ugh it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, it
is only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art.

52. Let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relation
of formal shade to color. Here is an egg; here, a green cluster of
leaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. In formal chiaroscuro, all
these are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carved
in marble. In the engraving of "Melancholy," what I meant by telling
you it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, the
leaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any of
these stand for. On the contrary, to a colorist the first question
about everything is its color. Is this a white thing, a green thing,
or a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark blue
first of all; if afterwards I can make them look round, or like fruit
and leaves, it's all very well; but if I can't, blue or green they at
least shall be.

53. Now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we are
speaking of. Here is a copy of Turner's vignette of "Martigny." This
is wholly a design of the colored school. Here is a bit of vine in the
foreground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn as
round, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividly
purple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in their
Tyrian nature. Here, on the contrary, is Duerer's "Flight into Egypt,"
with grapes and palm fruit above. Both are white; but both engraved so
as to look thoroughly round.

54. All the other great chiaroscurists whom I named to you--Reynolds,
Velasquez, and Titian--approached their shadow also on the safe
side--from Venice: they always think of color first. But Turner had to
work his way out of the dark Greek school up to Venice; he always
thinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to
the end. Those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you
fancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing Greek efforts to
get light. He could have got color easily enough if he had rested in
that; which I will show you in next Lecture. Still, he so nearly made
himself a Venetian that, as opposed to the Dutch academical
chiaroscurists, he is to be considered a Venetian altogether. And now
I will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the
two schools.

55. Here is a study of swans, from a Dutch book of academical
instruction in Ru