Page:Pen And Pencil Sketches - Volume I.djvu/150

96 ones. Again, the laws of all good painting having been long ago determined by absolute masters, whose work cannot be bettered or departed from ; Titian having determined for ever what oil-paint- ing is, Angelico what tempera-painting is, Perugino what fresco-painting is, two hundred years of noble miniature-painting what minutest work on ivory is, and in modern times a score of entirely skilful and disciplined draughtsmen what pure water-colour and pure body-colour painting on paper are (Turner’s Yorkshire drawing of Hornby Castle, now at Kensington, and John Lewis’s ‘Encampment under Sinai,’ being namable at once as unsurpassable standards) ; here is Mr. Walker refusing to learn anything from any of those schools or masters, but inventing a semi-miniature, quarter fresco, quarter wash manner of his own, exquisitely clever, and reaching, under such clever management, delight- fullest results here and there, but which betrays his genius into perpetual experiment instead of achievement, and his life into woful vacillation between the good, old, quiet room of the Water Colour Society, and your labyrinthine magnificence at Burlington House.

“Lastly, and in worst error, the libraries of England being full of true and noble books, her annals of true and noble history, and her traditions of beautiful and noble, in these scientific times I