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Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness § 1. Sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water.and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the form of the torrent—in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like trying to paint a soul.

To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water—to lay on canvas as much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that water is meant—is, perhaps, the easiest task § 2. The ease with which a common representation of it may be given. The impossibility of a faithful one.of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself—to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient—so mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its motion—with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below;—to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of man; to do it even partially, has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it.

As the general laws which govern the appearances of water have equal effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the subject in divisions; for the same forces which govern § 3. Difficulty of properly dividing the subject.the waves and foam of the torrent, are equally influential on those of the sea; and it will be more convenient to glance generally at the system of water-painting of each school and artist, than to devote separate chapters to the examination of the lake, river, or sea-painting of all. We shall, therefore, vary our usual plan, and look first at the water-painting of the ancients; then at that of the moderns generally; lastly, at that of Turner.

It is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the optical conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water is affected; to describe them all would require a separate § 4. Inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters.essay, even if I possessed the requisite knowledge, which I do not. The accidental modifications under which general laws come into play are innumerable, and often, in their extreme complexity, inexplicable, I suppose, even by men of the most extended optical knowledge. What I shall here state are a few only of the broadest laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation, but of which nevertheless, I have found artists frequently ignorant; owing to their habit of sketching from nature without thinking or reasoning, and especially of finishing at home. It is not often, I believe, that an artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them; over large spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly impossible to do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and sometimes in idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature, they are slurred or misrepresented; it is so easy to give something like a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the landscape is finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as something that may be done at any time, and then, in the home work, come the cold leaden grays with some, and the violent blues and greens with others, and the horizontal lines with the feeble, and the bright touches and sparkles with the dexterous, and everything that is shallow and commonplace with all. Now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as much landscape in it as above it. It is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. It is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky—so it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. Now, this farseeing is just the difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man knows the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. And if painters would only go out to the nearest common and take the nearest dirty pond among the furze, and draw that thoroughly, not considering that it is water that they are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain way; but drawing determinedly what they see, that is to say, all the trees, and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge, and the stones of it, and all the sky, and the clouds far down in the middle, drawn as completely, and more delicately they must be, than the real clouds above, they would come home with such a notion of water-painting as might save me and every one else all trouble of writing more about the matter; but now they do nothing of the kind, but take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else improve it, and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in touching the pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so Canaletto is still thought to have painted canals, and Vandevelde and Backhuysen to have painted sea, and the uninterpreted streams and maligned sea hiss shame upon us from all their rocky beds and hollow shores.

I approach this part of my subject with more despondency than any other, and that for several reasons; first, the water painting of all the elder landscape painters, excepting a few of § 5. Difficulty of treating this part of the subject.the better passages of Claude and Ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad; Claude's and Ruysdael's best so cold and valueless, that I do not know how to address those who like such painting; I do not know what their sensations are respecting sea. I can perceive nothing in Vandevelde or Backhuysen of the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of intellect—or evidence of perception—of any sort or kind; no resemblance—even the feeblest—of anything natural; no invention—even the most sluggish—of anything agreeable. Had they given us staring green seas with hatchet edges, such as we see Her Majesty's ships so-and-so fixed into by the heads or sterns in the first room of the Royal Academy, the admiration of them would have been comprehensible; there being a natural predilection in the mind of men for green waves with curling tops, but not for clay and wool; so that though I can understand, in some sort, why people admire everything else in old art, why they admire Salvator's rocks, and Claude's foregrounds, and Hobbima's trees, and Paul Potter's cattle, and Jan Steen's pans; and while I can perceive in all these likings a root which seems right and legitimate, and to be appealed to; yet when I find they can even endure the sight of a Backhuysen on their room walls (I speak seriously) it makes me hopeless at once. I may be wrong, or they may be wrong, but at least I can conceive of no principle or opinion common between us, which either can address or understand in the other; and yet I am wrong in this want of conception, for I know that Turner once liked Vandevelde, and I can trace the evil influence of Vandevelde on most of his early sea painting, but Turner certainly could not have liked Vandevelde without some legitimate cause. Another discouraging point is that I cannot catch a wave, nor Daguerreotype it, and so there is no coming to pure demonstration; but the forms and hues of water must always be in some measure a matter of dispute and feeling, and the more so because there is no perfect or even tolerably perfect sea painting to refer to: the sea never has been, and I fancy never will be nor can be painted; it is only suggested by means of more or less spiritual and intelligent conventionalism; and though Turner has done enough to suggest the sea mightily and gloriously, after all it is by conventionalism still, and there remains so much that is unlike nature, that it is always possible for those who do not feel his power to justify their dislike, on very sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to maintain themselves obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on the deficiency which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is most manifest on the one hand, where most has been achieved on the other.

With calm water the case is different. Facts are ascertainable and demonstrable there, and by the notice of one or two of the simplest, we may obtain some notion of the little success and intelligence of the elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their probable failure in contending with greater difficulties.

First: Water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a surface whose reflective power is dependent on the angle § 6. General laws which regulate the phenomena of water. First, the imperfection of its reflective surface.at which the rays to be reflected fall. The smaller this angle, the greater are the number of rays reflected. Now, according to the number of rays reflected is the force of the image of objects above, and according to the number of rays transmitted is the perceptibility of objects below the water. Hence the visible transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio. In looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the water looks black. In looking along water we receive reflected rays, and therefore the image of objects above it. Hence, in shallow water on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not increase in depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards—more or less according to our height above the water—becomes entirely invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface.

Second: The brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at which reflection is visible; it is always to be remembered that, strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and § 7. The inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect bright ones.that the darker ones are seen only in proportion to the number of rays of light that they can send; so that a dark object comparatively loses its power to affect the surface of water, and the water in the space of a dark reflection is seen partially with the image of the object, and partially transparent. It will be found on observation that under a bank—suppose with dark trees above showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the water is in those spaces not seen; but in the dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom of the water, and the color of that bottom and of the water itself mingles with and modifies that of the color of the trees casting the dark reflection.

This is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible. Of course at great distances even the darkest objects cast distinct images, and the hue of the water cannot be seen, but in near water the occurrence of its own color modifying the dark reflections, while it leaves light ones unaffected, is of infinite value.

Take, by way of example, an extract from my own diary at Venice.

"May 17th, 4 p.m. Looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity; the sky, which is pale blue, is in its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the vessels' hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea green, i.e., the natural color of the water under sunlight; while the orange masts of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected without change of color, only not quite so bright as above. One ship has a white, another a red stripe," (I ought to have said horizontal along the gunwales,) 'of these the water takes no notice.'

"What is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright reflected sky."

I have left the passage about the white and red stripe, because it will be useful to us presently; all that I wish to insist upon here is the showing of the local color (pea green) of the water in the spaces which were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered color of the bright ones.

Third: Clear water takes no shadow, and that for two reasons; A perfect surface of speculum metal takes no shadow, § 8. Water takes no shadow.(this the reader may instantly demonstrate for himself,) and a perfectly transparent body as air takes no shadow; hence water, whether transparent or reflective, takes no shadow.

But shadows, or the forms of them, appear on water frequently and sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these, as they are one of the most eminent sources of error in water painting.

First: Water in shade is much more reflective than water in sunlight. Under sunlight the local color of the water is commonly vigorous and active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the dark reflections, commonly diminishing their depth. Under shade, the reflective power is in a high degree increased,⁶¹ and it will be found most frequently that the forms of shadows are expressed on the surface of water, not by actual shade, but by more genuine reflection of objects above. This is another most important and valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some phenomena of the highest beauty.

A very muddy river, as the Arno for instance at Florence, is seen during sunshine of its own yellow color, rendering all reflections discolored and feeble. At twilight it recovers its reflective power to the fullest extent, and the mountains of Carrara are seen reflected in it as clearly as if it were a crystalline lake. The Mediterranean, whose determined blue yields to hardly any modifying color in daytime, receives at evening the image of its rocky shores. On our own seas, seeming shadows are seen constantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale green. These are no shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky above, seen in the shadowed space, refused by the local color of the sea in the sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the opposition of the vivid green.

