aning of the
word "tone"--the exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of
the hues of all objects under them; and more especially that precious
quality of each color laid on, which makes it appear a quiet color
illuminated, not a bright color in shade. But I allow this inferiority
only with respect to the paintings of Turner, not to his drawings. I
could select from among the works named in Chap. VI. of this section,
pieces of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, from the coolest grays
of wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. And the difference
between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly all the
paintings, (for the early oil pictures of Turner are far less perfect in
tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to account for, but on the
supposition that there is something in the material which modern artists
in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels Turner himself
to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and more important
qualities. The total failures of Callcott, whose struggles after tone
ended so invariably in shivering winter or brown paint, the misfortune
of Landseer with his evening sky in 1842, the frigidity of Stanfield,
and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent power and
admirable science of Etty are unable entirely to conquer, are too fatal
and convincing proofs of the want of knowledge of means, rather than of
the absence of aim, in modern artists as a body. Yet, with respect to
Turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings (the Fall
of Carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time when he was
producing the most exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to
favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent works (such,
for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in the Slaver) which
directly contradict it, and which prove to us that where he now errs in
tone, (as in the Cicero's Villa,) it is less owing to want of power to
reach it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. I shall
therefore glance at the particular modes in which Turner manages his
tone in his present Academy pictures; the early ones must be given up at
once. Place a genuine untouched Claude beside the Crossing the Brook,
and the difference in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in an
instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool and
transparent qualities of Claude would have been here desirable,