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Here every artist who paints in crayons, is arraigned for want of talents by the ingenious Mr. Bardwell; nor does he finish his book till he has infulted Mr. R-, Mr. H-th, Mr. H▬▬e, Mr. B—T―r, Mr. K—y, and every other diftinguifhed name he was acquainted with.

His introduction to what he calls the Principles of Perspec tive, is equally fingular; for tho' he endeavours (how infufficiently we shall observe on another occafion) to explain some principles, which he thinks it will require no mathematical knowlege to understand *; and in order to render them intelligible, has compofed fuch a variety of objects, as he conceives will draw on the knowlege of this art, he afterwards afferts, that a painter is not to be confined strictly to the rules of perfpective,'-and that nothing should tie up his hands: he should not have his genius imprisoned; but be at liberty to express his idea-with one stroke of his pencil.'

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It is too obvious, what mischievous impreffions fuch documents as these may make on the mind of a young ftudent of genius, whofe fprightly imagination is perhaps of itself too apt to run away with his judgment, and tranfgrefs those neceffary bounds which a well-founded theory has fet to the painter's fancy bounds beyond which all is abfurdity and error. Thus much for the defign of his introduction, let us now examine, in order, the paragraphs that compose it.

Mr. Bardwell fets out, unluckily, with what he calls an obfervation of Pliny's; but which, we suspect, he hath never read, except in an imperfect quotation, through the medium of Monf. de Piles. However, that he hath mistaken Pliny's words, is of little confequence; for unfortunately they are nothing to his purpose, either as he has, or as he fhould have quoted them.

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It is an observation of Pliny's,' fays Mr. Bardwell, that the antients painted with four colours only, and out of them ⚫ made all their teints. Monf. de Piles is of opinion, that it was out of these they made their grounds, or what we call the dead colouring.-How it really was, time has put it out af our power to determine: but if we fuppofe those four principal colours in perfection, then, I think, it can be no longer doubted, but that from them might be made all the various colours in nature.

Let us fee Pliny's words; they are in the feventh chapter of his thirty-fifth book of Natural History. Quatuor coloribus folis immortalia illa opera fecere, ex albis melino, ex filaceis. attico, ex rubris finopide pontica, ex nigris atramento.

* Mr. Bardwell is terribly averfe to mathematics.

• Apelles

Apelles, Echion, Melanthius Nicomachus clariffimi pictot res, &c.'

If Mr. Bardwell had known, that the four colours mentioned by Pliny were no other than black, and white, and red oker, and yellow oker, he would have known, that were they in ever fo great perfection, it was not only impoffible to compound blue, green, and purple from thefe colours, but even the tints of a tolerable carnation, or flesh colour: much lefs, that out of them the antients made all their teints.

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However, notwithstanding his ignorance of the fubject on which he has taken upon him to treat, he, with a decifive air, thus proceeds. For my part, I cannot believe, that the four capital colours of the antients would mix to that furprizing perfection we fee in the works of Titian and Rubens.' Certainly no man can believe, or difbelieve, a fact, the circumstances of which he is fo much a stranger to, as Mr. Bardwell is to the matter he is now difcuffing. But we could wish he had explained what he means by the four capital, or the four principal, colours of the antients. They cannot be mentioned in contradiftinction to colours lefs principal; there is not in Pliny the most distant hint of this fort; he exprefly fays, that the pictures he mentions were painted with four colours only. If by the last quotation our Author would intimate, that he does not conceive how the antients, with four colours only, could produce pictures, which, for harmony, truth, force, variety of tints, and vivacity of tone, should equal thofe which Titian or Rubens performed with a greater variety of colours ;-it fhould not only be obferved, that he has expressed himself aukwardly, but that, from Pliny's words rightly understood, there feems to be no reason for fuppofing, that the paintings he celebrates were of a fpecies to be properly compared with those finished pieces, and that more perfect kind of painting, in which the mafter proposes to imitate every effect of light and colour on the objects he reprefents.

