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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031290871 
 
THE CAVE METHOD OF BBAWINQ—FOR 
 STUDENTS— SECOND PAMT. 
 
 C O L OE. 
 
 MADAME MARIE ifiLISABETH CAVlS, 
 
 MEMBER OP THE ACADEMY OF PINE ARTS OP AMSTERDAM. 
 
 APPEOVBD BY M. EUGENE DELACROIX, EOE TEACHINQ 
 PAINTING IN OILS AND WATER-COLORS. 
 
 To See, to Understand, to Remember, is to Know. — ErBBNS. 
 
 TRANSLATED PROM THE THIRD PRENOH KDITION. 
 
 . "^^ E W YORK: 
 
 G. P.'mfUT NAM'S SOJSrS, 
 27 AND 29 West 23D St. 
 

 /^CORNELIL^ 
 
 \ 
 
 ft • i % / f^'- 
 
 ?^TY! 
 
 L.lkjHA\ 
 
 iCntered according to Act of Congress, *r. fhe ~z^t '1-' , h/ 
 
 a. P. PUTNAM & SON, 
 
 In the Clerk's Oflce of the District Court for the Sonthem District of 
 New Tork. 
 
REPORT OF M. DELACROIX, 
 
 Mb. Ministbr :^- 
 
 The Commission nominatecl hs Yojir Excellency to give 
 its opinion upoii- lite method of Madafiie Cav6, and upon the 
 quesUoa as to whether that method can be introduced into the 
 schools, has the honor of presenting to Your Excellency the 
 results of the examination that it has made. 
 
 The uncertain rate of proL;res3 in teaching drawing, the 
 want of flxfd principles that has prevailed in the instruction 
 of it up to this day, even from remote ages, have long since 
 rfcndercd it dusijable to have a method surer in its results, and 
 capable of being applied by all teachers alilie. 
 
 Anything like demonstration is impossible by the ordinary 
 methods of instruction: the different ways in which the mas- 
 ters may regard the instruction and the art itself become the 
 rule — a very varia-ble one, as we can imagine — that governs 
 the schools. Even admitting that tliese dilferent roads can 
 lead to an almost common result, that is to say, to a satisfac- 
 toiy knowledge of drawing, it is easy to see how important 
 the functions of tlie master become, and how necessary it is 
 that his special talents should quality him for guiding the 
 pupils in the midst of tlie uncertainty of the rules. 
 
 The first difficulty in such a method of instruction con- 
 sists, then, in iinding a sufficiently large number of teachers 
 endowed with indispensable talents, and resigned to the exer- 
 cise of functions tJiat are, of course, poorly recompensed. 
 
 The second, and perhajjs the most insurmountable diffi- 
 culty, consists in the impossibility of procuring good models. 
 Tliose tliat are met with in the schools, produced in all the 
 successive styles, chosen hap-bazard, devoid of correctness or 
 expression, can only vitiate the pupil's taste, and render the 
 best guidance almost useless. 
 
 Your Excellency's predecessor, M. Fortoul, like all judi- 
 cious minds, had been struclc with such a deplorable defi- 
 ciency. Aware of the novel results obtained by Madame 
 Cave's method, he had nominated, to examine into the pro- 
 cess, a Commission, the majority of which did not declare 
 
VI EEPOET OF M. DELACEOIX. 
 
 themselves in favor of its adoption, but without approving 
 the old metliod of instruction, the inconveniences of which 
 lidd Keen almost unanimously recognized. The use of the 
 tracing-copy, introduced by Madame Cave into her metliod, 
 seemed especially to arouse the scruples of the Commission, 
 and it was impossible for the greater part of its members to 
 recognize in it anj'thing more than the mechanical repetition 
 of the models, almost wholly devoid of all intelligent and 
 rational imitation. 
 
 Fresh successes of the Cave method have awakened the 
 s:ilicitude of Your Excellency. It seems to you, to-day, that 
 iu view of satisfactory and permanent results, the processes 
 employed for obtaining them might not have been sufficiently 
 understood. There is occasion, tlien, for reverting to so in- 
 teresting a question, and, in order to give additional light to 
 tlie Commission appointed for this purpose, it has been de- 
 cided that the elements of the method should be presented 
 to them and expounded by some person habituated to tlieir 
 use. M. d'Austrive, professor of drawing according to the 
 Cave method, has been charged with this, and, thanks to the 
 experience thus obtained, it has become easy to deliver an 
 opinion upon the method with full knowledge of its advan- 
 tages and its drawbacks. 
 
 The principal difference between the method and its pre- 
 decessor consists in this: that it is first of all necessiry to 
 train the eye, by giving it some sure means of correcting its 
 mistakes iu the estimates of lengths and foreshorteniugs. 
 
 A transparent tracing-copy [calgne) is put into the pupil's 
 bands, so that l)y applying it from time to time to his draw- 
 ing, he can himself recognize his faults and correct them. 
 This incessant correction does not enable him to dispense 
 with the attention that he must give to the original. After 
 several attempts have shown him to what extent his eye has 
 been capable of deceiving him, he redoubles his care .to 
 avoid mistakes that reveal themselves to him with a degree 
 of evidence that could never be attained by the mere coun- 
 sels of a master. His attention is furthermore kept up by 
 the necessity in which he is placed of jepeating li'om 
 memory tliis first attempt thus corrected. 
 
 This second operation, in which the pupil seelis to recall 
 the absent model, by drawing from memory his first attempt, 
 has for its object to engrave still more deeply in his mind 
 the relations of the lines to one another, aud when, by a 
 third operation, he has to copy the model again, this time 
 
EEPORT OF II. DBLACBOIX. VU 
 
 without the aid of the verifying trace copy, we feel that he 
 lU'isl bring to this lust task a more intelligent power of imi 
 
 til' 0117 
 
 It has been observed, in fact, in the attempts submitted to 
 tlie iiispeclion of the Commission, thkt this tliird draught ordi- 
 narily preseuled traces of a lively feeling, and one less re- 
 strained by the necessity of the precision to which the pupil 
 had been forced in his drawing, executed by tbe aid of the 
 verifying trace-cojjy. 
 
 The entire method consists in these three successive 
 operations, which are applied dually to drawing from the 
 relief and to tke demarcation of shadows. The pupil thus 
 acquires, and by very simple means, a very accurate apprecia- 
 tion of the laws of perspective in the huinau form, where we 
 know that they are much more difBcult, even impossible to 
 realize in a mathematical manner by the means that the 
 former methods have employed. 
 
 It seems unnecessary to enter into the details of the exer- 
 cises tbat liave fir their final object to familiarize the pupil 
 witli handling the crayon, and obtaining lightness of hand, 
 tOL'other witli accuracy of eye. It will suffice to declare, in 
 I'avor of this metliod, that not only can it be taught more 
 practically than any other, but that it has a reliable starting- 
 point, sucli as no otber can offer. 
 
 It is in point to speak of the influence that the models are 
 destined to exercise upon the progress of the pupils. These 
 models are nothing more or less than the most beautiful 
 specimens of the drawings of th« great masters, or engrav- 
 ings from their pictures. With regard to those taken from 
 aniiriues, they are drawn from the reliefs, by means of glass 
 or transparent gauze, which offers, as objects of study, only 
 figures traced with an exactitude of rigorous perspective. 
 
 Tlie question relative to tlie choice of teachers is not less 
 worthy of attention. The trace-copy, put into the hands of 
 the pupil and designed to give him complete certainty as to 
 the accuracy of his cop}', renders the teacher's task infinitely 
 more easy. Persons of second-rate talent, but merely fa- 
 miliar with the processes of the method, can become very 
 good teachers. Even pupils can be substituted when they 
 harve reached a certain degree of facility in imitating the 
 O-odels. 
 
 We have seen this performed in the primary schools, 
 where the method has been applied, and where the drawings 
 have seemed very remarkable. The directors of these 
 
VUl EEPOET OF M. DBLACEOIX. 
 
 scbools haa no knowledge of drawing. It is enougli to say 
 tliat the same would be the case in all the communes, wlere 
 it would be almost impossible to have a teacher. We can 
 llit'refi)re judge tliat the same principles, followed up in their 
 development by experienced masters, would yield still more 
 salisJ'aotory results. Instruction in drawing, thanks to -this 
 new proces?, would gain in greater utility from an industrial 
 point of view. It is known how many professions are based 
 upon drawing. To extend the means of instruction in this 
 direction is, then, to render a real service to the working 
 classes. The models, which can be easily multiplied by all 
 sorts of objects taken from nature, would auginent the num- 
 ber of designs employed in ornamental work, in stuffs, in 
 decorations of every kind, and would offer a variety and pu- 
 rity of form tliat would rescue industry and the arts from the 
 triviality of conventional types, that tend to bring about their 
 decay. 
 
 Such are the considerations resulting from the examinap 
 tions of Madame Cave's method. 
 
 The Commission has judged the principles of it to be use- 
 ful, and has the honor of recommending them to Your Ex- 
 cellency. 
 
 M. Delacroix. 
 
 TJiis report was approved and signed unanimously at the 
 meeting Jield tlie second of Decemler, 1861. 
 
 By a decree dated February 19th, 1863, His Excellency, 
 the JVlmister of Public Instruction, upon the report of the 
 Commission, outhorized the rectors of the academies of 
 Douai and Caen to apply the Cave method in the normal 
 schools of theu- jurisdiction. 
 
 M. Doudiet d'Austrive, professor of the Cave methad, 
 was charged with explaining and carrying out the metliod 
 sn the above-named schools. 
 
CAVE'S MANUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 riRST LETTER. 
 
 ANTIQUES — GEBAT MASTERS. 
 
 Tou answered M. de C perfectly, my dear Julia, when 
 
 you told him that it was intentional, my not recommending 
 above all to my pupils the study of antiques, of Raphael and 
 the great masters who have followed him. 
 
 I should take good care not to. Just as I do not make use 
 of other persons' glasses, so I have instructed your daughters 
 according to my own observations. If the result is good, 
 why trouble yourself about the criticisms of the classical 
 professors ? Have they any scholars who can, like mine, 
 after a year's study, draw from memory a Raphael, aWatteau, 
 or any other master, beyond the possibility of being mis 
 taken ? Certainly not. Then I am right in making them 
 acquainted with the masters before talking to them about 
 them. 
 
 It is my principle not to begin at the end. The antiques, 
 
 Raphael, Poussin, are the masters of style. To speak of 
 
 . style to a pupil who does not know how to draw, is to speak 
 1 
 
2 CATB S MAIfUAl OF COLOE. 
 
 of colors to a blind man. I do not wish your daughters to be 
 lilis the cl'ildren who are made to learn by heart the fables 
 of La Fontaine, and who repeat lilie parrots those lessons of 
 lotty philosophy. When the age of discretion arrives, they 
 despise them because they have never understood them, and 
 they persist in regarding Ihem, after the mimner of their 
 ancestors, as nothing more than dolls, hobby-horses, and toy 
 dogs to amuse their children. 
 
 It is with the antiques, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Poussin, 
 as with Homer, Plato, Plutarch. One must be well on in 
 one's studies in order to comprehend them. 
 
 I have not bored your daughters, then, with the great 
 masters, as children are bored with our beautiful fables. 
 First impressions are so seldom modified that it is prudent 
 not to speak to pupils about great things until they are 
 capable of appreciating them. 
 
 The arts and the sciences have their mysteries also, which 
 may not be revealed to infancy; that would be exposing 
 delicate eyes to a burning light. 
 
 But to-day I think that I am free to speak, and that I shall 
 be understood. 
 
 In our drawing lessons, before placing your daughters in 
 the presence of nature, I confronted them with the masters 
 of all the schools, in order that they might see how these 
 latter had interpreted nature while drawing it. To-day, in 
 our lessons in coloring, before placing them in the presence 
 of nature, I shall confront them with the colorists, in order 
 that they may sec, how these latter have interpreted it with 
 the brush. But I shall continue to be impartial : pupils are 
 
ANTIQUES — GREAT MASTERS. 3 
 
 npt made by imposing one's own tastes and predilections 
 upon tliem. I neillier teach my manner of drawing nor my 
 manner of painting. My pupils liave all Uie great masters 
 for tUeir professors, since, by means of tlie tracing copy, the 
 masters come of themselves and set to work, saying : " That 
 is not right : begin over again, correct." 
 
 I might write to you* that TVatteau seems to me to be tha 
 master for women. But perhaps there is something in my 
 organization which resembles his, and which makes me ap- 
 preciate him more than another woman would. So I suffer 
 the inclinatiou, the feelings of your daughters to develope 
 and guide themselves uninfluenced. I have opened for them - 
 a long road, very wide at the starting-point. At first there 
 is room for everybody ; but, as one advances, it narrows and 
 becomes difficult. Many rest by the way ; very few reach 
 the end. It is Elysium, Paradise : many called and few 
 chosen. 
 
 But before reaching those summits where the choicest 
 flowers sparlde, there are charming harvests to be gathered 
 upon the lower slopes. How many wonders, from Teniera, 
 who has painted the pleasures of Bacchus, down to Watteau, 
 animating the woods and the gardens. See those parks.and 
 those meadows with their roaming pairs, so happy in their 
 chatting and sporting that we catch ourselves enjoying them ; 
 enough to make us believe that they did nothing else under 
 Louis XV. The trees belong so completely to the persons. 
 and the persons to the trees, that we feel that they breathe 
 the same air. An atmosphere of happiness is spread over all 
 this nature, and, if Watteau has not wished to make poetry 
 
4 CAVE S MANUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 we must at least admit that he puts a great deal of it in tht 
 hearts and minds of those who contemplate his works. 
 
 He has painted the nature that was before his eyes. If 
 the costume of the age of Louis XV. had had any character 
 he would be a painter of style, for it is impossible to be more 
 faithful than he is ; and style is natural movement. 
 
 The great masters prove this. Thidias has reproduced 
 the beautiful forms and the grand figures that were before 
 bis eyes. What have Raphael and Poussin done ? We see 
 that they had the fixed intention of expressing well the great 
 scenes that inspired them. They cling to them with a sort 
 of piety, giving to each one of their personages his physiog- 
 nomy, bis attitude, and his action. For instance, they have 
 both painted wood-sawers : what admirable faces ! and how 
 they are men of our day ! the same correct and natural 
 movement. The only ditfereuce is in the costume. And yet, 
 if Raphael and Poussin had only painted wood-sawers, they 
 would not have passed for masters of style. There are so 
 many prejudices upon the matter of style. 
 
 Those who admhe the great masters from the true point 
 of view, admire all those who have adopted the same principle. 
 
 Placed before nature, your daughters perfectly appreciated 
 everything without effort, without theoretical explanations, 
 just as they knew perspective without knowing the how and 
 the wherefore. They learned as children learn to talk, with- 
 out grammar or dictionary. Is it not acknowledged that 
 the best way of learning languages is to speak them from 
 the first ? I have adopted this principle. 
 
 Children, pupils, work on. You will soon know why 
 
ANTIQUES — GREAT MASTERS. 5 
 
 You have the good fortune not to have any master, or to 
 have one who is in no hurry to be witty in your presence. 
 
 To-day, if I say to your daughters : " Style is born of 
 sweeping lines ; it is the harmony of contrasts ; when a 
 figure gives you a sweeping line on one side, it is very much 
 broken up by movement on the other," I shall be understood. 
 The antiques, the Raphaels, Pojjssins, and Lesueurs that they 
 drew from memory, have spoken before me. With a single 
 word I set them on the road to style. 
 
 Give them an example. Select from the common people 
 a liUle girl of ten to twelve, dress her in a long shirt without 
 sleeves, and let her move and act without seeming to watch 
 her. She will present movements of incredible style and 
 beauty, revealing to your daugliters the beautiful angels of 
 our great masters. 
 
