s, or of the white marble, or the green
sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would
have something more of color upon them than that opaque dead green.
Green they are by their own nature, but it is a transparent and emerald
hue, mixing itself with the thousand reflected tints without
overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in every one of those
individual waves, the truths of color are contradicted by Canaletto by
the thousand.

Venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the canals
are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps more and more
sluggishly against the rent foundations; but even yet, could I but place
the reader at the early morning on the quay below the Rialto, when the
market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him
watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and
under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the
grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away
in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish
baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on
their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing
boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such
florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last
of the old Venetian race, who yet keep the right Giorgione color on
their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual
degradation of the creatures that live in the cafes of the Piazza, he
would not be merciful to Canaletto any more.

Sec. 20. The Dutch painters of sea.

Yet even Canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is
spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared to the Dutch painters of sea. It
is easily understood why his green paint and concave touches should be
thought expressive of the water on which the real colors are not to be
discerned but by attention, which is never given; but it is not so
easily understood, considering how many there are who love the sea, and
look at it, that Vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. As I
before said, I feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these
men, because I do not know what it is in their works which is supposed
to be like nature. Foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave
sides and to fly, flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride
upon them l