ure than the roughness of the surface; for that part being of use
in giving force to the effect at a proper distance, and what a judge of
painting knows an original from a copy by--in short, being the touch of
the pencil which is harder to preserve than smoothness, I am much better
pleased that they should spy out things of that kind, than to see an eye
half an inch out of its place, or a nose out of drawing when viewed at a
proper distance. I don't think it would be more ridiculous for a person
to put his nose close to the canvas and say the colours smelt offensive,
than to say how rough the paint lies; for one is just as material as the
other with regard to hurting the effect and drawing of a picture.

_Gainsborough._

XCI

The picture[2] will be seen to the greatest advantage if it is hung in a
strong light, and in such a manner that the spectator can stand at some
distance from it.

_Rembrandt._

[Footnote 2: Probably the "Blinding of Samson."]

XCII

Don't look at a picture close, it smells bad.

_Rembrandt._

XCIII

Try to be frank in drawing and in colour; give things their full relief;
make a painting which can be seen at a distance; this is indispensable.

_Chasseriau._

XCIV

If I might point out to you another defect, very prevalent of late, in
our pictures, and one of the same contracted character with those you so
happily illustrate, it would be that of the _want of breadth_, and in
others a perpetual division and subdivision of parts, to give what their
perpetrators call space; add to this a constant disturbing and torturing
of everything whether in light or in shadow, by a niggling touch, to
produce fulness of subject. This is the very reverse of what we see in
Cuyp or Wilson, and even, with all his high finishing, in Claude. I have
been warning our friend Collins against this, and was also urging young
Landseer to beware of it; and in what I have been doing lately myself
have been studying much from Rembrandt and from Cuyp, so as to acquire
what the great masters succeeded so well in, namely, that power by which
the chief objects, and even the minute finishing of parts, tell over
everything that is meant to be subordinate in their pictures. Sir Joshua
had this remarkably, and could even make _the features of the face_ tell
over everything, however strongly painted. I find that repose and
breadth in the shadows and half-tints do a great deal towards it.
Zoffany's figures derive g