only to
look at a great Sir Joshua to see that quite half of every canvas is
merely a recipe, a painted yawn in fact, as the intensity of his vision
relaxed; but in a Velasquez your attention is riveted by the passionate
search of the master and his ceaseless absorption in the thing before
him--and this is all the more astounding because the work is hardly ever
conceived from a point of view of bravura; there is nothing
over-enthusiastic, insincerely impetuous, but a quiet suave dignity
informing the whole, and penetrating into the least detail of the
canvas.

There is one quality Velasquez never falters in; from earliest days he
is master of his medium; he understands its every limitation, realises
exactly how far his palette is capable of rendering nature; and so you
are never disturbed in your appreciation of his pictures by a sense that
he is battling against insuperable difficulties, severely handicapped by
an unsympathetic medium; but rather that here is the consummate workman
who, gladly recognising the measure of his freedom within the four walls
of his limitations, illustrates for you that fine old statement, "Whose
service is perfect freedom."

_C. W. Furse._

CCXXI

ON GAINSBOROUGH

We must not forget, whilst we are on this subject, to make some remarks
on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what I have already
mentioned,--his great affection to his art; since he could not amuse
himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable to himself. I am
indeed much inclined to believe that it is a practice very advantageous
and improving to an artist: for by this means he will acquire a new and
a higher perception of what is great and beautiful in nature. By
candlelight not only objects appear more beautiful, but from their being
in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as having a greater
breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears in a higher style; and
even the flesh seems to take a higher and richer tone of colour.
Judgment is to direct us in the use to be made of this method of study;
but the method itself is, I am very sure, advantageous. I have often
imagined that the two great colourists, Titian and Correggio, though I
do not know that they painted by night, formed their high ideas of
colouring from the effects of objects by this artificial light.

_Reynolds._

[Illustration: _Gainsborough_ THE CHILDREN AND THE BUTTERFLY _Mansell_]

MODERN PAINTING

CCXXII