the larger the better, as it will have a more grand effect when hung up, and a kind of painting I like more than little. Though it will be too great a presumption to expect it, I must needs own I most impatiently wait for this order from your Lordship.

"I am, &c. &c.

"JOSHUA REYNOLDS."

Of other events, previous to his arrival at Rome, I have nothing to add ; but, as a proof of his diligence whilst at that capital of the arts, I cannot omit giving a few of his observations, which I have seen in his hand-writing, apparently made on the spot, as remarks to refresh his. memory, and promote improvement in his future. practice they may therefore be interesting to young artists.

He says "The Leda, in the Colonna Palace, by Corregio, is dead coloured white, and black or ultramarine in the shadows; and over that is scumbled, thinly and smooth, a warmer tint, I believe caput mortuum. The lights are mellow, the shadows bluish, but mellow. The picture is painted on a pannel, in a broad and large manner, but finished like an enamel; the shadows harmonize and are lost in the ground.

"The Ecce Homo of Corregio, in the same palace. The shadows are entirely lost in the ground; perhaps more so by time than they were at first.

"The Adonis of Titian, in the Colonna Palace, is dead coloured white, with the muscles marked bold: the second painting, he scumbled a light colour over it: the lights a mellow flesh colour; the shadows in the light parts of a faint purple hue; at least they were so at first. That purple hue seems to be occasioned by blackish shadows under, and the colour scumbled over them.

"I copied the Titian in the Colonna collection with white, umber, minio, cinnabar, black; the shadows thin of colour.

"In respect to painting the flesh tint, after it has been finished with very strong colours, such as ultramarine and carmine, pass white over it, very, very thin with oil. I believe it will have a wonderful effect.

"Or paint the carnation too red, and then scumble it over with white and black."

Then, he adds, "Dead colour with white and black only; at the second sitting, carnation. (To wit, the Barocci in the palace Albani, and Corregio in the Pamphili.)

"Poussin's landscapes, in the Verospi palace, are painted on a dark ground, made of Indian red and black. The same ground might do for all other subjects as well as landscapes.

"Make a finished sketch of every portrait you intend to paint, and by the help of that dispose your living model: then finish at the first time on a ground made of Indian red and black."

It may be seen by those various schemes, to which Reynolds had recourse, how eager he was in the pursuit of excellence, and they may serve as a good example to beginners: again he remarks, that "all the shadows in the works of the Carracci, Guercino, as well as the Venetian school, are made with little colour, but much oil: the Venetians' seem to be made only of a drying oil, composed of red lead and oil.

"In comparison with Titian and Paul Veronese, all the other Venetian masters appear hard; they have, in a degree, the manner of Rembrandt; all mezzotinto, occasioned by scumbling over their pictures with some dark oil or colour.*

"After a strict examination of the best pictures, the benefit to be derived from them, is to draw such conclusions as may serve in future as fixed rules of practice; taking care not to be amused with trifles, but to learn to regard the excellencies chiefly.

"There are some artists who are very diligent in examining pictures, and yet are not at all advanced in their judgment; although they can remember the exact colour of every figure, &c. in the picture but not reflecting deeply on what they have seen, or making observations to themselves, they

* Titian, Paul Veronese, Tintoretto, Rubens, and Vandyke, have painted drapery admirably; and indeed the Lombard school have excelled in that and colouring, as the Romans have in design and nudity.

are not at all improved by the crowd of particulars that swim on the surface of their brains: as nothing enters deep enough into their minds to do them benefit through digestion.

"A painter should form his rules from pictures, rather than from books or precepts; this is having information at the first hand-at the fountain head. Rules were first made from pictures, not pictures from rules. The first compilers of rules for painting were in the situation in which it is most desirable a student should be. Thus every picture an artist sees, whether the most excellent or most ordinary, he should consider from whence that fine effect, or that ill effect, proceeds; and then there is no picture, ever so indifferent, but he may look at to his profit.

"The manner of the English travellers in general, and of those who most pique themselves on studying Vertu, is, that instead of examining the beauties of those works of fame, and why they are esteemed, they only enquire the subject of the picture and the name of the painter, the history of a statue, and where it was found, and write that down. Some Englishmen, while I was in the Vatican, came there, and spent above six hours in writing down whatever the antiquary dictated to them; they scarcely ever looked at the paintings the whole time."

He also made the following remarks on the character given of Apelles :

"It is a matter of dispute among painters, whether Apelles would be esteemed as a great painter were he now alive; the very argument I have heard urged against it is what persuades me he was a good painter; to wit, that he made use of but four colours.* A remark made by Pliny is, that he polished away, or varnished over his pictures, to take off their glaring effect, and to deaden the tints; but Pliny does not speak on this point like a painter he observed, that the pictures of Apelles had not that raw and gaudy colouring like those of his cotemporaries, and therefore imagined it was occasioned by a varnish; but it was from his judicious breaking those colours to the standard of nature.

"The ancient painters, I am fully persuaded, by many circumstances in the accounts given of them, painted in the great and true style: of this, the following anecdote, mentioned by Pliny, is a considerable confirmation.

"A painter had executed a picture which he valued for what is alone truly valuable in painting, that is, character and expression. On its being exposed in public, he was mortified to find, amongst other commendations bestowed upon this picture, a partridge admired that he had painted in a corner of the picture, that it was so natural it looked to be alive-he defaced it entirely.

* It was always Reynolds's advice to his scholars to use as few colours as possible, as the only means of being most secure from becoming heavy or dirty in colouring.