 Add a second shirt, reaching below the knees and fastened 
 at the waist, they will recognise the beautiful women of 
 Poussin. 
 
 A young girl of twelve, brought up among the people, is 
 ordinarily natural ; her movements are her own, and she has 
 the carriage of the antiques, for the human race is the same 
 in all ages. Mannerism comes from manners and fashions, 
 which do not spoil children so soon in life. So Raphael se- 
 lected bis virgins among children : we see it in the shape of 
 their foreheads and the contour of their cheeks. Never, ex- 
 cept in young girls and young boys of twelve, have I found 
 those simple and noble attitudes which characterize all the 
 work* of this divine painter. 
 
 I am confident that Mary, who, every evening, draws fronj 
 
G CAVJl!; S MANUAL OF COLOE. 
 
 memory her beautiful engravings, assents to every word of 
 mine, as to an acknowledged truth. In fact, I only make 
 such observations to her as she has already made herself. 
 Was I wrong, then, in commencing by giving her that ex- 
 perience ? 
 
 The esperience of one's professors is like that of one'a 
 parents : it corrects nothing, it teaches nothing. We profit 
 only by our own experience. The Creator of all things has 
 willed it thus, in order that we should remain human ; other- 
 wise, from one experience to another, ever progressing, we 
 should simply be gods by this time. 
 
 With a little of philosophj' in our hearts, we can pardon 
 those fools who upset our country, crying: Progress! pro- 
 gress! They do not know tliat progress in everything has 
 its limits, which it is impossible for us to cross. Governments 
 are like men, a happy luixture of good and bad. I said a 
 happy mixture, and I will not take it back : without the bad, 
 we should not know the good. 
 
 Perhaps it is also necessary that governments should have 
 their days of calm and their days of tempest. After the 
 storms, the arts revive. And what an admirable thing it is, 
 a revival of art. The arts are like flowers, they wait until 
 the frosts and snows have melted before they display them- 
 selves gloriously in the sun. Only in history there are very 
 long winters, We could wish that every government had 
 hot-houses for bad weather, that is, schools where the study 
 of art might calm the young heads of fifteen or eighteen. 
 Art is the contact of the spirit of man with the spirit of God 
 The artist thinks more than he speaks, and we speak toe 
 
ANTIQUES — GREAT MASTBES. 7 
 
 much and too well; thus it happens that we no longerunder 
 stand one another. 
 
 But you wish, then, some one will say to me, a society of 
 painters and sculptors ? No. I mean that art which, among 
 the ancients, was applied to everything; that art which set 
 its signet upon all the professions, and which reached from 
 the handle of a sauce-pan to the statue of the master of the 
 gods. With them, everything was cared for and in good 
 taste. In those times, a twentieth of the population, at the 
 most, busied themselves with giving laws to the rest, with 
 advising, with criticising; whereas, to-day, nineteen-twenti- 
 eths wish to decree and advise. We are in a theatre where 
 there is scarcely anybody left but actors. 
 
 If all the cotton in the world were run through a bonnet 
 frame, there would be nothing but cotton bonn6ts. You 
 put all the brains through the same loom, from which nothing 
 but writers come out. Is thiswise? is it judicious ? lam 
 no enemy of the pen. But you, if you loved the pencil and 
 the brush a little better, you would feel all the better for it. 
 But here I am giving lessons to governments that will not 
 listen to me I What a blunder! I will come back to you 
 who do hear me, to embrace you. M. E. C. 
 
8 cave's manual or coi.ok. 
 
 SECOND LETTER 
 
 ON COLOR WITHOUT COLOBS. 
 
 Before giving our young pupils a palette, my dear Julia 
 I must make them thoroughly understand what color is. 
 
 In common parlance the name of colorist is reserved for 
 the painter who possesses the science of the harmony of 
 colors. He who does not have this science, but places 
 colors one along-side of the other, commits an absurdity. 
 He is like a man sitting down before a chess-board without 
 knowing the game, and moving his pieces hither and thither ; 
 a singer that has neither a correct voice nor a correct ear, 
 splitting the ears of his hearers. A picture by such a painter 
 is no painting, it is an indescribable something, false and dis- 
 cordant, created for the torture of the eye. How many of 
 this sort have I seen at the famous exhibition of 1848 ! That 
 was the image of the age. 
 
 We must confine ourselves to making color without 
 colors, when we have no instinct for tones, and no talent 
 for harmonizing them. This is another way of being a 
 colorist, which is not so well known to the vulgar, and to 
 which I shall consecrate this letter. It will be almost a repe- 
 tition ; for already, in my course of drawing, I have taught 
 it to your daughters. If they have read me attentively, if 
 they have forgotten nothing, they will B aderstand perfectly 
 my new explanations. 
 
COLOB WITHOUT COLOES. J 
 
 Color without colors is oMaro-oseuro. 
 
 An engraving which has nothing but light and shade is 
 coloieil, if the light is distributed in such a way as to strilte 
 the eye. Of this kind are Rembrandt's engravings. This 
 gi and colorlst is especially concerned about his light ; he 
 disposes it with magic art. It is the sun of his creation. 
 
 God has given us this groat lesson in coloring, by mak- 
 ing the earth round, with a single sun to light it ; here, di- 
 rectly; there, more or less obliquely. Prom his point of 
 view, if indeed he looks at us from up there, he must enjoy 
 the most striking and varied effects. For him, that part of 
 the globe which receives the direct rays of the sun is the 
 most salient point of his momentarily shifting panorama. 
 Further off, shadows appear on every side and form the most 
 diversified and attractive scenes. Inasmuch as the earth is 
 not lit up eveiywhere at the same time, we can say then, aa 
 I have said of Remljrandt, that God has disposed the light 
 What a master for those painters who know how to study his 
 works ! 
 
 In order to understand me, take a ball and shift its lumi- 
 nous point by holding it to the light of a lamp. You will 
 see through how many gradations its light passes, from the 
 brightest part to the darkest ones. 
 
 To his lesson in coloring God has added a lesson in pic- 
 turesqueness, by interposing clouds between the sun and the 
 earth. He thus changes the uniform order of light, and 
 gives it those unexpected shapings, those ever new effects, 
 which delight us; we might almost say that he has not been 
 willing that ennui should attack us. 
 1* 
 
10 CAvil's MANUAL OF COLOE. 
 
 In imitating kim, the painter wlio is gifted witli an ob- 
 serving spirit can place tlie light where he wishes ; for in a 
 picture we only see the effect of the light without its cause, 
 inasmuch as the cause is almost always outside the limits of 
 the canvas. 
 
 But who knows how to profit by the great lessons that 
 the Creator gives us every moment ? Pride has ruined us on 
 our entry into the world. It renders us blind ; we believe 
 ourselves demi-gods, capable of creating. No, we can create 
 nothing. ^Ve are only imitators, and it is only by that title 
 that we are worth anything. Great men are only the great 
 apes of creation ; and, in the presence of the author of all 
 things, we should have that ingenious and naive awkward- 
 ness which we study with so much interest in the imperfect 
 beings that imitate us on earth. 
 
 Were I a political woman, I should add that the best 
 governed countries are those whose inhabitants have taken 
 tlieir form of government from on high, and accept from 
 their chief what they accept from God. When it rains, is 
 everybody pleased ? And we would have every act of our 
 ruler satisfy everybody at once I Is it possible ? 
 
 But I am only a painter, thank Heaven ! And, as I have 
 already said, the painter, continually on the look-out in the 
 presence of nature, acquires a groundwork of philosophy 
 tliat renders him happy. He enjoys in this world so many 
 things that cost him nothing, his imagination procures him 
 so many treasures, that he soars, so to speak, above the petty 
 weaknesses and miseries of this world. 
 
 So, my dear Julia, your daughters will be eternally grate- 
 
COLOR WITHOUT COLORS. 11 
 
 fill to you f(;r having made them learn the art of drawing. 
 I thank my motlier for it every day, amid my enemies and 
 troubles. Wliat a comforter she lias given me 1 And what 
 a resource, should fortune come to play you false! For on 
 ■what can one rely in a country that dates by revolutions, ex- 
 cept on one's own availability ? Make haste, then, my dear 
 pupils, to have a true talent; to-giorrow, perhaps, you will 
 have need of it. 
 
 You already know how to draw ; take your brushes. 
 
 From color without colors, which we cannot call lumi- 
 nous color, we will pass to the color of harmony, which 
 water-colors teach in a clear and precise manner. But I take 
 it for granted that I am addressing Eliza and Mary, who 
 know my first lessons : without which they would not un- 
 derstand the second ones ; they would not even understand 
 this iHtter, which I close in bidding you all three, adieu. 
 
 M. fi. C. 
 
12 CAYB's MANUAl, OF COLOR 
 
 THTRD LETTER 
 
 THE NIGH-r WATCH OF EBMBEANBT. 
 
 This is the occasion for speaking to you, my dear Julia 
 of Rembrandt's Night "Watoli, a master-piece of cliiaro-oacuro 
 of depth, and of atmosphere. It is a magical work. 
 
 In this picture it was that I found all the processes that I 
 am about to give you for making objects advance or recede. 
 
 It was audacious, it is true, to undertake upon a little sheet 
 of white paper, with water-colors, a work that might be 
 called the vigor of vigors. 
 
 But then I have found the secret that I was looking for : 
 to detach the personage? in a picture in such a manner that 
 the air will circulate around them, and that those in the 
 back-ground will not be in the vapor. 
 
 The Night Watch of Rembrandt is lit up just like the half 
 of a ball, as I have mentioned to you. Having discovered 
 that, I began to give the chiaro-oscuro with a single graduat- 
 ed tone ; then I painted over it in the shadow precisely as 
 in the light ; and I found that it was with water-colors alone 
 that such secrets could be discovered, and with water-colors 
 alone that they could be painted. 
 
 If you only knew how easy painting in oils appeared to 
 me after that work. I was able to hit upon the tone of the 
 figures in the back-ground, which is as accentuated, as lu- 
 minous, as vigorous as that of the figures in front. 
 
THE NIGHT WATCH OF KE.MBEANDT. 13 
 
 Ydu «'ill sec this by following, step by step, the lessons 
 that I am going to give you. 
 
 I also found the shadow of the light, which is the whole 
 color, all in this picture. 
 
 Bonington had hit upon the very same processes in en- 
 deavoring to copy a Rubens in water-colors. This proves 
 that ti'uth is one and the same, for I was not acquainted with 
 this great colorist; it was M. Carrier who informed me of 
 it, after having read the first edition of this boolj. 
 
 As soon as your daughters have practiced upon single 
 models, you will also place them before a great master and 
 a great composition. 
 
 You can make them commence the study of the principles 
 of color with an engraving, in order that they may not have 
 to trouble themselves with two things at once : the processes 
 that I am to give them, the tone of the work that they will 
 have to copy. You understand, of course, that a little more 
 yellow, a little more blue, makes things more or less dark, 
 more or less light. Let us then commence learning the 
 principles of color from a model without colors. You will 
 see studies that are, at times, extraordinary. Young girls 
 had mastered the charcoal so thoroughly, had become so in- 
 telligent by following scrupulously my method in coloring, 
 that I have seen water- colors made from engravings, in the 
 very tone of the master. Above all, it is the colorists that 
 they execute the best, because all the processes have been 
 taken from colorists. 
 
 So, when your daughters will be able to find the tone by 
 
14 cave's mastual of color. 
 
 meana of water-colors, tkey will find it for pastel painting, 
 for painting on ivory and porcelain. 
 
 With regard to painting in oils : as soon as you know wa- 
 ter-colors, I will give you the method of painting; as soon 
 as you have applied these processes to water-colors, you wil 
 have the key to all color. 
 
PAPKB Airo BRUSHES. 16 
 
 FOURTH LETTER 
 
 LBSSON— SELECTION OP PAPER AND BRUSHES— METHOD OS 
 STRETCHING THE PAPER— MANNER OF WASHING-IN. 
 
 It is not easy, my dear Julia, to find brushes and papei 
 suitable for water-colors. The best way of paying dear, is 
 to hunt for a good bargain. A brush for six francs may last 
 six montlis, a year ; a brush for two francs will last only two 
 weeks, because, at that price, it is very unusual to find a de- 
 cent one. A brush, to be good, must be elastic, that is, when 
 it has been wet and worked into a point against the rim of 
 the glass, the point should always re-adjust itself when turned 
 to the right or the left. Short and thick brushes especially 
 possess this quality, and their points, although very fine, are 
 firm and springy. A good brush may be used both for draw- 
 ing an eye and making a sky. It is better, however, to keep 
 the old ones for making the skies and backrgrounds, so as to 
 spare the points of the new ones. 
 
 With regard to the paper, choose it heavy, and dry to the 
 i.ouch. Paper that has been long kept is worth much more 
 than new paper, which has the additional disadvantage of 
 having been made by machinery. By wetting the paper 
 with your tongue, you will see whether it has been well sized, 
 that is to say, whether it does not absorb water, which is the 
 essential point. 
 
 " Poor workmen never find good tools," says the proverb. 
 
16 cave's manual of coloh. 
 
 Perfectly natunil ; either they have never been tauglit how tc 
 select, or poor ones are given them, although they need better 
 ones than other worismen. It is harder to fight two enemies 
 than one. A good fighter with a poor sword may be for- 
 midable, but what can a poor fighter do with a poor sword? 
 Give your daughters, then, the best that there is in the way 
 of brushes and paper ; you will spare them many a trial by 
 making their task easier. After a while, they will be at lib- 
 erty to perform feats, to paint with matches, or to make 
 water-colors on the wrong side of the paper. 
 
 But first they must learn to find the right side. 
 
 Take a sheet of paper, hold it flat on a level with your 
 eye; if you observe any streaks, or anything like scraper- 
 marks on the surface, you have the wrong side, and you can 
 mark it with a cross. 
 
 The great thing is, now, to stretch this paper on the board. 
 Follow carefully this recipe, which is as difficult to follow as 
 the one for those famous preserves that we missed so admi- 
 rably, according to the Family Cook. I am going to try and 
 be as simple and clear as its learned author. 
 
 Fold and cut your paper of the size that you have se- 
 lected ; wet thoroughly the wrong side of the sheet, with a 
 sponge, and lay it upon the board evenly and without 
 wrinkles ; then, in order not to soil or rub it, place on top, 
 edge to edge, a piece of ordinary paper. 
 
 But, before doing this, wet a piece of mouth-glue, which 
 you can hold between your lips, so as to have it ready for 
 use. 
 
 Now, witli the thumb and fore-finger, spreading them aa 
 
STEETCHING THE PAPER 17 
 
 far apart as possible, press the two papers upon the board 
 and then pass your mouth-glue under the edge of the moist- 
 ened paper ; you have then only to bear upon the paper on 
 top with the back of your pen-knife, rubbing it until the 
 other paper is glued tight. 
 
 By taking care to keep the mouth-glue soft, you can thus 
 go all around the board without being in a hurry. 
 
 During the operation, a book placed upon your sheet of 
 paper will serve to hold it flat. 
 
 " Having followed all tliese directions carefully, let it dry, 
 and you ought to have a favorable result." 
 
 This is called the bore of water-colors. "We must set about 
 it resolutely ami in cold blood. Boards can be bought 
 already stretched, but the paper is not always good ; it is 
 often on tlie wrong side ; besides, when one has found a 
 quality of paper to one's liking, it is not pleasant to change. 
 "We must, then, at the outset, form the good habit of helping 
 ourselves. 
 
 Oh ! confess that I must indeed be possessed with the de- 
 sire of making good pupils, to have the courage to write all 
 that. I be,<;tow my malediction upon those who will not 
 cai-ry out all that I prescribe. I pronounce them unworthy, 
 and forbid their reading these letters. 
 
 "While we are learning to stretch our paper, let us divert 
 ourselves a little by learning to handle our brush. 
 