We have seen, however, above, that the local color of water, while it comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones without deadening them. Hence when a shadow is thrown § 9. Modification of dark reflections by shadow.across a space of water of strong local color, receiving, alternately, light and dark reflections, it has no power of increasing the reflectiveness of the water in the bright spaces, still less of diminishing it; hence, on all the dark reflections it is seen more or less distinctly, on all the light ones it vanishes altogether.

Let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect induced by these various circumstances in co-operation.

Suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom under a group of trees, showing sky through their branches, casting shadows on the surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess some color of its own. Close to us, we shall see the bottom, with the shadows of the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the color of the water seen in its genuineness by transmitted light. Farther off, the bottom will be gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen in the dark reflections much farther than in the light ones. At last it ceases to affect even the former, and the pure surface effect takes place. The blue bright sky is reflected truly, but the dark trees are reflected imperfectly, and the color of the water is seen instead. Where the shadow falls on these dark reflections a darkness is seen plainly, which is found to be composed of the pure clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses the reflection of the sky, the shadow of course, being thus fictitious, vanishes.

Farther, of course on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in water, real shadow falls clear and dark in proportion to the quantity of solid substance present. On very muddy rivers, real shadow falls in sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our own sea, the apparent shadow caused by increased reflection, is much increased in depth by the chalkiness and impurity of the water.

Farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain variable distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain angle between him and the sun, varying with the size and shape of the ripples, reflects to him a small image of the sun. Hence those dazzling fields of expanding light so often seen upon the sea.

Any object that comes between the sun and these ripples, takes from them the power of reflecting the sun, and in consequence, all their light; hence any intervening objects cast apparent shadows upon such spaces of intense force, and of the exact shape, and in the exact place of real shadows, and yet which are no more real shadows than the withdrawal of an image of a piece of white paper from a mirror is a shadow on the mirror. Farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its shallowness, but in some measure, I suppose, up to depths of forty or fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local color of the water depends in great measure on light reflected from the bottom. This, however, is especially manifest in clear rivers like the Rhone, where the absence of the light reflected from below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly detached some distance from the floating object which casts it.

§ 10. Examples on the water of the Rhone.

The following extract from my own diary at Geneva, with the subsequent one, which is a continuation of that already given in part at Venice, will illustrate both this and the other points we have been stating.

"Geneva, 21st April, Morning.

"The sunlight falls from the cypresses of Rousseau's island straight towards the bridge. The shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on the water in leaden purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine green. This green color is caused by the light being reflected from the bottom, though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming paler towards the middle of the river, where the water shoals, on which pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls most forcibly, which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the absence of this reflected light, associated with the increased reflective power of the water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky above. A boat swings in the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a transparent pea-green, which is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at the spot. Its shadow is detached from it just about half the depth of the reflection; which, therefore, forms a bright green light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something like the true color of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the reflection, it is of a leaden purple, pale. The boat is at an angle of about 20° below. Another boat nearer, in deeper water, shows no shadow, whatsoever, and the reflection is marked by its transparent green, while the surrounding water takes a lightish blue reflection from the sky."

The above notes, after what has been said, require no comment; but one more case must be stated belonging to rough water. Every large wave of the sea is in ordinary circumstances divided into, or rather covered by, innumerable smaller waves, each of which, in all probability, from some of its edges or surfaces reflects the sunbeams; and hence result a glitter, polish, and vigorous light over the whole flank of the wave, which are, of course, instantly withdrawn within the space of a cast shadow, whose form, therefore, though it does not affect the great body or ground of the water in the least, is sufficiently traceable by the withdrawal of the high lights; also every string and wreath of foam above or within the wave takes real shadow, and thus adds to the impression.

