site
the sun, at noon, such a yellow horizon as this is physically
impossible. Even supposing that the upper part of the sky were pale and
warm, and that the transition from the one hue to the other were
effected imperceptibly and gradually, as is invariably the case in
reality, instead of taking place within a space of two or three
degrees;--even then, this gold yellow would be altogether absurd; but as
it is, we have in this sky (and it is a fine picture--one of the best of
Gaspar's that I know,) a notable example of the truth of the old
masters--two impossible colors impossibly united! Find such a color in
Turner's noonday zenith as the blue at the top, or such a color at a
noonday horizon as the yellow at the bottom, or such a connection of any
colors whatsoever as that in the centre, and then you may talk about his
being false to nature if you will. Nor is this a solitary instance; it
is Gaspar Poussin's favorite and characteristic effect. I remember
twenty such, most of them worse than this, in the downright surface and
opacity of blue. Again, look at the large Cuyp in the Dulwich Gallery,
which Mr. Hazlitt considers the "finest in the world," and of which he
very complimentarily says, "The tender green of the valleys, the
gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an effect like the
_down_ on an unripe nectarine!" I ought to have apologized before now,
for not having studied sufficiently in Covent Garden to be provided with
terms of correct and classical criticism. One of my friends begged me to
observe, the other day, that Claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet
more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily
discovered that Cuyp is "downy." Now I dare say that the sky of this
first-rate Cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that I have to say
about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. The blue remains
unchanged and ungraduated over three-fourths of it, down to the horizon;
while the sun, in the left-hand corner, is surrounded with a halo, first
of yellow, and then of crude pink, both being separated from each other,
and the last from the blue, as sharply as the belts of a rainbow, and
both together not ascending ten degrees in the sky. Now it is difficult
to conceive how any man calling himself a painter could impose such a
thing on the public, and still more how the public can receive it, as a
representation of that sunset purple which invariably extends its
influenc