ut Mr. Fielding should
remember that nothing of this kind can be done with success unless by
the most studied management of the general tones of the picture; for the
eye, deprived of all means of enjoying the gray hues, merely as a
contrast to bright points, becomes painfully fastidious in the quality
of the hues themselves, and demands for its satisfaction such melodies
and richness of gray as may in some degree atone to it for the loss of
points of stimulus. That gray which would be taken frankly and freely
for an expression of gloom, if it came behind a yellow sail or a red
cap, is examined with invidious and merciless intentness when there is
nothing to relieve it, and, if not able to bear the investigation, if
neither agreeable nor variable in its hue, renders the picture weak
instead of impressive, and unpleasant instead of awful. And indeed the
management of nature might teach him this; for though, when using
violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat monotonous,
the moment she gives up her vivid color, and depends upon her
desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens into her
sea-gray, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-gray, and the
expression of variously tinted light through all. Nor is Mr. Fielding
without a model in art, for the Land's End, and Lowestoffe, and
Snowstorm, (in the Academy, 1842,) of Turner, are nothing more than
passages of the most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted grays, and yet are
three of the very finest pieces of color that have come from his hand.
And we sincerely hope that Mr. Fielding will gradually feel the
necessity of such studied melodies of quiet color, and will neither fall
back into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with purple
and ink. If he will only make a few careful studies of gray from the
mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that has been three
days hard at work, not of a rainy squall, but of a persevering and
powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned into milk and magnesia
by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure and green on gray slate or
white granite, as along the cliffs of Cornwall, we think his pictures
would present some of the finest examples of high intention and feeling
to be found in modern art.

Sec. 11. Works of Stanfield. His perfect knowledge and power.

Sec. 12. But want of feeling. General sum of truth presented by modern art.

The works of Stanfield evidently, and at all times,