r, and with about the
same degree of completion: being all of them accurate records of the
main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows, and the remnants of
artificial color, obtained, by means of the same grays, throughout, and
of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient color)
touched upon the lights. As far as they went, nothing could be more
valuable than these sketches, and the public, glancing rapidly at their
general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an
estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been
necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and
clear, of details so multitudinous as (especially) the hieroglyphics of
the Egyptian temples; an endurance which perhaps only artists can
estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Roberts most
difficult to discharge. But if these sketches were all that the artist
brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as statements of
fact, they are altogether insufficient for the producing of pictures. I
saw among them no single instance of a downright study; of a study in
which the real hues and shades of sky and earth had been honestly
realized or attempted; nor were there, on the other hand, any of those
invaluable-blotted-five-minutes works which record the unity of some
single and magnificent impressions. Hence the pictures which have been
painted from these sketches have been as much alike in their want of
impressiveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the
living aspect of the Egyptian light; it has always been impossible to
say whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) was meant for hot
sunshine or for red sandstone--their power has been farther destroyed by
the necessity the artist seems to feel himself under of eking out their
effect by points of bright foreground color, and thus we have been
encumbered with caftans, pipes, scymetars, and black hair, when all that
we wanted was a lizard, or an ibis. It is perhaps owing to this want of
earnestness in study rather than to deficiency of perception, that the
coloring of this artist is commonly untrue. Some time ago when he was
painting Spanish subjects, his habit was to bring out his whites in
relief from transparent bituminous browns, which though not exactly
right in color, were at any rate warm and agreeable; but of late his
color has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his deep shades he