In this art, as in others, there are many teachers who profess to show the nearest way to excellence, and many expedients have been invented by which the toil of study might be saved.But let no man be seduced to idleness by specious promises.Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labour.It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advances; which, like the hand of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.A facility of drawing, like that of playing upon a musical instrument, cannot be acquired but by an infinite number of acts.I need not, therefore, enforce by many words the necessity of continual application; nor tell you that the port-crayon ought to be for ever in your hands.Various methods will occur to you by which this power may be acquired.I would particularly recommend that after your return from the academy (where I suppose your attendance to be constant) you would endeavour to draw the figure by memory.I will even venture to add, that by perseverance in this custom, you will become able to draw the humanfigure tolerably correct, with as little effort of the mind as to trace with a pen the letters of the alphabet.
That this facility is not unattainable, some members in this academy give a sufficient proof.And, be assured, that if this power is not acquired whilst you are young, there will be no time for it afterwards: at least, the attempt will be attended with as much difficulty as those experience who learn to read or write after they have arrived to the age of maturity.
But while I mention the port-crayon as the student's constant companion, he must still remember that the pencil is the instrument by which he must hope to obtain eminence.What, therefore, I wish to impress upon you is, that whenever an opportunity offers, you paint your studies instead of drawing them.This will give you such a facility in using colours, that in time they will arrange themselves under the pencil, even without the attention of the hand that conducts it.If one act excluded the other, this advice could not with any propriety be given.But if painting comprises both drawing and colouring and if by a short struggle of resolute industry the same expedition is attainable in painting as in drawing on paper, I cannot see what objection can justly be made to the practice; or why that should be done by parts, which may be done altogether.
If we turn our eyes to the several schools of painting, and consider their respective excellences, we shall find that those who excel most in colouring pursued this method.The Venetian and Flemish schools, which owe much of their fame to colouring, have enriched the cabinets of the collectors of drawings with very few examples.Those of Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, and the Bassans, are in general slight and undetermined.Their sketches on paper are as rude as their pictures are excellent in regard to harmony of colouring.Correggio and Barocci have left few, if any, finished drawings behind them.And in the Flemish school, Rubens and Vandyke made their designs for the most part either in colours or in chiaroscuro.It is as common to find studies of the Venetian and Flemish painters on canvas, as of the schools of Rome and Florence on paper.Not but that many finished drawings are sold under the names of those masters.Those, however, are undoubtedly the productionseither of engravers or of their scholars who copied their works.
These instructions I have ventured to offer from my own experience; but as they deviate widely from received opinions, I offer them with diffidence; and when better are suggested, shall retract them without regret.