Before we proceed any farther with Mr. Bardwell, it may not be amiss to examine the paffage which, to evince his erudition, he has thus ftuck in the front of his book; and here it will be neceffary to premise, that there is a fpecies of painting, which, without attempting to imitate the variety of tints, the degrees of opacity and tranfparency, or other particulars which discover to us the texture of objects, is contented with expreffing their forms only; which, in this manner of reprefentation, are generally fuppofed to be all of the fame hue (whence the Greek name monochromata, appropriated to this kind of painting) and of the fame unvaried texture: and which it exhibits by means of light and fhade only. Hence the expreffions,

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preffions, depinto a chiaro-fcuro, among the Italians, and peint en clair obfcur, among the French; tho' in our language, we frequently exprefs the fame thing by the phrafe, paintings in one colour; which has more analogy with the Greek. Of this kind (to mention an example) are the paintings which reprefent baffo-relievos on the ftair-cafe of the British Museum.

Now Pliny, when he treats of the progrefs of painting, fuppofes thefe monochromata, which we may properly translate pictures in one colour, or chiaro-fcuro's, to have been the moft antient kind of painting; which, however, we must not confine to the first rude effays of this art. The greatest masters seem to have exercised themselves in this fpecies of painting, and it is even yet frequently practifed.

Pliny exprefly fays, that Zeuxis, who began to diftinguish himself in the last year of the 95th Olympiad, painted monochromata +; and in another place he tells us, that the antients painted with cinnabar 1, what, in his time, were ftill called monochromata.

Thus we fee, this kind of painting was practised by Zeuxis, and from Pliny's manner of expreffing himself, it seems to have been in ufe at the time he wrote; what wonder then if Apelles, Echion, &c. who lived in the 107th and 112th Olympiads, fhould have fometimes exercifed themselves in this fpecies of painting, the execution of which, to the greatest perfection, required no other colours than the four juft mentioned by Pliny? That Apelles fometimes painted with brighter colours, may furely be inferred from what the fame Pliny fays. Speaking of that great artist, he informs us§, that when his pictures were finished, he covered them with a varnifh, which, at the fame time that it preferved them from duft and dirt, brought out the colours, giving them force and vi

* Græci autem alii Sicyone, alii apud Corinthios repertam, (effe pi&turam contendunt) omnes umbra hominis lineis circumducta itaque talem primam fuifle: fecundam fingulis coloribus et monochromaton dictam, 35, 3.

35.10.

Zeuxis pinxit monochromata ex albo. Cinnabaris veteres quæ etiam nunc vocant monochromata pingebant. 33. 7. Note, of this kind are feveral of the antient paintings lately difcovered at Herculaneum.

Inventa ejus et cæteris profuere in arte. Unum imitari nemo potuit, quod abfoluta opera atramento illinebat ita tenui, ut idipfum repercuffu claritates colorum excitaret, cuftodiretque a pulvere et fordibus, ad manum intuenti demum appareret. Sed et tum ratione magna ne colorum claritas oculorum aciem offenderet, veluti per lapidem fpecularem intuentibus è longinquo; et eadem res nimis floridis coloribus aufleritatem occulte daret. 35. 10.

vacity;

vacity; tho' in fuch a manner as that the glare or brightness of thefe colours, did not offend the eye of the fpectator; for the varnish gave to thefe exceeding florid colours a certain mellowness and folemnity, &c.-We may likewife remember, that even before the goth Olympiad. Polignotus || the Thasian had diftinguifhed himself for the lucid drapery and changeable coloured head-dreffes he introduced in his pictures; but that thefe, or the bright and florid colours of Apelles, could be painted with only black, and white, red okre, and yellow okre, is a fuppofition almost too abfurd to be laughed at. However, if any fmatterer who takes it in his head to fcribble on painting, fhould ftill think fit to doubt if the antient painters, in the time of Apelles, were acquainted with more colours than the four mentioned by Pliny, Theophraftus*, who was contemporary with Apelles, will entirely fet him right: this author enumerates a variety of earths and minerals used by the painters of his time; among which are orpiment, fandarach, chryfocolla, ruddle, okre, native cerulean, or ultramarine, factitious cerulean, which perhaps was fmalt; and he describes ceruse and verdigreafe, as likewife cinnabar, or vermilion; a species of which, he observes, was discovered in Athens about ninety years before he wrote his book: nor fhould it be forgot, that on many Egyptian mummies, ornaments remain, painted with a red and blue, that to this day preferve great vivacity. And Theophraftus fays †, that those who wrote the hiftory of the Egyptian Kings exprefly mention that King who first made artificial cerulean, or smalt.