I have not stated one-half of the circumstances which produce or influence effects of shadow on water; but lest I should confuse or weary the reader, I leave him to pursue the subject for himself; enough having been stated to establish this general principle, that whenever shadow is seen on clear water, and, in a measure, even on foul water, it is not, as on land, a dark shade subduing where it falls the sunny general hue to a lower tone; but it is a space of an entirely different color, subject itself, by its susceptibility of reflection, to infinite varieties of depth and hue, and liable, under certain circumstances, to disappear altogether; and that, therefore, whenever we have to paint such shadows, it is not only the hue of the water itself that we have to consider, but all the circumstances by which in the position attributed to them such shaded spaces could be affected.

Fourth: If water be rippled, the side of every ripple next to us reflects a piece of the sky, and the side of every ripple farthest § 11. Effect of ripple on distant water.from us reflects a piece of the opposite shore, or of whatever objects may be beyond the ripple. But as we soon lose sight of the farther sides of the ripples on the retiring surface, the whole rippled space will then be reflective of the sky only. Thus, where calm distant water receives reflections of high shores, every extent of rippled surface appears as a bright line interrupting that reflection with the color of the sky.

Fifth: When a ripple or swell is seen at such an angle as to afford a view of its farther side, it carries the reflection of objects farther down than calm water would. Therefore all motion § 12. Elongation of reflections by moving water.in water elongates reflections, and throws them into confused vertical lines. The real amount of this elongation is not distinctly visible, except in the case of very bright objects, and especially of lights, as of the sun, moon, or lamps by a river shore, whose reflections are hardly ever seen as circles or points, which of course they are on perfectly calm water, but as long streams of tremulous light.

But it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity by the greater number of spectators. In one of Turner's Venices the image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as long as the sails themselves. I have heard the truth of this simple effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on any water so exposed as the lagoons of Venice, the periods are few and short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator.

There is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. If we see on an extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of white clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water will not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it will commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and which the refused.

In many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infinite variety of hues, prolonged, like the sun image, from a great distance, and that our apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even of its surface, is in no small degree dependent on our feeling of these multitudinous hues, which the continual motion of that surface prevents us from analyzing or understanding for what they are.

Sixth: Rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the waves, will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its § 13. Effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images.length being given on the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye. But if the line slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and disjointed; and if horizontal, nearly invisible. It was this circumstance which prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at Venice, noticed above, from being visible.

Seventh: Every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of the objects beside the water, as we could see if we were § 14. To what extent reflection is visible from above.placed as much under the level of the water as we are actually above it. If an object be so far back from the bank, that if we were five feet under the water level we could not see it over the bank, then, standing five feet above the water, we shall not be able to see its image under the reflected bank. Hence the reflection of all objects that have any slope back from the water is shortened, and at last disappears as we rise above it. Lakes seen from a great height appear like plates of metal set in the landscape, reflecting the sky but none of their shores.

Eighth: Any given point of the object above the water is reflected, if reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath § 15. Deflection of images on agitated water.it, so long as the plane of the water is horizontal. On rippled water a slight deflection sometimes takes place, and the image of a vertical tower will slope a little away from the wind, owing to the casting of the image on the sloping sides of the ripples. On the sloping sides of large waves the deflection is in proportion to the slope. For rough practice, after the slope of the wave is determined, let the artist turn his paper until it becomes horizontal, and then paint the reflections of any object upon it as on level water, and he will be right.

Such are the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken into consideration in the painting of water. Yet, in the application of them, as tests of good or bad water painting, § 16. Necessity of watchfulness as well as of science.

Licenses, how taken by great men.we must be cautious in the extreme. An artist may know all these laws, and comply with them, and yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant of every one of them, and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate every one of them, and yet paint water gloriously. Thousands of exquisite effects take place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only while they are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws are so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labor could, if applied analytically, keep pace with them. Constant and eager watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to the painter than the most extended optical knowledge; without these all his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. With these it does not matter how gross or how daring here and there may be his violations of this or that law; his very transgressions will be admirable.