 "We are going to make some attempts at dull tints on or- 
 dinary writing paper, with ivory-black, for instance. Let us, 
 with the biush, put some drops of water on a piece of guard- 
 paper, aud add to them a little ivory-black, to make a gray 
 
18 cave's MASrUAL OF COLOE. 
 
 tone. This tone made, we will take some of it, with the 
 brush, and wash-in some squares on the paper. In order to 
 succeed in making them perfectly uniform, we must ascertain 
 how much water we can leave in the brush, and we shall see 
 that we need not be afraid of taking too much. We will 
 also make bands of all widths along-side of one another, in 
 order to learn how to reserve the white parts with precision. 
 If we have too much water left, on coming to the end of 
 what we are trying to execute, we can dry our brush by 
 holding it against the rim of the glass, and it will soon take 
 up the excess. These exercises are extremely useful, and 
 will not be slow to make us mistresses of our brush. 
 
 From this we will pass to the first drawings of houses 
 that I sent your daughters. The brush, in their hands, is 
 about to replace the pencil. Let them commence by tracing 
 tlie drawings very lightly, in order to avoid using bread- 
 crumb and india-rubber, which render wash-paper very bad. 
 This tracing accomplished, they will lay on the half-tints 
 everywhere, only reserving the whites with the exactness 
 that I have enjoined. 
 
 You see, from the very first step, how necessary it is to be 
 able to draw from memory. In water-colors, it is always 
 necessary to lead off correctly ; a correction is not possible. 
 
 "Wliile the half tint is drying, and not to lose time, your 
 daughters will return to their guard-paper and repeat the 
 exercises that I liave above indicated. When the paper is 
 dry, and has become stretched once more, they will draw the 
 architectural lines with the point of the brush ; after that 
 *hey will go over the shadows with tints more or less dark 
 
WASHING-tBT. 19 
 
 They may be obliged to go over tlie most vigorous parts 
 twice. 
 
 From liouses they will pass to draped figures, to heads, to 
 hands, to trees, to skies ; after that, they will shade, by wash- 
 ing-in, all that they may have in tlie wsty of engravings. 
 
 Fmally, they will wash-in, from memory, in order that the 
 brush may replace the pencil, and replace it with an equal 
 amount of skill. M. & C. 
 
20 CAViai'S MANUAL OF COLOB. 
 
 EIFTH LETTER 
 
 BBMAEKS— USEFULNESS OF BORES— HISTOET Or SOPHEONIA. 
 
 Stitdt, my dear Julia, is like everything in this world, a 
 mixture of trouble and pleasure ; the study of water-colors 
 no less than every other. Its beginnings are always hard ; 
 my last letter has proved that, both by 1Jie ennui that it has 
 caused you, and by the dilEculty of carrying out my instruc- 
 tions ; but I promise to indemnify you for it. Water-color is 
 a fairy, with hands full of beautiful golden fruit for obedient 
 and studious children. 
 
 But to stretch a sheet of paper, what torture! No doubt; 
 fortunately, we can escape from it. This is one of my little 
 secrets that I am going to impart to you. There is another 
 torture besides that of stretching paper ; it is to see a bore 
 enter, one of those out of employ, who come buzzing around 
 us like drones around the hive. "Well, I have found the way 
 to neutralize one bore liy another. Bores are almost always 
 good-humored and obliging. When I see one enter, imme- 
 diately I set about stretching my paper. He sees me impa- 
 tient and unhappy; that touches him ; lie assists me at first, 
 and winds up by doing the drudgery himself. Would you 
 believe it ? I have at times seen a bore with a certain amount 
 of pleasure. I have even seen more than one man of intelli- 
 p->iice solicit a bore's task. 
 
 By the way, there seems to be almost an entire system of 
 
USEFULNESS OF BOliES. 21 
 
 conduct there for an intelligent woman, provided she is a 
 little bit pretty, to take the good of things for one's self, and 
 leave the bad for otliers. But that would be selfishness, and 
 I will none of it. Simply permit me to extract a little profit 
 from these good bores. They do not complain of it. The 
 mouth-glue is their delight. 
 
 I had got that far in my letter, ray dear Julia, when the 
 Countess Stadmiski was announced. My servant has pushed 
 to sucli an excess ;he fault of murdering names-, that I looked 
 around, saying: "It is the Countess de Morantais, you 
 mean ? " " Yes, ma'am." I got up, in a very bad humor, and 
 went into the parlor. 
 
 A thousand to one you would not guess whom I found. 
 Sophronia, oar old comrade, who had married, you know, a 
 receiver-general, and is now Countess de Stadmiski. She 
 Is as young, as spiritudle, as pretty as ever. If 1 can give 
 you her history as she related it to me, it will interest you, 
 and our girls will see what cdn bo done with one's fingers. 
 She began by enquiring after you ; she did not know your 
 name nor your residence. When several young girls quit 
 boarding school, we might say tliey were on a ship suddenly 
 shipwrecked. Each one escapes her own way, the best she 
 can, like an egoist. But if, some time after, two comrades 
 meet, their friendships revive as briskly as though there had 
 never been any parting. They know each other so well ! 
 Sophronia will be rejoiced to make you a visit on her return 
 from Russia. 
 
 I have just found, these last few days, a letter that she 
 wrote me the second year of her marriage with the receiver 
 
22 cave's manual of color. 
 
 general of the Haute-Gai-onue. I send it to you. It will ex 
 plain to you, better than I could do it, the commencement of 
 her history: 
 
 "My Dear Eliza: Yesterday CYening, at the prefect's, 
 I saw your unfortunate French professor, whom we enraged 
 so m\ich, by way of taking revenge for the ennui that he 
 caused us. And, would you believe it? it was with a feeling 
 of pleasure that I saw Lis hateful face wrinkle to make me 
 a gracious salutation ; for, at that instant, your face and 
 Julia's appeared to me. I thought that he was going to give 
 me some news about you. Not at all. Then I became sad 
 and absent-minded, thinking that we had been separated two 
 years, and not one of us three had broken silence. Am I the 
 most to blame ? I know not ; but it seems to me that it is 
 ten years since I have seen you, so much has happened in 
 that short space of time. 
 
 " Seven years at boarding school, seven long days : Mon- 
 days, Wednesdays, and Fridays, lessons in grammar; Tues- 
 days, Thursdays, and Saturdays, lessons in geography ; one 
 Sunday, mass and vespers, and the next, holiday. That was 
 the life. But two years of marriage — two centuries in com- 
 parison. At the age of nineteen and a half, I seem to myself 
 an old woman already ; for, two months ago, I was happily 
 delivered of my second child. I have the honor, Madame 
 of informing you of it. Yes, Eliza, I have two daughters 
 Judge whether I am happy, I who have always pitied the 
 male sex in general, and in particular my poor brother, and 
 above all my husband. When I wrote on the blackboard, in 
 big white letters : ' God has been well pleased in creating 
 
HISTOKY OF SOPHEONIA. 23 
 
 woman, and has said to man, perfect thyself to please her,' 
 I did not think I was uttering such a great truth. Do you 
 know, my dear friend, that men go through tlie labors of 
 Hercules in order to be agreeable to us. They give us every- 
 where the best places, and always the best things. If we 
 drop our handkerchief or gloves, they will break their backs 
 to pick them up. If they have gardens, it is to offer us tho 
 flowers ; if they have wit, it is to charm us ; and if they have 
 hearts, for whom are they, good heavens, if not for us ? Have 
 you observed how they detest one another ? Those leaves of 
 paper in which they abuse one another every day have sur- 
 prised me very much ; if well-bred men treat each other so, 
 what would the roughs do, if they wrote in the newspapers ? 
 
 " So I said to my husband, the other day: ' How can you 
 expect women to respect men ? You do not respect your- 
 selves.' 
 
 " Speaking of my husband, I will tell you something 
 good. I ask myself every day: What have I done that he 
 should love me so much, that he should work as he does from 
 morning to night, for the good of me and my daughters ? 
 Really, in liis presence I am ashamed of my good-for-nothing- 
 ness. I take the trouble to rise, to drive out ; I give orders to 
 my servants ; I play with my two dolls : that finishes the Any. 
 In the evening, as soon as they are asleep, I beautify myself 
 to appear in the parlor, where I hear only charming things. 
 I was going to forget the pleasure that I enjoy in buying llie 
 most delightful fancy articles for my house, for myself, for my 
 daughters ; they bid fair to be as beautiful as any of us. So 
 I swear to you that I shall not stuff them with science 
 
21: cavk's jiantjal of colok. 
 
 What good? Men love us just as we are. Our sex is born 
 wo'uan, the other becomes man. Since I have been married, 
 my husband lias not once asked me for a song, and I believe 
 that he does not liuow that I learned drawing. What a 
 mistaken idea I formed about marriage. I was alarmed when 
 people spoke to me of a receiver-general; I -believed that 
 he would not converse with me on anything but accounts and 
 figures, and I said to myself: I shall be able to reply, for I 
 have always lakeu the first prizes in mathematics. On the 
 contrary, he has never spoken to me on serious subjects. 
 What trouble might be avoided, if we were only acquainted 
 beforehaad with the man we were to marry. With the ex- 
 ception of my drawing and my music, which have afforded 
 me some pleasant hours, how many bores I did undergo. 
 
 " However, to speak frankly, these bores are roses in com- 
 parison with all the torments that my poor brother has en- 
 dured. We have no public examinations to pass : we only 
 get a light vamisii of education, to make us shine. Lut the 
 poor yoaug meul After ten j'ears at college, they have to 
 tremble through examination alter examination ; then they 
 draw for the conscription; then they are placed in some law- 
 yer's office, where the first person that comes along exposes 
 to them all his troubles, a mass of undecipherable papers : I 
 have seen some of them. At all events, they will be. undis- 
 turbed in this den of chicanery ? No ; the state forces them, 
 a second time, to turn soldiers. One order after another to 
 mount guard is brought them ; so that they are sentenced, 
 condemned repeatedly to twenty-four hours of prison. 
 Enough to make one hand in his resignation as a man. Very 
 
HISTORY OF SOPHEONIA. 25 
 
 fortunately, the state shows some mercy : my husband as- 
 sures me that my brother is not so unhappy as he writes, and 
 that men In general would not be women. 
 
 " Perhaps because they are so glad to love us. 
 " Your darling, 
 
 " SOPHRONIA." 
 
 In this somewhat extravagant letter, my dear Julia, you 
 will see better than I could convey to you, what Sophronia's 
 happiness was, and what view she took of life. Four years 
 rolled on after these first two, without changing her circum- 
 stances any. But on the morrow of the sixth anniversary of 
 her marriage, the morrow of a day passed in joy, her hus- 
 band was thrown from his horse : killed on the spot. The 
 poor woman burst into tears while telling me how the dead 
 body had been brought home : " My eyes," she said, '■ be- 
 came so fixed and lustreless that people feared for my reason. 
 There wns a friend with me, the wife of the prefect's secre- 
 tary, who took me and mj' two daughters to her home. To 
 convey to you an idea of her patient kindness, her attentive 
 tenderness, would be impossible. For one entire year I ac- 
 cepted her devotion, without concerning myself about the 
 trouble I was causing her ; an unconcern that was terrible to 
 everybodj'. At times I would embrace my children, but 
 without thinking of them. I had but one preoccupation : 
 that was to recall the features of my husband and fix them 
 upon paper. I made more than twenty portraits of him, all 
 in different positions. My friend's husband had looked aftei 
 my aflfairs ; but the state of my health, or rather of my head 
 prevented him from rendering me any accounts. Finally 
 2 
 
26 cave's MANTJAl OF COLOK. 
 
 the doctor, in order to arouse me from, my apathy, conceived 
 the idea of revealing to me, all at once, a second misfortune : 
 ' You have left,' he said, ' thirty thousand francs ; you have 
 flfteeu hundred francs income ; from that must be deducted 
 live hundred francs for the lodgings vrhere your furniture is 
 kept, and, as a thousand francs a year will not be enough for 
 you, you will work ; a mother, you will work for your chil- 
 dren, as he whom you regret worked for them and you.' 
 
 " At these words it seemed to me as though I were awak- 
 ing out of a painful dream : What I I said, I can do some- 
 thing, then, for him who lived only for me. A great duty 
 shone upon me, that saved me from madness. If my hus- 
 band had left me a fortune, I should be in a lunatic asylum. 
 
 "Animated by an energy of which, until then, I had no 
 idea, I conducted my two daughters into our little apart- 
 ments, which I found charming. The hand and the heart of 
 my friend had gone before me. With delight I saw there 
 once moie everything that had belonged to my husband, all 
 that he had touched, all that he had loved. It seemed as 
 though he were there. He was there, in fact: all the por- 
 traits that I had drawn during my sickness were hung up 
 around me. Their resemblance was striking: all the expres- 
 sions of his noble countenance, now smiling, now affection- 
 ate, now serious. I knelt down with my daughters before 
 those dear and sacred images, and I felt that a protection 
 from on high descended upon us. . 
 
 " Not many days after that, a lady came to me, to order 
 the portrait of her daughter, who was about to leave for Eng- 
 land. She expressed her regret at this separation, which was 
 
HISTORY OF SOPHEONIA. 21 
 
 to be for a long lime. Again it was my friend that had in 
 terested this lady in my case, wishing to give me employ- 
 ment, and to make me understand that there were othet 
 troubles in the world besides mine. 
 
 " I made this portrait, so to speak, with my heart. Not 
 only was it a likeness, but the eyes of the young girl said 
 good-bye with a tenderness full of poetry : so I had to paint 
 after that her mother, her little brcthers and sisters. And 
 these portraits procured me others. I had the merit of hit 
 ting the likeness ; I was ignorant enough, as you wrote me, 
 not to get off any science at the expense of those wlio en- 
 trusted their faces to me. I contented myself with seeking 
 the physiognomy of each one, his habitual position, adroitly 
 mixing crayon, pastel, and water-color, after the manner of 
 Vidal, a beautiful portrait by whom I had seen at Toulouse. 
 " I cannot express to you the liappiness I felt in earning 
 money, in creating a value out of my fiugers, and employing 
 tliis value for the comfort, the adornment of my little girls. 
 Of all tlie satisfaction in life, I believe that that is the purest 
 and sweetest ; every evening it seemed to me that my hus- 
 band thanked me for it, and that I slept blissfully. This 
 lasted five years. We lived in mediocrity, but I envied no 
 one. 
 
 " God wished to try me still more. Six weeks passed by 
 the bedside of ray eldest daughter, who was attacked by the 
 measles had impaired my health. It took us both a year to 
 recover, during which time I could not handle a pencil. I 
 saw myself, my dear friend, a prey to that torture called 
 want of money. I saw bills come in that I could not pay, 
 
28 CA.Vb's 1L1JH-UAX OF COLOR. 
 
 ■n-auts that I could not satisfy, mortificalions, privations. 1 
 cannot tell you what I suffered. I had not the vanity to wish 
 to appear rich, but I had the pride to be unwilling to appear 
 poor. What a conflict I had to sustain with the difficulties 
 of each day ! I will tell you no more about them ; the recital 
 of those things, the remembrance of them even, now that 
 they are over, gives me a sort of shudder. 
 
 " My daughters grew up. The lime for their first commun- 
 ion arrived. Every day I conducted them twice to church ; 
 there tlic}' made the acquaintance of another young girl, 
 Genevieve Stadmiski. On my side I had exchanged a few 
 words with her governess, a very distingue person. Count 
 Stadmiski owned a magniftcont chateau in the neighborhood 
 of Toulouse. He had come there seeking a relief that he had 
 found nowhere. He was mourning for his wife, who had 
 died u year after marriage, in giving birth to Genevieve. I 
 saw him for tlie first time tlie day of the first communion ; 
 like me, he was deeply moved by the ceremony. As we left 
 the church it was raining ; the governess came with a mes- 
 sage from him offering us liis carriage, which I accepted. As 
 soon as we had taken our seats in it, he came himself, to beg 
 us to partake of a small collation. ' Our children,' he said, 
 ' will return to the churcli together, without being wet.' 
 
