of the Middle Ages, and analyse its elements, you will, if you are not
used to the work, be surprised at the simplicity of it, the few tints
used, the modesty of the tints, and therewithal the clearness and
precision of all boundary lines. In all fine flat colouring there are
regular systems of dividing colour from colour. Above all, don't attempt
iridescent blendings of colour, which look like decomposition. They are
about as much as possible the reverse of useful.

_William Morris._


CXLV

After seeing all the fine pictures in France, Italy, and Germany, one
must come to this conclusion--that _colour_, if not the first, is at
least an essential quality in painting. No master has as yet maintained
his ground beyond his own time without it. But in oil painting it is
richness and depth alone that can do justice to the material. Upon this
subject every prejudice with which I left home is, if anything, not only
confirmed but increased. What Sir Joshua wrote, and what our friend Sir
George so often supported, _was right_; and after seeing what I have
seen, I am not now to be _talked_ out of it.

With us, as you know, every young exhibitor with pink, white, and blue,
thinks himself a colourist like Titian; than whom perhaps no painter is
more misrepresented or misunderstood. I saw myself at Florence his
famous Venus upon an easel, with Kirkup and Wallis by me. This picture,
so often copied, and every copy a fresh mistake, is, what I expected it
to be, deep yet brilliant; indescribable in its hues, yet simple beyond
example in its execution and its colouring. Its flesh (O how our friends