It may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these days of idleness. I cannot help it; it is true, and must be affirmed. Of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is that which punishes great works of art when they fight without armor, and refuses to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of their truth, because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them before its appointed time. And yet, on the other hand, let it be observed that it is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called, that I have put before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection and trust in nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a difference between the license taken by one man and another, which makes one license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this difference is of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is not so explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even to whom, the license is to be forgiven. In the Paradise of Tintoret, in the Academy of Venice, the Angel is seen in the distance driving Adam and Eve out of the garden. Not, for Tintoret, the leading to the gate with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of conception is seen here as everywhere. Full speed they fly, the angel and the human creatures; the angel wrapt in an orb of light floats on, stooped forward in his fierce flight, and does not touch the ground; the chastised creatures rush before him in abandoned terror. All this might have been invented by another, though in other hands it would assuredly have been offensive; but one circumstance which completes the story could have been thought of or dared by none but Tintoret. The Angel casts a shadow before him towards Adam and Eve.

Now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as far as mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious kind. But how beautiful is the circumstance in its application here, showing that the angel, who is light to all else around him, is darkness to those whom he is commissioned to banish forever.

I have before noticed the license of Rubens in making his horizon an oblique line. His object is to carry the eye to a given point in the distance. The road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip at it, his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the horizon slopes to it. If the horizon had been horizontal, it would have embarrassed everything and everybody.

In Turner's Pas de Calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge of a near wave. It casts its reflection vertically down the flank of the wave, which slopes steeply. I cannot tell whether this is a license or a mistake; I suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs not unfrequently in Turner's seas; but I am almost certain that it would have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake been pointed out, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture, and the eye is so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of the reflections on the slopes of waves that it does not feel the fault.

In one of the smaller rooms of the Uffizii at Florence, off the Tribune, there are two so-called Claudes; one a pretty wooded landscape, I think a copy, the other a marine with architecture, § 17. Various licenses or errors in water painting of Claude, Cuyp, Vandevelde.very sweet and genuine. The sun is setting at the side of the picture, it casts a long stream of light upon the water. This stream of light is oblique, and comes from the horizon, where it is under the sun, to a point near the centre of the picture. If this had been done as a license, it would be an instance of most absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is detected by the eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for it. But I imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect science. Taking his impression instinctively from nature, Claude usually did what is right and put his reflection vertically under the sun; probably, however, he had read in some treatise on optics that every point in this reflection was in a vertical plane between the sun and spectator; or he might have noticed walking on the shore that the reflection came straight from the sun to his feet, and intending to indicate the position of the spectator, drew in his next picture the reflection sloping to the supposed point, the error being excusable enough, and plausible enough to have been lately revived and systematized.⁶²

In the picture of Cuyp, No. 83 in the Dulwich Gallery, the post at the end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections. This is visibly neither license nor half science, but pure ignorance. Again, in the picture attributed to Paul Potter, No. 176, Dulwich Gallery, I believe most people must feel, the moment they look at it, that there is something wrong with the water, that it looks odd, and hard, and like ice or lead; and though they may not be able to tell the reason of the impression—for when they go near they will find it smooth and lustrous, and prettily painted—yet they will not be able to shake off the unpleasant sense of its being like a plate of bad mirror set in a model landscape among moss, rather than like a pond. The reason is, that while this water receives clear reflections from the fence and hedge on the left, and is everywhere smooth and evidently capable of giving true images, it yet reflects none of the cows.

In the Vandevelde (113) there is not a line of ripple or swell in any part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat casts its image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged downwards informs us that the calm is perfect, (Rule V.,) and being unshortened informs us that we are on a level with the water, or nearly so. (Rule VII.) Yet underneath the vessel on the right, the gray shade which stands for reflection breaks off immediately, descending like smoke a little way below the hull, then leaving the masts and sails entirely unrecorded. This I imagine to be not ignorance, but unjustifiable license. Vandevelde evidently desired to give an impression of great extent of surface, and thought that if he gave the reflection more faithfully, as the tops of the masts would come down to the nearest part of the surface, they would destroy the evidence of distance, and appear to set the ship above the boat instead of beyond it. I doubt not in such awkward hands that such would indeed have been the case, but he is not on that account to be excused for painting his surface with gray horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its liquidity. It is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon.

