or drawing ; and I think it may be gained or helped on by practising this radiating form, which Harding makes the type of all tree-forms. If you get tied to it as a conventional method, you will never make progress from Nature. Doing it is not in Fig. 4. fact drawing, so much as preparing your hand to learn to draw pleasantly. Take this nonsense branch (Fig. 4). You may consider it as a convenient way of blocking out masses of leafage. In figure-work, the first 'block out' in almost straight lines has often much of the spirit of the form that is coming, though only done to get the 134 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. right proportions for an outline. And, if you consider this Hardingesque spray as an introduction to close drawing of leaves as you see them, you will be following him more faithfully than if you give imperfect abstracts of him, as he gave imperfect though excellent abstracts of Nature. Then, as you have power and opportunity, you must haunt the modern galleries, and look hard at Brett, Inchbold, Alfred Hunt, or Goodwin, or any of the better water-colourists. When you see trees well done, first understand why you like them ; that is to say, make clear to yourself from the picture what that par- ticular natural charm is which the artist meant you to see : then try and find it in Nature, and finally try and do it for yourself. Well, practise this sort of thing on your board or Fig. 5 blotting-paper, and now compare this bough (Fig. 5) with the block-out, or scale-practice bough (Fig. 4). What are the differences that strike you ? and which of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 135 the two do you like best ? — I daresay some of you will like the wrong one. In the first place, the nonsense-one looks freer, as they will call it. So it is, — freer of mean- ing or interpretation of Nature. There is spring and radiating line in it, nothing else whatever. The other is a nearly perfect outline of bough and leaves, calculated for its light and shade, and ready to have that put on, so as to make it the perfect form of a bough. (I mean to go on repeating this difference between line and form at you, till, as Dr. Liddon says, I have produced a kind of physical indentation on your minds.) The Turner bough is drawn under severe remembrance, or in the actual presence of the actual branch, and is bound to truth accordingly, — to all manner of truths about it, great and small. But see how light and feathery the boughs really are, and how their truth really makes them free! Why do they look to hang in that living way, all blowing and growing down to the ends of the leaves? Because they are foreshortened, or drawn in the strictest perspective, — far stricter than any rules of that joyous science can ever teach you to do. Those little edge-touches are edges of leaves in perspective : without them, the bough would not come forward as it does. The leaf-sprays are all like lightly-spread fingers, 1 as you may see,' — and as I have seen with great contentment, — ' Your own run over the ivory key, Ere the measured tone is taken Of the chords you would awaken.'— (I always think, like the 'Fessor, that one of the best things in music after dinner is to see white hands fly.) Well, you have true freedom in that Turner bough, — the liberty of being right ; and I for one don't care for any other. 136 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. This comparison of spread hands will carry you all a long way towards intelligent tree- drawing in all varieties. You know how people talk about the fanci- ful comparisons in 'Modern Painters' and 'The Stones of Venice,' without the faintest exertion to understand their real meaning. It is only one instance of what is called the practical character of the English mind ; that is to say, its utter inactivity when it isn't paid — handsomely and immediately. Well, anybody who will understand the meaning of the terms 'shield-builders' and 'sword-builders,' as applied to trees, will be re- warded by having an idea about them which will prevent his drawing them contemptibly wrong. You've heard of a Roman testudo, 'the tortoise creeping to the wall,' the cohort of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, and holding up shield overlapping shield, like a coat of scales to keep off stones and darts ? Well, when you stand under green boughs in a shower, you stand under just such a shelter. And, in drawing a tree, think of it, if you can, as one set of shields over another, remem- bering that indeed every leaf is literally a protection for a small bud ; then you will be more likely to draw branches in perspective, and make your tree at mass- distance look cylindrical or conical, not as flat as if it had been squeezed in a book. One sees many drawings, where the artist has evidently no notion of a tree at any distance as a rounded thing, one testudo of leaves above another, but as a flat surface, curiously shaded without meaning. This is most glaring, perhaps, when one remembers the way people used to draw firs. They are sword-builders ; and their leaves are not like shields separately. But you know the old ideal like a flat-fish's bones. I see the same sort of thing to this day in Swiss pictures ; though Calame has brought almost everybody OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 137 on with him into ideas of reality. Think of your pine spreading arms all round as he does his crown in old age, one umbrella over another ; then you can't draw him like the skeleton of a colossal sole. Tree-drawing is particularly difficult, because it makes continual demands on intelligence, like all other drawing, and they are not honoured so readily. People will try to do it by rule of thumb, and without reason. But now for a general succession of exercises. First, get your hand in a little with Hardingesque foliage. Second, trace this Turner bough exactly, with transparent paper and a sharp F pencil. Third, with the help of your squared glass, enlarge it, and draw it about four times its present size. Fourth, go out with your copy among elms or beeches, and look for a drooping branch in perspective like this, and draw it as you see it in the same style, trying to express every fact you notice in it, taperings here, swellings there, ramifications and leaves as you see them. By the time you have done all that, you will know what it is to draw a branch. Then (fifth) take any tree you like, in winter or early spring, when he is bare. Get his skeleton right in pro- portion, with your squared glass or thumb and pencil, and draw all the main branches as they spring from the trunk. It is drawing the skeleton of the tree, I know : and I want you to draw that, and yet not to draw human skeletons. And if you will ask why, it is because we don't exhibit our bare bones annually and healthily in a living way, and trees do. But character is everything ; and you cannot learn the character and essence of different trees so well by any- thing as by drawing their structure. For the tree is verily built up from the seed, limb by limb from leaf 138 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. on leaf: it is a tower of cells and leaf- fibres. Attend particularly to the insertions and forks, and the mus- cular development of the trunk in those parts and else- where. c Master him at his arm-pits, and you can draw him anywhere.' One of the best passages, at least to me the nicest, in 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,' is the talk about American and English elms and oaks. That man could have drawn like a landscape painter, if he had not found so much else that he could do. Thus he says, ' There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for instance : we find it always standing as the type of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought of the single mark of supremacy - which distinguishes this from all our other forest-trees? All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting gravity : the oak alone defies it. It chooses the horizontal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight may tell ; and then stretches them out fifty or sixty feet, that the strain may be weighty enough to be worth resisting. You will find that, in passing from the extreme downward droop of the branches of the weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a circle. At 90 the oak stops short : to slant upwards another degree would mark infirmity of purpose ; to bend downwards, weakness of organization.' I put this passage in my letter, because it is a type of that artist-naturalist pastime of observation under every green tree, which, with education, makes the land- scape-painter, and without which a student will hardly do much. You must all be born with it, I should say, be- cause you've all got souls ; at least I'm not Turk enough, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 139 or advanced thinker enough, to think of you in any other light; but it is wonderful how this interest in Nature goes on increasing in any man who will observe. To see is to enjoy: but hand-work is necessary to accurate sight ; and that is why a non-draughtsman is less fit to be a critic ; because he has not given that powerful attention, or in- tensity of gaze, to his subject, which the artist is practised in giving. No doubt, unintelligent drawing is as great a dulness as unimaginative description without pictures. At first sight of that Turner bough, you perhaps don't like it. Draw it, and you will see a great deal more in it. Compare it with another drooping bough, and draw it again : you will see that it is a quite infinite abstract of branch vegetation. And it is so with all Turner's landscape work : no other man's are such re- cords of delighted observation and record of natural phenomena. Let me talk of artistic observation, though science claims the word : I mean appreciation of the beauty of phenomena. Keeping a rain-gauge is observ- ing phenomena ; taking pleasure in registering from it is recording with delight, scientific delight ; to draw and imitate is to record with delight in beauty. And, as far as I know about being happy, one is so in working at this kind of record. I don't care if the picture suc- ceeds ; I have done it, and had my day. The closer you can keep to the visible facts, the stronger the delight, and the better the work : but you can't give them all ; nobody ever could : and you must select for yourself. And that makes all true landscape-painting original. Every man's honest delight in Nature is delight in God's work, and his pleasure is a pleasure of his own. But, besides that, all draughtsmen see different beauties, delight in different features, and rejoice in recording different touches of character ; and if a dozen men are 140 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. all drawing at Bettws-y-Coed together, same subject at same time all round, it is possible for them all to pro- duce original works together. Any subject is great or original to a man of the right size. Corot is charming to us, who want to do fifty things he never cared for, because Corot had a genuine delight in common things : he had the charmed eye, and delighted in the act of seeing. David Cox, with twice his range, was the same sort of man ; and both are, I hope, blessed in their work in a real sense, though they are not men for students to follow implicitly, or indeed far. Now, all winter you will want subjects for practice. I have given you a good deal to do already ; but next letter I will try and send you some bits. I think oak, birch, chestnut, and pine are the four most typical ex- amples you can have ; and that, if you learn those first, other trees will be easier to do from Nature, or to make a good conventionalism of for yourselves : if you add elm, your set of standards will be complete. You may take them from ' Hatton's Photographs of Trees ' : they are published in London ; and the Department Schools use them. In some sense they are better than Nature for study of form : the leaves are quiet ; and the whole thing will wait for you. Now, I think that's enough for the time ; I am sure it is if the club mean to do it all. Everybody should do the Turner bough. Let me see all the exercises, and do them twice, thrice, or four times the size I send them by post : it is capital practice for you, enlarging by means of the squared glass. I shall be in Oxford late in November. Floy said you were going to visit the Prseses of St. Vitus's. , He always likes a house full of ladies ; and this distressing though amiable weakness will have one satisfactory result, for OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I 4 I I'm coming to live in Jack Spigot's rooms in Ch. Ch., meaning to work at Turner in the galleries. That will be nice for you too, won't it now ? You must take up a horse with you : I mean to. Nothing will do in these muggy days so well as a little hunting. Good-bye, my dearest May, and believe me Ever yours affectionately, C. C. CHAPTER VIII. WE suppose we may remark, without immediate contradiction from the scientific press, or any painful controversy about priority of observation, that there is a great difference between winter and summer. It is perhaps more noticeable in Oxford than in other English towns, as trees are so pleasantly scattered among the old walls, and the summer contrast of gray and green gives a charm of colour to the whole place \ But on this day in chill November, the idea derivable from the ancient city was simply that of dirt, and all dirt. It rained in a fitful way, ' and the wind was never weary ' of displaying that policemanlike faculty of coming round the corner, which it possesses in a special degree in Oxford, because there are so many detached buildings. Messrs. Abbott and Firkins, the gentlemen's mercers, felt a calm satisfaction in observing from their shop- 1 [Note by C. C. — I want my upper division to do me a subject in gray and green ; either a tree near an oldish stone building, or a gray stone cottage among trees. I allow some moss in foreground, red, brown, and yellow, but had rather not see it. Use cobalt, light red, yellow ochre, indigo, and a little black for the grays, and keep the greens deep, — early-summer colour; emerald and gamboge, indigo and Indian red into that — lake and indigo to darken — glaze emerald and yellow ochre if you want to bring it together. Dark-gray sky. Get all the colouring you possibly can out of the green and gray.] OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 143 windows the showers of hats which kept blowing about the High Street, and the frequent change of umbrellas from convexity to concavity. All the schools were open, and worried-looking examiners were rushing about with bundles of papers. It wasn't a hunting day. The racket- courts were full of screams and steams ; the carriers' carts were three deep all down Broad Street ; and their proprietors were stumbling about Corn Market, engaged in conversations very like those of their prototypes in Henry IV. And Charley on Warhawk, and May on Kitty, were picking their way down that still rather picturesque old street in the direction of Port Meadow. Jack Spigot had lent him rooms in Ch. Ch. for a month ; and he had brought May on her visit to St. Vitus's. The two still took each other coolly, on the ground of distant cousinship and near friendship. No two people could like each other more. Everybody gave May to Charles, almost including herself ; and yet they went on, not regularly engaged, never talking of love, never flirting with anybody except with each other. They were rather surprised at not being desperately in love, and hoped they were going to be some day ; but it had not yet come off, and they had both rather lofty ideas about not marrying without it. They had been so much to- gether, that they were like brother and sister ; and Charles was sometimes angry with himself for being so like Tennyson's young man, who ' Because He had been always with her in the house, Thought not of Dora.' And it can't be denied that he had an apprehensive hankering for what he called his liberty. Nobody was less of a rough or a Bohemian ; but he had many and 144 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. various bachelor friends, artists, writers, and clergy— they were many of them good fellows ; and his life and talk with them was a thing he dreaded to lose. Shall I have to live perpetually spooning May? he asked himself. And will she like it, either, if I do? Even this was doubtful ; and May herself did not altogether know her own mind. She delighted in alternate labour and reverie. Her mother had thought very highly of the painter ; and she would probably have had him any day he had asked her in good earnest : but, till he did so of his own will and with a will, she held back her heart from him. She had seen suffering in many forms, and was, in spite of youth and strength, a grave and submissive sort of person about herself, expecting less in life than most of her age. She could be very happy with him, she thought ; but then they were both happy enough now, compared with so many others. He had his art : it seemed almost enough for him, without her. She had woman's work in nursing, visiting, and schools ; there was a good deal of music to keep up, and she did hard work as a student of art. Each was independent of the other from sheer occupation. Ripon, whom she greatly regarded, felt strongly against her undertaking any fixed rule of de- voted life. She was half angry with him sometimes, because he seemed so determined on her marrying somebody; then she liked him again, because he was so fond of Charles, and clearly never thought of any one else for her. And Charles himself never 'went on' with anybody else. Meanwhile she lived in her mother's pretty house, near Leamington. Her father's old stud groom managed her stable and garden, with a man and a boy; and the old Yorkshire nurse of other days was a sort of dame de compagnie, and very good company too. Mrs. Beecroft permitted Charles to carry off her OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 145 mistress to Oxford with a pretty good will ; for, to do him justice, he made love to all that was May's. They had engaged to go round Port Meadow by their left, and so meet Rip, who was to turn to his right. The rain had ceased, and the wind gone down ; but a heavy gloom and wet darkness without mist brooded over Isis and Cherwell rather depressingly ; and May said she felt as if they were in an aquarium. She never would keep one: the fishes gasped at her to that pitiable extent, and always looked as if they were denouncing her with their last breath. Charles only said, 'De- nouncing you ! they must be very odd fish,' sitting over on one side as his horse trotted on, and looking rather fondly at her, for he admired her original tirades beyond measure. They rode across the still firm turf, looking for the vicar. Port Meadow is a big enough place to give something of the effect of an unenclosed plain ; and horses or cattle at the Godstow end are mere specks in distance from the Oxford end of the race-course. Presently a steadily-moving object came up out of the grassy offing ; and they soon recognized a black horse- man, on a horse of similar complexion, both well known to them, in common with all town and gown, from the Vice-Chancellor to the street-sweepers. They watched the black's even, machine-like stride down the meadow, and saw he was pulling hard, though otherwise on good terms with his square-built rider. He cast one of the small ditches behind him without an effort ; then Rip saw the pair, dropped his small iron claws, and brought his horse round to them by main force. His brown, wrinkled face flushed like a russet apple ; his eyes and teeth showed white like a nigger's, shining all over with undisguised, unmitigated pleasure. ' Here we are again ! Quiet, old man ; stand still L 146 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. then! He's quite above himself to see you, my dear Miss Langdale ; and so am I. How jolly your coming to Oxford ! and how nice you do look, oh dear me ! ' ' I suppose I do. " Weak observation, that of yours, Mr. Ripon," as the professor said to the undergraduate ; but I like you much better well browned.' 1 Ah ! it improves one : so it does taters. So odd, you know ! How are you, Charley ? Warhawk looks short of work.' ' Well, we are come down here for a gallop ; but after all, he and Mariquita could do a short day well enough.' 'Just the thing! The Heythrop meet by the monu- ment at Blenheim on Friday, to-morrow : we'll all go. It is quite a scene, grand, if not picturesque.' 'What say you, May?' It was settled; and they went twice round, then cantered up to the Godstow end, and set their faces homewards on the race-course. The three horses laid back their ears together, and 'gave their small hoofs to the winds;' the distance came rushing up before; the turf sounded deep and hollow, and the green tufts showered behind like rain. Then they steadied a while, and May came to the front ; and they all sailed to the end together harmoniously. How different was the feeling of trotting home afterwards, with swelling veins and highstrung nerves, from the world-worn sensations of an hour before, when Charley left his easel, and the vicar his oft-interrupted sermon ! Let him, especially the intellectual liver, who can find a good horse to his mind, be mindful to keep him in condition, and to do it himself. One knows how much too fast one goes one's self in exercising a horse : one never knows how fast one's groom goes. They always want to get two hours into one. ' We meet at St. Vitus's to-night,' said May to Rip ; OUR SKETCHING CLUB. * but could we not come with you a little now, and see the school and the old church?' ' Certainly. My boy can take home your horses, and you can have a hansom after.' They trotted across Oxford to his abode in Holywell ; and he left them for a few minutes in his study, ob- serving its curious miscellany of classics and fathers, lexicons, guns, and skins, hard chairs and easy chairs, sermons, drawings, daggers, 'godly books and gimlets,' as Charles summed up his description of the place after dinner. Presently the owner appeared, free from boots, breeches, and splashes, in his customary suit of solemn black. They looked at his school, just vacated, and passed on to the little gray church, beautifully restored, and well kept, but all weathered outside in many a tint of purple, green, and golden lichen. Within, the blue chancel-roof was done in gold stars, with a Byzantine vine, and clusters of grapes in crimson, its stem encircled with the crown of David. It was Rip's handiwork in remembrance of Ravenna, and had exposed him to about equal objurgation from the religious and the irre- ligious world. Over the altar it surrounded a mosaic medallion of the crowned Lamb bearing the Cross. On the chancel-arch there was a larger one of the Good Shepherd, imitated from the Callixtine Catacomb. The Sacrifice of Isaac, and the Crucifixion, Jonah and the Resurrection, Elijah and the Ascension, the Rock of Moses and the Blessing of the Elements, were opposed to each other on the walls, in archaic form and rich colour. The principal window, amid much grisaille, had a medallion of Pentecost. The baptistery at the west end was painted with the Baptism in Jordan, from St. Pontianus' Catacomb, or other ancient authority, — ■ all Charles's work, with May, the vicar, and a vanished L 2 148 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. hand, dearest to him, for assistants. Jack paid for the colours ; and Flora gave the mosaics : it had been a happy time. ' Tempera was best, after all,' said Charley : ' when a wall is once dry, it stands very well ; and I must say you keep the church very warm.' 'We do our best. You see, I think we have got at real primitive decoration : let's hope people will learn to distinguish it from the mediaeval in time.' They passed through the churchyard, and stopped a while at a tomb, broadly carved with a cross and crown of thorns budding into roses. The three turned to the East, and repeated the Creed, holding each other's hands ; and, as they left the ground, the four-o'clock bell began to tinkle for evensong. ' I'm going to read prayers : my curates are both away. It is a short service ; and the Praeses does not dine till seven. Cup of tea after in the study, May.' ' Come, you do call me May again. You began with Miss Langdale.' ' I don't want you to keep that name always, anyhow.' May blushed a little vermilion blush of her own, and asked after some verses which she had once heard of as containing a description of his church. ' Ah, it comes in apropos of some Bedouin graves in the Sinai desert: you shall see some day. But there are one or two old people to see before prayers. Here's Charles : there's a warm corner in the chancel for you both.' He looked with an anxious pleasure at the two noble figures and bright faces who stood by him as he read. They were near to each other, he thought hardly near enough ; and he felt their happiness would be great part of his. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 149 They met again at a dinner such as the Praeses of St. Vitus's was wont to give his friends ; that is to say, an extremely good one, with perfectly assorted guests, all glad to meet each other. His banquets were often rather noisy in consequence. People wanted to talk to each other, and did so, on this occasion, all at once. It was decided, among other agenda, that Charles, May, and Miss Crakanthorpe (the Praeses' only daughter, and the delight of Heythrop, Bicester, South Oxford- shire, and Old Berks) should take Rip to Blenheim next day. ' That will bring a great field of the lads out,' said the Praeses. 'You'll go and keep order, won't you, Archivist? Cawthorne's young and impetuous, and Ripon is apt to be run away with, they say.' ' Well, it's generally in the right direction. I've only been told to hold hard once this season. My old horse has his motto, " Be with them he will ; " but the Archi- vist will show us all the way.' ' We'll see some of the fun, if there is any, 5 said a tall man, stricken in years, whose singularly bright eyes and falcon face retained an indescribable look of youth, in spite of the deep ploughing of time, labour, and sorrow, reading of many books, and knowledge of many things, especially horses and manuscripts. ' It's rather a show meet ; but, if I go with you two ladies, why, / shall have something with me to show.' A slight and well-timed frost next morning made it possible to ride to cover without being prematurely in- crusted with the Oxford oolite clay. Two favoured undergraduates somehow got admitted into the court- yard of the Praeses' lodgings, and had the privilege of seeing the Archivist toss May into her saddle, and hearing Mariquita's soft neigh to her mistress, 'just like a sister,' as Gertrude Crakanthorpe said, giving him a 150 OUR SKETCHING CLUB, small foot for the same purpose. Rip met them at the gate; Charles trotted up at the end of the Museum Road ; and, if M. Taine had been present, he might have reconsidered his artistic regret that the Italian cavalcades of the Renaissance exist no more. Charles's old pink was a study of gradated hues. Lord Wharfe- dale and young Devereux were clad in new scarlet, and other delights of fresh buckskins, gold chains, and the brightest possible boots. Rip was all black, or the darkest gray, scarcely relieved by his dark saddle and bridle, bright heavy snaffle and spurs ; but the black glanced and shone like velvet all over. The Archivist looked what he was, — scholar and horseman, a match for Symonds or Simonides ; and every horse in the party was a picture. Gerty and May were in small stiff pointed hats, how fastened on, so tight as they certainly were, the chro- nicler knows not. They had short, black cock's feathers, fresh faces, dark pupils versus blue, with the gallantest figures in the tightest of habits, — one with her purple hair in a twisted cable ; the other with a round nugget of gold on the back of her neck ; ' and all that's best of dark and bright met in their aspect and their eyes.' Could the Romance nations, or the Renaissance period, ever have turned out anything to beat them? The question was thoroughly gone into in a tobacco-parlia- ment that night, with Wharfedale's and Devereux's assistance; and Charles very skilfully closed a dis- cussion, which certainly never would have ended other- wise, except with the summons to morning chapel. He said he could not imagine more beautiful people, in an abstract, general way, than English girls, or indeed men ; but there was no model but the Italian model, and others could not be got into pictures. The same cast of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Italian face and form, Lombard or Etruscan, prevailed, as he said, all through the great pictures of the world ; and they were too many and too great for modern men and their subjects. While Titian and Tintoret remain, you must go after them. Rip stood out for Holbein's Englishmen, and thought that Phoebus, Sternchase, and Tingrind, working together, were strong enough to make the insular features 'rather typical or so'; and Charles admitted that mysterious expression as the party broke up. The morning's pleasure at Blenheim was memorable to the vicar above all others. He seldom saw fox- hounds, except in the course of the education of Master Walter Ripon, who had made his first appearance by the cover side last season, at the age of thirteen. Some- how, people were not much scandalized. The father was unlike anybody else ; the boy was a pretty boy ; and the old Archivist's example was a tower of strength. So the black horse appeared now and then, when hounds met within easy reach of Oxford : and the vicar sat on him now, with a grim smile on his brown face and in his hollow, eager eyes, thinking of a good gallop with May, his second remaining delight in this world ; and disregarding things in general. I know few fairer or more stately scenes, and none more accordant with English notions of Old England, right or wrong, than a meet of foxhounds in Blenheim Park. Quorn and Pytchley are perhaps of louder fame, and Bedale or Bramham have trysting - places more romantic, and dearer to the Northern heart ; but, for all that, when the Heythrop's gallant Master, and Goodall, and the lads in green, the brilliant, swift-looking pack, and the field of regular customers on regular flyers, trot up the long slope towards the palace, and turn off to seek their OUR SKETCHING CLUB. sport, the sight is pleasant to remember, and hard to forget. The turf was blue-gray where the hoar-frost lingered, delicate yellow-green wherever it had been sunned or trodden. Cawthorne duly noted this oppo- sition of colour; and his business eye was quick to observe the clear red-orange of dead brackens, the broad purple and green stems and shadows of the old oaks, the flash of scarlets ' as they fled fast through sun and shade,' the seat and hands of horsemen, and the stride, form, and satin coat of many a well-bred horse and hound. Above, all was delicate blue, soft haze, and mottled cloud ; and below, the British public, or a chosen portion of it, took its pleasure much less sadly than it is popularly supposed to do. As for the sport, they found a fox in one of the small southern covers, and galloped about the park after him pleasantly enough. The predestinarians, as Ripon called the people on foot, of course headed him from the only point which promised a good run ; but the sagacious animal was willing to indulge his devoted followers, and proceeded without over-exertion to Bladon, making suf- ficient stay in the little copses on the way to let in the roadsters. The fences were large and ragged ; but there were endless hand-gates ; and the vicar had to indulge the black with two or three gratuitous jumps, in a manner not unamusing to the field, as the excited animal generally cleared about his own height, without the least relation to the size of the obstacle, and once sent his master on to his neck. Rip promptly reinstated himself, however, and sailed on rejoicing. Then they got back into the park, did a good deal more galloping, and finally lost their fox, with a happy consciousness of having, in all vulpine probability, afforded him much amusement, and not more than a fair amount of healthful exercise. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 153 ' He'll live to run another day,' said the Archivist. ' It's a bore for a flying pack like this to get into a big park, with covers all round, and a cramped country. A huntsman can see and hear hardly anything, and has to ride like mad all over the place, without a chance of a straight burst. Halloo ! what's that row in front ? ' 'Are you aware that the hounds have just run into a kangaroo, and eaten him?' asked a dry-polite man on his left, not moving a muscle at the roar which arose from his audience. It was too true. One of the marsupial de- nizens of Blenheim Park had jumped up suddenly in the midst of the pack, and been incontinently pulled down ; and now some of his disconsolate and diabolical-looking friends approached, hopping on their hind-legs and tails to shelter, and nearly stampeding all the horses, who had never seen such unearthly or pretty things before. The black bolted under an oak ; and Rip might have shared the fate of Absalom, if he hadn't been bald. They turned home after one or two more rather per- functory draws. There was a slight luncheon at Wood- stock ; and then Charles put May up once more, and thought her very beautiful as she looked down on him ; while Rip took the duty, as he clerically expressed it, of mounting Gertrude Crakanthorpe, or Gerty Crack, as her familiars called her, — by no means behind her back. He was very fond of her. He liked all women who behaved not intolerably, or who were, or said they were, unhappy ; but Gerty was a special pleasure to him, be- cause she threw a reflection of her own high spirits over his nervous melancholy ; she was one of the best girls in or out of England ; habitually attacked him about anything or nothing, and always visited his old women. She now began at him the moment they were clear of the inn door. i54 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. ' I was sorry to observe that you came on the Black Monk's neck over that wall,' she said. ' Do you think it's quite safe for a heavy, timid parochial clergyman, getting on in years, to ride that sort of horse ? The Pro- batognomon of St. Turl's knows of a roarer that might do for you, he says.' 1 He wants to have you all to himself, I suppose. What a pity that such an important college-officer should be so given over to bachelor amusements, like horse- dealing, and that young ladies should talk about roarers ! Evil communications, Gerty.' ' He won't allow you can ride at all, you know. Can you tell me why gentlemen always abuse each other's equitation ? ' ' I haven't a notion ; but I think it must be true, as we have both noticed it. I don't think much of my own performance ; but I do like riding, though I learnt it late, we were so poor when I was a boy. I never felt like a workman till we came back from the East, twelve years ago. Four thousand miles on all sorts of ground and all sorts of nags and paces, is a long lesson.' ' Well, he says you ride too short, and roll and wab- ble, and are quite loose in your seat : that comes of the Turkish saddle. If he hears of that performance just now, how he will go on about it ! ' ' You'll defend me, I know : at least, you're sure to give it him about something ; which will avenge me. But don't underrate Arab riding till you've seen it, or mix it up with Turkish, though that is nearly as good.' ' Why, they can't ride to hounds.' ' Nor we to sword or spear-play.' ' And they've no real seat.' ' Nor we anything like hands.' 