ith it,
but by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the required effect
could only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass of the colour
of every object in your landscape, and of every minor hue that made up
those colours, and then could see the real landscape through this deep
gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with glass, but you
can do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you can put deep
blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in the
proportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you choose,
but your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio
or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of painting.[263]

Supposing those scales of colour, which I told you to prepare in order
to show you the relations of colour to grey, were quite accurately made,
and numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order to
obtain a deeper tone in any given mass of colour, than to substitute for
each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you
wanted, that is to say, if you want to deepen the whole two degrees,
substituting for the yellow No. 5. the yellow No. 7., and for the red
No. 9. the red No. 11., and so on; but the hues of any object in Nature
are far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole
matter clearly by taking a group of colours out of your scale, arranging
them prettily, and then washing them all over with grey: that represents
the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group
of colours, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and
that will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian.

You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the thing by
working from Nature.

The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a
good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in
it. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the
sky a bold full blue, bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and
leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and
brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to more complicated
studies, matching the colours carefully first by your old method; then
deepening each colour with its own tint, and being careful, above all
things, to keep truth of equal change when the