f painting spread out
before us, we may take a continuous view of the whole field. Leaving out
the painters of the experimental era let us begin with the great masters
of effect.
Sir Joshua Reynolds tells us it was his habit in looking for the secrets
of the masters of painting to make rough pencil notes of those pictures
that attracted him by their power of effect as he passed from one gallery
to another. He found almost all of them revealed a broad middle tone
which was divided again into half dark and half light tones, and these,
added to the accents of light and dark _made five distinct tones._ The
Venetian painters attracted him most and, he says, speaking of Titian,
Paul Veronese and Tintoret, "they appeared to be the first painters who
reduced to a system what was before practised without any fixed
principle." From these painters he declares Rubens extracted his scheme of
composition which was soon understood and adopted by his countrymen, even
to the minor painters of low life in the Dutch school.
"When I was in Venice," he says, "the method I took to avail myself of
their principle was this: When I observed an extraordinary effect of light
and shade in any picture I darkened every part of a page in my note-book
in the same gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white
paper untouched to represent light and this without any attention to the
subject or the drawing of the figures. A few trials of this kind will be
sufficient to give the method of their conduct in the management of their
lights. After a few experiments I found the paper blotted nearly alike:
their general practice appeared to be _to allow not above a quarter of the
picture for light, including in this portion both the principal and
secondary lights; another quarter to be as dark as possible and the
remaining half kept in mezzo-tint or half shadow._"
"Rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter and
Rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct Rembrandt's light
is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much; the rest of the picture is
sacrificed to this one object. That light will certainly appear the
brightest which is surrounded with the greatest quantity of shade,
supposing equal skill in the artist."
"By this means you may likewise remark the various forms and shapes of
those lights as well as the objects on which they are flung; whether a
figure, or the sky, a white napkin, animals, or u
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