'Now, Mr. Ripon, I may snap at you, you know; OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 155 but you musn't snap at me. Tell me what you mean about Arab riding.' 'Why, it's so much more pliant and sympathetic, you see, than ours. The rider's limbs, and the swing of his body, seem to guide the horse : they will turn quite short without a bit in their mouths. I've ridden all paces without one in Syria ; and Palgrave says the same of his Nejdees. I saw a capital expression once, that the Anazeh horse under the Anazeh was like the boxer's legs under the boxer, moving with him instinctively, with one will.' ' I'm afraid the Monk won't come to that just yet.' ' No, right ahead is his little game ; and it is agreed we can do that. But it was wonderful to see our old Sheik Salam press his nag with his bare calf, and use it like a spur. He could make a regular racing finish with his bare legs, as if he had been ever such a punisher.' £ Isn't it rather fine, galloping alone in the desert ? ' ' I'd rather gallop with you in Port Meadow ; but I liked the fast dromedary's trot for a few miles by my- self ; it looks and feels very odd and wild.' * What first-rate horses did you see ? ' ' None, to look them over well, except a big one of the old Leopard's, Abd-el-Azeez, at Jericho, — a big chestnut horse. They said he had no price : they value size so much when they can get it. He had good flat hocks, and quarters that reminded me of the pictures of the Flying Dutchman ; but he could not have been a real Nejdee. They kept him rather low in flesh, and he was so very quiet in the midst of lots of screaming women and children, camels and camp-fires, and all that sort of picturesque bustle, which you wouldn't exactly stand, old boy, would you ? ' he said to the Monk, who 156 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. neighed and plunged as if he was only meditating a day's work some time. ' There was a better horse at Damascus, that belonged to Sheik Miguel of the Anazeh ; but he had a temper: at least, he wasn't safe at his pickets, 5 &c. In short, Gerty and her reverend admirer were now fairly launched into a talk about horses ; and, as conversations of that kind seldom or never come to an end by themselves, we have no course open to us except closing this chapter by the strong hand. [Note II. by Charley. — As a study of colour, a hunting-field, in park or pasture-ground, might be made a valuable and beautiful subject, I think. Wood com- plicates the thing greatly; and ploughed land and cut hedges are no pleasanter to the painter than to the hunter. The figures must never be brought too near, however. Modern boots and saddlery are utterly in- tractable in a picture ; and they are more hopelessly vulgarized, because all pictures of the chase, as we have them, seem to be done from a tailoring, or bootmaking, or betting, or horse-dealing point of view. The ideal of the sportsman would really approach to that of the painter. One would want to see, and the other to repre- sent, hounds working or hounds running ; the latter as fast as you like, but in any case, as they actually do both. A pack at work, with the field as attendant on them and subordinate to them, in the midst of faith- fully-done landscape, will always be a good pictorial subject. See many works of Birket Foster's, and Leech's woodcuts. And horses and men singly are subjects. But I fear that Nimrod's run, which is all riding rather than hunting, and that of a rather jealous character, is a different matter. Yet I don't know why racing in a run is more vulgar than racing at Olympia, if you come to think of it : high training, skill and courage, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 157 dignify both ; and as for beauty, a horse and man flying something are very comely in going — as good as a biga or quadriga, for aught I know. But boots are boots, and they won't paint. I wish we could hunt in rough clothes, as we shoot, and have nothing shiny about us except bits, spurs, stirrups, and horses' coats. Shininess is abominable in art, and nothing has any business to flash nisi tem- per ato splendeat usu. Still, if you don't want to bring in staring portraits, and will treat the subject as artist's work, it may be an artistic subject. Thus, in the scene above mentioned, as I see my supposed picture of it, the sky and distance would be painted in the faintest grays, more or less blue, but allowing no actual blue, even in the sky, nor, indeed, any pure white. There should be a foreground of broad, sloping, or converging sweeps of green-gray and white grass (frosted) opposed to yellow- green grass (sunned or trodden). This should be con- trasted or enriched passim with the red of fallen leaves and dead fern, and the frosty parts made very blue in their shadows. There might be two or three hounds in foreground, a gray or white horse at some distance, a chesnut, and perhaps a black, leading into middle distance, where pinks should be distributed as flashes of scarlet, perhaps opposed by gorse or some deeper green, very sparingly, I think. The colour ideal of the whole is simply autumnal tints enhanced by scarlet coats, and deep or bright colours in horse and hound, without enough individuality to call the eye away from the whole scene in its unity. The Heythrop green velvet 1 is an important addition in colour, though diffi- 1 The huntsmen and whippers-in of this distinguished pack always wear coats of green velvet, of some special manufacture for tough- ness and endurance. i 5 8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. cult to bring in ; but I remember Jem Hill's white hair when he wore it under his black cap, and it surrounded his gallant old face in a way which made him a rather grand foreground figure on a white horse he rode. He is commemorated thus in Tom Spring's celebrated ' Pic- tures from Oxford : a Gallop from Bradwell Grove/] CHAPTER IX. ' T THINK you enjoy Oxford, May,' said Gertrude, JL a morning or two after the Blenheim day ; (in the Praeses' garden, green and old ; — wearing dark gray slashed with maize-yellow ; May ditto, with crimson — under a great red-armed cedar — and standing on short, deep turf almost as evergreen — a college garden is a rare thing in these days. Candour compels us to state that there had been a visit to the stables, and a prolonged petting of their horses, not unaccom- panied by largesse of small pieces of carrot). 'Rather, I should say. Everybody is so racy, and you are all so good to me.' 'Then you will be good to us, and stay a long time, till next term at least? That is what papa asked me to ask you, all of himself before breakfast. He declares he is hopelessly in love with you himself; and what is more, I'm sure he thinks you will do me good, you know, and keep me in order.' ' I never could undertake that for anybody, and I think we should both run the same way. But should you really like to have me for a long visit ? They say I ought to see more of the world : it is so nice here ; and I detest London, and Paris too. It would be very pleasant, only it's burdening you and the Praeses.' ' He begs for it himself, and all of himself/ 'Then you'd have to allow followers. My cousin is i6o OUR SKETCHING CLUB. sure to come to see me now and then, when he can't paint any more ; and Mr. Ripon too, — though one can't say which of us two he comes after. But I should like to stay with you, Gerty : we like the same things, and — and you have lost your mother too/ ' Ten years ago, you know ; don't think me unnatural, please, to have said so little of that before you spoke. It is a long time, and I have not forgotten. I think papa feels I am obedient, on the whole ; and I'm very fond of him.' She looked straight up to May, who was little ac- customed to turn her eyes from any woman's, — a man's gaze she never met or noticed, except in vivid talk, or strictly on business. The black eyes and blue met ; and then two pair of scarlet lips, twice over, and May had another friend. ' I'm only another bead on the chaplet ; so many girls like you,' quoth Gerty. 'You are quite a woman's woman, and I think I shall do whatever you tell me.' ' I'm only the string, and all of you are the pearls ; but I really have a pretty long row. You will like my Cousin Flora so, when you go to Hawkstone. I can stay three weeks now ; then I must go to RotherclirTe, and relieve poor Sister Helen, till after New Year ; then I suppose it will freeze. We might all meet in Feb- ruary in the North Midlands, and go out with the Goredale.' 'They say everybody is so jealous about riding in those parts, ladies in particular : the men call them the Cut 'em down Counties.' 'Why, you know riding men are jealous, and abuse each other's horsemanship everywhere, as the Probato- gnomon did Rip's. I like going fast, and sailing old Catapult at places ; and, if one is always waiting for OUR SKETCHING CLUB. l6l people, one can't do that ; but I don't care who is before me if I see the hounds. I couldn't bear to be seen racing any one, unless it might be Flora or Susan Milton for a field or two : I don't care for that sort of vixenish courage girls put on to beat each other : not good form, as men say.' ' How much of our time is taken up with wanting to beat each other?' ' Les rois le veulent^ — men will have it so : they will be made up to.' ' They are hard upon us : it is made our whole business in life to get married ; and they talk about husband-hunting if one tries to transact one's whole and sole business. It is a great thing to be indepen- dent, only in managing for papa. But I should like to have a life of my own as you have.' ' Did you ever take to music or painting in great earnest ?' ' Well, I sing ballads, and like it, and can play things right, for myself, and for children and old people ; but beyond that, and harmonized Gregorians, I never shall get. Tell me about drawing, and come and see my things. I want to make a great effort that way. " Modern Painters " had such an effect on me when I read it in Switzerland ! Look now, could I ever do any thing worth doing?' 'Undoubtedly; but you will always want to do better : as Mr. Ripon said so oracularly, you may be happy in your work, but never with it.' ' Yes, that's it : that dissatisfaction makes me think I might feel like an artist if I couldn't be one. How nice it is to get a thing nearly right, and find it really improve as one goes on ! ' ' Yes : Charles says that is the real pleasure in the M l62 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. operations and effort, rather than the complete work and effect. Soul, eye, hand, knowledge, all. at work together harmoniously, — that's true pleasure while it can last. Do be one of us, Gerty : it will make you almost happy sometimes.' £ My dear, how can you talk so?' said Gerty, very tenderly : ' it sounds so melancholy, and you have every thing, and are every thing, you know.' * Not quite either ; but I do quite agree with Dr. Watts, about not more than others I deserve, and so on. What I mean is, there is something so absorbing in working at a beautiful thing, that it makes one happy in a new way like no other. It is a mental stirrup and saddle ; and when one's in it, one's off the ground and going.' ' A sort of " wings to waft one over," ' sung Gerty. ' I hope it's not wicked, but I have said that so often, coming up to a fence.' ' I daresay ; but anyhow, if you have an art you really pursue, it is a quiet reign or element of your own. And we all want that, we are getting so over-wrought and excitable. Then you know it's the best part of educa- tion and independence. One can do the smaller things in Art as well as men do ; and there are not many of them who dare try great things. You or I really might do nearly as well as Mr. Whichpot or Mr. Qualms, R. A.'s.' ' I suppose it would get dreary and anxious, working for life.' 1 Oh yes ! it's that that keeps them down : they marry us, and then we are dead weights— of course. But all the best men say that the troubles of the artist are one great reason why amateurs should work hard : they have often time to do or find out special things the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 163 bread-winner has not time to try after. If we break down, our failures don't involve starvation. Painting three or four hours a day only would be a holiday to a workman ; but he has to spend a great deal of time in working for the market, and doing himself more harm than good. You or I, well employed, might spend all that time in work that really improved us, whereas the regulars have often to spend it in repeating their own slightest and worst sketches.' ' Three hours a day are a good deal, but I think I could get two.' 'Well, that's twice as much as the Professor's ulti- matum : he talks of how much may be learnt in one hundred hours or two hundred half- hours. So much depends on how hard you look at things in drawing them, and on your always observing and noting things everywhere. Then, you know^ by an hour he means not less than sixty-five minutes of absolute attention. Eager people, who are always roaming with a hungry heart, see and do so much more in the given time.' ' But you haven't told me my weakest points, May.' ' Well, you know this is good student's work : you haven't the usual want of drawing, — lines pretty right, and plenty of form in the distances, — no want of material, as he says. You want what we all want, who are not always at it, — that mysterious quality of solidity in front, leading away into middle distances, and so on. Tone, I think, really means the same : it is the quality which holds a picture together from foreground to zenith. . It is so hard to get, because it depends on habitually good perspective, and Tightness in pitch of shade according to distance. I believe Charles is to tell us something about that, as to trees, in his next letter. I should think more "Liber Studiorum" and M 2 164 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. jam-pot or object-drawing, would be the thing for you.' ' Talking of objects — just look at my portrait sketches !' ' Why, my dear, you must have got this dodge from " Hamerton's Essays." It is so good, — his idea of getting graphic power is by studying people's faces.' ' I suppose you mean, by graphic power, command of character?' 'Yes, of course, — graphic means marking, and cha- racter means mark.' 'That is one of the 'Fessor's principles, — every outer mark to mean something in the heart or disposition or history of the creature.' ' Well, faces are always capital practice when one can do them delicately enough. I wonder which is hardest, now, to see the way things are going in somebody's eyes and mouth, or to see the same in a tree or a cloud, or the bed of a stream.' ' I don't know, — it is all too difficult ; but what is one to do, May?' 'Oh! first catch your characteristic. Here you have the great hollows about the vicar's eyes, and the writhe in his mustache when he sets his lips ; catch your salient feature, and then score it down so that you'll know it again. Rembrandt is the standard, I believe ; then there's Leech ; and for landscape and animals, nothing like Landseer's pen and inks ; Turner's etchings whenever you can get them.' * Oh, my ! ' exclaimed Gerty. ' What an idea ! can't we all go to town, and see the Landseer exhibition ? I'm sure it's going to freeze, look how pink the clouds are. The horses want a rest, and papa wants a day's holiday — and to go with you too — upon my word, that old governor will get quite above himself!' OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 'Miss Crakanthorpe, be explicit and coherent.' ' Fiddle — let's have in Rip!' 'Gertrude Crack, Spinster,' — said May, in the style of Mrs. Chapone, — ' repair to your chamber, and put on your habit, and I'll put on mine, and we'll consider this subject in a manner becoming our station.' So they called to horse, and galloped in Port Meadow before lunch, meeting and racing with the vicar, who always tried to make his daily hour of equitation coin- cide with theirs. Before the expedition (for of course Gerty had her way), the following epistle on tree-drawing came to hand : — Letter XIV. My Dear F. : When one begins about real tree-drawing, it isn't very different from beginning about drawing any thing else thoroughly, because there is no end to it. You know, the best men are only students learning qualche cosa, as Michael Angelo said at fourscore ; and he is the happiest painter who paints the longest. Now, I think that landscape is underrated in this way. Figure-painters, the dullest or most theatrical genre men, despise it, because they think it easy ; never having really tried it, or in fact looked hard at it. The world takes their word against the landscapists, and Nature is considered easy because people have not given eyes and attention to her difficulties. Some of us have learnt more, by working out our back-grounds ; only it takes a painter to make accessories help up the principal figures, instead of drawing attention from them. But as soon as one begins to enjoy one's background, one learns that the endless change and OUR SKETCHING CLUB. variety 1 of landscape make it as difficult to imitate as figures, draped or undraped. One is more multi- farious, the other more subtle ; but a good observer will find only too much to record in either. But the fact is, landscape has not yet been scien- tifically studied, like figure-painting ; and is really purer art, because it is not demonstrable by gram- mar of anatomy. A surgeon understands figures pretty well ; and half the world would rather take his opinion of them than a painter's. But, except for some knowledge of geology, which proves dangerous to fel- lows who set up glacial theories and do drawings to prove them, landscape is still in the empiric state 2 . Rocks and rivers are painted because they are beautiful, one don't know why, and because they are there, one don't know how. Consequently, landscape loses all the scientific trumpets ; and you're not in that vast ring of people who want to get their living by physical study ; and they don't advertise you. We can't prove an Alpine storm or a sea-sunset ; whereas, when a fellow can assert (I can, you know, and I'm sorry for it) that he has cut up human bodies, and knows how their shins are inserted, and is up to the processes of their humeruses, then he can paint any contortions he likes, and the dear old public will think it is high art, and all the vivisectors and sawboneses will warrant him equal to Michael Angelo. It takes some indefinable 1 Note in margin by Flora. What on earth is the difference between change and variety ? Answered in pencil. Variety means multiplicity, — trees, leaves, and grass ; change means different light, shade, motion, and position in one tree or leaf. Would you, then ? 2 What's empiric ? Answer. Rule of thumb, conjectural or in- ventive work ; where you get the effect you don't know how ; like cooking, Plato says. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 167 feeling for nature, and much undemonstrable knowledge of the look of woods and hills, and much hard drawing of one's own, to understand an eight-inch drawing of Turner's. Whereas, anybody in his senses can coach up his bones in a week, well enough to say that the Atlas has his trapezoid muscle strongly developed, and call the calf of his leg his gastrocnemius. That is art on a scientific basis ; and Science will advertise her own lectures by puffing pictures which display that kind of knowledge. If you are led or driven, through I don't know what sustained effort, to paint one mountain as you have seen it, under sun or storm, or both, you and your Master best know the labour it costs, technical and imaginative. But who will care for or believe in your vision of that mountain ? A certain number of ob- servers and landscape-lovers, — all the sketching-clubs I hope, — and if your name is worth money, a number of people will want to get something by what you have done. I don't quite say what Juvenal said, — ' Every thing in Rome has its price.' — I think better of our people when on honour. But I do see that most men here think of money at all times and in all things. I talked to Rip about it ; and he said that want of money means need in general, and that the original curse on human toil under the sun is heavy on painters as well as plough- boys, — and that we are all well off not to be starved, if we follow our own ideas our own way. Which is true. But whether men buy and sell landscapes or not, figure-painting' is thought to be a learned pursuit, because it is respectable, and demonstrable, and con- nected with the doctors. Men are quite sure about surgery, not so sure about art ; and anatomical paint- ings prove their authors have read books, whereas land- i68 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. scape only shows you have observed things ; and ' books against things ' is the war-cry of all Prigdom. Now, the character of trees is of course closely con- nected with their anatomy ; and Hatton's photographs are a valuable step in the direction of more scientific, or better informed landscape. But knowledge of forest anatomy can hardly be so well appreciated as that of the human subject. And so landscape is perhaps the most artistic branch of art just now. First, its higher walks are not well rewarded, the Academy almost excluding its true leaders ; and so it is not utterly mer- cenary. And, say what you will, the intense vulgarity of so much English work comes direct from its venality. Then it is a real study of delight, and does not minister to doctoring or lecturing, or any other means of raising the wind. It is a ministry of pure pleasure to those who have enough purity to take pleasure in it. And its power depends on its character and its authors. I keep saying, The character of a man is the history of his soul ; the character of his works is the stamp his soul leaves on things. What does one see in a good drawing? That the facts are rightly done, and right things to be done, first ; and then that the man who did them was the sort of man to do things right, — a seeing man, a thoughtful man, an honest workman, perhaps a creative or poetical person. You learn something of the spirit of the painter by the work, and form and colour are the material or objective side of art, as character and composition are its spiritual or subjective part. The character of the workman will certainly come out in all he does, as soon as he has reached a certain technical correctness, enough to enable him to do anything. Even bad or nugatory work bears the character, or stamp, of impatience, of vanity, or simplicity, of ambition over-reaching itself, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 169 of apathy or indolence ; — or of the notion born of all these foibles, that landscape is an easy thing, not worth the whole attention of the great intellect now devoted to it. It is a curious observation of MacDiarmid's, that when a class of youngish students is drawing the same cast of a face, every lad, when he begins to be able to draw it at all, does it with more or less resemblance to his own. He, MacDiarmid, has noticed this repeatedly ; and it is a great mystery, going down into £ the abysmal depths of per- sonality V Well, people begin to draw trees, and then come and tell you, in a rather injured tone, that trees are so difficult. They want everything for nothing, as we all do ; and it cannot be had so : they want to imitate an oak in a couple of hours, and those not very attentive hours ; — when they know that it took God Almighty a century to make it, by the laws of Nature. But knowing the difficulty is a great step ; and it is all comprised in the words ' cha- racter' and ' change of character.' There are various trees of various dispositions ; and the disposition of the tree changes with the seasons and its own age. No two trees are less like each other than a young oak and a young Scotch fir ; but their character assimilates by time ; and, as old trees, they have much the same gnarled expression of resistance all round the compass, — both proclaim to the observer that ' it's dogged as does it.' Well, of course form distinguishes the different kinds of trees best ; and colour has more to do with the dif- ferent looks of the same tree, according to season. There is emerald-green, and gamboge in spring ; there is early 1 Pencil-note: Where's that? Answer. I suppose you mean where is that passage ? not what is the exact situation of personality ? — Tennyson's ' Vision of Sin,' of course. 170 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. summer dark-green, bronzed green of a hot August, paler green, and then 1 , in autumn, yellow and red. Ou sont les feuilles d'antan? 2 Never mind, if you have their ghosts in your sketch-book. I said oak, birch, chestnut, and spruce fir should be our four standards, or typical trees, to begin with. Beech, ash, or elm, or walnut will do as well ; in fact, if you mean business, you must draw them all, — we will see how. But stick to one or two favourite kinds till you begin to verify the general principle of growth as given in 'Modern Painters,' vol. v. It is that the upper branches grow upwards as a rule, and the lower ones droop downwards ; because the upper ones have more, light, and use it by trying always for more and more, growing upwards to the sun they love ; and the lower boughs droop as they get dripped on, and shaded from above, and as the sap always rushes up past them from the root towards the top shoots. For the life of the tree seems to be a fountain of its sap projected straight up- ward like any other fountain. Study this with elm skeletons in particular this winter. They will show you the rationale of that pear shape tree, which the profane used to call the shaving-brush type of tree, in Turner's Mercury and Argus. It is as good as a diagram, of the spiral growth of branches round the stem, of the effect of the uprushing sap feeding the top of the tree first, and of the gradual dwarfing and drooping "and final death of the lower branches year by year. You must know that the Professor has given me his practical book, ' Elements of Drawing from Nature,' 1 For deepest shades use indigo and gamboge, warming it if necessary with Indian-red or lake. Orange-vermilion, gamboge, and lake, will come in as autumn hues. 2 Old French for ' ante annum/ last year. See 1 Les Miserables.' OUR SKETCHING CLUB. pictures and all, to do as I like with for your benefit. I shall not alter anything he says at all in substance ; but it strikes me that you may like to have all, or nearly all, his tree-lessons together, and so I shall change the arrange- ment a little. You have already had his introductory hints on perspective, and lessons in shading and rounding forms. But he now prefers to insist more on outline, and gives me commission to put all who have faith through a fresh training in that. I am so glad to find so many of you willing to take elementary practice up again. It does you great credit, and all artists do it in various ways ; but the reward is sure, and there's no time to stop and praise you. In the first place, then, draw the piece of ramifi- cation at the end of this letter (Fig. 15) at twice its size as there given ; and Fig. 8 (a and b both) at thrice theirs. Then Fig. 6 as follows. Take a small twig, with four or five leaves like this. Draw its out- line at thrice its size, this way. First a perpendicular line in the middle of your paper : on that measure the triple length of the woodcut, from the point of the highest leaf to the bottom of the stem. Then make a four-sided figure, having Fig. 6. one of its angles at the lowest point on the right-hand outline of the stem, and passing through the leaf points. You know correct drawing is all measuring ; 172 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. and all surface measurement is done by triangles, — triangulating, the surveyors call it. And if you are beginning again in search of more accurate drawing, this is the least wearying method, I think. To in- scribe your subject in a rectilinear figure whose sides touch its extremities, divide it into triangles, and use those lines to guide your drawing. They are no part of your drawing : you ought never to have a straight line in your work when it's done ; you only make use of them to determine points and distances. Well, draw the straight lines of the figure very lightly, with a ruler if you like ; then do the main curves, down to the inser- tion of the leaf-stalks. You may measure with a strip of paper; but I had rather you tried to do without first, and corrected by it. You ought to get all the relative distances right, at thrice the size. Then get a real twig, something like the woodcut (p. 174). Put it in water; pin a sheet of light-gray, or white, or whity-brown paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark on the white field. Do its outline right : then do it in sepia, light and shade ; then you will want to do it in greens, which I don't forbid ; only they will vary more than you think, and want accurate matching ; and all the shades are coloured, you know, as well as the lights. Begin with the lightest tint (emerald and gamboge perhaps), and cut out the forms with darker patches of shade, lake and indigo perhaps, for spring or dark summer greens. But you will want other hues in. I cannot tell what they will be, and it is the best practice you can have to find it out for your- selves from the tree, and the paints. If you are put out by the perspectives of the leaves 1 , in 1 For leaf-perspective and outline-study, see end of this letter. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 173 trying to draw very accurately, shut one eye, and draw them as you see them with the other. We all see things stereoscopically with two eyes, and they cannot be drawn so : there's no help for it, I'm afraid. Now, don't you, and May, and the stronger sisters think you are being sacrificed to the beginners — again. Do one of these sprays for me, and I will give you back your free choice of work directly; but even old and good hands must keep up their neatness and certainty by elementary work. My notion of our course from the first has been this. Let us begin with simple leaf out- lines for the pencil ; and a jampot for processes of shading. After that, skies for free use of the brush. Then you go into tree-drawing, because that brings you right in contact with the multiplicity of nature, the first great difficulty. You are gradually helped out of it by seeing how Harding did things, then how Diirer and Turner did them ; then you are set to do bits of nature, then at larger bits, and so on — quite ad infinitum. Now we have got as far as foreground leaves and branches from nature. You have all tried them your- selves, so as to know the difficulties ; and we will see directly how Diirer deals with them. The Turner bough ought to have taught you some leaf perspective. And if possible, before we go on, go to the National Gallery, or wherever you can see leaves by Titian or Tintoret or John Bellini or Veronese. Their backgrounds are often made up almost entirely of leaves, and nearer wreaths are prominent in their foregrounds. You will see how you are now working in this direction. The vine-leaves round the head of Bacchus in Titian's Ariadne, in the National Gallery in London, are about the standard ex- ample for study: the more closely one admires them, the more may one be supposed to know about leaf-painting. 174 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. From branches and leaves to more branches and more leaves, — that is to say to masses of foliage. You have done them Harding's way ; but, as I said, if you want to be like Harding, you must get beyond him, and study nature with his help. I was in trouble about examples to give you, as drawing them and getting them engraved would be such a long, expensive business. And, as I said, the Professor set all right by intrusting me with his old book, 'Elements of Drawing.' It is to be served up to you and the world again without real alteration ; but with charge to insist more strongly on outline drawing. So henceforth we shall have illus- trations out of that book ; and what I write will be its substance, done up in our fashion, and with comments of our own and MacDiarmid's. Fig. 7. Now, to do masses of leaves, you must take a larger bough like Fig. 7 in the Elements, — that is to say, a spray of any tree, about eighteen inches or two feet long, — a terminal spray ending in leaves. Fix it by the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 1 75 stem in anything that will hold it steady : let it be about eight feet from your eye, or ten feet if you are long- sighted. Put a sheet of whity-brown paper behind it as before. Then draw it, every leaf, as you see it against the white ; first in pencil, then in sepia, side on so as to see its length or profile. Then do it again, end on to your eye. Where the leaves cross each other, and run into a mass, run them into a mass ; where they are distinct in shape, do them distinctly. You ought to make two such studies from every common tree, and of the same bough : one drawing in profile of its length, the other end on in perspective 1 . Nothing else can give you that handy knowledge and instinctive readiness in putting the right detail-forms down, which is everything to sketchers or painters, and which is variously called touch, manner, or graphic power. But, as you have got a knowledge of perspective of close leaves and boughs, from the last exercise and the Turner bough, remember it as you get into more distant and larger masses. The profile view ftiay be most important ; but you must understand all the difference between seeing branches in profile and in perspective. For example, fig. 8 in the Elements gives you a spray of phillyrea seen in per- 1 The boughs should be drawn sometimes as seen above the eye, sometimes below, to mark the difference between the upper and under sides of leaves. Fig. 8. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. spective, rather from above, and b the same in profile. But it is quite easy to pluck boughs for yourselves, and look at the sides of them and the ends of them. Next, when you have done five or six of these draw- ings from the larger boughs, take the best you have done, and try how it looks at different distances. There is a difference between a miniature view of a branch close to you, and a full-size view of the same at a distance : both the views may be the same size, but they look different : you don't see the close bough as you do the distant one 1 . The thinner stalks and, single leaves begin to disappear at two or three yards, leaving a sort of vague darkness ; the lights between the masses are less defined, and so on. Let me say it again : you might draw a bough close to you at half its size, and then retire from it, to such distance as should make it appear half its real size, and draw it with the help of your squared glass. Then the first drawing would be a mi- niature, the second a full-size at distance ; and they will be quite different, or should be. You can always measure the full size in your eye of any distant object by holding your paper upright before you, between the object and yourself, and marking off objects, length, &c. on its edge. Try this a little, and you will be surprised to see how small things really look to you. Then try the extremities or edge-forms of full-sized trees at different distances, in pen and sepia I should say, with a light dash of the brush, and work from the edges into the heart of the tree. And I think this is the stage of tree-drawing at which most good students must meet and contend with the mystery of quantity, as the Professor calls it. Hitherto you have been able to draw 1 See Fig. i6, end of chapter. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 177 things as you have seen them : now you must do them conventionally: you can't do all of anything in fact; you must always have peculiarity and tricks in handling and touch. 1 If leaves are intricate,' he says, ' so is moss, so is form, so is rock-cleavage, so are fur and hair, and tex- ture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and dexterities of handling are wholly useless, if you have not gained first the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing ; — so that if you cannot draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree ; and if not a wreath of mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds ; and if not a single grass-blade perfectly, much less a grass- bank ; — yet having once got this power over decisive form, you may safely — and must in order to perfection of work — carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity at hand.' So in order to find out what method can do, you are to look at painters' and engravers' works to see their methods. We have begun with Harding, and one spe- cimen of Turner. We are to copy nature in the end and always ; but that is best done by seeing how Turner did it first. So we must go to the engravers about it. The club must get, and any of you must get for your- selves if you can, the illustrated Rogers's Poems and Rogers's Italy. They contain foliage and everything else, done in a style which gives a real idea of Turner on a small scale. Then one or more of the following prints Bolton Abbey, "] Buckfastleigh, Powis Castle, Chain-bridge over Tees, Marly, from the Keepsake, Pont de l'Arche, View on the Seine with avenue, from Rivers of F ranee. N i 7 ? OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I think, if you will copy some of the trees in these — masses and individuals, at different distances, as they are given — you will grow much stronger in face of Nature. Keep as close as you can to the effect ; for you cannot, of course, work touch for touch with that fine engraving. It is so far like Nature as to approach to her mystery of delicate texture and gradations of tone. ' The texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work can possibly be ; and it will be a great and profitable achievement if you can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of the same volume, or the foliage at pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain ; and if you can once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of the 'Italy,' or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the moonlight at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or moonlight.' You are to study, and you will be glad to copy, these line engravings for the sake of their foliage and dis- tances. Avoid engravers' foregrounds altogether : their distinct parallel lines are demoralizing, and wriggle about in a meaningless way; but the rest of the plates will teach you a great deal about masses, and their tones at relative distances ; and, for what we are on now, the tree-forms are delightful. I should say you had better copy them in gray, with fine sable brushes, as like the original as stipple will get it : one can do things so very fine with the point of the brush, and pale colour, lightly dried on blotting-paper. This will teach you what stip- pling really means, and that its value is in expression — of transparency and delicacy, and often of form also. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 179 You won't despise the engravings as mechanical : no doubt the parallel lines are so, but the foliage forms, which I want you to attend to, are always etched, i.e. drawn with a free hand on a waxed plate. They show you what real work is better than most things. The Chain-bridge over Tees, Ludlow, and Powis have the best foliage of all. I must write you another letter about vegetation in general, and say how to work it up in the winter by pen-and-ink study, of Diirer in particular. You learn such intricacy, and such precision at the same time, from working at his woodcuts. The sort of thing I am now giving you may not, I fear, suit some of the weaker vessels among you ; not so much because they can't do what I tell them, as because they won't. But do you and the select band of customers cling to these lessons, and send me them carefully done, rather than any more Gretchens or Mignons. Miss Milton has been very good about this, and has gained immensely in the last four months in consequence. I don't know what to say to that nice young person. With her voice, ear, and passion, her line is certainly music ; and she is getting beyond the student state in that. But I really think, none the less, that hard drawing will do the Susanette good, and keep her business-like and prosaic. I wish she had to look after a house, like you or Ger- trude Crakanthorpe. It has come to this now, that all artists ought to be Philistines. Fellows are going off their heads, with their symphonies and nocturns. Really one begins to feel that the regular artist had better stick to the real and actual while he can, and trust to the foot of circumstance kicking him up to take his flights when he must. N 2 i8o OUR SKETCHING CLUB, Be that as it may, pen and sepia work is necessary for all of you who wish to go as far as you can. And that you may master it thoroughly, I commend you to the Professor's examples, — figs. 9 to 16. Draw 11 and 12 now, also 10 for the muscular-looking trunk ; Fig. 9. and by draw, I mean imitate every line and touch : you may use compasses if you like, a magnifier if you like, tracing paper if you like, anything else whatever you like ; but imitate these woodcuts faithfully some- how with your own hand. Never mind how little you do at a time, but do it thoroughly. If you will face 13, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 181 you will face anything ; and if you can do it you can do anything in black and white. Fig. 10, facsimiled from. Titian, is a good model for leaves in near middle- distance or foreground. Fig. 9 is a sort of corollary of Harding's system, showing you how to sketch, or make notes of, various forms of growth, applying his system of springing curves in all manner of ways 1 . I shall begin again about outline in my next, though it is to be on vegetation and trees ? there are some more of the Professor's ideas to be insisted on : in that paper I want to finish with tree-drawing and the methods of learning it. You almost all know something of matching colours and laying them on, and I do not think there is much to undo in any of your work ; but I want you to get a proper frame or foundation of knowledge of correct line, form, and substance ; and of light and shade under your colour and expressed in colour. I need not say that knowledge will greatly affect and enlarge your ideas about colour ; but all that will come naturally. So, now, 1 The Professor's description of it comes into my next letter. Fig. 10. 182 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. look at these four wood-cuts, figs. 10 to 13, and do them all in pen and sepia ; or some portion of the last, as much as you can. Keep it by you, and do a bit now and then. No. 11 you must do the whole of, sky and all. It is a regular Diirer sketch from nature, giving things as he saw them. It is in the Oxford 'Manual of Pictorial Art' as well. Notice the trees in it, in groups or masses. Distant trees are defined in nature, for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer tree being shown against the dark part of the rounded mass of a more distant tree. To draw this properly, nearly as much work would be wanted in each tree as in a regular jam-pot done for rounding exercise. You have not time for that on the spot ; and so you define your distant trees against each other by terminal lines, as Diirer has done. 'You will find, on copying that bit of Diirer, that every one of his lines OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 183 is prim, deliberate, and accurately descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a shape, definitely observed and set down ; it contains a true signalement of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that village. . . . ' This use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone when it rises against another tree or stone ; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in water : if these are to be expressed at all, it must be by some sort of shade ; therefore, as we shall see, no good drawing ought to consist entirely of outline, like Retzsch's works, for instance. You see in Durer, No. 11, why he limited himself so much to outline. He wanted bright light all over his plain and hills, that the dark* church and spire might bear them out more against the dark sky; and by those shades, and the light sides of the dark roof, the whole of the country part of the scene is made real and sunny.' I think you must feel Fig. 12. 1 84 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. that all that plain is in sunshine, and that it makes you ' Farewell, sweetheart,' — if that expression is a proper one, — you'd better ask Jack. I must write May a line : I wish I didn't neglect her so, but she never says a word about it, — and here am I in the middle of the Sinai Desert, getting on with the Burning Bush ; and here is Dr. Beke discovering another Sinai. What shall I do? If he makes out a case, we shall have to go out again, and bump on dromedaries all the way to Akaba. I wish she would come too : it would make Araby much blester than I found it before ; only all the tribes of Yemen would fight for her (have you read the skirmish in Herman Agha, by the by?), or she would be set on the throne of the Pharaohs, or something. I think you would be more of a Cleopatra or Nitocris : she would Fig. give the strong lines of the sky credit for dark blue. And if you ever had to do a desert subject, or an Egyptian or Indian one, or even a hot bit in Spain or Italy, — white roof and walls in sunshine, for ex- ample, — you would have to use that effect, if you were drawing it in black and white. The essence of heat and light anywhere is that the solid objects are brighter that the deep blue or heated gray sky, in their lights. Of course their shadows are sharp and strong in proportion. be great as Isis. Ever thine, C. C. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Letter XV. Answer by return. My Dear C. : Received your last letter ; and you say well, as far as I can judge, where art is concerned. But O dear boy ! you are only a boy after all, and don't know that art does not go far enough, — there is love ; and somehow you do not seem to have enough of it in you or on you, just yet. Dear C, I have never said any- thing about her to you before, but I have often and often talked of you to her ; and I think the time is coming when you must take her or leave her ; and if you leave her it will almost break my heart. I know I'm only a year older than you ; but I'm married and settled, and have seen and thought more of these things, and wasting love is like wasting life. It is a liberty my talking to you, but not a great one, we have been such friends. Don't care so much about your freedom, it seems to me to be all smoking-room ; and culture is mere priggism without tenderness ; and as for devoting yourself to your art, why, if your art! went by the name of Moloch or Juggernaut, and wanted victims, it would like to have May as well as you ; and she would devote herself to any right thing along with you. And if you think you don't care enough for her, or she for you, — in the first place, I know it's wrong ; and in the next, love comes on like a tide when one is married, if only people tell each other their hearts, — I'm sure of that from John. I have written it, and here it goes into the bag. I do pray it may do no harm. Good-bye : you work hard for us, I am sure ; but don't work too hard for your own happiness. Ever yours, F. i86 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Note by C. — I cannot leave out Fig. 1 1 in the Elements, though it involved some statements I could not get into my letter. It is a capital woodcut — facsimile of a sketch of Rafael's: and its chief purpose in its place, is to illustrate the simple and straightforward way in which he did his shading: and also to illustrate the difference between incomplete and complete shading. Incom- plete shading (which may be better in many kinds of work than complete) is when you shew your lines, complete is when you don't. In a perfect (i.e. fully-finished) draw- ing, no lines are promi- nently visible, but objects are rounded as if by the brush. In an imperfect, or rather incomplete one you shew your lines, as Durer, and Leech, and Alfred Rethel do : and then it will be better for you to vary their direc- tions according to the forms. Titian's tree (No. 10) shews the lines, and he has drawn them ac- cordingly, in curves round the trunk so as to help to shew its anatomy as well as shade ; so you would do in any etching work : making every line tell is one of the beauties of etching, as a confes- sedly incomplete style of work, having for its object rapid record, excellent but unfinished, and unfinishable. But Rafael's sketch is unfinished in another sense. He has only put down what he meant to do afterwards completely, with brush, or in Elements). OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I8 7 pencil, or chalk, not shewing his lines at all. So he did not think about the direction of his shading lines, but scratched in the rounding forms of the Saint's head and drapery with the easiest straight lines he could draw, from the right downwards to the left. You have been taught also to do your shading by unmeaning crossed lines and stipple, as at Fig. 3 1 . But in doing Nos. 11, 12, and the others, you must make your shade lines tell in a graphic way. And notice how the face and throat here are darkened towards the light : in the drapery of the arms, also : and just remember that Fig. 1 5 . shade is deepest where light falls steepest, and that where the rays are first fully intercepted will infallibly be the darkest part of your shadow. In drawing an orange in light and shade, the little rough- ness of the rind is best expressed at the edge of the light ; because there all the little excrescences meet the rays and intercept them, and so assert themselves in the strongest shadow. 1 See p. 35. i88 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. This is a good example of leaf-perspective at three distances ; you will observe that as soon as it is removed a few yards from the eye, as at (£) it becomes a dark line ; and again at (c) it is almost unintel- ligible ; and this accounts for the great uncertainty and difficulty of the outlines of leaf-masses in middle-distance. I called your attention to this at p. 135, with reference to the Turner bough, Fig. 5. Fig. 16. If you want a set of simple outline-subjects, you cannot do better than choose out a set of full-grown leaves of various trees ; dry them flat, and gum them on cards. Copy their outlines, stems, and principal ribs exactly, and your command of line will increase daily : — besides which you will learn more and more of leaf-form, and observe more and more about subtle curvature. The mid-rib of a leaf looks very straight, and never is straight, and nothing can be better for you to draw. CHAPTER X. Letter XVL May to Florence. Oxford, December. My Dear Floy: I suppose this fine bright frost prevails at Hawkstone. How jolly it must be for the horses to get a little rest after the life we have led them ! My friend Gerty Crack is quite indefatigable, and we have had gallops every day. I am quite delighted with her, and am so very glad you have asked her up north ! you will not be disappointed, I'm sure. Well, we made use of the first bright winter day by running up to town to see the Landseers ; and then, by way of contrast, we went to see Sternchase's great picture. It seems doubtful taste, I know ; but there we were, we had to get back in the evening, and it was see it or not see it : so we went. By we, I mean Gerty and myself, the Praeses, Charles, and Mr. Ripon : I don't like to call him by his name of Dick, and Rip is as bad. The Praeses made a capital chaperon ; and you will be gratified to hear that our behaviour was exemplary throughout. I must write something to you while it is all fresh. The men did all the talking, of course. Happily one can't hear one's self speak in the railway, or any one else ; and so we escaped with two horrible puns, — one about a Coalition 190 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. of pitmen on strike, and the other about Good Templars being sad Boheamians ; and the Praeses said something rather odd about the stages of human development, from the Ascidian into the Utilitarian. Well, we escaped unscrunched from the train, and went to Bur- lington House in three hansoms. I really think it would be a good thing for the public, if they would exhibit some leading painter in this way every year, dead or alive : we all thought so much would come to be understood of the man and his methods, and their progress, in the technical way, and so much more, too, about the real character of his mind and works, and the phases of thought and feeling he may have gone through. So said Charley, who always considers pic- tures as books. He is very good to me, when he is not thinking of Guinevere or Iseult, or Theseus and Ariadne, or the horses, — and I am so dull too. I wish we both cared more, or showed it more. But he is quite right, I'm sure ; for one does feel the contrast between that great incongruous Vanity Fair of an Academy Exhibition, and a quiet walk through one great man's doings. He certainly was a great man (oIol vvv ftporoL da-L, the Praeses said, and I've got him to write it down for me all right with the accents. I am glad to send you some Greek from Oxford, warranted genuine. I believe it means taking the lot all round, or something to that effect ; and Charles and the Vicar won't tell me anything else : it can't be naughty, at all events). Charles said he never had been so pleased, without being worried, in an exhibition, and that one really could learn something. But think, if we could have the chief living men annually here for six weeks or so, two or three at a time, perhaps, — collections of their works, I mean, — say Phoebus or Hermitage, or Tingrind or OUR SKETCHING CLUB. I 9 I Baldwyn, and, still more, De Vair and Brownjones. What a thing it would be for them to be able to explain themselves, and show what they have been doing, or trying to do, all along! and how any sensible person would like to understand their progress year by year from their boy-drawings ! Technically, in particular, one would see how a man developed his powers and found out what he wanted to do, and how to do it, and perhaps hid himself justice This is a tirade sustained between Charles and Mr. Ripon principally, and now I shall try to do the rest of the talk, as we talked it, only making it very laconic. R. and C. stand for those two, P. and G. for Praeses and Gerty, and M. for me, or May, whichever you like. R. — Well, did Landseer do himself justice ? C. — Made a pot of money, and enjoyed himself -exceedingly. M. — That's your notion, I know, of course ; but you don't try to work it out much, Charles. P. — No : he's on a better line than that, after all. But, Cawthorne, do you think Landseer was mercenary, or too much of a court or sporting painter? C. — No. I look on the commissioned portraits as nothing at all. He was a true naturalist and a great workman ; but I wish he'd stuck to such subjects as the Random Shot, or the Bears. He did too many pictures of swells ; but he did them honestly, and as well as he could. R. — Perhaps those best ideas don't come to one every day. C. — Though they tarry, wait for them, and meanwhile work away from Nature. Draw rocks in a stream, as like as ever you can, form and colour, and let the ideas come as they're given. 192 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Here Gerty looked at Charles, quite unconscious, you know, but in a way which might have made me jealous. I rather wish it had. And then she said, Isn't that the same as the advice in ' Modern Painters ' about Eldad and Medad, \ Go about your hard camp-work, and the gift will come to you'? P. — Quite so, Gerty ; but that is a tremendous subject we can't go into now. It opens the whole question of what inspiration really means. Go on, Cawthorne or Ripon (the Praeses never cuts any name short, except his daughter's, and I may say mine : but nobody ever called me Margaret, that I remember). R. — Well, graphics are grave, and life is real, and life is earnest, and all that. I should think he might have tried harder to get Swelldom to ask him for his own subjects. He never worked landscape as he could and should have done. Look at the 'Deer Pass,' and that glorious small oil-painting of ' Rocks by Loch Awen,' — that place under Cairn Gorm, — and then the chalk drawing, 'Avalanche and Deer!' How could the man who did that in a couple of hours ever give weeks to Mr. Van Humbug and his menagerie? C. — True enough ; and then the Provencal shepherd and his prayer for rain, with the flock bleating all round him before the crucifix. (Then he turned round to me, and asked me what I thought of that, and looked at me with all his eyes, quite grave and bright, across his brown beak and dark beard, looking very handsome, certainly.) I had felt inclined to say my prayers too, and so I told him. P. — One may make a note of that, I think, as decisive of Landseer's highest power, — the highest aim and the greatest success. C. — Moreover that picture is the grandest south-of- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 193 France landscape, beyond all price, and certainly, to my eye, beyond French landscape-painting. Was he thinking of that, now, or of the shepherd's prayers, and the flocks? R. — Goodness gracious ! don't ask : there the thing is, quite perfect in art and import too. Perhaps he didn't know himself; he most likely saw or heard of some such thing as actually happening ; and a man of his feeling would have caught the idea at once. It is so very happy, because it brings round all the scriptural symbolisms so perfectly. M. — You mean the Good Shepherd in the Catacombs, and the Church's sheep in the mosaics ? R. — Yes, and on so many of the sarcophagi. C. — Well, I don't suppose Landseer knew anything about catacombs or mosaics ; but he must have gone over all the ideas of the Shepherd of Israel in painting that. I never use the expression 'sacred picture'; but that one seems really to have the effect which such a thing ought to have. G. — Don't they say that the shepherd was a heathen subject of decoration? P. — No doubt, like the vine. It seems pretty clear the first Christians were glad to adopt both images, and give their own symbolic meaning to both. Why, the title 'Shepherd of People' is Homeric. I dare say it goes back to the earliest Aryan time, when you would have been called my milk-maid. Do you know ' daughter' means that? 1 G. — Very good meaning too ; and I can milk pretty fairly. C. — Well, then, there is a connection, after all, be- 1 See Max Mtiller's Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. O 194 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. tween Landseer and Sternchase, and we were not so wrong in going straight from one to the other. It's an excuse after the fact ; but I don't feel any the worse. P. — Nonsense ! don't be punctilious. Besides, it is so interesting to compare the two men and their lives, — one all enjoyment and flattery and sport, and swells, I suppose Fm to say ; and the other all high thinking, and low feeding, and hard work, like a soul in pain, you once said, Ripon. R. — Yes, I did say it, and it is so. He's gone through a thing or two — here that fixed, abstracted look came over him that you know of; and he said in a dry, quiet way, I think he takes refuge in that severe labour of all his painting ; it's the best thing many men have to do. There was rather a silence for a moment. We all knew Rip understood what he was saying pretty well. (That was what made him and Sternchase such friends always, — that they had suffered the same thing.) Then he went on again, It would make a good subject for an essay, — whether, and how far, any sport or hunter-craft can be a good subject for art, or a fit one. It's a doubt- ful question, and the Professor all but says No. C. — It's almost the same thing to ask how far aristo- cratic country-life in England can ever develop any good art. P. — Well ; you are the man to try : you are a bloated aristocrat in Yorkshire, and I think you are developing something; and your clubs ought to bring out some- body. I've seen some drawings of yours, Miss Lang- dale, and I thought them quite real art. M. — Why, I think Charles and I see a great deal of towns and middle life as well— quiet life, you know ; and OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 195 I like Mr. Sternchase quite as well as any of my grand acquaintances ; but he is very keen about hunting and shooting. C. — I don't think a taste for the chase in general is specially aristocratic ; and it is certainly poetical in certain conditions of society, — Swiss chamois-hunting, for instance. R. — The real difference between the two men is that of aim, after all. One gave himself up to circumstances, and patrons, and high country-life, and its sports. How could he help it? and could we have helped doing the same ? And the other conquers his fate more, and lives a life of great purposes apart. It's like comparing a Swiss aiguille to Ben-y-breac and its corries. P. — Well, Charles, you are in good enough company, if you can get in half-way between the great naturalist and the great master ; you must never think of giving in now. C. — I don't ; not just yet, at least. But I'm not like either of those men, and one must be rather discon- tented with one's own doings. Lionardo was : it's the regular thing. At best, one can follow in the body of the pack. G. — May and I were talking about that discontent with one's own work yesterday. Of course, we ought all to feel it ; but I don't think Sir E. Landseer can have had much trouble in that way : he seems to have done everything so easily. C. — Ah, he didn't feel it so himself in working from Nature ; and he never could have got up to that execu- tion without a deal of disappointment. I think he shows more graphic power, and more entire indifference % to oil-painting as his science, than anybody I know of. P. — Expound, painter, expound. O % 196 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. C. — Why, compare his work with Sternchase's. He, the last, is trying to do two things, — to do justice to a great idea by his science (technical skill you may call it, but it is founded on knowledge ; call it science, as you would boxing, if you like) ; and he wants always to increase the range and power of his science, that he may have the more to dedicate to his great idea, and that he may push the thing on for those who come after him. Landseer is a good naturalist and hunter : he gets his drawing right from sheer graphic power, and the coup d'ceil that can fix an idea of motion in his own brain ; — he is a colourist from his happy out-door life of observa- tion ; — and he is poet enough to be possessed by sub- jects and imaginations of his own, and those of the strongest. But all he cares for in his science is just what suits his purpose at the time. He does not want to be a master of painting, as a Venetian or Florentine might : he wants to do Lady So-and-So's terrier's back bristles exactly like bristles ; and no more. He didn't care for painting, and he wasn't one of us. He was much greater and healthier and better understood, I dare say ; but he shirked the hard work, and he blinked the high aims. Bad patronage does a deal of harm ; some one ought to be whipped for every tedious genre subject or affected portrait. (Here the Praeses said solemnly, ' Excoriare aliquis* and we all laughed) ; then Charley went back to his first saying, that Landseer should have believed more in his own genius, and led his patrons with him : if he hadn't thought so much of shooting, and staying about at big houses, he might have done them and himself immortal honour. P. — Ah, that's a great saying of your friend, the Professor's, that he wonders not so much at what men suffer, but at what they lose ; and I go on to wonder at OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 197 what they don't care about losing, or know they've lost. What might have been, now, if one of these men had been petted a little less, and the other a little more ? R. — I am afraid we owe it to Landseer that one can only think of Highland scenery now, in connection with deer and grouse. Nobody seems to connect the High- lands with history, or poetry, or antiquity, or anything but autumn holidays. I used to look up Gaelic tradition a little, but was chaffed out of it — mere sentimental- ism, cockneyfied, and so on. And Highlanders them- selves seemed to think I'd no business to be interested in their clans, or in themselves, as a Saxon who wasn't rich enough to take a moor at a fancy rent. P. — Sentiment, sentimentalism, and grouse-rents, — very different things ; but here the guard insisted on our changing for ' Haucksphut 1 ,' as he called it, with an evident anxiety to show how the word might be spelt without one of the conventional letters. Ingenious, wasn't it? I think I must go back to Rothercliffe soon, as Sister Marian wants a holiday rather badly, and I can help with her work. I have had a great deal of fun, and been quite the lady for ever so long, and mental tonics are necessary. We have done a good deal of Turner here ; and Charles says I am much stronger. He is off to his great exhibition picture to-morrow : we are both like Erin's children, — so good and so cold. Ever your own Private and exclusive May. 1 Oxford. 198 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Letter XVII. Charles to Flora. My Dear Floy : I told you in my last that I would try to finish off the subjects of vegetation and tree-drawing in this letter, but it can't be done so shortly. I only think of what I tell you as an introduction to drawing from Nature; that is to say, as likely to give you a notion what to look for in Nature, and some rule of natural selection, I mean of choosing, from the infinity of Nature, what you ought to put down. You can't put down all. Different persons look for and see different things, more or less correctly ; and he does best who gets down the greatest amount of the greatest truths. Now we have done much definite drawing, and we are going on to the indefinite and mysterious. Single leaves for outline and curve ; jam-pot for light and shade ; skies and clouds to learn use of the brush, — now we come to complication and mystery. We have done single leaves and grass blades : we want to do foliage and turf, and we find them in masses ; that is to say, in organized forms, of which you can see the organiza- tion, but only a part of the individualities which com- pound them. Now, any disorderly mess of lines, like the worst sort of modern woodcutting, is mysterious enough in a sense ; but your work ought to be a mystery worth unravelling. And the vegetation in Diirer's woodcuts is exactly what you ought to work from, in order to get mystery and organization together. Figs. 11, 12, 13, are capital examples ; but any very clear, distinct photo- graph of grasses or ferns will help you, if you will only take little enough of it at a time, and draw that in pen- and-sepia outline, giving a little shading, of course, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. where you want it, as you go on ; for folds and rounded undulations cannot be given in pure outline, and con- sequently pure outline in the strictest sense ought never to be enforced or practised 1 . But in all this practice, make out as much as you can, and don't go in for intricacy, but for accuracy. And if you can succeed in being accurate, and yet get any of the glittering con- fusion of Nature into your careful work, then you are forming a landscape style of your own, original and of the best kind ; and nobody can take it from you. Now, the mystery of Nature and of Diirer and of Turner comes pretty much to this to the draughtsman, — that the form is there, and you don't see what it really is till you draw it. I began to copy Fig. 12 for you just now. I took the square stone first, and I saw there were leaves by it, — large plantain or dock ; then, by the time I had done the outline of the stone, I saw there were three lower leaves, rather faint-looking, and the point of another below, and four strong upright- growing ones more. The dock grows like the tree, springing from the fountain of life in its stem, you see. Then I noticed the perspective of the lower square stone, and saw how it leads into the picture ; then that most delicate wild-parsley leaf on the right above the stone : in short, I had been drawing some time before I fully understood what I had to do. But, when that is understood, you are far on towards doing it. Without such practice in looking at things as this kind of copy- ing gives you, you will not see enough in Nature to produce a good drawing. But acquiring this power of sight really ought not to be a matter of many days to you. Practice is everything to the eye ; but all your 1 Note and Appendix. 200 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. eyes are well enough practised already, for you can all play the piano, and do needlework. I go all wrong in this sort of work for the first day ; just as one can never see one's fly for the first day's salmon-fishing. But when you have done the forms right, so as to get a stock of them into your mind, it will surprise you to find your rapid work improve wonderfully, and get much more piquant and characteristic in eager bits, when you let your hand fly. For accurate work accumu- lates right ideas ; and they will stream out of your fingers'-ends sometimes, in the brighter seasons — you don't know how, nor shall we ever. Now once more for our system, such as it is, roughly taken. First, large single leaf forms 1 , for accurate line ; then jam-pot for rounding in light and shade ; then washing in skies, for free use of the water-colour brush in covering a flat space ; then foliage and vegetation to introduce the real difficulties of Nature. You have not as yet, perhaps, attained Mr. Squeers's deep per- ception of what a rum 'un she is ; but everybody can see and draw from foliage, &c, and then, as we have had before, it not only shows you difficulties, but points to try for, and leading lines which give character. We had something about character in portraits of men and women ; well, there are characteristic lines or marks in all other things, which will give grace and vital truth to your portraiture of things, if you dwell on them. They are always expressive of the past history and present action of the thing. They show, in a mountain, first how it was built up or heaped up, then how it is being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms beat on it. In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has 1 Note and Appendix. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 201 had to endure from its childhood ; how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it ; where and when kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly along with it, bending as it bent ; what winds torment it most ; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most fruit, and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the water or vapour is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. 'Now, remember,' says the Professor, ' nothing distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always knowing, in life or art, the way things are going. Your dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed ; your wise man sees they change, and draws them accord- ingly, — the animal in its movement, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course, the mountain in its decay. Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate, and will have power over its futurity. The leafage round the foot of a stone pine or Scotch fir (Fig 9) from Sestri, near Genoa, has all its sprays thrust away by the root in their first budding ; and they spring out in every direction round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then, when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again ; some of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of growing upright if they can ; and this struggle of theirs to recover their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence their destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them, with 202 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they are to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy green.' In trees in general, and bushes large and small, perhaps the first general rule one notices is, that though the boughs spring irregularly, at all sorts of angles, they tend more upwards, and less downwards, as they get near the top of the tree. Hence a plumy character and aspect of unity in all the branches, which is essential to their beauty. They all share in one great fountain-like impulse : each has its definite curve and path to take, and all together form a great outer curve, whose cha- racter and proportion are peculiar for each species. Observe, a tree doesn't grow as at a, anyhow, but as at c, a b Fig. 17. in its simplest possible type ; or as at b, showing the full intention and idea of the tree, which wants to carry out all its minor branches to the bounding curve, so that they shall all get to air and light in plenty. And the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 203 branches each try for the bounding curve in the same way ; so that the branch-type isn't anyhow, but so as to take its proper share in the great curve, as at b. I observe that some members of the club have a care- less way of drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging on to the other, that way Fig. 18. — which is about the worst conceivable. But all un- meaning tricks of hand are to be avoided everywhere. I compared a rather drooping bough seen from below, to your hands held palm downwards, as in piano-playing. If you hold your hands out before a glass, palm up- wards, and with open fingers, it will give you an idea of the upward ramification of a branch, as the palm- downward position gives you the action of the lower boughs in cedars, and such other spreading trees. Fig. 19 is a specimen-sketch of Turner's from Nature, which shows you how to work when you have not time to put any colour on ; or when you can only run a little sepia or gray over the trees, to give a notion of their pitch of shade against the sky and each other. It is particularly nice for you to copy ; for the trees are like some of Harding's : they are specially graceful, absolutely free from any mannerism, and as rapidly done as his hand could go it. And there is not a line or a touch to be spared ; not one scratch, I do declare, which is not graphic, and descriptive of a fact, or part of a fact. Look at the lower bushes! Fig. 19. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 205 There's radiation and spring, and life, and vegetable hap- piness, whatever that may be. And the upper trees — what makes them graceful ? The plumy toss of the branches, and their spring from the stem: you can how see the fountain of sap rushes up through them, and it is their centre. Then, when you copy it, you will feel how all the touches group together, and take you into and across and all about the woodcut, as a composition. Look at the lines which mark the ground, and how the water runs off the hill ; and at the figures on the top, which show it is no great height, only a swell of the chalk down ; and note the regular steps made by successive climbers, who, you see, have all got blown at nearly the same place, and worked off to the left. If you want to learn how to express distance and surface in flat country or gentle slopes, the hill and ground part of this woodcut is a perfect lesson ; and see how you are led away into the distance by the comparative sizes of trees, much as by Diirer in Fig. 11. Then this sketch shows you how to put in figures and adjuncts. Most of the club seem to do it rather by guesswork, or by mere feeling for colour, because a strong dark, or a blue patch, or a red patch, is wanted here or there. But see how the figures come in here. The dog is under the boy, and his back is in a springing curve : the boy's is actually in springing action as he tries to scramble on to the parapet : all that gives spring to the trees above by repeating their curve, or, in other words, by dwelling on the idea of springiness to your eye. So the farmer and his stick almost double the height of the stems. That is what I shall have to talk of hereafter as the law of repetition, when we go into composition. If people don't see a thing when you first say it in your drawing, why, say it again in it, some- 206 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. where else, and again, with variations, if necessary. And, besides over all this, there is a grand set of curves in the picture, which have their origin in the dog's tail, and sweep over the trees ; but we must put that off also. This looking for guiding-lines, as I said before, is the first great thing to make your drawing graphic or cha- racteristic. Take an old house-roof (almost all old things are worth drawing, because of their history and its outer signs). A bad draughtsman will only see the tiles in a spotty irregular order all over : a good one will see the bends of the under-timbers were they are weakest, and the weight tells on them most ; and where the rain- water runs off fast, and keeps the tiles clean, and where it lodges, and feeds the moss ; and he will be careful, however few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together toward those hollows where the roof is giving, and by which you see its fate. Just so in ground ; there is always the direction of the run of water to be noticed, — how it rounds the earth, and cuts it into hol- lows ; and generally there are traces of bedded or other internal structure in any bank or height worth drawing. Notice in No. 19 the depression in the hill marked by the footsteps, and the hollow where water runs down from left to right, behind the roots of the trees. This is what I mean by going for the facts in all your sketching. It is not dull or commonplace to do so, because the facts are often striking, and still oftener pathetic. I should say there is something honourable, and so on, in the decay of an old house-roof and its associations. Now, in your light-and-shade sketches from Nature take this as an outline model. First get your sizes and distances and main lines in pencil-lines like these ; then run some gray or sepia oyer them for pitch of tone, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 207 and masses of light and shade ; let dry ; and then, over what is left of the pencil-marks, use the quill- pen, to make it graphic, and tell about the facts. That leaf is the main one ; that bough is the leader ; and this touch means so much of it, point, side, or surface, as the case may be. Don't do anything in a general way. Nothing is general : things look like what they are like. There really is no receipt for doing anything. Some of you ask how to do grass ? I'll trouble them for what sort of grass? — thyme on the downs? or sedges by a stream? or mowing grass in June ? or Alpine grass, half lilies? or Craven pasture, half heather ? The only dodge I know is the old one, — to go by the shadows between the stems, as Durer does. Grass always grows in tufts, more or less. The prominent stems and leaves will be your guiding-lines in light ; and, if you draw them as you see them, you will find a shorthand to express the crowded vegetation behind : that is Diireresque or Turneresque drawing. Or you may ' do grass ' very nicely at a little distance, by giving the undulations of the ground in green patches of shade with jagged edges (taking care not to make them too dark at first); but that, after all, is drawing by characteristic lines. You will leave similar fringes of light, of course, and it is easy to make them like grass edges ; but, the better they fit the characteristic slope of the ground, the more grassy they will look. Look at the drawing in Fig. 20, or any of the grassy foregrounds in the engravings, and try to leave your edge-forms in light, painting the dark sharply up to them, as you would do the bright edge of a round tree against a mass of shade. If you happen to have the Oxford ' Art Manual 1 ,' there 1 Macmillan, Oxford University Press. 208 OUR SKETCHING CLUB, is another good example of tree and vegetation lines, — Cephalis and Procris, the etched lines from the Liber Studiorum plate, before it was prepared for mezzotint. If you will draw either that, or Fig. 19 and the others, and draw from Nature in that way, that's all I want, and will be all you will want. As a sufficient guide in putting light and shade over your lines, you must study Turner's Liber Studiorum. The plates have been very fairly done in autotype, and one or two of this list 1 will do as examples for your work from Nature. You might add Rizpah or the Mer de Glace to it, because they will widen and deepen your 1 Elements of Drawing, p. 132. If not one of those in List 1, any- other you can get ; except those in List 2, which are useless. LIST Grande Chartreuse. (Esacus and Hesperie. Cephalus and Procris. Source of Arveiron. Ben Arthur. Watermill. Hindhead Hill. Hedging and Ditching. Dumblane Abbey. Morpeth. Calais Pier. I. Pembury Mill. Little Devil's Bridge. River Wye (not Wye and Severn). Holy Island. Clyde. LaufFenbourg. Blair Athol. Alps from Grenoble. Raglan Castle. The Liber Studiorum is a collection of dark-brown engravings done by Turner, or from his drawings and under his eye : they contain something like universal instruction for landscape, but must be drawn to be understood. The following plates are, however, useless. (List 2.) I. Scene in Italy ; goats and trees. 2. Interior of church. 3. Bridge and trees ; figures on left, one playing a pipe. 4. Ditto, with tam- bourine. 5. Ditto, Thames, high trees, and square tower. 6, 7. Tenth and fifth plagues of Egypt. 8. Rivaulx Abbey. 9. Wye and Severn. 10. Scene with castle in centre, cows under trees on left. II. Martello towers. 12. Calm. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 209 estimate of the passionate and tragical power of land- scape, in hands capable of true passion and deep tragedy. But one or two of these plates will be enough, and give you work enough ; for this is the way you must do them. They consist, you know, of firmly etched lines with mezzotint shade laid over them. First, then, trace the etched lines very carefully at the window, or with transparent paper ; trace them again on smooth draw- ing-paper; then set the original before you, and go over the whole with your pen, working from the original with the greatest care to correct any exaggeration or slip you may have made in the tracing. And do this when you are fresh, and with your full attention, leaving off when you are tired, and never doing too much at a time. Reinforce your first lines till they really represent Tur- ner's ; and then you will see, as in the bough we began with, how his lines prepare you for his light and shade. Then, for the fourth time, do some part, or the whole, of the plate again on drawing-paper ; and put on the light and shade in any brown that matches the plate, with a fine sable. Use it like a pencil after the first light coat of tint, and cross-hatch and stipple till you have got Turner's gradations. Don't begin with the sky, I think, but with something which has lines you can go by. Only get a square inch of this sort of thing right, and you can do anything in light and shade. It really is worth any of your utmost efforts : it is very difficult ; but I don't think people really learn to exert themselves till they have come to grief a good many times; and nothing is more strange in art than the way everything begins to go right, and all materials and tools seem to favour you, after one difficult thing has been well done. You ought, moreover, to have a photograph (as I P 210 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. think I have said) of some favourite landscape-subject of your own, — high hills and a village, or some picturesque town in middle distance, and some calm water ; and if possible, a stream with stones in it. Copy that, or parts of it, in the manner of the Liber, with brush and pen. And here please observe, that on any Swiss, or Scottish, or Lakes or Dales expedition, you ought to look out for a few photographs of pet places which you have drawn yourself : that is most important, to compare your sketch from Nature with her record of herself. In copying the photograph, get all the gradations you can. You can't get them all ; but every hour of attention at such work is so much new strength to work from Nature. You may use gray if you like it better than brown, or brown and gray together, perhaps. Do it a little at a time, rather than hurriedly. Pen over pencil in firm outline, with the strongest darks shaded in bold lines, crossed, if you like. Then the sepia or gray tones, dark- ened to the right pitch ; then all the finer penwork ; and take out the high lights with fine brush and blotting- paper, or a sharp knife. Try working against time. See what you can do in half an hour, an hour, or two or three ; always getting full depth of light and shade, and taking the difference of time out in finishing the parts. When you can do this well (granting sufficient power of correct outline), you are fit to work from Nature in light and shade, on landscape or any other subject. Then, as to the sort of work, or amount of finish you ought to attempt, according to time. First, if you are not limited, do a perfect light-and-shade study in gray and brown, with all the facts drawn, and none of the gradations omitted. Second, you may be pressed for time : in that case, make up your mind about the effect of the whole, and make a rapid study of that first ; — of the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 211 effect, that is to say, how you will have the facts. That scene is to be like that in your thoughts henceforth ; un- less it be till you do it again in colour ; — that is the effect of the scene on you, in masses of light and shade, — your general impression of it all. Do that quickly in mass ; then make another Diireresque sketch in hard pencil, or pen and colour, and get in all the facts you possibly can in the time. Also go nearer, or quite up to, any peculiarly interesting part, and make a nearer memorandum of that : it will often be a key to the detail of the rest, and explain what things mean in your most distant drawing, — whether you knew at the farther distance what they were or not. Soft pencilling washed over with gray is, perhaps, the easiest and nicest way of doing your study of effect. Lights will come out pleasantly with the brush while the gray is still wet ; but be careful not to take off too much. All this on white paper only. Till you are a consummate worker, you had better use gray paper in the studio only, or in copying Turner, or other works done on the same. His gray body-colours are most beautiful and instructive subjects to copy, for the strongest of you ; and working carefully at them is the thing of all others to introduce you to oil-painting. Third, if you are to take notes of a scene, altogether against time, do a good pencil outline you can't mistake ; then wash over all with your lightest gray, as if you were beginning a jam-pot ; then keep your head if you can, and go at it hard. Dash on the dark masses first ; then try to take off or add colour while it is wet, till you get the inter- mediate tones. You may scratch forms in nicely on the wet with the wrong end of your brush, or a smooth- pointed stylet ; or take the brightest lights out with the corner of a sponge, or scratch them off with a knife (sea foam will do well that way) ; but then, in the last few P % 212 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. minutes, when your paper is covered, take to the pen, and mark your outlines in vigorously, as in the Liber Studiorum. This kind of work seems specially necessary for some of the hardest still-life workers, and steadiest copyists in the club. Deliberate exactness is much, but it is not all, and can't do everything ; not the things we want most to do sometimes. You know what it is to have to tackle a great cumulus cloud, or an on-coming thunder-storm, or sheet of rain, or some odd set of striking shadows. You must learn, in a sense, to shoot Fig. 20. flying as well as sitting. Somebody would not try to draw a thrush for me the other day, 'because the bird wouldn't stand still to be drawn.' That's art-school all over ; but it will not make a draughtsman from Nature. You must learn to use the inner eye, the imagination or memory; I'm sure- I don't know which of them it is of the two : but this is what it does, — to give you a vision of the bird, or cloud, or what not, as you mean to have him in your picture. To that vision you ought to adhere steadily: your brain ought to see from the first, and with a glance, what your hand is to do in the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 213 end ; and your technical knowledge ought always to be able to tell the hand what it is to do next throughout the processes of completion. Minute copying may bring on slow habits, and that way of always groping after a motionless copy, which often disables the regular art- student from doing anything like a picture. I remember reading men at Ch. Ch., who had brains enough for a lesson, as old Latchford said, but hardly enough for a book or a subject ; and just as many art-students seem to be equal to a copy or study of still life, who will never make anything of a picture, or represent real life. They can draw a cast of a horse perfectly, but cannot do old Cata- pult sweeping a brook. So you must sometimes study for speed and decision, while in a general way your practice is all for ac- curacy and tenderness of touch. You must learn decision, to know what you want to do, and do it ; and nothing can teach it so well as these //^-drawings, so called. Then, once more, it will be worth ever so much to you to get into a habit of noting the shapes of shadows, — cast-shadows, I mean, not rounded shade of structure or form. I must have told you, in looking over the club portfolios, that light or sunshine is only to be had by sharpness, and defined edges of shadow ; and, of course, if the edges are to be defined, they oughtn't to be defined wrong. They are always odd-looking things; but in distance or middle distance, in fact, one recognizes things Fig. 21. 214 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. chiefly by their shadows ; and, in fact, one sees more of the shadow than the substance. Turner's distances seem full of confused touches with odd shapes, and with- out much meaning, when you first look at them ; but, when you begin to copy and really see into them, they are full of meaning: they are all real and accurately- done shadows of actual detail. Fig. 20 and 21 are a capital example of an Alpine bridge at four different distances, which illustrates this wonderfully well. Fig. 22. Now as to your tools. An F and HB pencil ; and al- ways carry a white-paper note-book. But always wash your pencil things lightly over with some tint, if you want to keep them : it is so tiresome to see all one's clear lines and edges of shade rub out into nothing, and all one's darks grow grubby and shiny like a fire-grate ! There is a model note-book in the gibeciere I got you ; and it becomes you very much : so you have two artistic reasons for wearing it. May looks the chatelaine all over in her's. To finish up about foliage and vegetation. I said a good deal about the Professor's law of radiation and law of individuality while I was on Harding. The prevailing OUR SKETCHING CLUB. * x 5 radiation and springing ovoid curves of Harding's sys- tem must be reconciled somehow with the individual capricious life of tfre separate leaves ; and you must always beware of monotony of touch, and nonsense drawing. His example (Fig. 22) gives you a sense of radiation, if you look pretty hard for it ; but the first thing that strikes you about it is, that every leaf is going just his own way. There are wandering lines mixed with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones ; and you may have ever such freedom of hand, and firm touch, and clear touch, and all that ; but you can't draw that example without time and pains, and following leaf after leaf. Well, there is a third thing Fig. 23. besides these two laws of radiation and of liberty : there is mystery. The confusion of light and reflection comes upon you as soon as you begin to do a spray a little way off with light upon it. In doing boughs in a room, as we have had it, you escaped all that ; but, if you took the same boughs out into sunshine, you would miss a point here, and edge there, and have glitter and cast- shadow to deal with ; in short, there would be more than double trouble. This belongs rather to the subject of colour ; but I think we had something about it before, when I saw Susan's and your drawing of the old pond at Hawkstone. Remember, anyhow, that introducing sunshine into a picture alters all its conditions, and the 2l6 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. sunshine becomes the principal fact in the picture, or nearly so. Cuyp makes it so, to his great honour — the fuddled old Phcebus. The Professor's drawing, in etched line, of a spray of oak as it is really seen in light, is hereby presented to you in Fig. 23 ; and any more puzzling thing to draw I never knew. There is a good deal to be said about the laws of tree-form ; but I think it must wait till we go into the 'Fessor's canons of curvature, and composition in general. For the present, let's have it once more : in drawing any tree, or any thing, in a thoughtful, or in- telligent, or truly imaginative way, you ought somehow (often, I think, unconsciously) first to indicate some of the ruling organic laws of what you are drawing ; secondly, to show a sense of the individual character and liberty of the forms of parts ; then, thirdly, you should show in- telligence of the mysterious way in which law and liberty are united in Nature, and ought to be indicated in draw- ing. They are so in Turner's works : whether he is drawing rocks, or trees, or clouds, or cities, the law is there, and the liberty ; and he shows both, you don't know how. The wind is blowing one way, and the clouds are all going in that direction, each in his own way. The granite or gneiss has burst up from beneath by the same volcanic force, but has cooled down, every ton of it variously. The forest all grows the same way, by the springing fountain of sap from each root, and every tree grows his own way, according to the ground he stands in. The men all build their houses for shelter, and according to the laws of gravity and mechanics ; and every house is, or should be, different according to its master's way. The horrid uniformity of modern streets, which have no individuality, is what excludes them from artistic treatment ; it indicates that appalling sameness OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 217 of outer respectability, in which all the people transact existence. And, whether you can reach him or not, Turner is the best model you can follow, and try to under- stand, in this matter. He interprets law, liberty, and mystery in foliage and other things, in a manner un- like any one else. There is analogy between graphic art and life ; and nothing can be truer or more real, not more fanciful, than this which follows from the Elements : ' There is no moral vice or virtue which has not its pre- cise prototype in the art of painting ; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretful- ness and quietness, feebleness and firmness, pride and modesty, and all other such habits, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness, by conditions of line and colour What grace of manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, rugged- ness, or quaintness, in the dealings or conversations of men, precisely that relative degree of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen and relieve human souls, that power, in the same relative degree, play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life, sim- plicity of custom, and balance of authority, precisely that kind of goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its colour, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.' 1 1 1 Elements/ p. 167. 2l8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Letter X VIII. In same envelope. rev. r. ripon to lady lattermath. My Dear Flora : Charles has just turned up, in a state of excitement, because he has got into a bit of sermon towards the end of his letter ; and he is good enough to say that it's my business to pull him through it, and that I've got nothing else to do. So they all say, always. However, as to the analogy between works of art and the lives men live, that is one form of the question, How far a man's work must be affected by his morals, cha- racter, and spiritual conditions? To me, that quotation from the 'Fessor is as true as the multiplication-table ; but numbers of people, good ones too, and abler than any of us in many ways, would simply skip that page in anger, because it contains analogies which require atten- tion, and yet are not demonstrable ; — they care for none of such things. Literal-minded Benthamite people are the most dogmatic tyrants on earth against anything that isn't just in their way. Then, many people have inactive minds ; and they find all manner of thoughts affect them with the symptoms of an irritant poison : so I've noticed. Many excellent Britishers look on a man with an idea as a big caterpillar is said to con- template the ichneumon fly who wants to lay eggs in him, — that is to say with extreme disgust, and every attempt at resistance of which their imperfect nature is capable. But for this statement about good painting, — that it conveys true, weighty, and instructive ideas about law, liberty, and mystery, and has its morals accord- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 2ig ingly ; — it seems to me perfectly true and sensible, as much so as political economy. It asserts the spiritual nature of man and his arts so strongly, that it must be most unwelcome to materialism, and will be contradicted accordingly, to the end of all things. , But if one believes in one's own spirit, as well as flesh, one will believe that the spirit directs the eyes and fingers, partly with conscious moral choice, partly with- out, partly in ways altogether inscrutable. But it takes a good deal of work to be quite certain of this in draw- ing, &c. One must have full experience of the dif- ferences of one's own humours and nervous conditions ; one must compare one's work done in a happy, clear, right-minded, and steady-handed time, with work done thoroughly out of vein. But as to the sort of man, and the sort of painting, everybody admits the impression of character on work. Salvator Rosa is called Savage Rosa in 'The Castle of Indolence.' Well, does that mean that Thqmson thought Salvator's landscape the work of a mild person of lymphatic habit, or that he saw the ferocity of the man in the canvas ? Those who look at Angelico's works, and concede the possible existence of angels, will think he probably possessed some of their supposed characteristics. Salvator's land- scape is as savage as his battle-pieces. The good side of his fierceness is his sense of the movement and sweep of clouds and foliage ; the bad side, that he has not patience, or good heart, or peace of mind, enough to finish a leaf, or a wreath of mist ; and, as one sees by his figure-subjects, he delights in the representation of blood and murder, as much as Gustave Dore, who is his worthy nineteenth-century successor. I don't know, and never heard, anything against the personal cha- racter of the last ; but I think the Salvator savageness 220 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. has come upon him, as on Salvator, because he has given himself up to stimulating the mixed passions of the public, and that without scruple. This involves haste, impatience, and unscrupulous working. That is the principle : if a man has any sense of law, order, and the concerted action of things, he will show it ; and Salvator shows it, in a measure, as I said. But he shows great want of it also. Individuality, or patient working out of character, is not his quality. If a man has the sense of mystery, he may show it by means of light, like Turner; or by ink, like Dore. But if he is pandering to his own or other men's passions, con- sciously or blindly, then his perception of law will be warped or limited by passion, and his descriptions of individuality will run to morbid anatomy, and his mys- tery be sometimes rather a mystery of iniquity. Of course, if there be no right or wrong, and nobody is answerable for his work, no artist is ; but, if man is to be judged according to his works, I don't see why painters are to get off, because they work with paint. There seem to be two sorts of men, as to their thought and teaching. One lot is practical, and they rejoice in what they know best, and are perfectly certain of ; the other set is contemplative, and they are always looking for some knowledge which they think best to have, but cannot perfectly know. If the practical thinker will regard nothing but logical demonstration, he must define things, and that his own way : he will make God in his own image ; or ride his logical faculty, as the Mills did, right away into dogmatic atheism. If the speculative or poetic party will do nothing but theorize and poetize, — at all events, he can't expect the practical man to understand him ; and he may probably come to believe in nothing but himself. To my mind } OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 221 the Christian faith seems alike to supply the practical man with speculative or imaginative outlooks, so that his soul cannot cleave utterly to the dust ; and on the other hand, it supplies the speculative with practical duties, so that he can't go off into thin air. Painters cannot hold it unerringly, or follow it impeccably, any more than other men ; but in proportion as they do both, by God's help, their painter-work will gain in purity of aim, and power of attainment I never perorate, and this is what I think. If you have not done so before, you must read 'Modern Painters,' vol. v, chapters comparing Diirer with Sal- vator, and Angelico with Wouvermans. I can't imagine anything better or more decisive. Ever your affectionate R. R. P.S. — I'm to have a week's salmon-fishing in Craven after Easter; will you take me in, for, say, two nights en route either way? I meant to bring the enclosed verses with me, but send them now. Prof. Skreemin defied me to get any poetry out of the chase. I wonder if you will think I've been and done it. Please explain to non-hunting friends that Charley (not our own Caw- thorne) means a fox in the English midlands (Charles Fox, I suppose) ; that they always means the hounds ; that a bullfinch is a high hedge one has to swish through ; and that galloping fast over rig-and-furrow fields is just like being at sea. Adieu! 222 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. THE GLORY OF MOTION: SOUTH OXFORDSHIRE. Three twangs of the horn, and they're all out of cover ! Must have yon old bullfinch, that's right in the way: A rush, and a bound, and a crash, and I'm over; They're silent and racing, and for'ard away ! Fly, Charley, my darling! Away, and we follow; There's no earth or cover for mile upon mile; We're winged with the flight of the stork and the swallow; The heart of the eagle is ours for a while. The pasture-land knows not of rough plough or harrow; The hoofs echo hollow and soft on the sward; The soul of the horses goes into our marrow: My saddle's the kingdom, whereof I am lord; And, rolling and flowing beneath us like ocean, Gray waves of the high ridge-and-furrow glide on ; And small flying fences in musical motion, Before us, beneath us, behind us, are gone. Oh, puissant of bone and of sinew availing, To speed through the glare of the long desert hours! My white-breasted camel, the meek and unfailing, That sighed not, like me, for the shades and the showers — And, bright little Barbs, with veracious pretences To blood of the Prophet's and Solomon's sires; You stride not the stride, and you fly not the fences; And all the wide Hejaz is naught to the Shires. O gay gondolier! from thy night-flitting shallop I've heard the soft pulses of oar and guitar; But sweeter's the rhythmical rush of the gallop, The 'fire in the saddle,' the flight of the star. Old mare, my beloved, no stouter or faster Hath ever strode under a man at his need : Be glad in the hand and embrace of thy master, And pant to the passionate music of speed. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 223 'T'ard Beauty — how quickly, as onward she races And ' comes through her horses ' in spite of my hold, I catch the expression of jolly brown faces Of parties a-going-it over the wold. They mostly look anxiously glad to be in it, All hitting and holding, and bucketing past; O pleasure of pleasures, from minute to minute, The pace and the horses — may both of them last ! Can there e'er be a thought to an elderly person So keen, so inspiring, so hard to forget, So fully adapted to break into verse on As this, — that the steel isn't out of him yet ? That flying speed tickles one's brain with a feather; That one's horse can restore one the years that are gone ; That, spite of gray winter and weariful weather, The blood and the pace carry on, carry on? CHAPTER XL Letter XIX. My dear May: I'm so glad you are Corresponding Secretary again— for ever so many reasons— and first and plea- santest, because I have had a bit of success, and I know you will be glad enough about it not to mind what has followed. They hung my big Syrian landscape * By the way of Edom ' right on the line at the Dudley ; and the Duke of Holderness bought it straight off on the Visitors' day — ^500 : of course I ought to have asked a great deal more, but I do think it's worth that. Well, then he called in Baker-street, he's quite young you know, and I knew him at Ch. Ch., and he wants me to go with him and the Duchess yachting and painting, all spring and summer, and start directly. His vessel is at Venice — large tonnage, and steam of course, Ai, copper fastened, and all the rest of it, and of course carries an experienced doctor, who won't have much to do, I hope ; but they mean to run across to Alexandria to begin with, and try Cairo, with a glance at the Desert — and so to Jeru- salem ; whence, if we escape unfevered and unbroiled, we come back to Constantinople and Athens, up the Adriatic again, into the Styrian Alps if very hot, vintage in the Italian lakes or thereabouts, yacht round to OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 225 Genoa and home by Gib. about October. The Duchess wants a regular change, and seems likely to have it. Well, I have undertaken to go, for obvious reasons, and we start almost directly ; — only settled it this morning : I am to write to you as much as I can, for the Club, and have instructed Ripon to do the heavy instructive work at full length. I shall come back to you with no end of sketches in the autumn. Now, in the way of general advice this summer. I think I have nearly said my say about drawing and sketching, though in a rough way — and now as to choice of subject, composition and colour for the sketching season. I notice in most students' work, as the Professor is always saying, and as I have often said to you, that almost everybody chooses too difficult things to do — or to attempt. We're all just like children about red, for instance. Red sunsets, of course ; scarlet geraniums, red cloaks, red cheeks and roses, red leaves, apples, poppies, what not — everybody delights in the most difficult colour they can have to deal with. For crimson or scarlet, the purest reds in fact, are the type of pure colour. I think you had all better read the beginning of Hesperid ^Egle (Modern Painters, vol. v. part ix. ch. xi. p. 319), and compare with it Hamerton's observations about yellow sunsets being manageable by amateurs, and red ones unmanageable. I haven't the book handy, but he says, that amateurs, or students as I call you, ought to be content with yellow sunsets, because the yellow will always look distant ; and not to try red, because that colour comes at you if it is not handled very skilfully indeed. Which indeed is true, and in passing I may just tell you what I think the skill consists in, and Q 226 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. say practically that those who work hard at red apples, may in time paint red sunsets, and that the red and yellow streaks in a Blenheim Orange or a New Eng- land pippin, are a contrast not unlike red and yellow streaks in an evening sky — mutatis mutandis. Now the necessary skill to treat red as well as yellow in such a sky would be shewn— I think — (i) First, in the right hue of your red clouds ; having the red pure enough (rose madder and raw sienna — or scarlet madder and gam- boge — or above all, orange vermilion.) Make a note of that last colour ; it is almost typical of colour in its fullest brightness, and it is midway between scarlet and yellow, and has some of the distant quality of yellow. I don't mean that one colour is naturally more distant- looking than another, but that such is our imperfect nature that we find it easier to make yellow look farther off in a picture than red. (2) In the right tone of your reds — none too strong or deep. (3) On your own knowledge of the peculiar forms of the red streaky clouds near the horizon, or the fields of cirri aloft, or the ragged fiery edges of great storm- clouds lower down. (4) On your experience of gradation, so that you can keep your sky down and back, by the shadows of your clouds on their upper sides, and the gra- dated light from the horizon ; there's a great deal in that. (5) On your experience of solid drawing and colour of rocks, trees and objects in general, under sunset light, so that there may be force of tone in your middle distance and foreground to throw all the sky back. (6) Again, on how much you know about solid drawing in distance and fore- ground, so that you may have massive forms in right per- spective to give distance to the whole picture. In other words, if you can draw sunset clouds, and colour them, and oppose them, you may put them in pictures, but it takes OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 227 a painter to do it. And the younger the landscape- student, the more he wants to do it. This is a fair instance of premature choice of over- difficult colour. And colours of great brightness and purity have this special difficulty even in foreground, that the intense hue is very flat, and destroys light and shade. Nobody can give the light shade of scarlet geranium ; primroses are very difficult, so is the purple heart's-ease : if you tried to draw the delicate form of the petal, you could not have the colour, — and here I am happily brought to one of the first rules about choice of subject : choose one for the sake of form, or for the sake of colour : but unless you have time to paint a picture on the spot, don't choose it for both — let one of the two objects decidedly take the lead, and be pre- ferred to the other where their interests clash. But I began with our natural evil tendency towards beautiful subjects which are too much for us. That is why I have such an objection to ideas, and sentiment, and right feeling, and moral purpose, and all that gam- mon. You're all art-students, and not teachers of ideas, or any of the other things, as far as I am concerned with you. I want all your attention for technicals, and you want me to attend to your feelings— and that amounts to flirtation, which I don't practice. But let all observe the Professor's rule, and 'don't draw things that you love on account of their association ; if you do, you are sure to be always entangled among neat brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges ; besides which you will be always trying to make your drawing pretty or complete, which will be fatal to your progress. All you have to do is to make it right, and to learn as much in doing it as possible. So, then, though you may draw anything you like in a friend's Q 2 228 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. room, or" your own, down to the fire-irons, or pattern on the carpet, be sure you do it for practice and not because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs.' Also, he says, 'never make presents of your drawings, then you will not care too much about making them pretty. 5 Cruel, I'm afraid, but the fact is, without cruelty one can't get much real work out of a ladies' sketching club. Then, I say again, don't draw polished or shiny things by choice. A strong flash of light in a picture always asserts itself as the principal thing there, like the high light on a jam-pot. Indeed, I can't bear anything shiny. I like dead gold and frosted silver, and the most artistic steel I know is in the form of linked mail, or the damasked or the black Khorasanee sword blades. We have had a good deal before about sunshine versus colour ; and how brilliant light destroys hue or is unfavourable to it. As a corollary to this, never draw new things. All fresh things if you like, from buds up to babies ; what I mean is, new made things of man's making. ' You cannot have a more difficult or profitless study than a new eight-oar, or a better study than an old coal barge lying ashore at low tide. In general, everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.' Of course, he excepts ladies, at least I always do : — it wouldn't be exactly nice for any member of the club to take to making studies of the plainer portion of her acquaintance as such. Further : don't draw things through one another ; try and not have trees in foreground so as to draw distance through their branches ; avoid confusion, generally speaking : you lose time for open-air sketching in the great difficulty of these matters. Again, which is a hard saying in a cultivated country, avoid all enclosures : they dwarf the whole country, and make it angular and OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 229 unmanageable. In the West Country the fences seem to swallow half the land up ; they are beautiful in them- selves, but it is demoralizing to contemplate such infernal farming; and, after all, you only get the idea of a for- malized wilderness. You can make capital studies of honeysuckles and blackberries in a hedgy country ; and it is perhaps the best work you can do there : I had rather do that than try extended views of enclosures. And, per contra, as to where you are to look for sub- jects. What to look for, I can't tell you ; for beauty is in the eye of the gazer ; but you will know when it is found. Try all banks and slopes for her, — anywhere where water runs one way, and leaves decided marks; and where stones are left bare, or natural rock, and where grass and trees grow on a slope, and mark the anatomy of ground, as in Fig. 19. There is always something by a river, — either broken banks, or old steps, or lock-gates, or bucks and eel-pots, or mossy stones and trickling water, or sword-flags and reeds and water-lilies. You most of you dwell in the Midlands ; and therefore your best home-subjects will generally be trees and cottages, unless you take to architecture, which I do not want you to do, except for practice in line and perspective. But draw all such things faithfully ; for in proportion to your power over them will be the springs you will find let loose in you when you get the chance of contending with mountains and torrents. But those are happiest who are best contented with home-subjects. No art- critic is any good who doesn't 'contradict himself periodically; and, having told you in the last page not to draw things because you love them, I now say, don't draw them unless you love them. You all go to the seaside somewhere, I suppose, or can reach the Downs somewhere. What I have to say on them 230 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. is, that you will do better, when there, to look for broken banks, and overhanging places of moderate height, than to go in for high chalk-cliffs, unless you get them as masses, under special circumstances, or make the most careful and literal studies of their structure. I remem- ber once at Brighton, seeing a great cumulus of April hail-cloud with the black part of it bearing out a high white coast-cliff, which had the sun on it in front, and yellow sands in wreaths and heaps before it. The sea was passing from emerald to indigo and purple, and breaking against it, — there were white sails, and birds, &c. That made a capital study of masses in blue, white, gray, and yellow ; and you can look for some such effect in a chalk country near the sea ; but generally it is better to draw banks in a state of transition from cliff to slope. And, for tree-studies, two or three trunks, with flowery ground below, and ivy on them, if you can find it, are the most rewarding things you can take up. Wherever you live, there's always the sky ; and the sun sets and rises, and clouds fly and change, over all things, great and mean, or good and evil. Then, wherever you can find a brook, or any water that flows between natural banks in its own way and at its own pace, why, there you are. Draw it, water and banks, till you get the lines of flow quite right, and till the water runs in your line-etching : do that, and you can do anything. I write a good deal of this, because some of you write rather pathetic complaints about not getting good sub- jects, never having seen Switzerland and Italy, and so on. Well, it does seem hard ; and no doubt a summer in Switzerland would give any student an impulse ; and it is a great fact in one's mental history when one first sees high mountains. I'm sure it was in mine. And I do so like nice young ladies having nice things ! But OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 23I really there are not many in the club who are equal to the study of Alpine scenery — in a workmanlike or artistic sense. Technically speaking, you will most of you be better painters by working at home, at whatever you can find, and making yourselves strong enough before the great opportunity comes round. I find spring in England, when there is any, one of the most inspiring things I know, — and that after having seen and drawn things from Hammerfest to Mount Sinai. And that reminds me : — everybody in the club must do a primrose, a snowdrop, a larch-bud (you know the crimson and green things, how pretty they are), and a horse-chestnut- bud just open, before the ' perfect fan,' next spring ; it's too late now. Meanwhile, let all who can't find anything beautiful make me a study, this autumn, of a large grow- ing root of globe-orange mangel wurzel. I'm going to do one myself; for it is just about the most beautiful study of deep and strong contrasted colour in the world, — the deepest and brightest purple and green, and the richest and purest orange and red. And let's all try and see the great beauty of little things. An old town or village in middle distance is a delightful subject, if only you will draw it with its ins and outs, and tile-roofs, and red brick against green, and ricks and palings, and tufted gardens and old trees, and cows and et ceteras. French- country life is more picturesque than English ; low- country life, I mean. The avenues of trees and sweeping unenclosed country are so charming, and the tree-forms in general are more graceful ; and our ruins are always in such good repair, and our wildernesses so very artifi- cial, that there certainly are a good many snares in the sketcher's path. So never trouble yourself with any thing but genuine subjects ; and as the Professor says, says he, which his words are very true indeed, 'When 232 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. you get into a mountain country, the first thing you feel is, that you are overpowered with too much subject ; and the first thing you have to do is to set to work at one corner of rounded rock, with lichens over it in one place, and its structure well marked in another, and get that rounded and lichened in your drawing in correct form and local colour. Do that right first, and then you may try to draw the morning spread upon the mountains, if you can. But, when you are strong enough to choose grand subjects for yourselves, you are beyond my range of teaching.' And the fact is, that I must now talk to you in another way ; that is to say, to the most advanced of you, Nos. &c, &c, and to all the others in order, as they reach a certain standard of precision and certainty in execution. That is all I have tried to lead to, so far, — truth of work one may call it, I suppose. But now we are going on about composition and colour ; and idiosyncrasy, or natural gift, must come in : so that henceforth I must have regard to your ideas and feelings, and all that ; and so, instead of objecting to ideas in general, I shall hence- forth only blow up about irrelevant ones. As you know, one can't help nibbling at the subject of composition all along, because composition begins when- ever you compose, or put any two objects together in a drawing. Well, people ask what are the principles of composition ; and the best answer is, that they are not completely ascertained, and never can be, till art is ex- hausted, till every possible idea is expressed, and till very possible permutation and combination of artistic ideas have been made. What do you want to do, or compose ? What sort of picture do you want to make ? what sort of idea will you convey ? If your idea is fresh, your com- position will be a new experiment on new principles. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. And you will find, doubtless, when your work turns out well, that certain general rules have been obeyed in it. If you first made out what you really wanted to do, and then took the best means to do it, you obeyed the first rule of composition, in its proper order ; that is to say, you secured some degree of unity and consistency. I've said it too often, I know ; but it comes round in such an endless number of ways, — the leading idea or characteristic, and truth to it. Ladies hardly ever want ideas, I think, or fragments of them ; but they frequently get them from men, and they often seem to have dif- ficulty in choosing the biggest. And whoever it may be, man or woman, the more imagination and feeling one has, the more decided duty it is to be accurate with one's self about what one really has imagined or felt, and whether it is one's own egg, or somebody else's egg, — which last case, I'm sorry to say, is the general rule. I know that it is in a real sense a new fact that A or B has got an idea, new to him, though it may be as old as the hills to any one else ; but, when A comes to ex- press it, he must consider how many people know it already, under all forms of expression. And for feeling, you know appreciation is not genius, and mistakes are made between the two. Pure appreciation or admira- tion, of a great work, cannot go wrong ; but when it begins to be emulous, it is less safe. You may think it is in you to do as good a novel or picture as the admired example, and wish intensely to do it ; but you can't do that model over again, or take another's ideas from him, and make them your own, as if they occurred to you first. You may do as good ; but it must be different, — yours, and not his ; and imitation often becomes gross plagiarism. Look how Tennyson's poems, or Kingsley's novels, used to be illustrated at the R. A. It may be 234 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. meritorious to work out a picture of the Gardener's Daughter, gowned in pure white, &c., as in the book ; but the picture cannot be original work in the same sense as the poem is an original poem. No doubt it depends on subject, and on the mental vigour of the painter; as some of Tingrind's or De Vair's illustrations show great original power, though of familiar subjects, such as the Sleeping Princess, or Arthur. But on these great subjects for all comers, the poet and painter are much in the same position. It is well to try what you can do after so many others. Horace tells young poets to try the common or public subjects [dicere communid), because they are difficult, and they have been often done before ; so that the student may compare his work upon them with other people's. Sad old dog, but knew a deal about composition. Now, then, your painting, for the future, will be in two lines, — either you will employ yourself in making studies or memoranda, in order that you may know hereafter how to do compositions which you look forward to in your mind ; or you will mentally arrange materials thus gathered, thinking things over and over, till you know which to take, and how to take them, and in what order. You never will do this well by any rule or set of rules. It is a gift, people all say ; and to me it seems undoubtedly a divine gift, if any of our faculties or powers are divinely given. But to the landscape- painter, at all events, motives of composition come, or ought to come, quite easily and sufficiently, in the form of what we call impressions from Nature. Some of you will now be right in beginning to try to ' paint your im- pressions,' as Turner said. How he came to say it, was this : some good landscapist, it may have been Stanfield, told him that he had been much struck with a view OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 235 somewhere on the Simplon, and, being then unable to stop, had gone back to the place next year, and found himself indifferent to it, and, on the whole, unable to make anything of it. ' Don't you know you ought to paint your impressions?' said Turner. By impression he meant that instantaneous prescience and forecast of the picture which he would make, imprinted once — perhaps not oftener — by the place which charmed him. His great sensibility and intense vision impressed him with such pleasure as such men feel at their best ; and his great science in ways and means of representation enabled him then and there to see his way to embody- ing that delight, and making it permanent. He got a vision of that view, under that light and so on, as it would look on his canvas or paper ; he saw its compo- sition 'within his head'; and, more than that, his know- ledge of materials and operations seems generally to have given him an instantaneous forecast of the colours and processes he would use. One cannot help seeing in his unfinished works that he is working up to an impres- sion ; to one consistent notion of the whole; and also that he is working with precision and certainty, and has a pre- science of his work in its intermediate state. Well, that, of course, is genius in the highest degree, developed in a very strong character by the severest technical training; and you can't do like Turner, or Stanfield either. But you can do like May Langdale at her best ; and that is worth doing, I can tell you. So do not lose an impres- sion. I am thinking of scenes or ' effects ' now, not simple studies. You see some place you fancy for a picture. Why do you fancy it ? Because of its actual beauty in form or colour, all day long and every day ? or because you see it under storm, or sunset, or sunrise ? or from thoughtful or sentimental association ? Any of these, to 236 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. an advanced student, is a good motive or reason for painting a picture, if it is strong enough to carry you through the picture ; but of course, if you only do the place on account of an effect of light or so, it is the effect which must be your real subject, and not the permanent features of the place. As to subjects whose motive is sentiment, all I have to say is, the stronger your feelings are about a place, the more mathematically accurate your description of it in water-colour ought to be. Non- sense-description of feelings, and tearing passion to tatters, are common enough things in print ; but tearing a beloved landscape to tatters for want of patience or attention shows that love or sentiment about it has waxed cold ; and is intolerable. Well, bearing in mind that we are studying colour now, and therefore that, in all we do now, colour is to take the lead throughout, and to be perferred to form, if necessary, let's set a palette : I mean let us see your colour-box, or write one out for you. I would use cake- colours at home, at least, in England ; but the moist ones are best for out-door and general purposes. Take time in beginning ; and always have clean saucers and two water-bottles at hand ; and do, please, be cleaner and tidier with both than I ever was, or shall be. Have clean Chinese-white near you always, and keep it moist by using it with all your distance-colours, and indeed with almost all your hues, unless for deep transparent darks. For in water-colour, as well as oils, the principle is the same ; opaque or solid lights and shadows you can see into. By using a little white habitually, you will quietly pick up the practice of body-colour as you go on, and glide from that into oils quite easily ; for body- colour practice is precisely the same as that of oil, guided by the principle above mentioned. I think I must finish OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 237 up these letters by an introduction to oil-colour, through practice in copying Turner's gray paper body-colours, — for example, some of the drawings for the Rivers of France, which are now at Oxford and Cambridge. A great thing about body-colour is, that it delivers you altogether from shininess, and all temptation in that direction. In oil, one has always too much glitter : and the horrid yellow varnishes which prevailed after the Dutch school are utter ruin to anything like colour ; so in water-colour I would avoid polish altogether. Never gum anything whatever. Do no more than use gamboge with your violet-carmine and indigo, or brown madder and indigo in the deep shades. Flashes and gleams on water, and so on, are about the only shiny things in landscape 1 . I think it's a sign of advancing good taste, that French polish is going out so much in furniture. Oak and walnut, and all other woods, I think, look much better for hand- rubbing. Accordingly, for water-colour drawing, we will have white paper, rather smooth, but not greasy, and trans- parent or semi-transparent colour. One thing more before our list of paints ; and that is, on washing over. First of all, don't do it ; or, if at all, only by way of lay- ing ground colours. If you know what you are going to draw, you may prepare a ground for it by laying in the masses of your picture in gray and yellow, flat and smooth ; and I give you leave to let them dry, and go over them with a soft brush and clean water, to get at something of Lionardo's sfumose, or cloudy shadow. But when you begin with accurate form and real colour, then resign your washes, and emphatically, ' throw up 1 All atmospheric lights are best in opaque colour, without excep- tion. Gamboge is a gum, and will give quite enough transparency to your shade. a 3 8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. the sponge.' Never have anything to say to rough paper in any moderate-sized work ; and with cartoon- size here we've nothing to do. Of hard chalk portrait- heads on rough paper we may speak some time, but not now. I know that some of you are given over to spong- ing and washing ; but really it is hardly ever of any real use ; it is positively bad whenever you do it without definite reason, and worse and worse as you do it later on in your picture. Here is your full list of colours. If you get them all in half-cakes, dry or moist, they will not take up much room in a tin box. Arrange thus, I think. Did I give you a list before ? if so, this is a complete one of all you can want. Arrange thus, across the usual tin box, — Cobalt. Smalt. Antwerp-Blue. Indigo. Yellow-Madder. Gamboge. Emerald-Green. Raw-Sienna. Lemon-Yellow. Cadmium. Yellow-Ochre. Chrome-Yellow, I. Rose-Madder. Burnt-Sienna. Ligbt-Red. Indian-Red. Orange-Vermilion. Extract of Vermilion. Carmine. Violet-Carmine. Brown-Madder. Burnt-Umber. Vandyke-Brown. Sepia. Violet-carmine and Indian-red make a capital purple for drawing forms or lines, when you mean to colour over them. Always float colour on as wet as you can at first, in all the light tints ; and use it rather thick, so as to crumble on the paper, in the darks ; then fill the interstices up with another deep hue somewhat opposed, — lay green into blue shadow, or into purple, or into black ; or purple into red ; or red into yellow ; or try and make purple in your work by patching or stippling pink into blue ; or orange, by using pure red and yellow in a crumbling way together. It is difficult, but very interesting ; and that's the way to get good colour. I have mentioned two or three triple mixtures, as, raw-sienna, indigo, and OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 239 brown-madder for background to a study, or foregrounp shades ; and you may put some gamboge with your violet-carmine, and red if you want transparency. But, as a rule, never mix more than two paints at a time. Better put the third over the first two when they are dry. It will do you all good to get a large sheet of paste- board in squares or strips, and to try mixed tints on it — warm and cold colours together. Once for all, life is too short for the use of colours as they ought to be used : and everybody must pick up knowledge for himself about them ; but you will get most in this experimental way. Then the suggestive Susan asks a very sensible question, — if there is any dodge, or help, as to matching natural open-air colours. She says they are all so odd, and none to be found in the box. Well, one thing to do is to practice mixed tints on pasteboard, and try them against natural tints. One comes on good grays or purples that way. But the best way is that in the Elements ; i.e. to cut a hole the size of a pea in a white card, hold it in the light, but not in sunshine, and so look through it at different hues, — grass, trees, rocks, &c. ; then match those hues on the cardboard. And if you do this pretty rightly, and paint a landscape in those colours, you will find yourself using Turner's colours ; and your work will be, in an important sense, like his 1 . 1 Elements, Letter iii. p. 212: 1 In your early experiments, you will be much struck by two things, — first, by the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in sun-lighted things ; and then, that, among the tints you can imitate, those which you thought the darkest will con- tinually turn out to be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by sight ; thus a cedar or Scotch fir at two hundred yards off will be thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us, because we know by experience that the peculiar colour they exhibit at that distance is the sign of darkness of foliage. But, when 240 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. It is rather a good thing for modern art that the man who can write best about colour for professed painters and students has written most about it. I have nothing to add, I'm sure. But you cannot understand about colour, unless you are always looking at it ; or about matching landscape-colours, unless you are always trying mixed tints. And, as said above, never mix too many ; remember you can put another glaze over when dry, and warm up or change hues, or chill and throw them back, if you like. Still you should keep up the practice of trying pure colours laid into each other's interstices to produce the effect of a mixture. For example, blue drapery is often greenish in the lights, and purplish or blackish in the shades. There are numbers of blues, and a larger number of bad blues than of other bad colours. But if you look at one of the Veroneses in the National Gallery, or can get at some of De Vair's work, you will see all that can be done in that colour. The French blue- purples, which they generally oppose to drab or deep yel- low, are very instructive. At all events, in doing these variations, paint the half-shades in first, as near as you can match them, with a not very full brush, leaving crumbly edges, and fill those in with the next tint pure without any mixing. A little of this practice with drapery will teach you a great deal of colour, besides bringing you on in boldness and accuracy of form both together. Do this, and paint single wild flowers and leaves right up to their hues, if you can, in oil, body-colour, or transparent water-colour, especially the last. The more you do this, the better you will understand all that is written con- we try them through the cardboard, the near oak will be found rather dark green, and the distant cedar perhaps pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray in Nature is, by the way, another somewhat surprising object of discovery. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 241 cerning these things, and the less time (happily) you will have to read it ; for colour is colour, and it can't be talked or written in black and white. As I've been saying, one reason you can't talk about colour is, that you are sure to contradict yourself. No- body knows what blue is, or what green is, or purple ; and the 'Fessor says there is no such thing as brown. I used to describe things on the positivist principle, and always say sky-colour, or gentian colour, or turquoise ; or, in greens, emerald or leaf-green, and so on. But now, by way of a good self-stultification, you must do all you can to lay your colours in exact patches, edge to edge ; and you must also practise laying them into each other. Patchwork, of course, is the principle ; and in theory everything ought to be painted touch for touch — like mosaic, my friend Legros says ; but it can't always be done, and there is a peculiar melting quality about hues which have blended naturally while wet : we must all try to run colours into each other as like Nature as we can. The example in the Ele- ments, p. 213, is a birch-trunk. Take one from Nature — a young one in the woods, where the brown bark joins the white — and paint it as well as you can, fitting the edge of one tint to the edge of another, ac- cording to form. ' The high lights will probably be white ; then there will be pale rosy gray round them on the light side ; then a deeper gray on the dark side, probably greenish, perhaps varied by reflected colours. Over all there will be rich black strips of bark, and brown spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray on the light side, leaving white for the high lights, spots of moss, and dark side ; then lay the gray for the dark side, leaving the black and brown moss still white, but fitting this gray shade colour to the rosy gray ; then take % 242 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. the moss colours, brown and green, matching every spot, and lay them in the white patches left for them ; then the blacks and browns on the dark side, all to form ; then your background; fitted to the edge of the tree-trunk.' It sounds hard and irksome ; but there are few students of landscape, indeed, who would not be much the better for sitting down and trying it. Or take a big stone, a mossy one by a brook-side, in the same way. Sunny side, pale green-gray, black, cobalt, light red, and touch of yellow-ochre ; leave forms of mossy spots correctly ; dark side same, gray darker ; leave mossy forms ; then emerald and gamboge on the moss, all over ; then model the gray stone, and get all the forms you can in the gray ; then ditto moss in green ; then background, raw- sienna, cobalt, and yellow-ochre, say ; then strong umber shadows ; same on the deepest part of the moss, or under it ; finally, a touch of chrome on the brightest green. These are all separate touches. The result ought to look quite like Nature ; but every brush-mark should be visible through a glass. Do one or other of these subjects. And then, for blending colours. Look at a wave, or better, perhaps, a sheet of calm clear water, playing under reflections. Draw, or put down something in hard pencil to repre- sent, its undulation, so that you may be able to be quick and decided with your forms in brushwork ; then strike on the light sides of all the waves not very wetly, but very pale, with emerald-green and a little yellow-ochre, leaving the darkest parts of their furrows. Before it dries, add cobalt to the yellow-green, and cover the paper almost entirely, leaving nice edges here and there ; then, while still wet, put in Antwerp-blue and lake with your cobalt, to get two well-opposed purple shades. Touch them in firmly while rather wet, using two brushes. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 243 The result may come to grief once or twice ; but if you are sure of your forms, and put your touches in quick and firm, without puddling the colour, it will have real beauty of hue, I trust. The right point of wetness is the difficulty. Then paint blue into gray, and purple into crimson, in sunset clouds and sky : they will require careful drawing in the first instance, but will give you an idea of the superior quality of quickly-laid colour. You know, I don't want you all to do all these things seriatim. But I think any of you, even the very best, will get something by any of these practices which you have not tried before. Many of you may have made use of them already ; but I wish you would try all that look new to you ; particularly the last, with wet pure colour ; for beware of mixing mixtures. For richness of colour, texture of near work, lusciousness of effect, and all that, William Hunt is your model ; and your best exercise will be painting single petals of bright garden flowers, geraniums, I think in particular, or single roseleaves of various hues. Calceolarias and foxgloves are very in- teresting, and difficult as to their spots. Of course, if you go to Switzerland, and get a chance of studying gentian or Alpine rose, why, do it, I entreat you : and don't give up all to sensations of glacier and precipice. But studying rich flower-colours will show you, beyond all else, how true splendour of hue lies in gradation and change, not in quantity or extent of bright colour. The Professor says, Nature is quite stingy about her ultra- marine in a bell-gentian, economising it down to the bottom of the cup. Perugino was very particular about his, too, I remember ; or was it his employers who made it, and were so stingy with him P 1 In any case, if a very 1 Vasari's Life. R 2 244 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. small space of pure colour is not brilliant enough, you will seldom paint it brighter by adding to its extent, or trying to make it brighter. Gradate it and vary it ; oppose it properly, and see that you have nothing else to put it out. And, to learn clear force of colour, you may paint your geranium petals till you can pick them up. In anything which has much bloom on it, as grapes, &c, it is a good plan to lay a thick body-colour ground of the bloom-tint, and paint all the variations into that with transparent colours. This is a heavy letter, dear May and here Charley took a long browse at the feather of his pen. His disquisition on colour was easier to write, after all, than his four months' valediction to May. What would t'owd missis say ? (Lady Susan Cawthorne always went by that name in the mouths of her irreverent offspring.) He knew that May had been asked to Red Scaurs for the whole summer, with a decided eye to business on his mother's part. How t'missis did adore May, to be sure ! And really, you know, four months' knocking about without seeing her would be a bore ; and mere de- scriptive letters would hardly be enough between them. And he fancied that May had left off telling him about herself and her thoughts of late : she was as frank as ever, but not so confidential, and their cousinly epistles had been fewer than usual. Charley put down his pen, and ordered Warhawk round. It was cold and wet : so he indulged in something far beyond regulation pace in Rotten Row, which was almost deserted. Warhawk strode along easily at three-quarter speed ; and the delightful rhythmical motion and feeling cheered his master's spirits not a little. Still he thought of Port Meadow and Knavesmire, and of the figure of all figures which had so often fled on fast by his side ; how she OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 245 used to bend her long neck to him, and glance with wide dark eyes, and tell him some odd fancy ; or sing a little of some galloping ditty ever so low to herself and the hoofs ! * Come,' quoth Charley to himself, ' if I'm not quite in love yet, I can't think of anybody else like this. Shall I give up Holderness ? he'll understand, or, at all events, the Duchess will.' No, it was all set- tled, and it would hardly be right to break ofT ; he was really wanted as friend and companion more than as a drawing master after all. He must go and see May. Come, he could take her something : she always kissed him, and was so pleased with anything he gave her. He bethought him of a favourite study of Susan Milton's golden head with a dark green ribbon in it, relieved against the brown neck and black mane of old Catapult, represented as eating carrots from her hand. Catapult's brown and black stood out against a mossy olive-green Yorkshire stone wall — and all was highly finished. May had not seen it. It was prettily framed ; and he had it packed at once. Then, only stopping in Baker Street to give the needful orders, he went to Mr. Ruby's, who had charge of certain pretty things left him by an extinct aunt or somebody, and bore away an emerald and diamond ring of price. He dared not order an 'engaged' one; but the alternate repetition of the first and last letter of the word was something. Besides, the arrangement of colour was bad in the regular anagrammatic circlet ; and coarse stones, like garnets and amethysts, were her aversion. Then he remembered she would be at RotherclifTe, and full of her infirmary. So he lighted down at Fortnum and Mason's, and bought some tins of turtle-soup, and two dozen of champagne for the patients. May would like that. He looked in at Peat's, where a new travelling- 246 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. saddle, with holsters, bags, and valise, a remounted Per- sian snaffle, and the package of his gun and et ceteras, along with the saddlery, highly interested him ; and so he thought again of the long hours of horseback, and wandering fields of barren foam, and that four or five months. Thinking what will please a young lady is a mental occupation more easily taken up than laid down again. And now came two questions to exercise Charles for the rest of the day, — ' First, what does she like most ? second, supposing that to be, on the whole, me, hadn't I better square the whole concern before I start ? It is awkward running away from her now ; and they won't find it easy to put her visit off till I come home : it would be too obvious for her. I'm afraid she must be angry ; and her anger always takes the form of harder work, and less pleasure. She wouldn't go and marry an ascetic divine, now.' — A thrill of terror went through him ; but he thought of Ripon and his influence, and felt easier. But he went off with his presents by the night train for all that, and drove to the sister's house at Rothercliffe, straight from the station. He asked for the Lady- Superior, and was admitted with some circumspection, as the visits of young gen- tlemen with the appearance of superior plungers are somewhat unfrequent at the doors of religious ladies. It would be difficult to say which of the two was more agreeably surprised with the other. Sister Catherine had entertained an idea that young painters were an ex- ceedingly rough lot, or, as she would herself have put it, a painful description of young persons ; and Charley lived in some awe, and perhaps suspicion, of ladies- superior as a variety. So that, when he found he had only to talk to a well-bred woman in a black gown, and white OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 247 hood and collar, who understood not only him, but May and him, in five minutes, and seemed to think the whole thing perfectly natural, he was not only very much pleased, but showed it in a manner gratifying to his interlocutor. May was with her patients. He said something of having brought a present for the hospital ; and the sister clapped her hands on hearing of the cham- pagne. It was the very thing the convalescents wanted ; and it would be a blessing to all the sisterhood to have it to give them. ' But you won't carry May away from us altogether, Mr. Cawthorne? She is so very useful, and does so much with so little trouble or bustle ! Don't be surprised ; she is not Sister anything, you know : nobody can call her any name but May ; and we all go by our own Christian names here. How long do you want her ? ' ' I want to take her home, and bring her back on Saturday, on my way to town. We start early on Monday morning.' ' This is Thursday — dear me ! Well, after the turtle- soup, you may claim anything, But we shall miss her ; and, what is worse, a good many sick people will ; and I shall have to send her away in a fortnight, as I never let her stay for more than six weeks at a time. You musn't think I think her vocation is really with us. She does us most good by coming and going. Won't you drive on a hundred yards to the wards with the nice things ? Ask for the matron, and tell her you come from me ; or, stay, here's a line for her.' He passed through the usual ominously clean hospital hall and staircase, which seems as if the echoes of the whole building were forcibly suppressed in it, like the winds in Ulysses' keeping, all eager to break forth. It always makes one listen for screams in far apartments. 248 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. He caught a soupqon of the conventional smell of saw- dust, soap, and dry stores, fresh meat and baking ; and turned into the accustomed clammy waiting-room, with horsehair chairs prematurely worn by anxious people fidgeting in them. He had time to be sorry for others, and thankful for his own twelve-stone of hard health ; noticed the lift and chair outside for shattered casualties, and the terrible low oak-jointed table in the corner ; and forgot all in a moment as May shot into the room quite radiant. She had just had time to read his letter : and, whatever she thought of it, to complain was altogether foreign to her nature and ways. ' Well, here you are : I'm so glad to see you before you go ! ' and she gave him both hands, and just let his lips touch her cheek. ' Have you time to tell me about it?' Charley had been nervous before; but this greeting affected him as if she had thrown a bucket of cold water in his eyes, and followed it up by another of scaldings. He hemmed and hawed, and held on to both her hands, till she assured him that ' she did not mean to scratch,' not knowing what to say either. She was vexed ; but even then ' his twa een told her a sweet story.' 1 My dear May, I wont't go if you really forbid it ; but it is a great chance. You see I'm no better than my fathers, and here is just what I want most — a strong patron to bring forward all I've been working at for ten years. He could get one a hearing.' 1 You creature, do go wherever you like ! but settle it all well at Red Scaurs. Your father and Lady Susan are getting on, you know, and are not strong. Goodness ! What's in all these boxes ? You really do not lodge here, Charles ? and well for you too.' ' Sister Catherine told me to bring it here ; it's some OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 249 tins of turtle soup and a little champagne for the un- fortunates in general.' * That's a dear good boy ! how it will bring them all up ! Champagne is such a tonic, you know ; and I be- lieve it does people twice as much good, because it is so nice. I'm quite against nasty things.' ' Could one get the sisters to take any ? ' 'Perhaps, if Lady Susan would send them a dozen, they would have it on feast-days.' 'Well, now, come with me now to Red Scaurs, till Saturday, and coax t'missis about that and other things. I have got leave from Sister Catherine.' May started, and declined rather confusedly. There would be so much to do and settle with his ' parients,' and she should feel in the way ; and they really wanted her here very much till Sister Anne came back, and so on. Charles begged hard, and carried his point ; but he felt that no more could be said to his dark lady now. He was lover enough to feel that a rebuff would be very bad to bear, and had tact to see that May was more vexed than she showed, or indeed knew. The brave do not feel fresh wounds ; but they bleed from the old ones ; and it seemed, for the time, as if all their years of friendship had only established their power of giving each other pain. Both were beginning to know that vague sense of dependence, and loss of inner liberty, which we are sorry to say does come on people, when they first know that they care for somebody else as much as they do for themselves. It is startling, and not always pleasant, particularly to self-centred and high- minded young ladies. They feel wronged : they have not flirted, or called on love, or noticed the tiresome urchin ; but his hand is at their heart-strings for all that, and he is lord of pain as well as pleasure. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. And Charles was in the wrong. JHe ought not to have put her off as a bit of summer occupation to be settled with before grouse time ; and now she suspected he meant to say something at once, and try to carry her by coup de main before he went, without really un- derstanding or explaining, or telling his heart to her at all. Though she would not have owned it in words, the being made love to properly would have been very sweet to May Langdale, who could dispense with nearly all pleasures, but was far too young not to enjoy them all. And having, perhaps, indulged in certain visions of a summer of sweet words and sighs, she felt a real distress at losing them all ; in short, her soul was bitter within her ; and she dreaded further trial, and would not let Charles be grave about her, or himself, or his parents, or his journey. They had a hasty luncheon with the Superior, who talked well and rapidly all the time ; then she made him look after her luggage, modest as it was ; then they couldn't hear themselves speak in the train. A waggonnette is not a good place for mutual confidences ; and for that evening and all the next day Charles was occupied with his father, who had distinguished himself of old as a traveller in the Isles of Greece, and produced an infinity of journals, plans, and sketches. Lady Susan clung to May as soon as they were alone together, and said she was her great hope, and her daughter — already ; so like her whom she and Ripon never forgot or named. They sat close together like little girls : the elder lady was full of love for the younger, and a little afraid of her, and knew not what to say on their main point. But her tenderness was balm to the other ; and anger and sorrow all went out of May's great wholesome spirit straightway. ' You'll come to us in the summer all the same, dear?' OUR SKETCHING CLUB. said the old lady. 'We are getting past everything now. Tom won't get away from the House till August ; and then you are not only my darling, but you would do everything for us so well ! I want as much help some- times as one of the RotherclifTe old ladies ; and I value yours so much more! And you never manage anybody.' ' Oh gracious, Lady Susan ! I hope not : I've no turn for command, I know.' ' No ; but people in general have a surprising turn for doing what you tell them : that is better. I declare, that stupid boy's only chance was never to go out of your sight ; and I suppose you are out of all patience with him.' ' No ' (here followed kisses), ' you've made me so much better! I think we have both taken each other too coolly ; but, indeed, I think I must be very fond of him. He's the very contrary of stupid, I'm sure. Tell me,' said May, in her soft shrewd voice, — 'you have always seen so much of the world, — isn't it true that young ladies are almost expected to propose to gentlemen in society ?' ' Well,' said the old lady, relieved and amused, ' they seem to do quite their share of the courtships ; but I never expected a son of mine to be a backward lover.' ' I'm sure he has great hopes from his painting. All his things are so full of passion and hard work, as if he threw his soul into his fingers ; and he seems to have no passion to spare. Perhaps he is a great man after all, you know ; and his ways are not our ways.' ' I've no notion of a great man's caring so little for his old mother's little games, and going off to Jericho just when she has asked the beauty of all England to come and stay in a country-house with him. But, my dear, what am I to say to him?' 252 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 'Nothing. I'm not a modern, but quite an old woman, and can't let him off speaking first. Lady Susan,, do you in your heart think he really cares enough about it?' ' I do, in my heart, think that he is just like the rest of them, and would go mad if he thought he should lose you ; and I think he is learning to know that too. And really he may learn it best of all at his Jerichoes.' ' Then ' (more kisses) ' only let him find that out, if he can ; and don't let him say anything now, and I'm sure I shall be glad to be here this summer. "And let all this be as it was before,'" said May, unconsciously quoting Dora, and illustrating it as well. CHAPTER XII. ELL, good-bye, my dear Charley,' said his V V mother at parting, and after all embraces. ' You were quite right to say no more to May now : just leave her to us, and write to her. It's no use talk- ing, Dieu dispose. But, till I see you together, I shall live in fear; and, if I leave you with her, I shall die happy, and so will your father.' Dick Ripon sat in his Oxford study on a summer morning, running over Charles's club letters, a few of which had been left unanswered : he was further in- trusted with the duty of elaborating some additional remarks on colour, from that hero's notes. He was ill at ease, and anxious about May, but had had the comfort of seeing that the painter was much worse than he was. After all, they were young ; and three or four months would not be much, if all were well. The Vicar had had his 7 a.m. service, his gallop before breakfast, and then that meal itself; had seen sick people and others ; and had finally done what he could to shut himself up for a little writing : but, as being interrupted was the law of his existence, his ob- servations were apt to be more pithy than connected. They were addressed to Flora for the present, as he was to see May at RotherclifTe in a few days, and had already written to her on her own affairs. He sat at his study-table, doubled up in a Glastonbury chair, in a 254 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. corner of the room, like a pacha in a divan, and seeming to fill it up with his deep broad torso, and powerful thighs, and bow legs, as a badger fills his lair. He had learned an Eastern habit of never letting himself be accessible from behind ; no bad rule for those who ad- mit all comers. For the rest, 1 his swarthy visage spake ' distraction, if not distress. His forehead and bald occiput looked scholarly ; his eyes were rather mild, with the troubled look of the priest ; and the rest of him certainly looked somewhat hard, if not sporting. He wore a peculiar black coat, which he was wont to describe as a 'capitular cut-away,' — straight, single- breasted, collarless, of Melton cloth as tough as leather, and dependent for its character entirely on his nether garments. At present, in black Bedford cords and butcher-boots, he looked like a chastened horse-dealer. In smooth trousers, he resembled an excited archdeacon. Thus ran his observations : — Letter XX. R. R. to F. L. My dear Flora: As to Charles's club letters left unanswered, whereof many: (i) No. ; just joined club; can't attend any school of art ; has drawn a good deal in her own way ; sends specimens and nice letter, asking what she had better do. Answer : Get my book, — ' Oxford Art Manual' She has an eye for colour (you all have), distances good, and foreground weak. She must copy plaster casts of heads in sepia (that will enlarge her ideas of light, shade, and perspective), and do a series of simple flowers in water-colour, getting them as bright as ever she can, which will show her all about colour. No use going on with views. (2) Miss Milton is at it OUR SKETCHING CLUB. *55 again. Wants to know what solidity is in drawing, and how she is to get it into her foregrounds. Draw every- thing in right perspective, and always have something — anything — in front, to lead into the picture. Per- spective does it. Think of the square box we had in Charles's sixth letter. Wants to know what quality means. Quality of colour means purity or truth of hue ; of form, purity or truth of curve ; of composition and painting in general, right arrangement and relation of tone. I suspect that young lady of an inclination to try to shut me up ; and recommend severe drawing, which will be much better for her. (By the by, I heard one of the little girls who had been to the drawing- school, and quarrelled with her companion, reduce her antagonist to tears by calling her a wicked mixed pig- ment ; and really it sounded terrible : do try it on Susan). (3) How is No. to learn finish? Virtually the same question as the first. She is a little stronger in her work, and ought to take a large inossy stone, or a tree-trunk with a few ivy-leaves, and do it in colour, with whatever comes behind it, as she sees it. (4) Had not the club better send their critic outlined sketches of proposed drawings, or work in progress, to ask his advice ? Yes, of course ; but I shouldn't advise the critic to send them back again, unless he is to get a great deal more for his work. But to have a drawing (of the same subject by all hands) in progress all the year, and send it month by month, or every two months, in the portfolios, would not give him so much additional trouble. The rest of the letters amount to this, for the most part, that the writers have not time to work at drawing. Why write to say so ? Try something you have time for. Now that drawing is so much studied, and by many people, rich and poor, with the greatest 256 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. energy, and on good methods ; now that, in conse- quence, good workmanship is cheap, — it may not be worth while to produce fifth-rate stuff. But when once you begin to work hard at a cast, or can do a single petal right, you begin to gain something, whether what you produce is pretty or not. Doing pretty things easily is the silliest employment, even in the art way, of which a sane creature is capable. To conclude : let all these parties get my book, which contains all things needful. Now, for some more about colour, Charles's notes carry the subject a good way; but there is some more to be added about general tone of shadow, I see. You know, — first, in pictures, all things are seen (or are de- fined in form so as to be known for what they are) by shadows ; secondly, all those shadows are coloured things, neither pure white nor black : therefore, thirdly, white and black in a picture ought to be treated as colours, yet as separate colours at the top and bottom of the scale, — vanishing-points of hue, in fact. Thus a black object will be black in quite a different sense from 'black' shadow, and will look altogether unlike it in the picture. A crow, and the shadow of crow, are different colours. The shadow depends on the colour of the grass it falls on ; the black of the feathers (unless they are under sunshine, and flashing in the light) is positive and separate. So of white : if you are to have white in your picture at all (except in dots and splashes, like crests of waves, &c, which I don't count), if you are to have a pure white object of definite form for the eye to rest on, it must take the lead in your picture, like Wouvermans' white horse. You cannot have anything brighter ; you ought not to have anything quite so bright : but all things should be subdued for its sake, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 2$J and gradated up to it. And, further, the white object itself can't be pure oxide of zinc, or even very white paper : it must be modelled in yellow, or rose, or neutral yellowish-brown, or olive ; all which are model- ling shadow-tints, which will go with white, purples, and blues and greens ; and cold shadows are only fit for chill or painful effect. You will hardly find pure white in all Turner's gray paper drawings ; there is always yellow or pink or green in it : and, if you will put a small patch of thick Chinese-white (oxide of zinc) anywhere in one of your own, it will rather surprise you by its crudity. To keep it at all, you will have to reduce its size to nothing, and gradate up to it amidst great difficulties. With the scientific use of tinted whites in ideal -conventional paintings, like Moore's, or symphonies of colour, like Whistler's, I've nothing to do : but you cannot have much of it in a landscape ; and what you do have should convey a sense of light and purity, and be, as the Professor says, precious. Then when you have a black object, as I said, it should behave as such, and be like a crow jn a field, or a raven in a moorland landscape, or quaint characteristic blot. ' Black should look strange among the coloured shadows, never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of the intensest shade in the centre of masses of shadow.' Nothing but long practice, and long study of the best landscape-work — I should say, with Turner's, some of Alfred Hunt's and Goodwin's water-colouring — can teach you how much may be done by stippling colours into each other ; for the dodges and ' malices ' of it are quite infinite. But cloud-drawing will teach you a good deal of it. Study a cumulus, or rain-cloud, and try and copy a bit of Turner's storms. Or do some purplish-gray S 25 8 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. clouds with good forms, and try to stipple on a pink glow with solid colour, used in faint touches and crumblings and hatchings. Try to darken a hillside in middle distance, by putting on masses of pines or other trees in different hues of shade. In fact, the artifices of varied colour change continually with subject and circumstances, and I don't know what more to say about it. I think, when Charles writes again, he will tell you something of what you should not do or care for in your colouring. Quant a moi, I am sure you will always do good by observing, imitating, and executing varia- tions on natural contrasts of colour, — purple and green, yellow and gray, and so on. But purple, green, gray, and colour itself, are all relative terms, expressing our personal ideas of hue, which we cannot accurately com- pare with each other, certainly not describe to each other. Colours are personal and objective, like every- thing else in art. But there is a sort of morbid, upholster- ous fear of bright colour now, which is sadly against naturalist landscape. I really think so much broadcast art-teaching addles people's brains, and makes them more absurd than they need be. We used to say in Christ Church, that real ignorance required machinery to get it to a real climax ; and we tried it once. The whole staff of us lectured in logic, each man to his pupils, for a whole term with much zeal ; then, at the end of it, we became, as the dear old Dean delighted to call us, a Board of Examiners ; and every man ex- amined his neighbour's pupils in the art of reason. Such a donkey-race ! Of course, there were some good ones, but, in a general way, such wild misconception, and impertinent idiocy, and fluent hallucination, as we got, must be rare, even in Oxford. Well, there are OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 259 books about colour, and decoration^ and all that ; and they have done some good, no doubt. They have taught the common oppositions of colour which are or may be fit for dress and furniture, and have taught people to use half-tints, and produced one or two nice olive-greens, and green-grays, and pinks ; but Morris and Faulkner, or Mr, Holliday, are almost alone as educated men of original power and thorough training,, who can really do the thing by principle and invention together. I don't blame the workmen : I think the public has not the sense to take pains to spend its money properly. But now for a few principles. The oppositions of natural hue will do in a room. Only half-tints ought to come over large surfaces of colour, as walls ; they ought to be subdued, because they can- not be gradated ; they ought to please the eye half unconsciously, and not challenge attention, or ask to be looked at hard. Brown and gray; then brown runs into purple, and finally to crimson, and gray to green, and then yellow, and the opposition is good throughout ; but as to dictating which tint against which, it depends on climate, character, size, — I don't know what. Then there is the putting-in small bits of bright or. pure colour in opposition, like pure pale crimson spots into an olive-green or yellow-and-white wall-paper. You should see this artifice in the intensely bright colours of a yellow Arab kefiyeh, the silk scarf they wear instead of a turban in the desert. The ground of it is an in- tense yellow; the broad border, a bright deep red; and along it, with gold-and-silver threads, are stripes of rich purple; and in the midst of the yellow the brightest turquoise. But these incongruous colours are placed in such small quantity of narrow stripes (the turquoise only three or four threads), and are so set in narrow S 2 ■z6o OUR SKETCHING CLUB. white spaces, that the result is somehow a brilliant har- mony. I think I've seen rich apple-green in them too. I'm so sick of artistic colours t and the notion of them is so wrong! Folds of dress in one monotonous half- tint never can be like Veronese's folds of rich colour, blended and gradated with all his science and passion ; and, till you get a whole trade of dyers like Tintoret, the indescribable Venetian draperies never can be imi- tated by the skirts of Mayfair : you may be sure of that. And then the women they painted had all plenty of colour in their cheeks and hair; and really, to see a washed-out looking damsel in a washed-out looking pale green, fancying herself like Titian, is lamentable indeed. Besides, in Venice, in that day, women wore real stuffs and genuine silks, and materials rich and real. And then, to make matters worse, people cut their sham Titianesque dresses up into tunics and sacks, and hack them into bunchy Dolly- Vardenisms, and Louis Quinze absurdities. And a lot of benighted beings dress and decorate up to a period, and revive drabs and light blues, and chilly gildings, and spindle-shanked chairs, and pianos on stilts, because the worship of ugliness was carried out that way under the Directory. I am sure bright positive colours, with plenty of white, ought to come in again in ladies' dress, if you are not to lose your eyes for naturalist colour altogether. I saw a crab-tree just in flower the other day, with fresh Hooker's green leaves, white, green, and rose, and thought how you would look in a gown of the same. May must abide by her black and amber, or rose and white, I suppose, with her dark hair and eyes. Shocking, my talking about these matters. Ever yours affectionately, R. R. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. P.S. — Poor Mrs. Beecroft writes in alarm about May's joining ' a chalybeate order.' Can she mean ' celibate' ? Letter XXL R. R. to F. L. Red Scaurs, June — , 1 8 — . My Dear Flora : Charles's last letter on colour went almost to the end of the subject, I thought, — as far as he could follow it in giving rules for what you ought to do and attempt and care about ; but I find some capital ob- servations further, on matters which you ought not to be troubled with, and they seem to come to this (I think the end of the last letter cautioned you against that sickly fear of pure and bright colour, which is infecting fine art, and seems to be derived from milliners' and upholsterers' notions about dress and furniture) : — First, do not think that local colour will help you with form, for local colour flattens everything. Second, don't be bound by, or care much about, what people say and write about approaching or retiring colours. Warm colours, reds and yellows, are said to express nearness, and cold ones, blues and grays, to express distance. Well, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't : it depends on the subject in which they are used, and its associations. It is a good thing for you to know little practical dodges about the pigments ; as for example, that Venetian red is the best red to decorate a high vault or ceiling, because it 'looks more distant' than other reds, — but there is no workable rule about ad- vancing and retiring colours. It is their quality (as %6i OUR SKETCHING CLUB. depth, delicacy, &c.) which expresses distance, not their hue. Blue in a picture is a sign of distance, because mist and air are blue, and a warm colour a long way off is often lost in the mist, or modified in colour by it. In the same way, quoth the Professor, brown may be called a retiring colour, because when stones are seen through brown water, the farther off they are the browner they look ; and yellow may be a retiring colour, because when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther they are off the yellower they look. Neither blue nor yellow nor red have any power of expressing either nearness or distance in themselves. A blue gown in a haberdasher's shop does not look any farther off than a red gown, and a red cloud in an evening sky always looks farther off than a blue one, and so it is. So orange is a sign of nearness in an orange, because it is not so bright farther off ; in a sunset cloud it is a sign of distance, because you don't get that bright colour on the vapour when it is near you : it is all matter of experience. And even force and pitch of colour do not necessarily express nearness, and delicacy or paleness the contrary. A foreground of primroses or blue hyacinth may be faint and delicate enough ; but they will look much nearer than tree-trunks or heavy clouds beyond, accord- ing to drawing. I made a note for this letter this morn- ing in the Raven's Gill ; — you remember that darling green place here where one scrambles up the deep gill, what you call a dingle, up over great grit stones, with every one a whole garden of mosses on every square inch of him ; and Charley's pre-Rafaelite pun, about humouring rocks and drawing them according to their little lichens. Well, if the heather had been out at the bottom of the glen close to me, it would have been delicate and pale purple; if I had been looking at OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 263 heathery hills far away, they would have been deep intense purple. 1 The rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full on the snow in distance ; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak, six miles away from shore. And you may have a dark purple, blue-green or ultramarine distance in clouds, or sea, against a close foreground of pale sands or bright flowers, or anything which strongly re- flects light. Never mind any rules of aerial perspective ; match the colours of things faithfully wherever they be, near or far. Nature doesn't want you to measure space : the power of discerning distance fairly by the eye over an unknown space is really limited to a few hundred yards ; and you would have a bad time of it every time you painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance in aerial perspective.' The ins and outs and apparent contradictions are very bad all through this subject. Though all shadows are coloured, still they are of darker and colder colour than the local hue of the thing itself which they shade — and when the thing is very eclatant and glowing the local colour fairly beats the form-shadows, as I told you 1 . In a scarlet geranium or a primrose, or a blue gentian, or one of those intense purple pansies, you cannot see the delicate structural shading of the petals, the local colour is too much for it. And so, it cannot be said that colour interprets form, or makes it any clearer to you. Of course in a dissected map one country is of one colour and is known by it, and in a pair of top-boots you know 1 Structural shade or the modelling of form is, of course, a dif- ferent matter from cast shadow of one object on another in sun- shine. The latter prevails over everything. 