companion,
he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument by which he must
hope to obtain eminence. What, therefore, I wish to impress upon you is,
that whenever an opportunity offers, you paint your studies instead of
drawing them. This will give you such a facility in using colours, that
in time they will arrange themselves under the pencil, even without the
attention of the hand that conducts it. If one act excluded the other,
this advice could not with any propriety be given. But if painting
comprises both drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of
resolute industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in
drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to the
practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be done
altogether.

If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and consider
their respective excellences, we shall find that those who excel most in
colouring pursued this method. The Venetian and Flemish schools, which
owe much of their fame to colouring, have enriched the cabinets of the
collectors of drawings with very few examples. Those of Titian, Paul
Veronese, Tintoret, and the Bassans, are in general slight and
undetermined. Their sketches on paper are as rude as their pictures are
excellent in regard to harmony of colouring. Correggio and Barocci have
left few, if any, finished drawings behind them. And in the Flemish
school, Rubens and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in
colours or in chiaroscuro. It is as common to find studies of the
Venetian and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and
Florence on paper. Not but that many finished drawings are sold under
the names of those masters. Those, however, are undoubtedly the
productions either of engravers or of their scholars who copied their
works.

These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience; but
as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them with
diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them without
regret.

There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the
vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it
too often. You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have
great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate
abilities, industry will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to
well-directed labour: no