The Colorists.

21. The Delineators are the men on whom I am going to give you this
course of lectures. They are essentially engravers, an engraved line
being the best means of delineation. The Chiaroscurists are essentially
draughtsmen with chalk, charcoal, or single tints. Many of them paint,
but always with some effort and pain. Lionardo is the type of them; but
the entire Dutch school consists of them, laboriously painting, without
essential genius for color.

The Colorists are the true painters; and all the faultless (as far, that
is to say, as men's work can be so,) and consummate masters of art
belong to them.

22. The distinction between the colorist and chiaroscurist school is
trenchant and absolute: and may soon be shown you so that you will never
forget it. Here is a Florentine picture by one of the pupils of Giotto,
of very good representative quality, and which the University galleries
are rich in possessing. At the distance at which I hold it, you see
nothing but a checker-work of brilliant, and, as it happens, even
glaring colors. If you come near, you will find this patchwork resolve
itself into a Visitation, and Birth of St. John; but that St.
Elizabeth's red dress, and the Virgin's blue and white one, and the
brown posts of the door, and the blue spaces of the sky, are painted in
their own entirely pure colors, each shaded with more powerful tints of
itself,--pale blue with deep blue, scarlet with crimson, yellow with
orange, and green with richer green.

The whole is therefore as much a mosaic work of brilliant color as if it
were made of bits of glass. There is no effect of light attempted, or so
much as thought of: you don't know even where the sun is: nor have you
the least notion what time of day it is. The painter thinks you cannot
be so superfluous as to want to know what time of day it is.

23. Here, on the other hand, is a Dutch picture of good average quality,
also out of the University galleries. It represents a group of cattle,
and a herdsman watching them. And you see in an instant that the time is
evening. The sun is setting, and there is warm light on the landscape,
the cattle, and the standing figure.

Nor does the picture in any conspicuous way seem devoid of color. On the
contrary, the herdsman has a scarlet jacket, which comes out rather
brilliantly from the mass of shade round it; and a person devoid of
color faculty, or ill taught, might imagine the pic