l as many
others--though take only these, as the most striking contrasts to
Rubens--excelled also in the agreeability of their colouring, without
reference to subject, and in the sympathy with regard to it. So that
in them were united the two essentials. Whereas Rubens had in any
perfection neither; the one not at all, and the other only in a minor
part and degree.

Such was the _general_ character of Rubens' colouring. I do not mean
that there are no felicitous exceptions. I would notice--but there the
human figure is not--his lioness on a ledge of rock; there is an
entire absence of his strong and flickering colours: on the contrary
all is dim--the scenery natural to the animal, for it partakes of its
proper colours, (and this is strictly true, as the hare and the fox
conceal themselves by their assimilating earths and forms.) The
spectator advances upon the scene, unaware of the stealthily lurking
danger. The dimness and repose are of a terror, that contrast and
forcible colour would at least mitigate; the surprise would be lost,
or rather be altogether of another kind; it would arm you for the
danger, which becomes sublime by taking you unprepared. And there is
his little landscape with the sun shedding his rays through the hole
in the tree, where the sentiment of the obscure--the dim wood--is
enhanced by the bright gleam--and there is in this little picture a
whole agreeability of colour. His landscapes in general are, however,
very strange; rather eccentric than natural in colour, yet preserving
the intended atmospheric effect by an idealism of colouring not quite
in keeping with the unromantic commonness of the scenery.

But these exceptions do not indicate the _characteristics_ of Rubens
as a colourist; he is more known, and more imitated, as far as he can
be imitated, in the mannerism of his style which has been described.

Deficient, then, as I think him to have been in these two essentials,
I am still disposed to question his claim to the title, and to ask,
"Was Rubens a colourist?" If the answer be in the negative, it may be
worth while to consider the precise point from which his style may be
said to have deviated from the right road; nor is it here necessary to
particularise, but to refer to the Italian practice generally, which
will be found to consist chiefly in this--in the choosing a low key;
and for the greatest perfection of colouring, the proper union of the
two essentials of good colouring, it m