 " \?e were in such delicate health at that time, that I grate- 
 fully accepted his offer. The Count was acquainted with 
 my entire history. What was an impromptu affair for me 
 was not one for him ; everything had been prepared for my 
 reception. It was luxury carried to its utmost; the Count 
 did not know his own wealth. After the breakfast, a gleam 
 
HISTORY OF SOPHEONIA. 29 
 
 of suiisliinu permitted us to take a stroll in the park. We 
 direclrd our steps towards a delicious pavilion, constructed, 
 like llie chateau, in the stj'le of the palace at Fontainehleau, 
 but on a very small scale. The clumps of trees that sur- 
 routided it on the south and north, made it an abode full of mys- 
 tery and charm. ' In your place,' I said to the Count, ' I should 
 live here, and leave the chateau to the servants.' ' That Is 
 what I shall do,' he replied, 'if yott refuse me the favor of 
 coming here and spending the summer. It is not a favor 
 that I am showing you, it is a service that I ask of you ; my 
 daughter has need of the society of your two amiable chil- 
 dren ; with them, see how gay and rosy she becomes.' 
 
 "I accepted, looking at Genevieve's cheeks; I had also 
 taken a look at the cheeks of my daughters. 
 
 " The Count showed us our rooms, that let in the air and 
 the sunshine in profusion. The next morning we were In- 
 stalled in them. I remained there all summer, and I forgot 
 my troubles so completely that I soon recovered my health, 
 that is to say, my youth. Yon can guess the rest. 
 
 The Count was seized with an extraordinary passion for 
 me. He was extremely fond of painting ; his greatest plea- 
 sure W!is to see me make sketches of all the nooks of his park, 
 all the places that we visited together. He mounted them 
 himself and collected them in magnificent albums. He had 
 a rich coUrctiou of engravings and works of art; he it was 
 that taught me to know the masters and formed my taste. 
 We complimented each other: he was a connoisseur, but 
 could not hold a pencil ; I could handle the pencil, but I knew 
 nothing. I made rapid progress, thanks to his counsels 
 
30 cave's manual of cor,OE. 
 
 What eloquence, when he spoke of art and everything thai 
 is beautiful in nature! "With his words he painted bettei 
 than the greatest artist with his brushes. 
 
 " On the other hand, he showed the most incredible tender- 
 ness and gefierosity for my daughters. He seemed to bo 
 recompensing them for the gayety and the health that Gene- 
 vieve "had found in their society. 
 
 " Tou can understand that after six months passed in this 
 way, to separate us would have been to break all our hearts. 
 Then it was tliat my marriage with the Count was decided 
 upon ; five months later, I married him. 
 
 " Some other day I will tell you how we passed those five 
 months, the finest of my life. 
 
 " There are two ways of being beloved and happy ; I have 
 known them both. The one never quits the earth, the other 
 soars ever above it." M. !&. C. 
 
FLESH-TINTS. 81 
 
 SIXTH LETTER 
 
 LESSON — FLESH-TINTS. 
 
 We are going to draw, my dear Julia, several heads ; trace 
 them, not on the wrong side but on the right side of your 
 wash-paper, and then atretcli the sheet upon the board. 
 
 The colors of your palette should be arranged as indicated 
 on the model.* 
 
 The sheet being well stretched, let us go over the draught 
 of our heads with cobalt blue and red brown. These two 
 tones mixed can become vigorous, but they are never black 
 or hard; besides, they do not hold to the paper, and are 
 easily erased. 
 
 We will then model our faces with indigo, as we have 
 modeled them, in washing, with gray. 
 
 We will make pale ones and vigorous ones. 
 
 When they have dried, we will put on a general tone. 
 This will be the luminous tone of the iiesh. The complex- 
 ion of brunettes being darker than that of blondes, we will 
 apply dark tints to the heads that are boldly modeled, and 
 light tints to the others. Yellow ochre and vermilion are 
 the colors with which we will make them both. But in what 
 proportions must these colors be mixed, in order to hit upon 
 
 * There are some new colors, in tubes, that are also excellent. Not 
 more than half the pastel should be put on the palette. 
 
Zi cave's manual op color. 
 
 tbe light or the dark ? Only trials upon the paper can teach 
 us that. Look at nature, and endeavor to Imitate her. 
 
 Sometimes lake, in small quantities, succeeds better'than 
 vermilion ; sometimes, too, ochre alone suiflces. . 
 
 The general tone, being dried, gives us light and half-tint. 
 
 The shadows remain to be considered. 
 
 Naples yellow mixed with a little burnt sienna, there are 
 your shadows. Sometimes the sienna may be replaced by a 
 little vermilion, or a little lake. 
 
 All these tones are found in nature. They need only to be 
 sought for, and applied in an accurate manner. When you 
 have decided upon one of them, apply it boldly to all tbe 
 shaded part, taking great care to spare the half-tint that 
 unites the shadow to the light. These shade-tints are at the 
 same time tints of reflection. We make use of them, washing 
 them less, however, in order to come back to the more vigor- 
 ous parts. So yellow ochre and lake give the very bold parts 
 under the nose, under the chin, and in the ears. Do you 
 wish for still more boldness ? Substitute Italian earth for the 
 burnt sienna. 
 
 Lake can also be replaced by burnt sienna. Make your 
 attempts in the presence of nature ; with a little tact, you will 
 find the colors to be chosen, you will learn the proportions in 
 which to mix them. Observation alone can be your teacher. 
 
 It will tell you that it is with vermilion or lake in small 
 quantities that we compose the rose color that graces the 
 cheeks of youth. Keep on trying ; the cheeks of your daugh- 
 ters will serve as models. 
 
 Sometimes a very light pink tone will successfully blend 
 
FLESm-TINTS. 33 
 
 the lialftint -vvlth the light. This is what we often observe 
 in llie pictures of Rubens. 
 
 Reddish brown and cobalt blue will answer for going over 
 the lines that have become too light-colored. 
 
 With these two colors it is that black eyes are painted. 
 
 I have no need to tell you which one we keep for blue eyes. 
 
 Reddish brown will do for the bolder parts of the mouth, 
 the light being obtained with vermilisn. , 
 
 There you have all my secrets, my dear friend. With nine 
 colors, indigo, red brown, cobalt blue, yellow ochre, Italian 
 earth, sienna, Naples yellow, vermilion, and lake, we can 
 make flesh-lints like Correggio and Rubens ; rival nature in 
 lier most charming creations ; in a word, paint those beauti- 
 ful young brunettes or blondes, those pretty rosy children, 
 for whom the art of water-colors seems to have been invented. 
 Is it not marvellous ? 
 
 Take note that I say the art of water-colors. It does not 
 sufHce to be acquainted with the colors, to know their appli- 
 cation, in order to harmonize them as nature does ; observa- 
 tion is necessary, instinct, taste combined with experience. 
 We make our dishes overdone or underdone with the best of 
 family cook-books, and we are not good cooks because we 
 do not know the condiments of a dish. (Pardon me, if I seek 
 my comparisons in the kitchen ; painters, who are no ene- 
 mies of good living, nearly all lay claim to shine in it.) We 
 become soup-makers, we are born roasters, Brillat Savarin 
 has said ; I can say in turn : we become drawers, we are born 
 colorists. What my son, who has just left college, translates 
 by nascuntur poeta. 
 
 I do not address my remarks here to every mind, as I did 
 2* 
 
34 CAV.b.'s J[ANUAI- OF COI.OE. 
 
 in teaching drawing from memory. Drawing is a language, 
 whicli we spealc with more or less purity, with more or less 
 style. It is necessary, it can always be applied usefully, like 
 the language we speak. 
 
 But color is poetry, that art divine, attainable only to 
 choice spirits, that moves, transports them, and gives birth to 
 master-pieces. 
 
 This you need not tell your daughters just yet; their 
 young souls might become over-heated ; keep them still in 
 the domaiu of prose, all the while teaching them, step by 
 step, the processes of water-colors, a dry enough st'idy, but 
 one that will break them in more and more to drawing from 
 memory, which they must know above all, and perfectly. 
 At first I wish to give them what is necessary ; later they 
 will become artists, if there is a chance. 
 
 Perhaps you will treat me as a twaddler, seeing that I 
 come back so often to drawing from memory ; but what can 
 1 do ? I write these lines in a tremble ; I fear that Mary has 
 not resolution enough to resist the fascinations of color until 
 she can give herself wp to it without danger. She would 
 only be added to the category of miscarried talents, and all 
 my ti-ouble would be lost. To you I confide these letters, to 
 you, a tender and prudent mother ; watch over them as you 
 watch over the novels that your daughters are not old enough 
 to read. The reading of these might be equally injurious to 
 them ; they would turn to the novel, and not to the reality; 
 you would make false painters, as novels make false women. 
 Be wise, like nature, that is, never in a hurr3\ The pupils 
 that we wish to show off before the time are like hot-house 
 plants, that die as soon as tliey see the light. M. fi. C. 
 
ATMOSPHEEB. 35 
 
 SEYENTH LETTER. 
 
 REMAHKS— ON THE ATMOSPHERE— ON THE AET OE DEESS- 
 ING— ON CONVENTIONAL COLOE. 
 
 Maby writes me that she has no aptitude for color, and 
 that she is rather afraid of meddling with it than anxious to 
 employ it. I have read this passage in her letter, my dear 
 Julia, with pleasure. This timidity proves that she catches 
 the difBculties of the art she is studying, the cliaracteristic 
 of an observing and thoughtful spirit. 
 
 Innocence feeding a serpent is an emblem the philosophy 
 of which few persons understand. This one more, this one 
 less, we are all innocents on a thousand occasions. Those 
 who are gifted with the faculty of observing, of comparing, 
 should thank heaven. And even if drawing from memory 
 should give us but this good habit, it would deserve to. have 
 altars raised in its honor. Observation and comparison, that 
 is the whole of wisdom. 
 
 I will then praise Mary for having noticed that to put at- 
 mosphere behind the figures is the principal diiBculty of a 
 picture. She is right in letting it engross her attention. Ask 
 her whether she has noticed in nature, how, when several 
 persons are assembled in a parlor, the contour of each indi- 
 vidual stands out on the background. Ask her whether she 
 sees silhouettes caught, so to speak, with a brass wire, as in 
 the pictures of certain painters. Let her follow alternately 
 
36 cave's manuax, of color. 
 
 tUe contour of each person. She will find that there are 
 Ijhices where the line disappears and is completely lost in the 
 shade ; but she will find it again, very clear, a little way 
 above, very slightly marked a little below, varying thus all 
 around the figure. "Well, what is the place where the air cir- 
 culates the most ? Behind those parts of the contour which 
 are undecided. 
 
 The more diversifiedly we endeavor to bring it out on the 
 background, the more atmosphere we put between the can- 
 vas and its figure. 
 
 Paul Veronese, who excels in this respect, often brings out 
 his figures by the tone alone. There are tones, in fact, which 
 recede, and tones which advance, by force of their own 
 value ; so yellow, white, and red take the foreground before 
 green, violet, and gray; black, too, stands out by reason of 
 its vi^or. Generally, mixed colors yield to primitive ones ; so 
 in the parlor, the women who do not wear free colors are 
 eclipsed by the others ; they always find themselves in the 
 background. The art of dress is the first step in the art of 
 painting. By the way in which a woman wears colors, we can 
 see whether she has the feeling of a colorist. Not everybody 
 has it. For instance, pink and blue are the fashion ; all the 
 women wear them ; well, those who put blue bows on a 
 rose-colored dress have an ordinary look ; precisely on tho 
 other hand, those who wear roses on a blue dress have a dis- 
 tingue look. Why is that ? 
 
 Nature has given us this- lesson in harmony. It is the 
 roses that stand out against the sky. Whence the principle : 
 a little pink on a great deal of blue. The observing eye, the 
 
CONVENTIONAL COLOE. 37 
 
 colorist, feels thi8 Tvithout knoAving why. He also knows 
 that green baimonizes with 'all shades, because all flowers 
 have green leaves. Finally, green and blue do not go to- 
 gether. Obsei-vo nature. She will give you few blue flowers, 
 and their leaves are never of a free green. 
 
 She teaches us everything when we know how to observe 
 her. A pretty toilette to-day would be a skirt of light lilac 
 taffeta with a dark lilac earaeo, white collar and sleeves, the 
 whole relieved by a yellow ribbon or rose. This is the 
 decoration of the iris. Thus arrayed, sit down upon an 
 English green sofa, and if you are the least bit graceful, 
 if the iris has the least bit perfumed your toilette, you 
 will appear very pretty, especially to tliose who are fond of 
 the iris. 
 
 What charming harmonies upon the birds and the flow- 
 ers I Colorists delight to make studies of them ; they find 
 here their gamut. 
 
 This is what Mary will do when she commences water- 
 colors. All that she sees about her, in the gardens, in the 
 fields, on the trees, will be mirrored in her mind as in her 
 eye. Those flying flowers, the butterflies,°that she already 
 loves so much, will become still dearer to her. There are 
 caterpillars whose beauty she will envy ; she will envy the 
 veiy moss on which they creep, when, with a lens, she goes 
 in quest of delight in the domain of those animals that we 
 trample under foot. If God had given us eyes to see little 
 things in all their details, we should no longer dare take a 
 step in the country. How many beings oa the earth share 
 the fate of those field flowers that live and die without any 
 
38 cave's MANUAl OF COLOR. 
 
 one's deigning to gather or to look at them ! However, per- 
 haps they are not the most unfortunate. 
 
 The eyes play a great part in our life. This is why I 
 Beek to perfect them, by exercising them, by teaching them 
 to see, and to see well. 
 
 But let us return to color. Tou wish to know, dear friend, 
 how, in painting, we place the pink tone between the half- 
 tint and the light. We put it very close by the side of the 
 blue which forms the half-tint. By exaggerating it, we should 
 produce a rainbow : so it is necessary to be sparing of it, and 
 to make use of it only in certain places, where we feel that 
 something is wanting. However, when your daughters copy 
 Rubens, he will teach them this secret ; for of course they 
 will copy Rubens. 
 
 The more I find it bad to copy oil-paintings in oils, the 
 more I find it useful to copy them ia water-colors. Here ia 
 my reason : 
 
 Oil-colors are forbidding. There are pictures that time 
 has rendered absurd, incomprehensible, where green has taken 
 tlie place of blue, yellow of white, black of red. Those are 
 not the ones that your daughters will copy. But there are 
 also some in which time has happily blended the tones, and 
 which remain worthy of the masters who painted them. 
 Still, a certain coating has collected on them, which veils the 
 colors, and deceives the copyist by giving him a false gamut. 
 His judgment then errs in the presence of nature, and he 
 makes conventional color. As his painting becomes, in time, 
 coated in the same way, before many years it will be as black 
 as the pictures of a century, pictures painted with colors of 
 
CONYENTIONAL COLOE. 39 
 
 n good quality, very light, very blonde, and which, neverthe- 
 less, have not escaped the misfortune of blacliening. 
 
 As water-colors, on the contrary, blanch, they can be made 
 very vigorous. They will become clearer by the very nature 
 of their colors, which are transparent on paper. Water-color 
 studies from oil-paintings of old and modern masters are, 
 then, an excellent practice. 
 
 But what is doubtless going to astonish you, I will not 
 permit Mary to copy from water-colors. I prohibit her from 
 doing so, because I have noticed that pupils are always dis- 
 posed to imitate the stroke of the brush and to appropriate it 
 to themselves. Now, if I have any one antipathy, it is for 
 this sort of imitation, which kills all originality : hence my 
 pupils have a character which is peculiar to them ; they have 
 not the way of doing things of any painter. 
 