264 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. which are the tops and which are the boots by their colour. What I mean is, that where your attention is really called to colour, from its subtlety, or intensity, or on account of its beauty, however you put it, you more or less lose sight of form : and that consequently and practically, when you are dealing with the intensest or subtlest colour you can produce in painting, you will have to give up forms which you would insist upon if you were drawing in fine pencil. Certainly it would be so with the flowers I have mentioned. But, on the other hand, you will never be able to put the right touches of colour in the right places, get the right gradations of colour, and so on, without severe study of form : and every good colourist in landscape must work as hard as he can at it. At the end, when you have really learned to put the right touch of the right shape in the right place at the right strength, and that infallibly, you will be right in both colour and form. You will then be able to paint the pinks and gray-purples and yellows of a peach all right, and it will look beautifully round. But it will not be your pinks and yellows which will give the peach its look of roundness ; it will be their gradations, and relations of difference. And when all's done, your peach, perfectly imitated, looking as if it could be taken up, and making one positively feel greedy about it, will be hardly so round-looking as if you had done it with your best care in light and shade. Light and shade, or chiaroscuro as they will call it, is abstract form, abstracted or withdrawn from colour : and I don't think it is in human nature not to see more form when colour is withdrawn, or not to be able to draw and record more form, when the great difficulties of colouring are withdrawn. Well, the last advice about colouring is, always take it OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 265 coolly, and let everything dry before you touch it again. If you will only mix two colours at a time \ you may always let the result dry in peace if it be pretty right in form, for you can change it ad libitum by glazing ; but right or wrong or anyhow, never touch wet colour, once spread, a second time : if you puddle it with the brush you lose the peculiar beauty with which the particles arrange themselves on the paper as the water medium dries away from them. That is the use of form. Know your forms before you put them on, and then every patch of hue will go on with quickness and precision, and infallibly be beautiful in itself as a patch of hue, as it ought to be. When anything is decidedly wrong after drying, wash it clean out all over and put it in again, — whenever you wash at all, wash out. I would never wash over for effect, where warm colour has once gone on, and as seldom as possible over sky or distance. Your usual process will be, first the masses — then out- lines of form all over in pen and colour to guide the brush — then forms in coloured shadows — perhaps glazes to bring together, and darker touches to bring out again — some powerful reserved darks in foreground — and all the hatchings and stipplings you like to put in, in pure colour or clear gray. And always, point de zele, don't be in a hurry, or think you can do too much at a heat or in a sitting. When one is tired, one's temper goes, and as sure as that happens things go wrong : and hurry is a symptom of fatigue towards the end of a sketch, or of a day's work. When you want to get done, leave off. And meanwhile for practice, this Exercise, Fig. 30 in the 1 Excepting in neutral shades, where a yellow, a blue, and a red may be mixed for background or dark shadow. See above, p. 243. 266 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Elements, will be the very thing for all of you to prac- tise — all the best of you with the others. Two twin cottages, balconies, windows, shingly roof and eaves : to be expressed in some detail, with one tint of gray and a few dispersed spots and lines of it. And you ought to be able to do all that without dipping your brush more than three times; and without a single touch after the tint is dry. Practise that till you can do it well, and you will soon be surprised at your own sharpness and vigour in open- air sketching. These flat patches of tint, by which one works in colour, I suppose must be called patches or spaces ; or perhaps masses : they are not outlines, though they possess them ; nor are they forms, which possess both light and shade. They are called masses, I think, in the Oxford Lectures, and that appears on the whole to be the best word for them. But the power of all your painting depends on the hold you have of the form in which your masses of coloured shade shall come on the paper. Now, then, for the hardest of all, which is to interpret Fig. 24. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 267 Charles's views on Composition, gathered in a great degree from the Professor, but carefully digested with the full powers of what he is pleased to call his mind : I wish he knew it a little better on other matters. Well, Composition is making one thing out of several things, combining from their various natures a new nature or unity. A book is composed of thoughts and words ; a picture, of thoughts, forms and colours. There must be an intended unity ; a thousand of bricks or so are not composed into a heap as they are shot out of a cart, they are composed into a house according to foreknown plan. About the words Purpose, Character, and so on, we have had enough. What I must go on about is, that the Unity or Compound Idea expressed in the picture or poem consists of ever so many compounding ideas : these have to be arranged in proper order and relation so as to lead up to the One central impression har- moniously, without interfering with each other. And though no rules can be given for this in anything — though no picture worth the name can ever be painted by rule — still principles may be got at chiefly by obser- vation of great works, and seeing how great men have worked up their ideas, the many minor into the one greater. There is no better view of these principles for landscape than that which is given in the Elements, and C. and I are commissioned to work that up again for you. They are simple rules of arrangement : you cannot invent or have ideas by rule, perhaps not by study ; but when you have a subject of thought and painting, you will set it forth with the proper trimmings, and in better style, by understanding how that work has been done before. The chief example is Turner's Ehrenbreitstein ; and just under this there is a nice plan or sketch of 268 OUR SKETCHING CLUB, the picture. And I should think it was chosen as an example of composition not only because its arrange- ment is easily explained as well as subtle, but because it is a regular landscape, of nature in beauty, without direct appeal to human passion. It is all calm : it is the very contrary of what is called sensation. That means weakness in convulsion : this is strength in re- pose. Sensation in its very best sense, if it has any, is the appeal to feeling made by the human tragedy ; that Fig. 25. is to say, according to the definition of tragedy, by man overpowered by circumstance. Now, here you are not immediately concerned with the doings of man ; they are not represented ; but you are reminded of what Ehrenbreitstein could do. Do you remember Hood's housemaid's description of Coblentz, in ' Up the Rhine' : ' This is a bewtiful city which is under the proteckshin of a grate Fortress on the other side of the river, as can batter the town all to bits in a minit.' Briefly put : but that is the idea which inevitably strikes every- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. body in coming up the Rhine, and it's quite clear it struck Turner. Well, he got down to near the actual meeting of the great waters, or supposed a point near it on the Moselle ; and there it all was, power in repose ; the maiden fortress, as grim as a Valkyr, and the city and bridge. And the genius of his composition, the unity of its invention, the purpose of the picture in Turner's mind, is not only to make a very pretty land- scape of a very lovely subject, but to invest the subject in the mind of the spectator with what he felt and thought about the whole concern. Well, now, it gave him an all-embracing notion of strength in repose, or peace tolerably prepared for war, in a country where men have done battle generation after generation. So the old tower on the old bridge is his leading or master feature. And of course in every picture you do, you must have a leading feature, and must make the eye go to it first of all the other features. That may be done by making it a prominent form, or a principal light, or a principal dark, or a principal con- trast. In figure subject, or subject of immediate human interest, it is perhaps easier to insist on one's leading feature. It is done academically by arranging figures in a pyramid, and putting the chief in the centre, or placing them in ovoid curves about the canvas. Rembrandt places his chief interest in the middle of his principal light with grand dark contracted figures : sometimes using light on flesh very wonderfully 1 . The simplest example of this is in the various Holy Families, 1 As in the Susanna and Elders in Sir E. A. H. Lechmere's col- lection. Apart from its artistic value, this great work has the advantage of being the least offensive treatment of the most lament- able of the great public subjects. It is distressing enough not 270 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. in which the light of the picture is made to radiate from the Infant Saviour. Again, with landscape subjects which appeal to some great event, or make stirring call on some one feeling, composition is easier, because the leading interest takes the lead of itself ; — Turner's Riz- pah, Cephalus and Procris, Jason, and others, are good examples. You have only to put your event in a prin- cipal light, and make the other things lead and point to it. In pure landscape again, the painter simply leads the eye to his favourite passage : the motive of the pic- ture is what he thinks its principal beauty. If he enjoys his distance most, his foreground will not have very marked figures, or they will be moving on into his distance in perspective ; if he delights in his foreground and figures, he will make his distance into their background. When the picture involves no action or passion or re- membrance of human life, its motive and leading idea or feature is to be found in its chief beauty ; and the most successful landscape composition is that which surrounds the most beautiful passage of landscape, with others, in subordinate positions, which assist it by harmony or contrast, like the setting of a large fine stone. That subordination secures unity : or, in other words, it tells you in a word or two what the picture is about ; or at all events puts you on the right scent, or strikes the right key-note, — any expression of the sort, though I think key-note is the best, because one's mind echos to be disgusting. The expression of utter horror and shrinking terror which convulses the leading figure, actually depriving it of its natural and accustomed beauty, elevates the character of the work and its author alike. We have reason to be thankful that this apocryphal narrative is no longer read ' for example and instruction of morals ' in the English Church Service. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 271 and re-echos to the clear well-struck thought, and it gives one ideas of one's own. Now let's try the woodcut of Turner's Ehrenbreitstein by this. The tower on the Moselle bridge is the key- note. It is the happiest thing in the world its being there, for it is a picturesque old tete du pont> and marks that the bridge had to be defended in other days, and that East Franks and West Franks felled each other on the Rhine ever since old Roman days at the Con- fluentia. Modern fortification is ugly enough for its infernal purposes ; and Turner only suggests it, on the right. But in the bridge-tower he gives his hint of fields fought long ago, and sets one's thoughts the way his went. Then further, to keep you in that key, you can't help running your eye from the top of the bridge-tower to the top of the fortified cliff of Ehren- breitstein. It is a grand mass of rock, but it is so reduced by aerial perspective of colour that it cannot stand against the tower as a leading feature ; it carries on and confirms its impression, of repose or intermis- sion of strife, the greatest repose of all. This is our first note then — The Law of Principality or (Leading) Motive and Leading Feature (1) Fig. 26. This example speaks for itself : the two leaderless leaves (a) are not so pretty, the three (b) with a leader are prettier, the five (c) with a gradation of superiority are prettiest. 272 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. Let's just have the others as given — The Law of Repetition or Echo (2) „ Continuity or Monotone (3) „ Curvature (4) „ Radiation (5) „ Contrast (6) „ Interchange (7) „ Consistency (8) „ Harmony (9) Law is as good a word as any other ; but these rules are in fact generalisations, by the best observer in the world, from nature and the best pictures in the world. And they are not so much rules for us, as principles to be borne in mind by us, in looking at other men's pictures, and in doing them for ourselves, when we indulge in that vanity. The first is stated ; now for the second — Repe- tition or Echo. Unity in a picture is the sympathy of its groups or parts, different things going the same way : it does not matter how different, if they guide one's thoughts in the right direction. When Turner wants to give a notion of a brook in summer, he introduces a bird drinking at it ; when Tintoret wants us to understand the force of the River of the Wrath of God he puts in pine-branches rending in it. That is an echo of idea or feeling ; but Turner has another and perhaps more important, at least more technically important way of repeating passages of colour ; and so have other great composers. In Pembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing boats, one with a red and another with a white sail. In a line with them on the beach are two fish in precisely the same relative positions, one red and one white. Now this kind of repetition is somehow connected with human feeling about repose and quiet. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 173 In general throughout Nature reflection and repetition are peaceful things. Reflection means a chief result of calm in water, and tells on the eye at once in a picture, But repetition is associated with quiet succession of events, — that one day should be like another day, or one history be the reflection of another history, being more or less results of quietness ; while dissimilarity and broken succession are the results of interference and dis- quiet. The cuckoo's note, or mowers whetting scythes, are harsh unpleasant sounds in themselves ; but re- peated again and again, as they are in early summer about the country, they are soothing and pleasant to a degree. Now in the example there is a little tower on the left of the big one, and without it the big one looks most forlorn. All the spires in Coblentz are arranged in pairs ; — the mast of the distant boat just hides the artifice when repeated for the third time. There is a large boat, and its echo, two more distant ones with two men apiece, and the nearer cliff of Ehrenbreitstein is repeated by the round bank with a little girl sitting on it. Things are all in pairs — 'Jack shall have Gill, nought shall go ill' — there is a general repose. Then the words Symmetry and Balance are best taken up in this connection, for they give the idea of repetition, broken echo, or likeness with a difference. The likeness leads, but the difference is necessary. A figure against its reversed reflection in water produces symmetry. Nature is never formal, and difference is always secured, or change and movement take its place. You are very symmetrical yourself, I think ; but if you stood mathe- matically upright and stiff, with hands at your sides, toes turned out at 90 and eyes at attention, you would lose much of the quality. You are never quiet for a moment you know ; and never look, in consequence, as T 274 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. if you could be divided into two right or left halves, like boots. In fact, boots made right and left are symmetrical, while straight boots are not so, exactly on account of this necessary difference, which exists in a simple way in one, and doesn't exist in the other. I think much of the grace of human movement (feminine in particular) results from the differences in play and subtle change between the right and the left side. A severe living symmetry and balance of harmonious groups or opposite figures, is characteristic of the greater sacred compositions, particularly Giotto's in the church of S. Francis at Assisi, upper and lower, and many of Perugino's works — especially the Madonna in the Na- tional Gallery, with the Angel Michael on one side and Raphael on the other. Balance and symmetry are ex- pressive of calm, repose and order, then, in landscape as in figure-painting : and as in that, a dull man will carry out the principle formally, a brilliant one brilliantly. But in this Coblentz example you will easily see how the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other, are nearly equal masses balancing each other on either side of the tower, which is like the upright rod of the balance, in which they may be supposed to hang. 3. Law of Continuity. This way of producing or expressing unity consists in giving connected succession to a number of more or less similar objects, and disciplining them to act in relation to each other at different distances from the spectator. Ranges of pillars in a cathedral, or mountain promon- tories one beyond another, or flocks of cirrus-cloud * shepherded' to the horizon ' by the slow unwilling wind' — all different shapes moving in the same order re- OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 275 spectively — are good examples. If they are all' of the same shape, continuity becomes monotony, and is dis- agreeable, for the most part — you can't make much of a perspective of telegraph-posts. The best possible ex- ample of the true thing is Turner's sketch below — Calais Sands at sunset, a rough woodcut which gives a sufficient idea of such an arrangement. And here, for once, let's have one of the Professor's descriptions in his own form. Fig. 27. ' The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards the point in the horizon where he has set ; and the tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in which they cross each other so quietly at their edges ; just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little, as two children kiss and clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing T 2, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting : but all this would not have been enough expressed without the aid of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm-waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.' Ah, dear me, what a deal of stuff we've all written in imitation of that, since it came out in '57 — but we did not choose a bad model, and some of us wrote fair English too. Well, Turner acts by this law of continuity in the first example also when he dwells so on the bridge ; for its long succession, of retiring arches were the first thing — at least after the old tower — that caught his eye and technical fancy. I don't know, I'm sure, whether he thought about all the wars of France and Germany ; I said he must have thought of something of the kind close to Ehrenbreitstein, — but this bridge was his artistic reason for painting the picture ; it came as he wanted it to come. His reason for being so fond of long irregular bridges (see Rivers of France, &c.) is given in the Elements with great ingenuity. He felt that that sort of bridge indicates the nature of the river it crosses so much better than some grand high show-engineering effort, which strides right over a valley regardless of everything. The old Moselle bridge is like other old things of the same kind, built with irregularly-sized arches, wherever the best rock- foundation was found at the bottom of the river, or wherever the currents came, in time of flood, on the flat or shallow side of the river. And the larger arches were built where the river was deepest and strongest — on one side and not in the middle, as is always the way with a mountain river, or a river which still remembers the OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 2JJ mountains. You know how the water always swings from angle to angle, so that there are alternate deeps and shallows on both sides, forming salmon-pools in some of the happier lands up north. Well, the great currents must have greater arches for their floods, and the greater arches must be higher, or they would tumble down ; and that is why the bridge takes, or pictorially speaking, ought to take, the form of a large arch, and why the highest point of the bridge is found over the deepest part of the river. Thus we have the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches running over the flat shore on the other : though if the current be strongest in the middle it must be highest near the middle. But usually there will be the full force of the river near one side, a steep, or at least a hollow curve ('wave-worn horns of the echoing bank') on that side, with a large arch,— and a flat shore on the other side, with a number of small ones. That is our best example of Continuity. 4. Law of Curvature. Notice the subtle curves all over the small woodcut Fig. 2 5- They are perceptible there ; but two larger ones are given, 28, 29. I think you have drawn enough to feel the painter's dislike to straight lines and regular curves ; but if not, just try what straight lines across Turner's bridge, on both sides along the top, from side to side, will make of it, if you put them in- stead of the curves. Curvature certainly is a condition of beauty, and curved lines more beautiful than straight ones — though nearly-straight ones have their indis- pensable uses, like the perpendicular of the tower and OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 279 arches — and for a good composition it is necessary that the eye be led about the picture from one prominent object to another in curved lines. You will find in the woodcut of Ehrenbreitstein, Figs. 25 and 28, that a line drawn from the top of the higher bridge tower, touching the angle of the smaller one and a seated figure below on the left, and finishing in one of the wooden spars, makes Fig. 29. a very beautiful springing curve. Another starts along the great rudder on the left, touches the back and head of the figure sitting on it, and swings up to the top of the tower again. Three more are combined of the curved forms of the three boats, and reach the tower top in the same way. Then the seven towers of Ehrenbreit- stein all but touch a grand curve of profile down the hill, two only falling a little short to disguise the artifice. 28o OUR SKETCHING CLUB. And this is more beautiful, just as the old-fashioned or typical form of the bridge is more beautiful, because it indicates natural structure. Towers might have been built beyond the present curve, or not have been built there at all, but undoubtedly the basalt rock below would take it ; for that is a governing form of all mountain masses which are not cloven into precipices or covered with straight slopes of shale. You can see this by drawing profiles of the moors where they dip down into gills, or of the slopes and cliffs of downs on the chalk, or on the sea- coast : but it is one of the great lessons you are sure to learn in a mountain country. I think I should send everybody to Switzerland early, for great broad lessons in structure of hills and valleys, and to see Nature really at rough work, and for a great enthusiasm if possible — then I should keep them all at home for twenty years' practice in smaller things ; and then send the best sur- vivors once more to the Alps to do what they liked. That, or something like it, was the course Turner went through. Graceful curvature is distinguished from ungraceful first by its moderation ; that is to say, by being nearly straight in some part of it — if strongly bent at another ; and then by its variation, never remaining equal in degree. None of the mechanical curves, segments of circles, ellipses and the like, are beautiful, though the parabola and the hyperbola consist of a pair each of beautiful curves. On this subject, if you will go into it, you must read the dissertation in vol. iv. of Modern Painters. If you want to fill your mind, or memory, or inner eye, with the most graceful curves, study wings. In common sketchers' talk, you know, we speak of sweeping curves and springing curves, or better perhaps of the springing and the sweeping part of the same OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 28l curve. The curve through the two towers, the figure and the spar is a very springing one : that of the top line of the bridge, and still more that formed by the water-line of the bay directly below the bridge is re- peated in the foreground and continued out of the picture on the right by the ripples — those I should call sweeping curves or pairs of curves. And I think if you look at the wings of any birds of powerful flight they will give you a notion of springing life and beauty in their lines. Grouse or teal for short-winged birds, hawks or gulls for long- winged. The expression of vital strength in both depends on the more or less severe line of the shoulder and long quills, and on the power- ful bend of the former. Of course the radiation of the feathers from the bone adds greatly to the effect. And as for the connection between wings and mountains, the debris-curves of a place at the foot of Mont Blanc are drawn at plate 43 of vol. iv. Modern Painters ; and they are exactly those of a woodcock's wing. The mountain curvatures drawn in that volume are more instructive, if you read them at home, than a visit to the place would be without them. The word ' springing' makes one think of vigorous effort, and the origin of the curve of a wing, or that specified in the woodcut, represents the idea in and by means of line. Such curves as those of a distant shore may be called sweeping, because, being nearly straight for so great a part of them, they convey the idea of distance in perspective, of space and in fact of infinity. Curves which radiate from a centre, like those of wings, leaves, and vegetation in general, are felt as springing with finite life, and go as far as they can. But it is hardly necessary to distinguish these from each other after all, as almost all good lines spring vividly 282 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. from their origin and sweep off into severity of curve afterwards. You or Susan once said something about the melan- choly of a quiet river, especially at evening and morn- ing. That is all perspective line : the banks lead the eye away into the far distance, to the horizon and be- yond, over the hills and far away. It is the visible symbol of eternity and infinity, and strikes upon one's spirit by quality of line, as the sounds ' far away,' and ' never more,' do by strange quality of sound. The boughs in perspective give one a sense of the wandering and unreturning flow of the river and its quiet power ; and above all of its passing away into the outer sea and river or ocean that flows round all the world. Moreover, the line of a river in a picture on the horizon generally contains a number of vanishing-points of other lines. Fig. 30. You ought to have two or three specimens of good and bad curves, a is bad, being part of a circle, and monotonous, b is good, because it continually changes its direction as it proceeds. If you can't see it, put Fig. 31. leaves on them, and you will see that a is quite limp without any will or spring of his own. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. All these are good curves (Fig. 32), and if you want to spoil them, you have only to turn them into segments of circles. Fig. 32. 5. Law of Radiation. I think almost as much as you can manage on this head has been said in the letters about tree-drawing. Radiation is the connection of lines by their all springing from one point or closing towards it, and it enters into the beauty of all vegetable form. The chestnut leaves (Fig. 26), which illustrate the Law of Principality, are examples of this law also : but in the whole tree this law of beauty is seen in a more complicated manner, in the arrange- ment of the large boughs and sprays. The leaf is flat, but the tree radiates all round like a fountain — we said something of the inner fountain of the sap springing up through the trunk to the boughs and foliage. And the branches, being bigger and older, develope more cha- racter of their own, and radiate with more will of their 284 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. own, not so strictly according to law as the ribs of the leaves. Yet it has been ascertained that in all trees the angle of the lateral ribs of the leaves with their central spine, is approximately the same at which the branches leave their stem ; and thus a section of the tree would be like a magnified view of its own leaf, but for the force of gravity which is always at work on the branches. The leverage of their own weight bears them down, day by day, and year by year : accordingly the lower or older branches bend down the most, and the older a bough is the lower .it hangs. Besides this, beau- tiful trees have a way of dividing themselves into double masses, something in this form (Fig. 41). If you re- member this, and the forms of minor radiation given in the tree-letter (Fig. 17 b) you will have a sort of handy general notion of the Law of Radiation, as trees illus- trate it. And remember, in the same letter, how the ends of the sprays were compared to hands hollowed palms upwards with outspread fingers. It is more ac- curate to represent them by the ribs of a boat, as if a very broad flat boat rested on its keel at the end of a main branch. Fig. 23 is the natural bough from Fig. 33- Fig. 17 b. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. below ; Fig. 34 the flattened boat ; Fig 35 the look of such a bough seen from above. It is not always easy to see the radiations of a system of curves in a great picture, because obedience to the law is disguised, and the master is often found to have placed the centres of convergence or radiation far out Fig. 34. of his picture. But it is easy to see what it is in the Turner woodcut, Fig. 25. It is the tower again. One curve joins the two towers, down into the back of the sitting figure on the left, and the spar ; another goes along the rudder and backs of the nearer figures on the left ; the boats begin others, as I said before, and the long re- flection of the tower holds all together, continuing its Fig. 35- vertical lines, and giving that expression of repose which nothing but calm water can give. Then the sweeping loops at the foot of the bridge point out how the current has swept round on the left in two sets or reaches ; and the baggage on the narrow tongue of land is a sort of pedestal to add to the height of the tower. On the 286 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. same principle, in Fig. 19, the foliage illustration, the farmer and his stick are put under two of the trees to add height. The interior curves of the bushes radiate from a point behind his head ; and their outlines are repeated and continued by the dog's and boy's backs. And the boy, and the man, and the dog, and the per- spective of the bridge, and all the lines to the right (more strongly marked and darker towards the light), and the slope of the hills, and all, direct the eye to Windsor Castle, which is in the middle of the picture of which the woodcut gives a part. It is the centre of the picture, just as the bridge-tower is in Coblentz and Ehrenbreitstein. 