always feel a never-changing impression on my eye, that the "Blue Boy"
of Gainsborough is a difficulty boldly combated, not conquered. The
light blue drapery of the Virgin in the centre of the "Notte" is
another instance; a check to the harmony of the celestial radiance round
it." "Opposed to Sir Thomas's opinion," says Mr Burnet, "I might quote
that of Sir David Wilkie, often expressed, and carried out in his
picture of the 'Chelsea Pensioners' and other works." It strikes us,
from our recollection of the "Chelsea Pensioners," that it is not at all
a case in point; the blue there not being light but dark, and serving as
dark, forcibly contrasting with warmer light in sky and other objects;
the _colour_ of blue is scarcely given, and is too dark to be allowed to
enter into the question. He adds, "A very simple method may be adopted
to enable the student to perceive where the warm and red colours are
placed by the great colourists, by his making a sketch of light and
shade of the picture, and then touching in the warm colours with red
chalk; or by looking on his palette at twilight, he will see what
colours absorb the light, and those that give it out, and thus select
for his shadows, colours that have the property of giving depth and
richness." Unless the pictures are intended to be seen at twilight, we
do not see how this can bear upon the question; if it does, we would
notice what we have often observed, that at twilight blue almost
entirely disappears, to such a degree that in a landscape where the blue
has even been deep, and the sky by no means the lightest part of the
picture, at twilight the whole landscape comes out too hard upon the
sky, which with its colour has lost its tone, and become, with relation
to the rest, by far too light. It is said that of all the pictures in
the National Gallery, when seen at twilight, the Coreggios retire
last--we speak of the two, the "Ecce Homo" and the "Venus, Mercury, and
Cupid." In these there is no blue but in the drapery of the fainting
mother, and that is so dark as to serve for black or mere shadow; the