Among all the pictures of Canaletto, which I have ever seen, and they are not a few, I remember but one or two where there is any variation from one method of treatment of the water. § 18. And Canaletto.He almost always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green, covered with a certain number, I cannot state the exact average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple.

And, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field of apparently smooth water. By our sixth rule, this rippling water as it retires should show more and more of the reflection of the sky above it, and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until, at two or three hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of water should be one even gray or blue, the color of the sky receiving no reflections whatever of other objects. What does Canaletto do? Exactly in proportion as he retires, he displays more and more of the reflection of objects, and less and less of the sky, until, three hundred yards away, all the houses are reflected as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake.

This, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which the reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of weakness. It is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the light reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and to make the eye understand the cause of the color, and the motion of the apparently smooth water, especially where there are buildings above to be reflected, for the eye never understands the want of the reflection. But it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in the world to give the inverted image: it occupies a vast space of otherwise troublesome distance in the simplest way possible, and is understood by the eye at once. Hence Canaletto is glad, as any other inferior workman would be, not to say obliged, to give the reflections in the distance. But when he comes up close to the spectator, he finds the smooth surface just as troublesome near, as the ripple would have been far off. It is a very nervous thing for an ignorant artist to have a great space of vacant smooth water to deal with, close to him, too far down to take reflections from buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and retiring and transparent. Canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all feel himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no resource but in the white touches above described, which occupy the alarming space without any troublesome necessity for knowledge or invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some means of expressing retirement of surface. It is easily understood, therefore, why he should adopt this system, which is just what any awkward workman would naturally cling to, trusting to the inaccuracy of observation of the public to secure him from detection.

Now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself, it is not the infringement of this or that law which condemns the picture, but it is the spirit and habit of mind in § 19. Why unpardonable.which the license is taken, the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which infects every part alike, and deprives the whole picture of vitality. Canaletto, had he been a great painter, might have cast his reflections wherever he chose, and rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted his sea sloping if he chose, and neither I nor any one else should have dared to say a word against him; but he is a little and a bad painter, and so continues everywhere multiplying and magnifying mistakes, and adding apathy to error, until nothing can any more be pardoned in him. If it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, 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 cafés of the Piazza, he would not be merciful to Canaletto any more.

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 § 20. The Dutch painters of sea.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 like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is gray, to have the gray of stormy air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the gray of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door; and many other such things appear to me which, as far as I can conjecture by what is admired of marine painting, appear to no one else; yet I shall have something more to say about these men presently, with respect to the effect they have had upon Turner; and something more, I hope, hereafter, with the help of illustration.

There is a sea-piece of Ruysdael's in the Louvre⁶³ which, though nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful, agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves § 21. Ruysdael, Claude, and Salvator.have much freedom of action, and power of color; the wind blows hard over the shore, and the whole picture may be studied with profit as a proof that the deficiency of color and everything else in Backhuysen's works, is no fault of the Dutch sea. There is sublimity and power in every field of nature from the pole to the line; and though the painters of one country are often better and greater, universally, than those of another, this is less because the subjects of art are wanting anywhere, than because one country or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and another none.

Ruysdael's painting of falling water and brook scenery is also generally agreeable—more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. There appears no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

The seas of Claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient art. I do not say that I like them, because they appear to me selections of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless; but I think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time selected, or at least that the fine instances of them are so, of which there are exceedingly few.

On the right hand of one of the marines of Salvator, in the Pitti palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is thoroughly good, and very like Turner; the rest of the picture, as the one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. I have not seen any other instance of Salvator's painting water with any care, it is usually as conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism is perhaps more tolerable in water-painting than elsewhere; and if his trees and rocks had been good, the rivers might have been generally accepted without objection.

The merits of Poussin as a sea or water painter may, I think, § 22. Nicholas Poussin.be sufficiently determined by the Deluge in the Louvre, where the breaking up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the capsizing of a wherry over a weir.

