Chapter XI: Letter III: On Color and Composition (4)

[70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
marked through this division.

[71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art,
must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the
dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the
veil of its perversion.

[72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into,
especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.

[73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned
by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but
cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not:
and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good
taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.

[74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
before.