 Tliose who paint in oils make a wise beginning by making 
 copies from water-colors. The manner of painting being 
 different, they do not run the risk of borrowing the touch of 
 another ; their touch must belong to them, provided they are 
 to liave one; this we shall see liereafter. 
 
 Commence with water-colors, all ye who wish to succeed 
 in painting. Tliey are not easier to handle, but they are 
 taught and learned more readily. They are quick in giving 
 qualities which we are long in finding in the studios of paint- 
 ers ; first, pi'ecision, for it is impossible to go over the flesh- 
 tints without spoiling them. They even force you to color, 
 because the preparations which precede them on the paper 
 render them more positive, and imprint them with greatei 
 truthfulness. So.nothing is more profitable for painters thau 
 
40 cave's majs^ttal of color. 
 
 making the sketches of their pictures in water-colors. lu 
 proportion as we advance in our lessons, we shall recognize 
 Ihe trutli and the advantages of this principle. 
 
 Before proceeding to the manner of painting stuffs, one 
 Avord more about the tones that match. Let us take up the 
 flowers again and put together some toilettes. What a 
 beautiful adjustment you can make with the pansy! A 
 mantle of violet velvet, a dress of light violet satin, a hat of 
 yellow satin and black velvet, with white sleeves and collar 
 — what a beautiful, sober costume. As the^ pansy has no 
 perfume, we will not use any. 
 
 But you will not forget the perfume of the rose, when you 
 wish to decorate yourself, after its image, in a dress of dark 
 green tatfeta, a, caraco of delicate green, a straw hat orna- 
 mented with rose-colored ribbons, white sleeves and stoma- 
 cher. 
 
 Have you observed how a straw hat always gives the fin- 
 ishing touch to the toilette? The reason of it is simple 
 enough : nearly all flowers have a little yellow ; hence, yel- 
 low, like green, produces a good effect with all the other 
 colors. Are you not, like me, indignant at the audacity of 
 horticulturists who have produced the double daisy ? A fine 
 improvement I The daisy 1 The most smiling of flowers ! 
 They are going to rhake a National Guard top-knot of it, by 
 taking from it the pretty yellow ring, around which its 
 petals grouped themselves ! Those petals that we pluck out 
 one by one, in our youth, to know whether we ai-e still loved 
 by the absent one. Nowadays, three hours would be needed 
 to pluck the leaves of a daisy— three hours to know whethei 
 
CONVENTIOlSrAL COLOR. 41 
 
 we are still loved ! As well take the railroad, to go and 
 assure ourselves positively. 
 
 Thus, from impi'ovement to improvement, poetry is forsak- 
 ing this world. Since I have spoken of railroads, is there 
 any tiling less poetical than those long, partitioned boxes, 
 rolling without horses, so regularly, with such a monotonous 
 noise, that, on our arrival, we examine ourselves, we invol- 
 untarily feel ourselves, to see whethef we are not woven or 
 knit, whether we have not become broadcloth or stockings, 
 such !i sensation have we had of passing from the condition 
 of a man to that of a thing. 
 
 But this letter is growing too long. I take leave of you, 
 my dear Julia, as well as of those flowers, those butterflies, 
 those birds, by means of which I have given your daughters 
 the secret of combining pretty toilettes. Theii' cleverness, 
 or rather their coquetry, will enable them to make, every 
 season, new discoveries. They are going to take a little 
 course of botany and natural history. The aim will be a 
 little frivolous, it is true ; but why should we not seek to 
 amuse ourselves at work? Has not the Creator placed plea- 
 sure by the side of the most serious things? Would the 
 family exist without love ? Starting from this principle, 
 which I always derive from the Great Source, we will learn 
 water-colors, like drawing, with the least possible ennui. 
 
 M. :&. c. 
 
42 cave's manuai, of color. 
 
 EIGHTH LETTER. 
 
 LESSON— THE HAIK. 
 
 Befoke directing our attention to drapery, let us take up 
 the hair. 
 
 The rules that I lay down for you, my dear Julia, are not 
 written anywhere. They are not taught in studios. I am 
 indebted for my knowledge of them to my observations in 
 nature, and to my studies in the practice of my art. The pu- 
 pils will understand them well, only by applying them them- 
 selves ; for it is impossible, by explanation, to attain perfect 
 precision, to fix the proportions of the colors in an exact 
 manner, in view of such diverse variations in the shades of 
 objects. Tl)e experience of the pupils, then, and their essays, 
 must come to the assistance of the professor's lessons. 
 
 Blonde hair is modeled with a very light tone of ivory- 
 black and indigo. Sometimes the ivory-black will suflSce, 
 sometimes the indigo. You pass over it a general tone of 
 Naples yellow or yellow ochre. 
 
 "When the general tone, which is the tone of the light, is 
 made by yellow ochre, the shadows are produced by lake and 
 Naples yellow ; and when it is made by Naples yellow, we 
 must, in order to draw the colors, employ yellow ochre and 
 Italian earth. 
 
 For chestnut hair, Naples yellow, lake, and even ccbalt 
 
THE HAIK. 43 
 
 blue, are introduced into tlie general tone, and. In the shad- 
 ows, Italian earth mixed with these first tones. 
 
 Very black hair, the lights of which are blue, is made 
 with warm tints, suoli as sienna, lake, bitumen. The general 
 tone is made with indigo, and the shadows touched up with 
 Italian earth and lake. 
 
 A general rule : warm-tinted hair is made with cold tints, 
 and cold hair with warm tints. This rule is applicable to all 
 preparations ; it would, of itself, suffice to guide the pupils 
 whom nature has made colorists. 
 
 There is sucli a diversity in the shades of hair, that great 
 cleverness is needed in varying the value of the tones indi- 
 cated for preparations. By the value of a tone, we mean its 
 relative force. With regard to the tone of the light, we must 
 make it such as we see it. 
 
 Now it is, my dear Julia, that you are about to recognize 
 how essential precision is in drawing the light. A head is 
 not round, you already know, unless the light is perfectly 
 true. When the recollections of observation do not come to 
 the assistance of the pupil's intelligence, hair will be an 
 impossibility ; for it is of prime necessity that it should be 
 correctly attacked, right off, without hesitation. As I have 
 said, this is the grand difHculty in water-colors ; we can not 
 correct the drawing without injuring the color. 
 
 However, practice with the charcoal teaches us so well 
 how to catch the form of the lights and shades, that, for 
 Mary and Eliza, the difficulty will no longer be anything but 
 play. 
 
 You will observe that the tone? that I have just indi- 
 
44 cave's manual of colob. 
 
 cated, except the bitumeu and ivory-black, are the same as 
 those that we have employed for the flesh-tiiits. And even 
 the bitumen is sometimes necessary for the visual point, and 
 ivory-black is mixed with the indigo to produce very fair 
 flesh-tints, like those of children in our northern countries. 
 Often, then, the hair and the flesh-tints can be prepared 
 together; and even the shadows of the hair are the same aa 
 those of the flesh, in the beautiful transparent creatures that 
 Rubens delighted to portray. 
 
 In passing from hair to stuffs, we find, as a rule of draw- 
 ing, the same principle : the form of the light indicates the 
 quality. The finer the hair, the more brilliant it is ; conse- 
 quently, the closer the light becomes. In satin, the light is 
 also very close, as your daughters know. Thus, it has natu- 
 rally become a form of speech to speak of the hairs of satin. 
 Tlie form of the light indicates the quality of the cloth, I 
 have said. In fact, it is not by color that satin or wool is 
 made ; it is by the drawing. Have you not seen your daugh- 
 ters make satin dresses with charcoal, just as the engravers 
 make them with the graver ? 
 
 I repeat it : to your daughters, who will not touch colors, 
 except with a perfect knowledge of drawiug, water-colors 
 will offer little difficulty. They will make studies that will 
 astonish the first artists ; for, between us, if my principles 
 are well understood and well applied, however poor a water- 
 color may be, no one will ever believe that it is the work of 
 ■\ pupil. Your daughters, perhaps, will not be colorists, 
 perhaps they will not attain to the poetry of color, like the 
 masters ; but they will still have learned much ; they will 
 
THE UAIK. 45 
 
 appreciate the master-pieces of art. Tlie elegance, the stylish- 
 ness of their toilette and their house, will be remarked ; for, 
 as soon as a matter of taste comes in question, the last of 
 painters is still the first of men. 
 
 Do not let Eliza, your sculptor, think that she can dis- 
 pense with water-colors. The sculptors who know how to 
 paint, know how to color their statiiary. Look at Michael 
 Angelo. To separate, in education, color from drawing, 
 would be a mistake. More remains of what we learn than 
 we suppose; the seed, that we think is lost in the ground, 
 will rise up sooner or later. The lessons taken in youth 
 have roots like that boarding-school friendship which will 
 end only with ourselves. 
 
 M. :&. C. 
 
46 cavJb's manual of color. 
 
 NINTH LETTER. 
 
 REMARKS— BEUNBT' PES AND BLONDES— TALL MEN AKD 
 SHORT MEN— OPPOSITES. 
 
 YotJ reproach me, my dear Julia, with having forgotten 
 red hair. The omission is almost ingratitude ; for nothing 
 seema prettier to me than hair of a reddish brown, with 
 black eyes and lashes. But how does it happen that this is 
 a disputed beauty ? Why is this color admired in dress, in 
 flowers, in the sky, yet condemned when it lends its lustre to 
 the hair ? Is it not also the work of God ? There is a preju- 
 dice here that I cannot explain. Must we believe that it 
 was at first considered as a great privilege, but that later the 
 blondes and the brunettes, men and women, who are in a 
 majority, have become jealous of it and thrown it into dis- 
 credit ? 
 
 Painters have no share in this injustice; nearly all their 
 women are blonde or red-haired, their children blonde or red- 
 haired. These tones, in fact, harmonize belter with delicate 
 flesh-tints : the ensemble produced is more pleasing to the 
 eye. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are mistaken if we imagine that in 
 adopting this color we paint weak creatures. We paint 
 charming creatures, that is all. In general, blondes have 
 more will than brunettes ; what they wish they wish better, 
 but they wish it with a gentle will which does not startle 
 men, which is not even suspected by them. The husband 
 
BRUNETTES XND BLONDES. 47 
 
 of a blonde is conlicleirt of bting master, and often he is not ; 
 ■wlierejis the husband of a brunette, who is always afraid of 
 not bfing mast^T, almost always is. Do we not say, on 
 seeing a brunette with black eyes: "There goes a witch 
 that must lead her husband by the nose 1 " People will al- 
 ways be the dupes of appearances. 
 
 It is the same with men, those who, by virtue of their 
 character and their physique, really deserve that name. 
 First-class men never annoy their wives on the subject of their 
 authority; on the contrary, they are well content to let them- 
 selves be led by tbeir wives, provided it is done gently, and 
 that they do not feel their chains. It is so natural to obey 
 the feeble creature that we protect, to elevate the loved one 
 by this daily condescension, making her happy by flattering 
 her pride. Insignificant men, on the contrary, wish to be 
 masters ; they need some sort of superiority, and are vain of 
 the name of domestic tyrants. On the other hand, are not 
 large men nearly always very gentle with their wives? They 
 are conscious of their strength, and have no need of speaking 
 in a gruif voice, or of frowning, to put on the airs of au- 
 thority. Not so with small men, who like to make up for 
 their physical defects by that arrogance and unaccommodat- 
 ing disposition which I call conjugal despotism, and which 
 turns the household into a veritable civil war. As an intelli- 
 gent mother of two daughters, created in your image, you 
 will be careful, I am sure, not to marry them to blockheads 
 or abortions. It is innate in these monsters to be always 
 seeking an opportunity of revenging themselves for their 
 inferiority. 
 
48 CAVi'ri SlAiTUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 Still, weakness is painted fair, and strength dark-com- 
 pkxioned. In the pictures of the legend, Blue Beard is ot 
 a colossal size ; of Cleopatra, who was migrwnne, I have seen 
 a portrait that was tive feet six inches tall. Future painters 
 wil. not fail to make a giant of Xapoleon. Even now, see 
 what Gerard has done with him in painting the crossing of 
 the Alps — a cavalier vigorously managing a fiery steed, in- 
 stead of a little man pensively sitting upon a mule. And it 
 must be so. It is not the mission of art to rectify popular 
 mistakes. It accepts prejudices, and is governed b\- appear- 
 ances, which are themselves often prejudices. In a word, it 
 lia.s only to do witli visible things, and speaks only to the eye, 
 without running foul of received opinions. Thus painting 
 and sculpture, fair deceivers, give to great men, to heroes, the 
 appearance of strength and grandeur, although nature, taking 
 dcliglit in the opposition of contraries, has made them insig- 
 nificant and small. 
 
 But this law of opposites in the material world i< also 
 onr law, for we shall fare badly if we do not follow nature. 
 Color especially lives by opposites. And to speak of red 
 hair, which brought on this long digression, do you know 
 what we employ to model it ? Indigo. Xow the most op- 
 posite color to red is blue. Harmony of tone lies in con- 
 trasts. You recall our studies in flowers? In those called 
 fnrget-me-Uf)ts, which have a beautiful blue, we found orange- 
 colored stamens, and admired the happy eflfect produced by 
 this union. 
 
 How could we, in a picture, place several figures along- 
 side of one another, unless we observed the same harmonies 5" 
 
OPPOSITES. 49 
 
 This is the fixed rule of Paul Veronese and Correggio, 
 When you come to Paris, you will take 3'our daughters to 
 the pictures of these masters. The " Marriage in Cana " and 
 " Anliope," master-pieces of coloring, will seem to them to 
 have borrowed from the flowers the happy selection of their 
 tones, so effectively and at the same time so harmoniously are 
 they colored. In " Antiope " they will see, as I told you in 
 my second letter, how the light shades off little by little, 
 starting from the brightest point, which we call the sun. In 
 the " Marriage in Cana," the same effect ; only, the composi- 
 tion being immense, the liglTt is more widely spread, and ad- 
 justs itself admirably in rebounding upon other less lumi- 
 nous points. 
 
 How many amateurs have passed before these pictures 
 without understanding the genius that animated them. 
 How many artists even have appreciated their eminent quali- 
 ties only after years of study. Because nowadays there is 
 really no education for the artist. Each painter will tell you 
 that he has invented painting, that nobody has taught him 
 anything. This is only too true. But the fault is with the pu- 
 pils, or rather with the century. Since kings are no longer re- 
 spected, masters are not. Pride has gone to our head. For- 
 merly masters loved to initiate their young apprentices into 
 all their secrets ; they made them their assistants ; between 
 them there was the friendship of father and child ; the pupil 
 worked ou the picture of hi.« professor, but did not for all 
 that think hipiself professor. To-day, if a pupil touches his 
 master's picture, he goes away and tells everybody that he 
 
 made the picture. Consequently the bond that united them 
 3 
 
50 cave's manual of color. 
 
 is goon broken. The young blunderer is left to his own 
 winss, and, like the bird that has left its mother's nest too 
 soon, lie falls down and down to the saddest end. 
 
 That is why modern art is below ancient art. 
 
 And what is society becoming ? Legal equality is an ad- 
 mirable principle ; in wishing to extend it to everything, wa 
 make an absurdity of it. Nature has not made men equal. 
 She has created the strong to protect the weak, the weak to 
 love the strong. The modern system of equality makes none 
 but envious persons ; no more respect, consequently no more 
 aflfection, for there is no kind oriove without respect. 
 
 One hope is still left us. The human reason, which has 
 its moments of aberration, cannot fail to return to the right 
 road. A minister no longer writes to his employe : " Citizen, 
 I discharge thee from thy functions, greeting and fraternity." 
 "Which was the same as saying: " I condemn thee to die of 
 hunger. Tliy brother." 
 
