Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 139.pdf/296

Rh buried in the yard of the club-house of Yokohama, where a stone with the inscription, "Fred, 1863," still marks the place where poor Sandy’s faithful companion lies.

 

 From The Cornhill Magazine.

of our greatest art-critics is fond of telling us that there is no such thing as a vulgar color, though there are many vulgar ways of arranging colors. Nobody ever objected to the most brilliant crimson, purple, or orange in a gladiolus, a tulip, or a calceolaria. Nobody ever found the hues of sunset gaudy, or thought the rainbow overdone. The iridescence that plays upon the facets of an opal, the inner surface of a pearly nautilus, or the dewy petal of a rose, never struck the most fastidious eye as glaring, in spite of all its changeful wealth of pink and green and violet. Even among human products we have each of us seen some specimens of Indian or Moorish workmanship, on which the brightest pigments known to man were lavished with an unsparing hand, and yet the total effect was not one of vulgarity, but rather of richness and splendor. Like the gorgeous tropical butterflies, they push color to its furthest admissible extreme, without ever overstepping the limits of perfect good taste. Indeed, it is undeniable that every color in itself, apart from special relations, is beautiful to the majority of human beings just in proportion as it is pure, intense, massive, and brilliant.

Nor do I think that we can doubt the superior æsthetic effect of reds, purples, and oranges over greens, blues, and violets, in the vast majority of cases. Not only do children and uncivilized men prize the pungent hues far more than the retiring ones; but in costume, in festal decoration, and in flower-gardens, almost everybody confesses the same natural preference. It is true that many other considerations come in to mask this original tendency of our nature: fashion or a sense of propriety may make us dress in black or grey, rather than in scarlet or pink; the desire for relief may lead us to gaze with greater pleasure on the blue vault of heaven and the restful verdure of the meadows than on obtrusive masses of red and yellow; an educated revulsion from the excessive stimulation of vulgar furniture — with its crimson satin coverings, its wall-paper ablaze with rose-bunches, and its flare of gilt mirror-frames — may lead the artistic few to delight in the quiet repose of solid grey oak, neutral-tinted papers, and delicate shades of mellow green. Yet these exceptional instances cannot blind us to the general love for ruddy hues. Baby in its cradle jumps at a bunch of red rags. Dinah in the cane-field makes herself lovely with a red turban. The central-African chief is bribed with yards of red calico. Purple and fine linen are the proverbial adjuncts of ancient rulers, from Tyre to imperial Rome. In our own day, the soldier's red coat proves irresistible alike to the nursemaid in the park and to her mistress in the ball-room. Indeed it is a noticeable fact that men condemned to wear the sombre frock-coat of modern life are glad to seize on every opportunity for donning a brighter and more conspicuous garb. Regimental dances, masonic fêtes, Highland games, boating-matches, athletic sports, and fancy balls are all eagerly caught at by our handsome, well-made young men as lucky occasions for the display of something finer than the swallowtail and white tie of every-day gatherings. The subaltern in his uniform, the master of fox-hounds in his scarlet coat, and the champion sculler in his striped jersey are all representatives of the healthy primitive love for honest red and yellow.

But while we allow that bright colors are in themselves the pleasantest and prettiest of all — for indeed the retiring tints owe most of their beauty to the relief which they afford us from the excessive stimulation of brilliant hues — and while many of us are even beginning to perceive in England that an over-anxious fastidiousness on this point has long deprived us of much innocent pleasure in dress and decoration — I think it possible that almost all our painting (viewed as purely imitative in purpose) is still marked by far too much color, and especially by far too much red, purple, orange, and yellow. I know that to offer any criticism from outside on our artistic public is to stir a nest of hornets, who straightway sally forth to sting the unhappy culprit with many technical phrases and great assumption of obvious superiority. But I must hasten to reassure these irritable gentlemen by stating that I do not propose to deal out any praise or blame in the present paper to any school or person whatsoever. When I speak of over-coloring, I only mean to assert the simple and positive fact that bright hues are to be found in greater proportions on