ny is palpably as
artificial as their feeling is cold.

Sec. 23. De Wint.

There is much that is instructive and deserving of high praise in the
sketches of De Wint. Yet it is to be remembered that even the pursuit of
truth, however determined, will have results limited and imperfect when
its chief motive is the pride of being true; and I fear that these
works, sublime as many of them have unquestionably been, testify more
accuracy of eye and experience of color than exercise of thought. Their
truth of effect is often purchased at too great an expense by the loss
of all beauty of form, and of the higher refinements of color;
deficiencies, however, on which I shall not insist, since the value of
the sketches, as far as they go, is great; they have done good service
and set good example, and whatever their failings may be, there is
evidence in them that the painter has always done what he believed to be
right.

Sec. 24. Influence of Engraving. J. D. Harding.

The influence of the masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is confined
to those who have access to their actual works, since the particular
qualities in which they excel, are in no wise to be rendered by the
engraver. Those of whom we have next to speak are known to the public in
a great measure by the help of the engraver; and while their influence
is thus very far extended, their modes of working are perhaps, in some
degree modified by the habitual reference to the future translation into
light and shade; reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it
induces respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro and the
explanation of the forms, but which is harmful, so far as it involves a
dependence rather on quantity of picturesque material than on
substantial color or simple treatment, and as it admits of indolent
diminution of size and slightness of execution.

We should not be just to the present works of J. D. Harding unless we
took this influence into account. Some years back none of our artists
realized more laboriously, nor obtained more substantial color and
texture; a large drawing in the possession of B. G. Windus, Esq., of
Tottenham, is of great value as an example of his manner at the period;
a manner not only careful, but earnest, and free from any kind of
affectation. Partly from the habit of making slight and small drawings
for engravers, and partly also, I imagine, from an overstrained seeking
after appearances of dexterity in execution,