 Perhaps it is in our power, dear Julia, to come to the help 
 of diseased society. Let us take possession of the arts, re- 
 jected nowadays for politics or adventurous undertakings. 
 Without making your daughters blue-stockings, let us teach 
 them to create little chefs-cCmuvre that will recall men to the 
 desire to create grand ones. The love of the arts, the sweet 
 pleasures that they procure, will restore them to the society 
 of women, from which they are becoming more and more 
 estranged, and it will not be said that the French women 
 have suffered Frenchmen to become Englishmen. 
 
 M. fi. C 
 
BLACK AN-D WHITE STUFFS. 51 
 
 TENTH LETTER. 
 
 LESSON— BLACK AND WHITE STUFFS. 
 
 Tou know, my dear Juli;i, that we always say : " I am 
 going to wear colors," when we leave off a white or a black 
 dress. In fact, black and white are the absence of all color. 
 Nevertheless, in order to make myself understood, I shall be 
 obliged to say : black color, white color, although that is an 
 absurdity. 
 
 The slmdows of black and of white are highly colored. 
 
 But the rule as to the harmony of opposites is going to 
 reveal itself to you in all its conclusiveness. 
 
 White stuffs are prepared with a gray tone of ivory-black. 
 The ojii)osite of white is certainly black. Do we not say: 
 channing from white to black, meaning an utter change ? 
 
 Your daughters, who are teachable, who know that each 
 one of my lessons has its practical utility, and that it would 
 be impossible, after having neglected one of them, to compre- 
 hend the next one — your daughters almost know how to 
 execute white stuffs, since, according to my directions, they 
 have washed their draperies according to their old engrav- 
 ings. 
 
 Spread the gray half-tint of ivory-black everywhere, scru- 
 pulously preserving the light: that is the method for wash- 
 ing the whites. 
 
 Brillluul stuffs, such as satin, have bold shadows; the 
 
62 cave's manual op coloe. 
 
 ninth lesson in Drawing has told us that " Now, bold shad- 
 ows are obtained with a little bitumen, adding a little Naples 
 yellow in the reflected shadows. Sometimes burnt sienna 
 replaces the bitumen." 
 
 The whites are made such as we see them. They are 
 prepared, as I have said, with ivory-black, which gives a 
 gray tone; The preparation for shadows is the opposite 
 tone to that of light. Always our rule of opposites, observed 
 by all colorists. 
 
 When the white is gilded, as in woolen stuffs, take a gene- 
 ral tone of yellow'ochre, or Naples yellow. Then the prepa- 
 ration should be mixed with ivory-black or indigo. 
 
 From the whites let us pass to the blacks ; they are the 
 two master-tones. I will tell you, further on, why they are 
 thus called. 
 
 Black stuffs are made with very warm tones, such as bitu- 
 men, lake, burnt sienna. When the drapery is well modelled, 
 well drawn with one of these tones, the tone of the light 
 must be sought. The colder the light, the warmer should be 
 the preparation. 
 
 The tone of the light should be laid over the entire dra- 
 pery. This is why we call it the general tone. 
 
 When well dry, which is essential, go over the bolder 
 shadows with the same tone. Do not forget that you must 
 get your black tone without black. Black is only used in 
 the light. Note well this remark, which is an important one. 
 
 In satin stuffs, the lights are white. It is theJialf-tint that 
 gives the tone. This is a general rule that I shall not repeat. 
 
 Thus, after having attacked the shadows, a general tone 
 
BLACK AND WHITE STUFFS. 63 
 
 is passoil orer the whole, the small lights being carefullji 
 spai-ecl. This general tone becomes the half-tint, and yet it is 
 always the tone of the stuff: it is pink, if the satin is pink 
 black, if the satin is black. 
 
 For black velvet the preparation is made with the same 
 warm colors; but, instead of using lightly ivory-black, in 
 order to lay on the general tone,, a darkish peach-black must 
 'be used. The very bold parts must always be gone over 
 with the warm tones. The lights of velvet are exceptional: 
 they are picked out by drawing with a little water on the end 
 of the brush, and then rubbing with a bit of linen. Peach- 
 black adlictc.s to the paper very slightly, and disappears im- 
 mediately, leaving a light such as velvet calls for. We get 
 it more or less brilliant, according as we erase. For in- 
 stance, by wetting a second time and letting it dry a little, 
 rubbing wilb some force, we obtain a pure white. 
 
 Practice it is that gives knowledge. So, my dear Julia, 
 I ad\ise you to make your daughters take a piece of each 
 kind of stuff, in order to try for themselves each process. I 
 cannot go into a mass of petty details. Whatever I may do 
 to make myself clear, I llel that these dry lessons need to be 
 put in practice in order to be understood. I can only set 
 my pupils on the right road ; their own sense will guide them. 
 
 Thus, how can I explain reflection ? It varies, first ac- 
 cording to the stuff, then according to the object that re- 
 flects. I cannot then indicate its color; I must confine my- 
 self to saying that it is sometimes picked out by proceeding 
 as though for velvet, at others by passing a bright tone ovet 
 a bold tone, as in oil-painting. 
 
54 cave's manual os color. 
 
 "White, Naples yellow, vermilion, cobalt blue, red brown, 
 yellow ochre, etc., are the colors useAtoTgouachi-ng;*hymi^- 
 ing them with others, we obtain the desired tones of reflec- 
 tion. Another general rule, to which I shall not need to 
 revert. 
 
 I have told you, my dear friend, that white and black 
 were master-tones. With them alone, one can make a pic- 
 ture. Great painters have proved it: Van Dyck, among- 
 others, has made chefs-d'ceavre with figures dressed wholly in 
 white or in black. Two such powerful colors are they, that ' 
 we can say that women who wear other colors sacrifice 
 themselves to those dressed in black or in white. This is 
 certainly not their intention ; that you know as well as I do ; 
 but one grows weary of her white dress or her black dress, 
 and yields to an imperative need of change. Woman is con- 
 stituted so : she f jrsakes a dress that becomes her for one 
 that does not ; but she looks different. Karely does she dress 
 two successive days in the same manner : she must change 
 something, were it but a ribbon. Hence, the great variety 
 in our fashions ; whereas, the costume of those gentlemen 
 differs each year, at the utmost, by the change of a short- 
 waisted vest to a long-walsted, a high-crowned hat to a low- 
 crowned. And they will not alter it a particle when they 
 have us on their arms, dressed d la Orecque, which is soon to 
 take place. Yes, dear friends, it appears that we are going 
 to return to natural beauty, the beauty of sweeping lines, 
 and to give our husbands the pleasure of adorning their 
 goddesses in their true costume. On the strength of which 
 I embrace you. M. !6. 0. 
 
 * To put in a body color. 
 
cave's maxual of coLon. 55 
 
 ELEVENTH LETTER. 
 
 REMARKS — DRAWING IN COLOR - COLOR IN SCXniPTTTRE. 
 
 I AM glad, my dear Juliii, your experience comes to Iho 
 assistauce of mine in tlie tasli that I Lave undertalien. Our 
 studies iu water-colors will make you comprehend more and 
 more how important it is to be able to draw perfectly before 
 taking up a brush. I see it, for you are alarmed at all the 
 knowledge you must liavc in order not to spoil the form in 
 putting on the color, and you are very right. 
 
 Color is of itself very delicate; it must be handled with 
 freedom. If the color does not indicate the form with accu- 
 racy, we run the risk of losing the color by correcting the 
 form ; for, as there are projections and depressions, which are 
 the whole of drawing, so also there are tones which advance, 
 and tones which recede, and which are the whole of color. 
 
 The color then can destroy the drawing, and the drawing 
 the color. 
 
 The great difficulty in making them keep pace has given 
 rise to two schools ; the school of drawers, and the school of 
 colorists. The one sacrifices to the god of drawing, the other 
 to the god of color. This would not be so, if both could draw 
 perfectly from memory. But, as I have said, the means 
 hitherto employed for teaching drawing demand too much 
 time. Besides, this art has not, like the art of speaking and 
 writing one's native language, been made one of the elements 
 
b*? cave's makual of color. 
 
 of eduoatiou. Unquestionably, one is not a painter because 
 lie knows how to draw, any more than one is a poet because 
 he knows how to write. All have the gift of being able to 
 hold a pen, a pencil ; but only a few have the gift of imagi- 
 nation, of genius. If poetical ideas develop themselves in a 
 man, if he feels himself to be a poet, he has no need to study 
 grammar, he knows how to write in his language, he can 
 take his flight ; nothing arrests his genius. On the contrary, 
 when a man feels himself to be a painter, he must commence 
 by studying the grammar of his art, for he does not know 
 how to draw. "Well, one of two things happens : either his 
 genius prevents him from studying profitably, or his studies 
 chill his genius. For there are two well defined ages in 
 man ; one where he takes, one where he gives. During the 
 period of his growth, he feeds on the ideas of others ; then he 
 learns. But his growth once arrested, he wishes to produce ; 
 then he no longer learns. This is the order of nature ; it 
 must be obeyed. 
 
 Whence I draw the conclusion that drawing should bo 
 earnestly learned in youth, and that it should become a popu 
 lar art, like the art of writing. 
 
 The Government should think of this. 
 
 Whence comes the decline of the arts ? Prom this, that 
 for a long time past, each generation has been thrown upon a 
 single track, that of literature. There is another, that of the 
 a'rts, which may be thrown open to many minds; it is not 
 even pointed out to the youth, whereas their access to it 
 should be facilitated. The arts do not lead nations to dis- 
 order. They render them happy and celebrated. 
 
DEAWING m COLOE. 57 
 
 As a painter, I have great difficulty in explaining to my- 
 self this exclusive preference for the art of writing, when ] 
 "onsider that of the entire heritage of the primitive races, we 
 have left to us only objects of art, monuments, which we 
 nunt up, which we preserve at great expense. It is by mean," 
 of them that we distinguish civilized nations in antiquity 
 and succeed in retracing their hi^ory. And of all those 
 persons who study iind admire them, whether abroad or in 
 our museums, not one comes and says to the ministers of 
 public instruction : " Cause the art of drawing to be taught 
 in all your colleges, not according to the caprice of the pupils, 
 not as an art of amusement, but seriously, as a useful art." 
 Art speaks when history is silent. The history of the tower 
 of Babel is to be repeated at intervals appointed of God. 
 After each confusion of tongues, what can there remain of 
 the past? Buildings, objects of art, which alone speak to 
 the eye, which re-link the chain of time, and continue ou 
 humanity by tradition. 
 
 Eliza, our sculptor pupil, must not, on perusing these 
 lines, yield to the desire to model. The time for that has not 
 yet come. We must firmly Insist on her learning water- 
 colors. Let liei- know that, later, a few lessons will suffice 
 for teaching her modelling. I have known a painter who, 
 without ever having handled wax or clay, made, on his first 
 attempt, the statue of one of his friends, a sculptor. It was 
 llie sculptor who served as a model and disposed the action ; 
 so that he saw both his master-piece and his reputation created 
 at the same time. That sculptor had modelled before draw- 
 ing. Whoever imitates him will be like the painter who 
 8* 
 
58 CAvil's IIAKUAX OF COLOR. 
 
 draws before coloring ; he will never learn to draw ; and a 
 sculptor witliout drawing is only a practitioner. He must 
 measure liis lengths and breadths by the dividers : always a 
 captive in his narrow genius. 
 
 However matter-of-fact the clay model may be, it has its 
 poetry. Even here we must know, and know well, in order 
 to create, to compose. What genius could endure the pre- 
 occupation of looking up the steps, of studying the material 
 part of art? Can you imagine to yourself Jlichael Angelo 
 and Benvenuto employed in measuring oif with the com- 
 passes the length of a leg or the breadth between the eyes? 
 Phidias, who has made all his heads very small, Jean Gou- 
 jon, who has made all his legs very long, they thought indeed 
 of taking measurements ! They were in quest of "elegance, 
 and tbey found it. 
 
 In sculpture, it must be remarked tliat marble and plaster 
 make the <ibje,cts appear larger ; bronze, on the contrary, 
 smaller. Material color being wanting to the sculptor, how 
 can he supply the deficiency ? He has only one way : color 
 without color, or luminous color, just as you choose to call 
 it. Thus he colors a statue, a group, a bas-relief, bj' the 
 skilful, original manner with which he makes it receive its 
 light and project its shadows. Luminous masses, broad 
 shadows, black holes, arranged with the knowledge of the 
 colorist, and kept in balance with the eye of the draughts- 
 man, give to a work that taking appearance which attracts 
 admiration and wing approbation. 
 
 Eliza will have this skill in modelling iu clay, when she 
 has acquired it by drawing with the pencil, by coloring in 
 
COLOR IN SCULPTUEE. 59 
 
 water-colors. She will not fall into tliat sculpture witliout 
 art which gives no pleasure to him who sees it, earns no 
 honor for him who makes it, which is as tedious as piaster- 
 casting and less exact. In sculpture, as in painting, I repeat, 
 it is the eye that speaks to the eye, feeling to feeling, not sci- 
 ence speaking to science. We live in entire ignorance of oui 
 muscles, and yet there are artists who devote themselves to 
 showing that they know them all. I call that the sculpture, 
 the painting of a doctor. There are critics also, it is true, who 
 give especial attention to these amiable qualities, and who re- 
 joice at being able to say, in front of a picture ; " There's a 
 man that can't live; his mastoid apoph3'sis can't exercise its 
 functions." This rage for stripping oS the flesh to see 
 whetlier the skeleton is really there, is as absurd in an artist 
 as it would be in a lover who treated his betrothed after this 
 fashion. Beautiful paintings, beautiful statuary, are not, any 
 more than beautiful girls, made to be dissected. Let us 
 know how to please, that is our law and our aim. The whole 
 of art is there. M. fi. C. 
 
(JO CAVE S MANUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 TWELFTH LETTER 
 
 I.ESSON— COLOEED STUFFS. 
 
 The harmony of flowers has taught me the principle of 
 the harmony of opposites. 
 
 As I have ah-eady said, I make use of blue in preparing 
 red. It is with indigo that I model the drapery, if I wish to 
 make a scarlet woolen stuff. I then put on a general tone of 
 lake, over which I brush some vermilion. The vermilion ia 
 brushed on by taking it very dry with the end of the brush, 
 In such a way as not to put it all over the paper. There is 
 uo other way of imitating well the grain of the wool. 
 
 I go over the vigorous places with bnrnt sienna, and 
 liometimes with bitumen. 
 
 For silk stuffs I do not use the lake tone, but I immedi- 
 &iely apply, all over, a general scarlet tone, unless the lighta 
 are white, as in satin. Now I have told you, above, how 
 they are reserved. 
 
 Sometimes the lights are of a gilded white. They are then 
 gilded, by a general tone, before putting on that of the stuff. 
 
 Blue stuffs, on the contrary, are modelled with red tones, 
 .jurnt sienna, or lake. 
 
 Pale rose, with very bright gray-blue. 
 
 Pale blue, with bright red tones. 
 
 I have already remarked to you that nearly all the flowers 
 have green leaves and a little yellow, and that yellow and 
 green harmonize with all the other colors. It follows that 
 
OOLOKBD STTJITS. 61 
 
 the shadows of green and yellow may be modelled with, all 
 the other tones, and that we may obtain an astonishing va- 
 riety of results, for all the greens and all the yellows are not 
 prepared in the same way. 
 
 Let us pass to the neutral tints, which are always derived 
 from the primitive ones. 
 
 Gray, which is derived from blue, is prepared with sienna. 
 Hence gray and ri)se go well together. 
 
 Coffee-color, crude color, {Scrue), which are derived from 
 the reds, are prepared with the blues. 
 