From what has been said, it appears, firft, that Apelles could not be ignorant of those bright colours used by other painters in his time. Secondly, that the bright colouring of his pictures, mentioned by Pliny, indicate his use of such colours; and lastly, that thofe pictures of his, in which he employed only black and white, and red oker, and yellow oker, were no other than monochromata, or paintings in one colour. Thus far have we digreffed from Mr. Bardwell. We fhall now take him up where we left him.

He goes on, if we have no certain knowlege of their ' method of colouring, who lived in the last century, how

Sicut Polygnotus Thafius, qui primus mulieres lucida veste pinxit, capita earum, mitris verficoloribus operuit. 35.9.

* Αλλα μαλλον αν τις τους τοις χρωμασι διαριθμησειε, δίπερ δὲ οἱ γραφεις χρωνται, &c. Theophraftus de Lapidibus. † Σκευατος (Κυανος) δ ̓ ὁ Αιγυπ]ι και οι γραφονίες τα περί τους Βασι λεις, και λείο γραφυσι. τις πρωίος βασιλευς εποίησε τεχνητον Κυανον, μιμή σάμενος τον αυτοφυή.

• fhall

• shall we understand theirs who lived near two thousand years ago? And why the method and practice of colouring, ⚫ which was fo well known to Rubens and Vandyck, fhould not be continued down to the present masters, is to me fur⚫ prizing +.'

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He then proceeds to give fome account of the declenfion of painting (of which notice has been already taken) and goes on, In the course of studying this part of my art, as I could • have no affiftance from the living t, I found myself obliged to ⚫ make my court to the dead; I mean their works. And tho' I have had very little opportunity to ftudy even them; yet from the few I have copied, I have, after a tedious courfe of mistakes, at laft, by mere dint of labour, and the affiftance of genius, fuch as it is, found out the following method of colouring very easy and expeditious.

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"Painters, fays de Piles, fpend many years in the search "of knowlege, which they might have attained in a little "time, had they hit at first upon the right path §." • This

⚫ truth

It is not merely the distance of time, but the want of hiftorians, that hinders us from knowing facts; and it were wrong to afk, how we shall know what men were doing at Athens or Thebes, in the time of Pericles and Epaminondas, when we are ignorant of what paffed there even ten years ago. Befides, the queftion is, whether Pliny understood the method of colouring ufed by Apelles, &c. It is plain he might, for Apelles is among the authors from whom he profeffes to have taken his knowlege.

+ The reader must not be furprized that Mr. Bardwell talks fo contemptuously of our prefent matters: to depreciate them and their works, feems one of the principal purposes of his book.

It appears, nevertheless, to us, that we have fome artists, even in England, whofe colouring may vie with the school of Titian, or of Rubens: tho' their modefty might take offence were we to name them.

This is evidently an abfurd abuse of all the living artists in England. Did our Author, when he first began to apply to painting, (that is, before he knew any thing himself) immediately difcoover that nobody elfe knew any thing of the matter? Was it in confequence of this difcovery, that he fought no afsistance from a mafter? Or did he feek, and find nobody that conld give him one useful hint? Happy genius! when the Richardfons, defcended in a right line from Rembrandt, forgot their art, you rife, felf-taught, and applying your finishing fecrets to the virgin-tints, produce your ufeful and agreeable method of colouring! Vid. Introduction, p. 3.

Mr. de Piles's obfervation may be applied to any art, as well as to the art of Colouring.-That Mr. Bardwell has experienced the truth of what Monfieur de Piles fays, is a modeft hint that he

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