y turning to purple and gold,
or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all,
as we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a
more particular explanation of the subject:--

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with the upper
part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly laboured (at) it
with great perseverance. It took me numberless sittings to do it. I have
it by me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think how
much pains were thrown away to little purpose,--yet not altogether in
vain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that there
is nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of true
art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of the
spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be this as
it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I thought that
life was so too at that moment. I got in the general effect the first
day; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my success. The rest was
a work of time--of weeks and months (if need were), of patient toil
and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by Rembrandt at Burleigh
House, and if I could produce a head at all like Rembrandt in a year, in
my lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and wealth and fame enough
for me! The head I had seen at Burleigh was an exact and wonderful
facsimile of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as nearly as I could)
an exact facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do I now believe,
with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in giving
general appearances without individual details, but in giving general
appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done my work the
first day. But I saw something more in nature than general effect, and
I thought it worth my while to give it in the picture. There was a
gorgeous effect of light and shade; but there was a delicacy as well as
depth in the chiaroscuro which I was bound to follow into its dim and
scarce perceptible variety of tone and shadow. Then I had to make
the transition from a strong light to as dark a shade, preserving the
masses, but gradually softening off the intermediate parts. It was so
in nature; the difficulty was to make it so in the copy. I tried, and
failed again and again; I strove harder, and succeeded as I thought.
The wrinkles in Rembrandt were not hard lines, but broken and
irregular. I s