h respect to the art of
illumination; meantime, the facts bearing on our immediate subject may
be briefly recapitulated. All men, completely organized and justly
tempered, enjoy color; it is meant for the perpetual comfort and delight
of the human heart; it is richly bestowed on the highest works of
creation, and the eminent sign and seal of perfection in them; being
associated with _life_ in the human body, with _light_ in the sky, with
_purity_ and hardness in the earth,--death, night, and pollution of all
kinds being colorless. And although if form and color be brought into
complete opposition,[24] so that it should be put to us as a matter of
stern choice whether we should have a work of art all of form, without
color (as an Albert Durer's engraving), or all of color, without form
(as an imitation of mother-of-pearl), form is beyond all comparison the
more precious of the two; and in explaining the essence of objects, form
is essential, and color more or less accidental (compare Chap. v. of the
first section of Vol. I.); yet if color be introduced at all, it is
necessary that, whatever else may be wrong, _that_ should be right; just
as, though the music of a song may not be so essential to its influence
as the meaning of the words, yet if the music be given at all, _it_ must
be right, or its discord will spoil the words; and it would be better,
of the two, that the words should be indistinct, than the notes false.
Hence, as I have said elsewhere, the business of a painter is to paint.
If he can color, he is a painter, though he can do nothing else; if he
cannot color, he is no painter, though he may do everything else. But it
is, in fact, impossible, if he can color, but that he should be able to
do more; for a faithful study of color will always give power over form,
though the most intense study of form will give no power over color. The
man who can see all the greys, and reds, and purples in a peach, will
paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether; but the man who
has only studied its roundness, may not see its purples and greys, and
if he does not, will never get it to look like a peach; so that great
power over color is always a sign of large general art-intellect.
Expression of the most subtle kind can be often reached by the slight
studies of caricaturists;[25] sometimes elaborated by the toil of the
dull, and sometimes by the sentiment of the feeble, but to color well
requires real talent and earnes