 In every case, if the light is of a warm tone, the shadow 
 has a cold tone ; if the light has a cold tone, the shadow has 
 a warm tone. This principle a;iplies to everything that has 
 a color, to woods, metals, plants, etc. 
 
 Your daughters will not bore themselves by making 
 studies of all the colors with pieces of stuffs. On the con- 
 trary, thanks to the facility which water-colors give in pass- 
 ing the tone of the light over the tone of the shade, they will 
 discover tones of such flue quality and such great truth that 
 they will be astonished. Water-colors make the colorist, I 
 have said. Why should not your daughters become such, after 
 experiments, ofttimes so fortunate, made in studying them? 
 
 They will also have to look for the tone of the light with 
 great care. Let them make their experiments on the guard- 
 paper. Sometimes several tones must be mixed to make a 
 single one. 
 
 I shall not tell you that violet is made with blue and pink, 
 and green with blue and yellow. Children, in coloring en- 
 gravings, learn for themselves all those mixtures of primitive 
 
62 cave's manual of color. 
 
 tones that give Ihe composite tones. In a word, they know 
 liow to find the tone of the light. What I have been teach- 
 ing you is the science of shadows, and the harmony of the 
 lights among th'eraselves. Well, the harmony of the lights is 
 derived from the harmony of the shadows; you see this at 
 every step. 
 
 You will doubtless ask me how I will make violet, which 
 is composed of a warm tone and a cold tone. I am guided 
 by the result : as it is cold, my preparation is a warm tone. 
 The same with green, and many other colors. 
 
 F,or striped or flowered stuffs the drapery should first re- 
 ceive the color of the ground ; the stripes or flowers are laid 
 on afterwards. The stripes well drawn, well defined, turn 
 the folds : so they must not be painted In haste and without 
 observing the foreshortening. 
 
 When we know how to paint stufis with the preparation 
 that I have indicated, we know, my dear Julia, how to pre- 
 pare everything that has a color ; we can overcome a very 
 great difficulty in the execution of the shadows when several 
 objects of the same color are side by side. For instance, let 
 us take the yellows : a yellow inlaid floor, a wicker chair, a 
 yellow dress, a gilt frame. All these objects, put side by side, 
 diflfei- in their light and their shade. Well, in modelling 
 them, we lay on our tone lighter or darker, according to 
 the value of the colors. The general tone of the light which 
 goes over the whole, not being of the same yellow, varies 
 verj' naturally the tone of the shade. Hence it results that 
 each shadow belongs perfectly to its own light. In oil-paint 
 ingg it is very difficult to hit upon these different tones. 
 
COLORED STUFFS. 63 
 
 Nothing is more essential, my dear Julia, than to make 
 studies of all these objects, one after the other, and to try 
 thus several blue tones, and several red tones. 
 
 But remember that yellow and green give greater variety 
 In the preparation of the shadows ; because they harmonize 
 with all the colors. Nature puts them almost everywhere. 
 The flon'crs are there to prov* it, and you will pardon my 
 reverting to it. 
 
 It is the flowers, too, that will give you a color that blends 
 with another, and at the same time is used in preparing it. 
 For instance, the deep violet and the light violet of the pansy 
 are prepared with burnt sienna; we iind precisely this tone 
 of burnt sienna in the middle of the flower. The combina- 
 tions of the flowers should be engraved upon the memory, 
 as drawing is. We should make studies, essays, in all the 
 colors and all the shades, so as to repeat them afterwards 
 from memory. It is a real pleasure, in modelling the flesh- 
 tints, to study all the scales of blue and gray, and then all 
 the scales of light that come over them, as well as the tones 
 of shadow and reflection. 
 
 I hope, my dear Julia, that, without hurrying yourself, 
 you will give youi-self up to all these exercises. Your imagi- 
 nation need not wait for color in order to compose. Make, in 
 the meanwhile, pictures in charcoal, or else wash them with 
 ivory-black, and then, afterwards, you will reproduce them in 
 water-colors. Give yourself up exclusively to color without 
 color, until you are perfectly mistress of your color and your 
 bru.sh. Tour first water-color will be a master-stroke, I as- 
 sure you of it, as I do of my friendship. M. fl. C. 
 
04 gate's MAlTOAl OF COLOB. 
 
 THIRTEENTH LETTER, 
 
 REMARKS — THE TOUCH — MOVEMENT AND FORM. 
 
 You pity me, my dear Julia, thinliing of tlie patience it 
 must liave cost me to write tlie preceding letters, and you 
 fear that I may not have the courage to bring my enterprise 
 to its close. You doubtless say to yourself, " When I have 
 to put a figure in shadow, one kind of lessons ; other lessons 
 for the hair, others still for the drapery, etc." Ctieer up. 
 Water-colors work miracles. They know how to transfer an 
 entire figure into shadow, in the twinkling of an eye, in a 
 way that astonishes even those who learn it ; a great advan- 
 tage that they have over oils. So, when we know how to 
 paint in water-colors, we can paint in oils ; whereas, when 
 we know how to paint in oils, we cannot paint in water- 
 colors. 
 
 As for the profession in one or the other kind of painting, 
 I do not think it anything great. Not to have any profession, 
 is itself something original. Without the profession, we ac- 
 quire a nilive touch that is peculiar to ourselves and that is 
 not spoiled by a certain amount of awkwardness, w^hen ac- 
 companied by feeling. I compare it to the awkwardness of 
 children, that is so charming. I do not condemn clever ma- 
 nipulations, but I wish it to come from the skill that is pe- 
 culiar to yourself In a word, I wish your painting to ba 
 
THE TOUCH. 63 
 
 yourself. "Sou paint skilfully, just as you eat skilfully. Ru- 
 bens could not do anything awkwardly. 
 
 If I insist upon my pupils painting their water-colora 
 from oil-paintings, and oil-paintings from water-colors, that 
 is to prevent their copying the touch, be it skilful or not, of 
 this or that master, which is often only special dexterity and 
 sagacity. Besides, it is an agreeable condition; and if it 
 does not afford any glory, it is lucrative. 
 
 But if you wish to succeed in composing, in creating for 
 yourself, knowledge must be acquired. Touch, technical 
 skill, style, are not knowledge. Rubens had knowledge. 
 You who have had, like myself, the good fortune to see all 
 his chefi-dcmvre at Antwerp, do you think that he did not 
 have it at the end of his brush when executing those sublime 
 compositions that seem to be the work of a day, so complete 
 and pervading is the harmony, so aptly has the action been 
 caught in the act? 
 
 Gros, his admirer, said one day to one of his pupils : 
 " You liave copied the model, but you have not copied 
 nature." That pupil, we may be sure, had not the knowl- 
 edge of form, without which we cannot express the move- 
 ment and action that are given by nature, and which the 
 model never gives. 
 
 Nature is man at liberty, moving without effort or manner- 
 Ism. The model is only a living manikin which you set in 
 motion and which always has, consequently, something false 
 and borrowed. 
 
 Every man is constructed for the movement that he can 
 take, or ratlier every man moves according to his physical 
 
6G caye's mah^ual of coloe. 
 
 organization. What one can do, anotlier cannot ; what ia 
 graceful in one is ungraceful in another. Here is a woman 
 witli a long neck, short waist, and long legs ; certainly she 
 has not the same movements as one with a short neck, long 
 waist, and short legs. It follows that one is supi^le, the other 
 stiflF. Here, a distingue look, elegance, style ; there, an ordi- 
 nary look, a vulgar nature. All these qualities, all these 
 defects are due to the form. This is so true that certain fine 
 ladies look like servants, and servants like fine ladies. 
 
 Movement follows form, even in children. Those who 
 have the same tournure as their parents, have the same man- 
 ners. I mean children who have been orphans from their 
 birth, and who, at fifteen or at thirty, have the same gestures 
 that their parents had at those ages. 
 
 Now you will understand perfectly the words of Gros : 
 " You have copied the mode], but you have not copied 
 nature." 
 
 Mature is everybody; the model is but one; it is not even 
 one, for it obeys a will from without, it is not itself. Nature 
 is the composition which starts from the memory of the 
 artist, and which his genius animates by adapting the move- 
 ment to the form. Nature it is that our old masters pos- 
 sessed so well. People have said that they had finer models 
 than we : it may be so ; but it is silly to think that it is be- 
 cause they liad fine models that they were great painters. 
 They were great painters because tliey had the knowledge 
 of nature. That is the source of the style that we admire in 
 their works. 
 
 Although Eubens has, in a remarkable manner, adapted 
 
MOVEMENT AND ITOKM. 6T 
 
 movement to form, nevertheless there are great artists who 
 say, in good faith, tliat Bubens is no painter by style. This 
 comes from their having derived their idea of style from 
 cerliiia master-pieces, instead of studying it in nature. 
 
 It is there alone that we find it. Phidias has taken it 
 from Greelc nature; Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo, from 
 Romau nature ; Paul Veronese, f?bm Venitian nature ; Pous- 
 sin, Lcsueur, Jean Goujon, from French nature ; and, I make 
 bold to say it, Rubens from Flemish nature. Is there any- 
 thing truer, more poetic, holier in its grief, than the Virgin 
 standing at the foot of the Gross, in the picture of the Cruci- 
 fixion, by this master ? Every mother weeps before this ma- 
 ternal sorrow ; just as she naturally and involuntarily 
 stretches out her arms to those beautiful infant Christs, pal- 
 pitating so with life and fresh beauty. It is poetry, people 
 say, not style. If itis not style, how could it be poetry? 
 
 Let us leave these discussions to the men, who think 
 themselves obliged to judge according to tradition, under 
 penalty of passing for ignoramuses. We women, who have 
 a right to be ignorant, let us judge by our own feeling, and 
 let us proclaim the good wherever wo find it. When God 
 has not willed tliat all beautiful natures should be alike, why 
 should people wish for similarity among all beautiful pic- 
 tures ? Why reduce to one solitary one all the works of 
 creation, so numerous, so diversified ? Why should not each 
 poet represent all of beauty that there is in every country 
 with the poetry that is his own ? And then, what an aberra- 
 tion of mind, when judging of works and classifying paint- 
 ers, to presume to give so much pre-eminence to form over 
 
68 CAvi's MANUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 color ! Form, good ; but after that ? Do you think that art 
 stops there? Interrogate the poets, then. WJien they have 
 bestowed upon their heroines regular and pleasing features, 
 a lissome and elegant form, they hasten to give them life, by 
 borrowing from the rich palette of nature those colors which 
 you despise. Behold them, animate with their rosy lips, 
 their ivory neck, their azure eyes, their golden or their raven 
 hair, their rose and lily complexion, and then say that form 
 is everything. 
 
 The utmost that I can conceive is the discussion of the 
 question, whether the drawing aids the color more, or the 
 color the drawing ; but I detest this senseless war of words 
 against facts. Let us enter boldly into the application of 
 drawing and of color. "We are creating a school of women. 
 The Greeks and the Komans have left no traditions to which 
 we are obliged to submit, and the doctors who lay down 
 rules with such comic pedantry have no authority over us. 
 We can look at the masters of art with our own eyes, com- 
 prehend them with our own intelligence, feel them with our 
 own soul, and then, enlightened and inspired by them, go on 
 in the way opened before us. We shall not do any 
 better than our rivals, perhaps, but we shall do something 
 different, especially if we remain women. We are nearer to 
 nature than they are : that is one advantage already. 
 
 Let us constantly seek of her our inspirations, as the 
 first masters have done. Let us take our harmonies from 
 among the flowers, the butterflies, the birds ; let us select 
 our eftects of light from among those which God has pro- 
 fusely scattered over the earth, and let us say, at every step • 
 
MOVEMENT AND FOEM. 69 
 
 "Every human creation has its source in a creation of 
 God's." Would you believe it, that all the Grecian, Gothic, 
 and Moorish designs, ai'e to be found in snow-crystals under 
 the magnifying-glass ? We shall find there wonders for 
 stuffs, vases, clocks, etc. Besides, in arranging pretty 
 toilettes, we shall succeed in finding harmonious composi- 
 tions for our pictures. , 
 
 Our habit of wearing colors will render us more skilful 
 in happily blending them. The old masters are perhaps in- 
 debted, in a measure, for their talent as colorists, to the colors 
 they were in the habit of wearing. Now-a-days the men 
 only change color in their opinions. I doubt very much 
 whether that will make them colorists. M. ^. C. 
 
70 oate's manual of coloe. 
 
 FOURTEENTH LETTER. 
 
 LESSON— PROJECTED SHADOWS — DISTANT HUES — SKIES- 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 In order to proceed regularly, my dear Julia, I am going 
 to speak to you about projected shadows and distant hues. 
 We must commence by studying a figure in its light, with 
 its background and its projected shadow, before passing to 
 figures in shadow. 
 
 Projected shadows should be in harmony with the object 
 on which they fall. On a yellow.inlaid floor they are pre- 
 pared with yellow ; on the grass, like green ; and so on. 
 You know how important it is that the shadow should 
 belong to the ground, and not to the figure. Otherwise, the 
 figure would be glued to the ground. Get your daughters to 
 notice, when a person is walking, that the color of his 
 shadow varies with that of the ground on which he walks. 
 
 Sometimes the projected shadow is reflected by the object 
 which gives the light. Then the reflection must be sought 
 for and applied accurately, either by picking out, or by pass- 
 ing a bright tone over a bold one. 
 
 When the background of a picture is so far off that we 
 no longer distinguish the color, for instance, when an open 
 door resembles the opening of a cellar, this dark tone U 
 made with cobalt blue and red brown or with indigo and 
 vermilion. These same tones are used for the dark back 
 
DISTANT HUES. "71 
 
 grounds of the landscape, because they are vigorous without 
 being blaclc, and are consequently airy, and stand back from 
 the foreground. 
 
 But remind your daughters that in painting, as in draw- 
 ing, they must hold a piece of black velvet between them- 
 selves and the nature that they seek to represent. They 
 will be more and more convinced that everything is blonde, 
 even the boldest tree-trunks that rise against the sky. Even 
 a black hat, as soon as it is in the shade, is bold ; but it is no 
 longer black. Black is only employed in the light of black. 
 Our pupils will observe this in the pictures of great colorists. 
 
 You know that the very distant mountains and trees in 
 the landscape are sometimes very blue; they are painted 
 with cobalt blue or ultramarine. If they are greenish blue, 
 we add a little Naples yellow; if they are greenish yellow, a 
 little yellow ochre or Italian earth. For the distant tones, 
 cobalt green may also be mixed with red brown, with good 
 success. Transparent colors do not suit the background of a 
 landscape. When the foliage of a tree in the foreground 
 stands out boldly against the sky, the contour is never crude 
 green, even in the light. So cobalt blue, yellow ochre, Na- 
 ples yellow, and Italian earth are preferable to brilliant yel- 
 lows and greens, which must be reserved for the foreground 
 of the tree. 
 
 With regard to those bold blue tones which we observe 
 in forests or on the horizon of the sea, they are prepared 
 with cobalt blue or indigo, adding, if necessary, red brown or 
 vermilion. Cobalt blue and red brown are necessary foi 
 ships and their rigging, that seem to us, at times, so black. 
 
72 cave's manual of color. 
 
 Indigo yields a green tliat gives greater distance than 
 mineral blue, when it is used with opaque yellows. 
 
 Impress upon your daughters that the tones I have indi- 
 cated for the background should adhere but slightly to the 
 paper ; this is indispensable. The reason is : if you have a 
 mountain in the background, it is modelled, that Is to say, it 
 has lights and shadows. Now, in backgrounds, the lights 
 have more distance by erasing than by preserving them. 
 
 The same is true for all the more distant tones. 
 
 Make, then, on your guard-paper, a study of the colors 
 that are readily erased. Skill, acquired experience, will bring 
 out a light such as you wish. It will then be of service to 
 repeat this exercise with united tones, by using the means I 
 have already explained for draperies. 
 