6-9. Laws of Contrast, Harmony, Consistency or Interchange. I am obliged to talk of these laws or principles together, because I cannot separate them properly in my own mind. You will find a perfectly good separate account of them in the Elements, but it is rather difficult, and could only be given verbatim in the words of its author. It seems to me that Contrast and Har- mony are like light and shadow, mutually producing, suggesting and intensifying each other. Consistency is delightful arrangement of masses in harmonious con- trast : Interchange, delightful arrangement of contrasts balanced against each other, as in the quarterings of a shield, or where a lion in the middle of a black-and- white shield is painted black on the white side and vice versa. And contrast, like harmony, is in all things. Work and rest, sound and silence, light and darkness — these are all what we call correlatives, dependent on OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 287 each other : skilfully and sweetly arranged successions of them are harmonious ; violent and rough alternations made anyhow are inharmonious. But besides this, all colours have their opposites, which relieve them best ; and lines more curved are opposed to lines less curved, and massy forms to slight ones, and so on. And if you will only observe and draw from Nature, you will learn to know and understand the use of all these oppositions, and have right judgment about them. But as to ac- counting for them all, or even classifying them, it cannot be done, and would spoil the whole interest of painting if it could. I should say that Contrast and Harmony were the widest words of all these, as they express the relation of all the others. Of the two, Harmony is the leading word or idea, I think, because it has nearly the same meaning, for all our practical purposes, as the word Unity which we have stuck to throughout ; and because in so many instances Harmony is best obtained by subdued con- trasts ; that is to say, it arises from the sense of contrast overcome. There is harmony in the soft mirage and repose of a summer afternoon — because all the colours of a landscape so seen are modified by light. So there is in the sweep of a great rain-cloud, because all the yellows and greens under it are toned off into gray. That is harmony in softened contrast, and it is a mystery, glory and danger of Art that a sense of unity or harmony results from a violent thing's being represented with calm beauty : or, in a measure, from a wrong thing's being done right. And the great relation of Art to Morality or Right greatly depends on how and when artists think it right to represent the wrong state of things. The right state of Nature is calm, growth, clear colour ; the right state of a lady is 288 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. in dress becoming her beauty ; but it may possibly be right, justifiable, better done than left undone, to repre- sent her undressed ; and it is certainly quite right to represent storm and tempest if you can. Now storm scenes, and mountain scenery itself, involve the sense of passion and vehement action as much as tragic scenes or battle-pieces — with this advantage, that their expres- sion of the same can never be ignoble, except by mere incompetence. But likeness and consistency point to repose, and depend greatly on the suggestions of con- trast overcome. Cuyp's pictures, wherein it seemeth always afternoon, derive their soothing and sleepy effect from the spectator's unconscious feeling of how all the colours of the objects are merged in light, and lapped in gold. Contrast is there, but you don't see it and don't want to, as you would in another man's work. The old brewer overcomes you with animal feeling of soft bright- ness and ease,-and absence of interest, and rumination, and deafness to the call of time. And calm sea, or mountains under still sunset-light, or great quiet masses of cloud, pro- duce calm from contrast, because they make you think of immeasurably great forces not at present in action. The stillness of the valley of Zermatt carries with it an undefined suggestion of the inconceivable action of volcanic or watery forces by which it was formed ; and the voice of the Vispach breaks it now and then, thun- dering down from the glaciers, and protesting from far below that he and they remain from the beginning and go on for evermore — ordained of old, and not without their terrors. Well, for contrast in the Coblentz woodcut. The Ehren- breitstein hill is a convex curve ; but at the bottom great beds of rock strike across it from left to right almost at a right angle, with a spiral leftwards again up the hill, which OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 289 harmonises the two systems of lines, — the beauty of the bridge is all contrast, a lot of perpendiculars, all various, linked by one sweeping horizontal curve at top and an- other below. The reflections and contrasts of colour in the picture must be left to your imagination : but tower and bridge are key-notes of contrast in line. Of course the ablest men are most subtle in disguis- ing their contrasts ; and violent contrasts, or glaring contrasts not rightly led up to, are decided vulgarities, and mark something third-rate in the perpetrator. But any one who attends properly to gradation in light and shade, and works faithfully by natural colour, will cer- tainly be prevented from going far wrong in this matter. In any contrast, were it even of sunset seen behind a hill, there is only one high light, and only one darkest tone, and each of them should be led up to on its own side. Turner, I believe, almost always interposes cloud, or softens the intense brightness of the sun behind mountains* You must read the Professor on all this ; only re- member that when he says a great painter often permits himself a certain carelessness of treatment, and is some- times inferior to himself of set purpose, or by judgment, in the course of his work, he is not addressing a Sketching Club, but speaking of Tintoret or Turner. Such men do make you feel the subtle contrasts of the play of their own minds, by dwelling with greater care on one part than another ; but if we try that game we are not likely to do much good. But, if you can do one part of your subject well and others not so well, you are right in doing the latter slightly, or as well as you can up to a certain point : and you may, if you can, disguise the fact that you didn't know how to carry them farther. Still, avow- ing it will do your picture no harm. What does do U 290 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. harm, is trying to finish it all over quite evenly, and failing. Sternchase does this successfully; but to this day none of us, who care most for him, know how far he is in the right about it. There is a capital example of an old tower, p. 300, Elements, which shows how little contrast will suffice for all due effect. There are five sloping battlements, very solid and strong, with two old roofs between them, slightly built, and collapsing in every variety of pretty Fig. 36. curve, varied by the tiles. But all depends on a large ring which hangs against the inner wall, and contrasts with all the perpendicular lines. By the way, that must be why such emphasis is always laid on great rings in walls of sea-ports, &c. — they contrast so with the square lines of masonry, and up-and-down masts and rigging. Then the flat inner sides of the battlements, which are rather bald, are contrasted with the tiled edges of the outer sides, which slope down like roofs ; and the fifth is smaller and sharper than the others. Contrast, in fact, OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 291 in a great man's work, though it may be gentle enough, never ceases in one form or another. And all the laws of composition are obeyed by great men ; partly because the great men unconsciously make the laws, which are generalisations from their works ; partly be- cause they obey laws by instinct several ways at once } and are all right all round. 'There is as much differ- ence in the way of intention and authority between one of the great composers ruling his colours and a common painter confused by them, as there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old lady carried off her feet by a mob.' Interchange or interpenetration, as we had before, is only reversed contrast, as in heraldry, — blue passing to the red side, and red to the blue, in a four-quartered shield ; or smaller portions of either introduced alter- nately. Prout dwells strongly on this principle ; and you may learn it as he did, by looking faithfully at nature. A tree-trunk looks dark against the sky, but is light against dark as soon as it is backed by a hill : in a hot climate the white walls are brighter than the sky in the light, and ever so dark in shadow ; in short, this seems to be Nature's favourite artifice, and you will get it best from her. The main use of these pages after all is to tell you how to look. Then for consistency and harmony again : what is called breadth in a picture is dependent on consistency ; what we call spottiness in a picture is want of breadth, or too equal opposition of its parts. Consistency is the overcoming, or apparently dispensing with, contrast- though, as I said, it often exists when it does not at first present itself to the eye. Many compositions act on the mind by aggregate force of colour or line, and may be painted in various tones of red or gray or gold U 2 292 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. almost exclusively ; with numerous slight contrasts, and one impression of glow or coolness. Sunrise and sunset effects are all in this way ; the same hue of colour being the sustained keynote of the whole, with endless variety or minor contrast, in gradation. You see the law of con- trast and continuity very well in such a sky, when there are groups or fields of cirri. Much of their beauty will depend on the order or disciplined arrangement of their forms, as they appear governed by the wind and their perspective. When you have done the forms, colours, and disposition of your field of cirri at all well, you have so far forth given the best impression of consistency which can be given. As to breadth, Nature is always broad ; and if you never paint an effect you have not seen, and never lose those effects you do see, your work will never want for it. Of course drawings in progress often look spotty : but if you work your picture out from Nature, it will assuredly fall together, soon or late. I think Charles has already told you a good deal about single oppositions, and the great breadth which results from proper contrast of every tone of one hue with every tone of another. The French school practise it very skilfully ; and it is the best thing you can learn from them, as to colour. Of course I don't deny but that they may be the best masters of academic drawing also : though I can't say who they would set up against Hermitage or Ponto. But they do know how to oppose neutral tints : and in landscape they know no colour beyond diluted grays. Poor M. Regnault ! what would he have done if he had lived ? They haven't honoured him too much ; for his death atoned for his disciple- ship to Gustave Dore: and, if he painted in the gory style, he gave his own blood in the day of distress ; but he is best known in England because he shamed OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 293 art and himself by doing thick streams of murder run- ning down marble steps. The press and the public un- derstand that. He might have been a French colourist, and he proves that such a being is a possibility. But if you are to try for breadth, that is to say, try to set masses against masses in your pictures, it must not be done by saying black is white, and painting everything one colour, right or wrong. The thing is, to account for it naturally. Gray clouds and yellow sands — pink mist and gray sea or ice — green fields and gray fog — crimson sunset and purple shadows ; — you may mass things under those contrasts as you like for ever, but one of them is enough for a picture, and should be enforced by subtle repetition all over it, so as to reach Unity of Impression at last. As for Harmony, there are some more notes about it to come, besides hints on finish. May is here, and sends best love : she seems quite happy, but looks more like Isis than ever, as I see her now, playing whist to amuse Lady Susan ; and dealing all round, very like Fate, with a sense of humour. Gravity certainly gains on her, but she lets out now and then ; she was angry about the Chanticleer abusing the Professor, and said criticism was like measles, attacking books at an early age : and she thought an anonymous writer must be very like an isolated measle. Only just now, being asked for her favourite hero in ancient history, she named Remus, as 'an unobtrusive character.' And she said she had always understood Pygmalion to be the sculptor of the Florentine Boar. I stay here a week. The Garrow is in fine condition, and I'm to get all the salmon I can. A fourteen-pounder to-day : it makes one happy. Wednesday week I take May to town, where she will stay with her aunt, and 294 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. abide, as she says, 'for a short Season — she can't stand more than a fortnight of pleasure at a time, it is so insufferable.' Then I am to fetch her for a week with Gerty; and thereafter Charley's Major is to take her back to Red Scaurs. Too bad of that stoopid boy going off. But he is attentive in his way. I'm glad to say May appeared this morning in a very good belt from Venice, mounted in gold of some old design, with a gibeciere, and hunting-knife conforming, bracelets and collar and I don't know what ; just rich enough for anywhere, and plain enough for any day. I wonder if she cried over them ; her eyes were a little red, but as bright and cool as the Garrow — and as deep as its pools. She will never let herself be unhappy : but at her age one wants joy. I hope if she ever has it, it won't upset her too much. The parients are very well, which I hope this finds you and Jack ; and so no more at present, from yours truly to command. R. I. P. P.S. 'The Duchess's pluck seems to be more than proportioned to her rank.' (This is from Charley's letter from Constantinople, just read me by May). 'The Mediterranean being altogether too hot, and Stamboul not oriental enough, she has made up her mind for Trebizond first, then Erzeroum and Etchmiadzin. Her church views interest her beyond measure in Armenia ; and she has ordered Holderness to go up Ararat, and look out in earnest for any remains of the ark. Up we go accordingly : I wish we could only have Devouassoud or Aimer with us ; but it will be a very good business I doubt not, and there must be some subjects. I wonder if the long straight sheepskin coats they often wear here- abouts are a traditionary remembrance of the fashion OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 295 of Noah and his sons, as represented in our early days. What more, I don't know, except that we are to join the Anazeh Arabs somewhere on the Euphrates, cross from Bagdad to Damascus, by Palmyra, and ride down to Jerusalem ; all some time this side Christmas. I must get home long before, at any rate/ I believe you, my boy. P.P.S. Oh here's a game! That scamp Charley has been taking notes about me and the young one. Just read the enclosed memorandum and look at the scratched sketch — not bad I must say. They seem to be a part of some intended club letter, and you shall have them just as he left them. ( I got a good example of instantaneous eye-impres- sion this morning; I don't call it quite coup d^ceU^ be- cause it is an involuntary picture on the eye as it were. Going through Oxford the other day I stayed a night at Ripon's ; and when I arrived he was out on Port Meadow with Master W. I strolled down there and waited on the racecourse, where it crosses a small ditch, lately cleaned out, and a good jump for a pony. Pre- sently I saw the black and the little chestnut come sailing up the meadow, evidently meaning to have the ditch near me. The little ones led ; but as they came at it, Ripon (who was quite determined his son's pony should not refuse, rushed past on the black and just flew the place half a length a-head, so that they were in the air together. The boy got over very well, and it gave me a sort of instantaneous photograph on the brain, of the little pony jumping all he knew, as ponies do jump, with the boy's delighted look and good seat, — both rising at their leap ; and the governor in the air on the Black Monk, turning in his saddle to look at them, 296 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. with his horse just in the act of landings fore legs out and hind legs coming up to them. I think this scratch has a little motion in it : and it is so difficult to do anything that really looks like going. If any of you can get a rapid impression of any interesting action quickly done, and realise it at once or soon after in lines, it will be admirable practice, and a great test of real graphic power. Fig. 37- That instantaneous action of the mind by which you know what you want to do, and therefore know how you will have it, is a mystery to me, and so I think it is to every one else. Ripon referred me to the Professor, Modern Painters, vol. ii. p. 146, and to Sir W. Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, vol. ii. p. 499 ; finally, with considerable impudence, to himself, Contemporary Review, vol. vi. p. 384. Well, of course, I wasn't going to look at the book, but I made him talk it to me ; and he said on this wise, evidently quoting OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 297 himself — in fact, I made him take the book down and read it : ' You are contemplating some special matter, and you get a new light given you on it, you do not know how. When you ask the musician how the fresh melody came to him, or the poet or painter how the new idea broke on his mind as light, or swooped on him with agitation, like a wild bird alighting — how do they an- swer ? If they are wise they will say, " God knows how I came by this. There was a train of thought ; or there were many converging, and then a flash, an inspiration, and I saw." The new thought really is a gift of reve- lation to him who has it. Others may have had it before, but in him it has found a new nidus^ and will form a fresh thing or unity in him and out of him. What is that image first of all projected on the mental retina, to aid and realise which you call in your judgment, taste, powers of composition, and so on? You have a vision of something before you begin to compose, and a pur- pose for combination before you combine. Can any- body conceive of Orcagna beginning with a blank mind and a white wall to select materials for his " Death" from things in general? Or are we to suppose that Michael Angelo compounded his Atropos out of a simple in- duction of old women, without previous vision " within his head"? Or look at his Eve, which many call the loveliest form in art : or Fortune, on her wild wheel, beautiful and passionless ; turning her eyes away as she scatters crowns from one hand, and triple thorns from the other — could she be pieced together out of a whole hareem of contadinas ? 'No doubt, memory of composition spring at once to help the new-born image into realisation. Sir Andrew Aguecheek was adored once ; and we have most of us had one idea or so in our time. Some may perhaps 298 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. have had experience how a new notion sometimes appears like a ghost, quite frightening the inexperienced seer, and so returns to limbo only half questioned, and with its tale half told. Indeed, we do not find that great thoughts, or fresh bright intuitions, come to idle minds or unstored memories. The great pain and conflict of half-education in learning, is the struggle to realise an apergu with insufficient knowledge. Happy indeed are the well-prepared, who go to the cupboard of their me- mory with better fortune than the late lamented Mrs. Hubbard, who possessed a dog, or new notion, but was unable to find him sustenance.' Well, you see, I became possessed of a new unity ; a new subject or motive for a picture, simply by way of fortunate visual impression. I was much interested and pleased, and very attentive ; I am accustomed to look at things hard and sharply — and I saw all the simul- taneous action of those four scampering animals. They were thenceforth in that action still, as an image on my brain. I drew it, first blocking the outlines out in small — and it looked not without spirit ; then I went and looked at the horses, and Rip gave me a photograph of the black ; and I thought over the anatomy, and looked into Aiken, and Leech, and Winter's Oxford Sketches for the action, and that gave me all I wanted to finish the thing as far as it goes. And it goes far enough to convey the ideas of action and motion, with a certain emotion about speed, equine excitement, boyish and paternal pleasure, which is worth conveying — Q. E. F. Enfin, good-bye, my dear Flora : all will be well, R. R. CHAPTER XIII. Letter XXIL R. R. to F. L. My Dear Flora: It is not easy to leave off talking about harmony and contrast — let us just notice the vulgarities of both. Whether we all draw or not, we all look at pictures, and may possibly get some lights on a very necessary question in the Exhibition season — what not to look at. Now we said that harmony results from breadth of contrast ; so that if a picture illustrates one opposition of colour in endless variety, it is so far forth a good picture ; there is a broad contrast all over it, and harmony of various tints in the same leading colours all over it besides. Now harmonies may be false, and contrast may be forced. And all students must remember that they cannot be sure of truth in painting a picture in single contrast of two colours, unless they have seen such contrast in nature ; and that truth only can pre- serve them from exaggeration, coarse contrast, false- hood, call it what you will — from all which has the same effect in a picture as talking very loud about one's own doings has on the nerves of society. Therefore when you see pictures which attempt broad contrast, ask them first of all how far they were fairly observed and done 300 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. from nature. A great deal must have been done at home in most cases ; for two-colour effects are for the most part due to particular lights, or states of the atmosphere, or times of the day, sunrise and sunset, and they can't always be painted entirely from nature. And don't be bothered with symphonies and nocturns : that wicked Mr. Whistler has made a number of men do things calamitous and disastrous by inventing those titles. What you ought to do in the symphony way is to look for natural studies in one or two colours. You may go as far as two oppositions, which makes four colours. I made notes last season — having been both North and South — of some subjects of this kind. In a few of them there is harmony with less contrast, and those are the best examples. Just let me tell any of you who go through Oxford to stay between trains, and see one of the new East windows in the Cathedral by Morris and Faulkner ; for it has the singular merit of possessing the strongest contrast and the broadest harmony. The mass of the thing is green in every possible shade and play of hue, with a little artful contrast of particular blues, whites and yellows in small quantities — so small that you don't see them at first. Then, the whole thing having a green effect, the aureoles round three tall white saints' heads — there are three figures only — are the purest and finest scarlet-crimson I ever saw : it really is a red combining scarlet and crimson qualities, if there can be such a thing. I like it best of all windows what- ever. But for studying this sort of thing, you may be able to get at some of the undermentioned subjects, and their contrasts are broad and easily understood, and will mostly wait for you. OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 301 Afternoon — sun lowish. Whitening barley against cool gray-purple clouds and hills (rose-madder and cobalt — the whitish yellow of the ' tender-bowed locks of the corn,' yellow-ochre and white). Green in the laid places and up the furrows where one sees the stalks. A dark-green furzy foreground gave force, — if one wanted more blue and purple, the Moray Firth was beyond to the right ; and old Wyvis beyond that. That's too much at a time ; but soon after I came on a succession of natural exercises in colour, as the train ran through the woods going towards Aberdeen ; like this — First. — Greens. Scotch fir and gorse, .hardly any flower — harmony. If you want contrast, add the gorse-flower ; then harmony will depend on your skill in imitating the real relation of the yellow to the various greens ; in your tone or evenness of light and shade ; and on your catching the right quality of both hues : if you do the latter you'll do the former. Second. — Harmony. Scotch fir again, with young autumn growth, sharp green against the sombre purple- gray green. Then mossy floor of the forest, emerald and gamboge; dead (pine-needles) light red for contrast. Or better, omit that last, and dwell on the dark red- purple stems (violet carmine with light red). Contrast (second power). Add chrome for sunshine on the mossy green. For third power of colour, add to this the purple bell-heather. And finally, if you want a blaze, dwell on the red fir-trunks; so as to have dark-green and red above, and the heather-purple and green below. Or again ; try a close foreground-contrast : a red agaric under ferns.- Or a red-and-yellow squirrel on Scottish fir, or larch 3 02 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. boughs : add a rowan-berry in his mouth for second power of contrast. Or red deer among green trees, grass and ferns. Or perhaps best of all, an orange-and-green subject, which you may call ' Red comes the river down.' A stream in full spate from the moors — over sandstone and whinstone soil — all orange-vermilion and rich brown, and from that to white. Opposed by green leaves and ferns, and harmonised by gray rocks, very dark in their recesses. General effect of red, yellow and white op- posed to all shades of black and green. By black, of course, I mean dark purple and gray. Then finally and for the last time, there is a harmony of passion and feeling and consistent train of thought, which is the highest of all : — when you can put such parts or details into your pictures as shall set the mind of the spectator at work, and make him walk up your hills and sit down by your rivers, and think about them and the people who live by them. You cannot sit down and compose this sort of harmony : you may see it ; and all higher success depends on never missing such opportunities as will assuredly come to you. In learning the technique and processes of landscape-painting you have no business with ideas and feelings, because they distract your attention from technique. But when you have learnt that up to a certain standard, you have learnt a language up to that standard ; and the real result of your whole work will depend on what you have to say in it. And what you have to say will depend on what sort of person you are, and what things you really like. For the sketching season, when you are working from nature, you are always safe in painting what you like, supposing you to have learnt enough of the technique to know when it is impotent, in the face of OUR SKETCHING CLUB. 303 some great subject. I know it is very silly for young people to want to draw panoramas of Chamonix, or avalanches and inundations, when they can't really do jam-pots : but when you have once learnt to do any- thing well, you will have learnt to measure your powers, and will not be so eager to attempt what is beyond them. [These are some final notes of Charles's on Finish and Harmony. They are not very carefully expressed, but it seems as if he saw his own meaning pretty well, and I think the Club may get something from them. How the Oxford grind comes out, in his taste for distinctions, and arrangement of notions. Only think, if he had used his opportunities, and not gone off after Art and all that bosh, he might have got his First, and been a Fellow of St. Vitus, and a second-rate coach, or a sub-professor, or a school-inspector, and have written for the Chanticleer or the Scholasticus, and so arrived at wealth and fame. Now il 11 est rien> pas mhne academicien. How very sad !] R. R. There seems to be a point where finish and harmony — the processes and the quality which we call by those names — run into each other. Towards the end of every picture or study, your object is not only that it shall be like — that you ought to have secured ; but you want at last to get the thing into harmony ; to prevent its shock- ing anybody by inequality of tone — i. e. to get all the features of your work into their proper planes, or relative distances from each other, by means of right pitch of 304 OUR SKETCHING CLUB. force in light and shade, and also by good perspective. You haven't finished anything, and it is inharmonious, until you have corrected mistakes in these two things. With this preface, I should say Finish was of two kinds : One is finish in the sense of adding facts, natural or sentimental. They must be congruous and harmonious, of course ; or you either spoil the thing, or make a grotesque. The other is finish technical, for the sake of com- pleting processes of imitation ; or of emphasising the effect of your work ; or, as in so much of Sternchase's work, on account of the Workman's Honour. It is for your honour 2 59> 26 °- Di'irer, 84, 91, 97; woodcuts from, Figs. 11, 12, 13. Education, notion of, 41. Eggs, study of, 66, 75. Ehrenbreitstein (Turner), 259 seqq. Ehrenbreitstein and Coblentz, 268 seqq. Evenness of finish, 50. Examples of contrasted hues in nature, 300-302. Figures in Landscape, 1 7 ; Figure drawing compared with Land- scape, 64. Finish, 304 ; necessary limits of, 305 ; examples, 306. Dependent on lav/ of Principality, 308. French Landscape, 122. Garret and Clarke in Oxford, 91. Giotto, 267. Glass, graduated, use of, 26 ; gra- duated for portraits, 64. Good Shepherd, 193. Goodwin, 134. Gothic Architecture, domestic as well as ecclesiastical, 99. Gothic like Greek in study of nature, 81. Gothicism and classicalism, 99. Gradation, exercises in, 67-73. Graham on landscape, 64. Grass, 207. Gray-paper for body-colour, 326. Grays, Cloud, &c, 67-73. Greek Art, Attic and Byzantine, 81 ; Literature revived, 80, 95 ; study of nature, 80, 96, 99. Hamerton, 63. Harding's Trees, 130-135; reasons for use of, 132. Harmony, 286 seqq. : by contrast — examples, 300 ; by equal tone, 303 ; of Finish, 304-6. Hatton's Trees, 130, 168, 198, 209; Photographs, 130, 140. Heathen work in Christian ceme- teries, 99. Heine, on artistic envy, 1 1 . Hogarth, 97. Holbein, 80-98. Hue and Tint (colour and pitch of shade), 32. Hunt, Alfred, 1 34. Hunt, Holman, 102. Impressions, momentary, 295. Inchbold, 134. Inspiration and new -lights, 297. Interchange, 287. Interchange, Law of, 262. See Com- position. Jam-pot, study of, 18, 20. Landseer, 191 seqq. Laws of Composition, 262. Leaves, 135. Liber Studiorum, 17, 130, 207 seqq. ; copying from, 209 ; lists from, 208 ; examples, 261. Lights, from light to shade, the principle of water-colour, 21, 32, 33.120. INDEX. 373 Lionardo, 84, 237. Lubke, on Renaissance, 79, 97. Luther and Holbein, 91. Luther at Rome, at same time with Rafael and Michael Angelo, 97. Masses distinct from Forms, 258. Measurement by pencil, 28 ; by heads and waists, 29 ; by squares, 47- Melancholy of Rivers, 282. Morality, related to art, 287, 313-15. Morris and Faulkner, window in Ch. Ch., Oxford, 300. Motive of pictures, 261. Mystery and Organizations 98 seqq. ; 215. Myths, Hesione, Deucalion, Andro- meda, 100. Nature, distinct from Object, 48 ; Instructive power, 25. Oil-painting, 26. Opaque and transparent, 31. Orcagna, 97, 98. Outline distinct from Form, 135; Mapping out before colour, 117. Oxford, mercenary education, 6, 8. Pater, Studies on Renaissance, 80. Perspective, 26-31 ; of leaves, 134, 135- Perugino, 265. Photographs, 130, 140. Pisano, Niccola, 79 seqq. ; 97. Professional and Amateur, 49, 64, 65, 67. Radiation — Harding, 133; Turner, 134, 205, 215; law of, 262, 283 seqq., in boughs, 284. Ravenna, Mosaics, 101. Realism and idealism, 49. Reformation and Renaissance, 83,87. Regnault, 292. Renaissance and kindred terms, 77 seqq.; Gothic and Greek spirit meeting; really extending from twelfth to sixteenth centuries, and periods of, marked by great names and events, 97; connected with Reformation through Hol- bein, 88, 98, 10 1. New mediaeval renaissance and reaction, 102. Repetition, 272. Repetition, law of, 205, 262, 263 ; in idea and colour, 263. Rome, Mosaics, 101. Ruskin, 15, 20; Venetian Renais- sance, 82, 91 seqq.; 98, 136, 170, 180, 186, 187, 201, 225, 227, 267, 280, and all Illustrations. Samnicheli, 98. Sansovino, 98. Sarcophagi and Tombs, 99-101. Savonarola, 84, 85. Science in Renaissance period not antagonistic to Religion, 89, 96 ; Scientific and artistic feeling, 139, 166. Selection and omission, 116. Sensation, def., 254. Sentiment and the Practical, 220. Shadows, 212 seqq. Shield-bearers, testudo, &c, 136. Shield-builders, 136, 138. Sketching against time, 210, seqq. Sketching-Club, rules of, 1, 3, 16. Sketching : meanings, 25 ; sugges- tions, 28. Stones, 121. Study, distinct from sketch, 48. Subjects, common, 49. Subjects : Bird, 24 ; common, 49 ; Sea and Moorland, 54 ; Woodland and pool, 115: Choice of, 116; avoiding sunshine, 118; sugges- tiveness, 123; Oxford, 142 ; birch trunk, 241 ; girl's head with horse, 245 ; See Colour. Sunshine, 21, 118, 215. Sunshine and Light distinguished, &c, 21. Suppression of detail like judicious use of asterisks, 123. Symmetry and Balance, 273. See Composition, 269. System. See Course. Tempera and oil-painting, 26. Tennyson, 118. Testudo, 136. Tint and Hue (pitch of shade and variety of colour), 32 ; to calculate depth of tint, 32. Tintoret, 97, 263. Titian, 97 ; Titianesque dress, 260. 374 INDEX. Trees, drawing and colour, 166, 124, 129, 141, 165 seqq. ; 272 seqq. ; distinction between study of vege- table and human anatomy, 137. Tree-drawing, elementary, 129 ; con- tinued necessity for, ib. ; reference to modern painters, 131 ; Course of, 117, 137. Turner, Combe Martin and Coteaux des Mauves, 20 ; Perspective, 31 ; bough from, 134, 137, 139; Liber Studiorum, 17, 208, 213; Ehren- breitstein, 259 ; Suggestiveness, example 0^263; Pembroke Castle, seqq. ; Calais Sands, 265 ; In Swit- zerland and at home, 269 ; on gray paper, 257, 326. Unity, 259, 263 seqq. See Composi- tion. Velasquez, 97. Vulgarities of contrast, &c, 299. Water-colour, principles of, 31 ; from light to dark, 33 ; edges, 33. Water-painting. See Subjects. 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Books, Wordsworth says, are "the spirit breathed By dead men to their kind ; " and the aim of the publishers of the Globe Library has been to make it possible for the universal kin of English- speaking men to hold communion with the loftiest " spirits of the mighty dead ; " to put within the reach of all classes complete and accurate editions, carefully and clearly printed upon the best paper, in a convenient form, at a moderate price, of the works of the master-minds of English Literature, and occasionally of foreign literature in an attractive English dress. The Editors, by their scholarship and special study of their authors, are competent to afford every assistance to readers of all kinds : this assistance is rendered by original biographies, glossaries of unusual or obsolete words, and critical and explanatory notes. The publishers hope, therefore, that these Globe Editions may prove worthy of acceptance by all classes wherever the English Language is spoken, and by their universal circula- tion justify their distinctive epithet ; while at the same time they spread and nourish a common sympathy with nature's most "finely touched" spirits, and thus help a little to " make the whole world kin." The Saturday Review says: " The Globe Editions are admirable for their scholarly editing, their typographical excellence, their com- pendious form, and their cheapness." The British Quarterly Review says: "In compendioicsness, elegance, and scholarliness, the Globe Editions of Messrs. Macmillan surpass any popular series GLOBE LIBRARY. 3i of our classics hitherto given to the public. As near an approach to miniature perfection as has ever been made. u Shakespeare's Complete Works. Edited by w. G* Clark, M.A., and W. Aldis Wright, M. A., of Trinity College. Cambridge, Editors of the "Cambridge Shakespeare." With Glossary, pp. 1,075. 77^Athen/EUM says this edition is (( a marvel of beauty, cheapness ; and compactness. . . . For the busy \man, above all for the zvorking student, this is the best of all existing Shakespeares." And the Pall Mall Gazette observes: "To have produced the complete works of the world's greatest poet in such a form, and at a price within the reach of every one, is of itself almost sufficient to give the publishers a claim to be considered public bene- factors.'" Spenser's Complete Works. Edited from the Original Editions and Manuscripts, by R. Morris, with a Memoir by J. W. Hales, M.A- With Glossary, pp. lv., 736. ' ' Worthy — and higher praise it needs not — of the beautiful 1 Globe Series.'' The work is edited zvith all the care so noble a poet deserves y — Daily News. Sir Walter Scott's Poetical Works. Edited with a Biographical and Critical Memoir by Francis Turner Palgrave, and copious Notes, pp. xliii., 559. " We can almost sympathise zvith a middle-aged grumbler, who, after reading Mr. Palgrave's memoir and introduction, should exclaim — ' Why was there not such an edition of Scott when I was a school- boy ? ' " — Guardian. Complete Works of Robert Burns. — THE POEMS, SONGS, AND LETTERS, edited from the best Printed and Manuscript Authorities, with Glossarial Index, Notes, and a Biographical Memoir by Alexander Smith, pp. lxii., 636. "Admirable in all respects." — Spectator. " The cheapest, the most perfect, and the most interesting edition zvhich has ever been published.'' 1 — Bell's MESSENGER. Robinson Crusoe. Edited after the Original Editions, with a Biographical Introduction by PIenry Kingsley. pp. xxxi, 607. 11 A most excellent and in every way desirable edition." — Court Circular. " Macndllari 's ' Globe' Robinson Crusoe is a book to have audio Morning Star. Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works. Edited, with Biographical Introduction, by Professor Masson. pp. lx., 695. "Such an admirable compendium of the facts of Goldsmith's life, and so careful and minute a delineation of the mixed traits of his peculiar character as to be a very model of a literary biography in /*#/