t the ultimate hue of every shadow is brown, it
presupposes a peculiar and conventional light. It is true, that so long
as the early practice of finishing the under-drawing with the pen was
continued, the gray of that preparation might perhaps diminish the force
of the upper color, which became in that case little more than a glowing
varnish--even thus sometimes verging on too monotonous warmth, as the
reader may observe in the head of Dandolo, by John Bellini, in the
National Gallery. But when, by later and more impetuous hands, the point
tracing was dispensed with, and the picture boldly thrown in with the
brown pigment, it became matter of great improbability that the force of
such a prevalent tint could afterwards be softened or melted into a pure
harmony; the painter's feeling for truth was blunted; brilliancy and
richness became his object rather than sincerity or solemnity; with the
palled sense of color departed the love of light, and the diffused
sunshine of the early schools died away in the narrowed rays of
Rembrandt. We think it a deficiency in the work before us that the
extreme peril of such a principle, incautiously applied, has not been
pointed out, and that the method of Rubens has been so highly extolled
for its technical perfection, without the slightest notice of the gross
mannerism into which its facile brilliancy too frequently betrayed the
mighty master.

129. Yet it remains a question how far, under certain limitations and
for certain effects, this system of pure brown shadow may be
successfully followed. It is not a little singular that it has already
been revived in water-colors by a painter who, in his realization of
light and splendor of hue, stands without a rival among living
schools--Mr. Hunt; his neutral shadows being, we believe, first thrown
in frankly with sepia, the color introduced upon the lights, and the
central lights afterwards further raised by body color, and glazed. But
in this process the sepia shadows are admitted only on objects whose
local colors are warm or neutral; wherever the tint of the illumined
portion is delicate or peculiar, a relative hue of shade is at once laid
on the white paper; and the correspondence with the Flemish school is in
the use of brown as the ultimate representative of deep gloom, and in
the careful preservation of its transparency, not in the application of
brown universally as the shade of all colors. We apprehend that this
practice represents,