In the outer porch of St. Mark's at Venice, among the mosaics on the roof, there is a representation of the deluge. The ground is dark blue; the rain is represented in bright white undulating parallel stripes; between these stripes is seen the massy outline of the ark, a bit between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguishable from the sky; but it has a square window with a bright golden border, which glitters out conspicuously, and leads the eye to the rest—the sea below is almost concealed with dead bodies.

On the font of the church of San Frediano at Lucca, there is a representation of—possibly—the Israelites and Egyptians in the Red Sea. The sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each band composed of three plies (almost the same type is to be seen in the glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as especially at Chartres). These bands would perhaps be hardly felt as very aqueous, but for the fish which are interwoven with them in a complicated manner, their heads appearing at one side of every band, and their tails at the other.

Both of these representatives of deluge, archaic and rude as they are, I consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more natural, than Poussin's. Indeed, this is not saying anything very depreciatory, as regards the St. Mark's one, for the glittering of the golden window through the rain is wonderfully well conceived, and almost deceptive, looking as if it had just caught a gleam of sunlight on its panes, and there is something very sublime in the gleam of this light above the floating corpses. But the other instance is sufficiently grotesque and imperfect, and yet, I speak with perfect seriousness, it is, I think, very far preferable to Poussin's.

On the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness and apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still more contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in modern days.⁶⁴ I am not aware that I can refer to any instructive example of this intermediate course, for I fear the reader is by this time wearied of hearing of Turner, and the plate of Turner's picture of the deluge is so rare that it is of no use to refer to it.

It seems exceedingly strange that the great Venetian painters should have left us no instance, as far as I know, of any marine effects carefully studied. As already noted, whatever passages of § 23. Venetians and Florentines. Conclusion.sea occur in their backgrounds are merely broad extents of blue or green surface, fine in color, and coming dark usually against the horizon, well enough to be understood as sea, (yet even that not always without the help of a ship,) but utterly unregarded in all questions of completion and detail. The water even in Titian's landscape is almost always violently though grandly conventional, and seldom forms an important feature. Among the religious schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a moment can be considered as real water-painting. Perugino's sea is usually very beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of S^ta. Maddalena at Florence is freely indicated, and looks level and clear; the reflections of the trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the brush. On the whole, I suppose that the best imitations of level water surface to be found in ancient art are in the clear Flemish landscapes. Cuyp's are usually very satisfactory, but even the best of these attain nothing more than the agreeable suggestion of calm pond or river. Of any tolerable representation of water in agitation, or under any circumstances that bring out its power and character, I know no instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the subject happens to be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's want of feeling in every effort, and of knowledge in every line.

⁶¹ I state this merely as a fact: I am unable satisfactorily to account for it on optical principles, and were it otherwise, the investigation would be of little interest to the general reader, and little value to the artist.

⁶² Parsey's "Convergence of Perpendiculars." I have not space here to enter into any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is fortunately unnecessary, the appeal to experiment being easy. Every picture is the representation, as before stated, of a vertical plate of glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface. Let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed, whether the sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will always be found in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the side of the glass. The pane of any window looking to sea is all the apparatus necessary for this experiment, and yet it is not long since this very principle was disputed with me by a man of much taste and information, who supposed Turner to be wrong in drawing the reflection straight down at the side of his picture, as in his Lancaster Sands, and innumerable other instances.

⁶³ In the last edition of this work was the following passage:—"I wish Ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. I believe if he had he might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous victimizing, both in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that Vandevelde and Backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." The writer has to thank the editor of Murray's Handbook of Painting in Italy for pointing out the oversight. He had passed many days in the Louvre before the above passage was written, but had not been in the habit of pausing long anywhere except in the last two rooms, containing the pictures of the Italian school. The conjecture, however, shows that he had not ill-estimated the power of Ruysdael; nor does he consider it as in anywise unfitting him for the task he has undertaken, that for every hour passed in galleries he has passed days on the seashore.

⁶⁴ I am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject as a landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur where the sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to the figures, as with Raffaelle and M. Angelo.