be abandoned.
Fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration.
Many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been I think
always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very
early works. I have myself known no instance of a drawing properly
protected, and not rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest
change. The great foes of Turner, as of all other great colorists
especially, are the picture cleaner and the mounter.

SECTION II.

OF GENERAL TRUTHS.

CHAPTER I.

OF TRUTH OF TONE.

Sec. 1. Meaning of the word "tone:" First, the right relation of objects in
shadow to the principal light.

As I have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters have
never yet been equalled; and as this is the first, and nearly the last,
concession I shall have to make to them, I wish it at once to be
thoroughly understood how far it extends.

Sec. 2. Secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of
its brightness to the hue of light upon it.

I understand two things by the word "tone:"--first, the exact relief and
relation of objects against and to each other in substance and darkness,
as they are nearer or more distant, and the perfect relation of the
shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture, whether that be
sky, water, or anything else. Secondly, the exact relation of the colors
to the shadows to the colors of the lights, so that they may be at once
felt to be merely different degrees of the same light; and the accurate
relation among the illuminated parts themselves, with respect to the
degree in which they are influenced by the color of the light itself,
whether warm or cold; so that the whole of the picture (or, where
several tones are united, those parts of it which are under each,) may
be felt to be in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind
of atmosphere; this being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and
inexplicable quality of each color laid on, which makes the eye feel
both what is the actual color of the object represented, and that it is
raised to its apparent pitch by illumination. A very bright brown, for
instance, out of sunshine, may be precisely of the same shade of color
as a very dead or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally