execution to be more manifest than is necessary. Of this, he is himself
the best judge. For almost all faults of this kind the public are
answerable, not the painter. I have alluded to one of his grander
works--such as I should wish always to see him paint--in the preface;
another, I think still finer, a red sunset on distant hills, almost
unequalled for truth and power of color, was painted by him several
years ago, and remains, I believe, in his own possession.

Sec. 21. Copley Fielding. Phenomena of distant color.

The deserved popularity of Copley Fielding has rendered it less
necessary for me to allude frequently to his works in the following
pages than it would otherwise have been, more especially as my own
sympathies and enjoyments are so entirely directed in the channel which
his art has taken, that I am afraid of trusting them too far. Yet I
may, perhaps, be permitted to speak of myself so far as I suppose my own
feelings to be representative of those of a class; and I suppose that
there are many who, like myself, at some period of their life have
derived more intense and healthy pleasure from the works of this painter
than of any other whatsoever; healthy, because always based on his
faithful and simple rendering of nature, and that of very lovely and
impressive nature, altogether freed from coarseness, violence, or
vulgarity. Various references to that which he has attained will be
found subsequently: what I am now about to say respecting what he has
_not_ attained, is not in depreciation of what he has accomplished, but
in regret at his suffering powers of a high order to remain in any
measure dormant.

He indulges himself too much in the use of crude color. Pure cobalt,
violent rose, and purple, are of frequent occurrence in his distances;
pure siennas and other browns in his foregrounds, and that not as
expressive of lighted but of local color. The reader will find in the
following chapters that I am no advocate for subdued coloring; but crude
color is not bright color, and there was never a noble or brilliant work
of color yet produced, whose real form did not depend on the subduing of
its tints rather than the elevation of them.

It is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn in art, that
the warm colors of distance, even the most glowing, are subdued by the
air so as in no wise to resemble the same color seen on a foreground
object; so that the rose of sunset on clouds or mountains has