any portraits of myself, except those of my own painting,
where I have had the opportunity of coaxing them, so as to suit my own
feelings.

_Northcote._

LIGHT AND SHADE

CLXXV

Don't be afraid of splendour of effect; nothing is more brilliant,
nothing more radiant than nature. Painting tends to become confused and
to lose its power to strike hard. Make things monumental and yet real;
set down the lights and the shadows as in reality. Heads which are all
in a half-tone flushed with colour from a strong sun; heads in the
light, full of air and freshness; these should be a delight to paint.

_Chasseriau._

CLXXVI

The first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear
like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who
excels all others in that part of the art deserves the greatest praise.
This perfection of the art depends on the correct distribution of lights
and shades called _Chiaro-scuro_. If the painter, then, avoids shadows,
he may be said to avoid the glory of the art, and to render his work
despicable to real connoisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem of
vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours, who never have any
knowledge of relievo.

_Leonardo._

CLXXVII

Chiaroscuro, to use untechnical language and to speak of it as it is
employed by all the schools, is the art of making atmosphere visible
and painting objects in an envelope of air. Its aim is to create all the
picturesque accidents of the shadows, of the half-tones and the light,
of relief and distance, and to give in consequence more variety, more
unity of effect, of caprice, and of relative truth, to forms as to
colours. The opposite conception is one more ingenuous and abstract, a
method by which one shows objects as they are, seen close, the
atmosphere being suppressed, and in consequence without any perspective
except the linear perspective, which results from the diminution in the
size of objects and their relation to the horizon. When we talk of
aeriel perspective we presuppose a certain amount of chiaroscuro.

_Fromentin._

CLXXVIII

A painter must study his picture in every degree of light; it is all
little enough. You know, I suppose, that this period of the day between
daylight and darkness is called "the painter's hour"? There is, however,
this inconvenience attending it, which allowance must be made for--the
reds look darker than by day, indeed almost black, and the