Puslapio vaizdai
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at the same time, that the beautiful in colour, is of a positive and independent nature; whereas the sublime in colour is in a great degree relative, and depends on the circumstances and associations by which it is accompanied. A beautiful colour, is a common and just expression; no one hesitates whether he shall give that title to the leaf of a rose, or to the smallest bit of it; but though the deep gloomy tint of the sky before a storm, and its effect on all nature be sublime, no one would call that colour (whether a dark blue, or purple, or whatever it might be) a sublime colour, if simply shewn him without the other accompaniments.

I likewise imagine that no one would

call any colour picturesque, if shewn him in the same manner, though many of them might without impropriety be called so: for there are many which having nothing of the freshness and delicacy of beauty, are generally found in objects and scenes highly picturesque, and admirably accord with them. Among these may be reckon

ed the autumnal hues in all their varieties; the weather-stains, and many of the mosses, lichens, and incrustations on bark and on wood, on stones, old walls, and buildings of every kind; the various gradations in the tints of broken ground, and of the decayed parts in hollow trees. All these, which surely cannot be classed with the fresh greens of spring, with the various hues, at once so fresh and vivid, of its flowers and blossoms, or with those of the clean and healthy stems of young plants, may serve to point out in how many instances picturesque colours as well as forms, arise from age and decay. There is indeed a natural prejudice in our minds against all that is produced by such causes; but whoever attentively observes in nature the deep, rich, and mellow ef fect of such colours, will hardly be surprised that painters should have been fond of introducing them into their works, and sometimes to the exclusion of those, of which the beauty is universally acknow

ledged, and is likewise enhanced by every pleasing association.

Autumn, which is metaphorically applied to the decline of human life, when "fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf," and not the spring, la primavera, gioventù del anno, is generally called the painter's season. And yet there is something so very delightful in the real charms of spring, as well as in the associated ideas of renewed life and vegetation, that it seems a perversion of our natural feelings, when we prefer to all its blooming hopes, the first bodings of the approach of winter. Autumn must therefore have many powerful attractions though of a different kind, and those intimately connected with the art of painting: for which reason as the picturesque, though equally founded in nature with the beautiful, has been more particularly pointed out, illustrated, and, as it were, brought to light by that art, an inquiry into the reasons why autumn, and not spring, is called the painter's season, will, I imagine, give great additional in

sight into the distinct characters of the picturesque and the beautiful, especially with regard to colour.

The colours of spring deserve the name. of beauty in the truest sense of the word: they have every thing that can give us that idea; freshness, gaiety, and liveliness, with softness and delicacy: their beauty is indeed of all others the most generally acknowledged; so much so, that from them every comparison and illustration of that character is taken. The tints of the flowers and blossoms, in all the nearer views, are clearly the most striking and attractive; but the more general impression is made by the freshness of that vivid green, with which the fields, the woods, and all vegetation begins to be adorned. Besides their freshness, the earlier trees have a remarkable lightness and transparency: their new foliage serves as a decoration, not as a concealment; and through it the forms of their limbs are seen, as those of the human body under a thin

drapery; while a thousand quivering lights play around and amidst their branches in every direction.

But these beauties, which give to spring it's peculiar character, are not those which are best adapted to painting: a general air of lightness is one of the most engaging qualities of that lovely season; yet the lightness, in the earlier part, approaches to thinness; and the transparency of the new foliage, the thousand quivering lights, beautiful as they are in nature, have a tendency to produce a meagre and spotty effect in a picture, where breadth, and broad masses can hardly be dispensed with. The general colour also of spring, when April

Lightly o'er the living scene

Scatters his tenderest freshest green,

though pleasing to every eye in nature, is not equally so on the canvas; especially when scattered over the general scene. Freshness also, it may be remarked, is in

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