 One more thing worth knowing : to know how to take a 
 tone half out. To do this, stretch a corner of your handker- 
 chief over your finger, moisten it slightly with the tongue, 
 and tap it against the paper. 
 
 When our pupils have made a detailed study of all these 
 processes, they will put them in practice in copying the pic- 
 ture of some colorist. 
 
 I found them while copying in water-colors, in the Am- 
 sterdam museum, Rembrandt's picture, called the Night 
 Watch, a composition twenty feet large, which I reduced, of 
 coui-se. 
 
 Rembrandt makes the cliiaro-oscuro intelligible ; Rubens 
 the harmony of colors. A trip in Belgium and Holland is a 
 grand lesson in coloring, especially as one can copy there 
 these two masters. 
 
SKIES. 73 
 
 We must, then, my dear Julia, seek to find the means of 
 copying in water-colors one or two grand pictures by master 
 colorists. But we will speak of that hereafter, when the 
 time for k has come. 
 
 At present let us pass over to skies ; a weighty matter. 
 The most skilful water-colorists do them only in fear and 
 ti'embling. We must, with the same stroke of the brush, hit 
 both the form and the color. A sky retouched is a sky 
 spoiled. The white of the paper being reserved for the 
 clouds, the main point is to hit accurately the design of the 
 contour while making the ground of the sky, and the ground 
 should be free from spots. Tou see that the entire difficulty 
 lies in the execution. 
 
 Mary and Eliza will know how to draw skies from memory 
 when they begin to wash : you feel this in all its importance; 
 but you will notice what I have noticed in my pupils, that 
 they must, in washing the skies, acquire the habit of drawing 
 in an inverse sense. Thus, in their charcoal drawings, your 
 daughters bring out the white clouds from the black ground 
 by means of bread-crumb : this is the ordinary way of draw- 
 ing the object in the ground ; whereas, for skies, the ground 
 is drawn in the cloud by washing witli water-colors. An- 
 other habit that the eye has to learn. 
 
 With regard to the colors, they are made such as we see 
 them. Cobalt blue and ultramarine are preferable ; but we 
 can also use other blues without detriment, especially in 
 skies of a greenish blue. Ked, brown, or vermilion, mixed 
 with ivory-black or indigo, can also be used for the vanish 
 ing tones of skies. 
 
74 CAVB S MAWTJAi OF COLOK. 
 
 Let US re-descend to the earth, to study its beasts. Animals 
 generally have a white, black, yellow, or gray dress. I have 
 mentioned above how these four tones are prepared. 
 
 One great advantage of water-color is the ability to 
 model ■m entire animal with a single tone. Thus we catch 
 right off the light and the shade. The light is very close oa 
 animals with short hair, more open on animals with long 
 hair. Order j^ur daughters to model without troubling 
 themselves about the details of the hair. When they are fin- 
 ishing, they can take them out, or gouacheHhem in the neces- 
 sary places. 
 
 In saying the necessary places, I mean the striking places. 
 We must always bear in mind that the eye of the spectator 
 catches first the ensemble, and that it only goes into the in- 
 spection of the details when it is satisfied with the general 
 appearance. That is, of itself, a great eulogium on an artist, 
 to stand before his picture and say : " What a pity it is not 
 finished.' Do not people speak thus in the presence of a beau- 
 tiful unfinished construction ? They feel that the work has 
 been well conceived, and regret that the author has not been 
 able to finish it. The imagination of the spectator puts itself 
 in the position of the artist, so as to finish the picture or the 
 construction, and often it is more taken by it than by a fin- 
 ished work. This is why large sums have been lavished on 
 mere sketches. 
 
 But when a picture is incorrectly finished, that is to say, 
 when all the details are there without their masses, it is no 
 more regarded than is a heap of withered flowers. There is 
 everything in it ; there is nothing in it. M. 6. C. 
 
 * To put in a body color. 
 
EBMAKKS. 75 
 
 riFTEENTH LETTER 
 
 EBMAEKS— HOW TO PLACE A FIGUEK IN THE SHADOW— HAIB 
 AND WIG— LOVE AND FEIENDSHIP. 
 
 " Your daughters' work does not resemble faded flowers. 
 Already you find that it has form and style. An English en- 
 graver has told you that he could make charming engravings 
 from some of their designs.'' In sending me this, my dear 
 Julia, you bestow upon me an eulogium of which I have the 
 right to be as proud as your daughters are. Under my 
 method of instruction, the first essays are masterly efforts. 
 So I am going to open course after course for the propagation 
 of this simple idea. I experience so much pleasure in 
 seeing my pupils do what I should not do. The mother who 
 sees her son develop and become a handsome and intelligent 
 cavalier is not happier. She gazes upon him and listens to 
 him with admiration. Sueh is the picture of j'ou, of me, In 
 the presence of your daughters. I do you the honor of not 
 doubting it. 
 
 Water-colors cannot but increase your pleasure. They 
 proceed, too, by masses. You must have noticed that the 
 drawings and water-colors of a scholar do not excel in this 
 respect — very naturally ; one must be very skilful in order 
 to finish the details without altering the masses. Hitherto 
 pupils have always begun by finishing their drawings by 
 hatching, and their- first water-colors by stiijpling. Bo they 
 
76 CAV:fc's MANUAL OF COLOR. 
 
 Bay, when they have become men : " I could draw when I 
 was young : I made magnificent heads ; but at present I 
 could not draw a straight line." Such ones have never 
 learned to draw. That is a linowledge which is never for- 
 gotten ; on the contrary, we progress without worliing ; be- 
 cause, although the hand is at rest the mind is not. But 
 when we have copied and shaded a great lumbering head by 
 hatching, as the practice is still kept up to-day in many stu- 
 dios, we may be sure that we do not know any more than we 
 did at first. 
 
 The science of drawing and painting is so neglected or 
 rather so badly understood in our days, that there are artists 
 who have worked for ten years without knowing how to put 
 a figure in the shadow in the background of a picture. Out- 
 sid« of their foreground we perceive something misty, fajitas- 
 tical ; but living beings, never. If they had commenced with 
 water-colors, like your daughters, they would boldly plant a 
 drawn, accentuated, colored figure in the shadow or in the 
 half-tint, as Paul Veronese has done, and this figure would be 
 alive, in its right place, not too far forward nor too far back. 
 
 Do you remember that at boarding-school we were never 
 satisfied with the pictures that they gave us to copy, and 
 were always saying: " How shall we work from nature?" 
 If at this period I had discovered tracing, that Infallible 
 teache'r which I give to my pupils, what master-pieces we 
 should have executed in the very teeth of our masters, and 
 in spite of them ! Yes, master-pieces, I venture to say. 
 
 And if I had had this simple process that I am finally 
 going to reveal to you, which immediately transfers any fig- 
 
HOW TO PLACE A FIGUEE IN SHADOW. 11 
 
 urc or object whatever to the shadow or half-tint, we should 
 have made a resolution. 
 
 The process, here it is : 
 
 Begin by drawing the whole composition. Then pass a 
 general gray tone over everything that you wish to put in the 
 shadow or the halt-tint. This tone will be more or less dark, 
 according as the shadow or the half- tint that you wish to ob- 
 tain is more or less vigorous. Then paint on the gray paper 
 as though it were while, and the tones which would other- 
 wise be tones of light become tones of shadow or half-tint. 
 Do you understand me ? On gray paper you make blondes, 
 brunettes, negroes, with the colors that you would use on 
 white paper, and you find, to your surprise, those tones of 
 shadow and half-tint which characterize the great colorists. 
 I am indebted for this process to the various attempts that I 
 m;vli! in copying their works in water-color. 
 
 Try to reverse the process. Pass the gray tone over the 
 color. You will get only a bungling performance and muddy 
 colors. 
 
 To find tlie tone of the shadow and the half-tint; 
 
 To find the shadow and the half-tint in the shadow itself; 
 
 To model in the shadow and the half-lint: 
 
 These are the three great difficulties of painting. 
 
 My simple process solves them all. 
 
 If you isolate from the other figures the one thus executed 
 in tlie shadow, if you look at it carefully for some time, you 
 will find in it the little blue tones of the light and the tones 
 of reflection so perfectly, that you will think it has become 
 luminous. It will not return to the shadow until you have 
 
78 cave's manual of coi-ok. 
 
 compared it with Hie figures placed in the light. In reced 
 ing, it has nothing misty or fantastic. It preserves its life, 
 just as in nature ; we cannot say that it does not exist. 
 
 A painter was one day exhibiting with pride to a rich 
 London amateur a head of light hair perfectly executed. 
 " 0, yes, it is hair," said the Englishman ; " but it's a wig." 
 There was no life in it. 
 
 To give life to what we portray, that, my dear Julia, is 
 the object of painting. lu this Rubens excels : this it is that 
 has given him the name of master of masters. Does he 
 owe this eminent 'quality to his genius alone ? Does he not 
 also owe it to his profound knowledge of nature, that nature 
 which he had before his eyes in northern countries, where we 
 see the blood circulating under the cuticle : where the life is, 
 so to speak, laid bare ? He found in his own family, in the 
 transparent-fleshed young girls who surrounded him, those 
 types for all ages, so often reproduced and so much admired, 
 the Venuses, the Helens, the Ledas, the Ceres, the Floras, in 
 short, all the blonde goddesses of heathendom, even to the 
 Virgin of the Christians, also blonde, with the blooming 
 cheeks and the red lips of your daughters. And his genius 
 has made them live again on the canvas. 
 
 Believe me, all the great painters have wished to excel in 
 color. Those who were less of colorists than their rivals re- 
 gretted it. When Titian exhibited his Venuses, he prevented 
 Raphael from sleeping. More keenly than any one else did 
 Raphael feel the admiration that they must inspire. So great 
 in fact, is the magic power of the brush that created them, 
 that amateurs have remained for years in Florence solely 'ol 
 
LOVE AJSTD FRIENDSHIP. 79 
 
 tlie pleasure of going every day to contemplate tliem and to 
 admire the most marvellous harmony of beautiful forms and 
 beautiful colors. I have never seen anything more beautiful. 
 It is the apogee of art. 
 
 You must laugh at me, my dear Julia, noticing that when- 
 ever I speak of a master-piece I always say: " I have nevei 
 seen anything more besiutiful." This exclamation has es- 
 caped from me, by turns, in the presence of a Rubens, a Paul 
 Veronese, a Raphael, a Poussin. To-day, it is Titian to whom 
 I render this homage. It seems that in the presence of beau- 
 tiful pictures I am lilce our gentlemen in the presence of 
 beautiful women : the last is always in the right. 
 
 However, as to myself, there are only two ways of liking 
 cIiefs-cTwuiyre. I love some with a real love, I like others in 
 the way of friendship. 
 
 Those that I love, I loved them without after- thought, at 
 first sight, struck by that ravishing splendor which is irresisti- 
 ble. As to the others, those that have my friendship, it was 
 by seeing them frequently, by studying them, that I appre- 
 ciated them and became attached to them. Amateurs of 
 painting will understand me. I do not doubt but that they 
 h.ave, unconsciously, experienced the same emotions in the 
 presence of so many master-pieces, the constant objects of 
 their adoration. 
 
 After this I expect to see your daughters analyzing their 
 feelings, to find out whether they love or like a picture. 
 Their observations will perhaps amuse yon as much as tha 
 anxiety of Margaret, who is afraid she loves her young oousir 
 because she always sneezts when he comes. M. ti. C. 
 
80 cave's MAlfUAL OF COLOK. 
 
 SIXTEENTH LETTER 
 
 LESSON-COPYING A PICTUKB-OOMPOSING A PICTtTEE. 
 
 In order to copy a picture in water-colors, my dear Julia, 
 you must proceed with method, and never he in haste. Take 
 a tracing of the picture, if the water-color is to be of the 
 same size ; and if you wish to reduce it, trace it precisely as 
 though drawing it from nature. That must be your first 
 care.* It is important to make a careful study of the draw- 
 ing on ordinary paper, first, in order to transfer it to wash- 
 paper without mistakes. It is transferred simply by tracing 
 through a window-pane, or by red paper put between the 
 trace-copy and the white paper. 
 
 Unless a bore should come in, you will have to stretch 
 your drawing yourself on the board. 
 
 You then pass a general tone of yellow ochre over the 
 whole paper, in order to give it a yellow-white tone. 
 
 While studying with your daughters the picture that they 
 are going to copy, you will make them notice all the parts 
 that are in the half-tint, figures, furniture, ground. As soon 
 as the yellow tint is perfectly dry, they wlU cover with a 
 tone of ivory-black, in their drawing, all that is in the half 
 tint in the original. Do you see how necessary our charcoal- 
 drawing is, how it facilitates what I now ask? 
 
 * See '* Cavfi on Drawing," eighth letter. 
 
COPYING A PICTTJEE. 81 
 
 One matter well settled. 
 
 The paper remains intact wherever we find the luminous 
 parts of the drawing ; all the rest is covered with a gray half- 
 tint. 
 
 They will begin by painting those persons or objects of 
 the picture that have the most light, the parts which fix the 
 attention, and then continue copying until done, always 
 taking up the lighter points before the bolder ones, in order 
 to preserve the proper value of the effects of the light. 
 Where there are some parts bolder than others, they are 
 treated with a second gray tint, but, in every case, before the 
 color is put on. 
 
 Your daughters will certainly make blunders ; they will 
 make the tones too light or too dark ; but that is a matter of 
 practice. Their very mistakes will teach them. I can only 
 tell them in the words of the gospel : " Seek and you shall 
 find, if you follow my teachings." 
 
 The copies should be repeated from memory, after the 
 manner of a sketch. It is also good to make sketches from 
 the pictures of the great oolorists, and reproduce them from 
 memory. These exercises will accustom the eye to find the 
 correct tones and harmonize them. 
 
 From copied compositions we pass to compositions from 
 nature. 
 
 Our pupils will compose from memory, in order to give 
 the correct movement and expression. Quite naturally they 
 will adapt the movement to the form, because the recollec- 
 tion of nature caught in the act will come to the end of theii 
 charcoal ; for it is with charcoal that we compose. 
 4» 
 
82 cave's makual of color. 
 
 The composition beiug settled, they will take up tha 
 model in order to study tlie details. Tlie choice of models is 
 not a matter of indifference. They should be of the same 
 kind as the figures we have drawn. If they are short while 
 the figures are long, thin, and the figures are stout, how shall 
 we ever arrive at the ensemble, at truthfulness ? They give 
 the detail of the form. 
 
 They do not give the movement, which, if taken from 
 them, is always stiff and false. The painter himself must 
 perform the action of his picture, or he will give only a pup- 
 pet show. If he cannot compose without the help of his 
 models, he is no painter. The pupil who has learned to draw 
 from memory knows more about it than he does. What 
 cliaracterizes the works of the masters is their power in the 
 presence of nature. We see that they are her masters. They 
 find shapes, attitudes, that one woman in a thousand can 
 offer. With them, the model is only a slave wearing drapery. 
 What can we expect from painters who demand every- 
 thing of their models, both the composition of their draw- 
 ing and the movement of their figures? Nothing. They 
 tremble at the sight of nature, whom they have never 
 studied, whom they know not ; as an inexperienced orator 
 trembles before the public, because he does not possess the 
 faculty of remembering language. Both of them hem and 
 haw. 
 
 It is unnecessary to repeat here whnt I have already said 
 about composition in the fifteenth letter on Drawing. 
 
 Wlien your daughters are satisfied with the ensemble and 
 the details of their drawing, they will trace off their compo 
 
COMPOSING A PICTUEE. 83 
 
 sition on wash-paper, stretch it, and pass over it the yellow 
 ocUre tint. 
 
 Then they will return to their drawing, in order to study 
 out the effect by means of charcoal. When they have caught 
 it, they will pass to the harmony of the tones. 
 
 To find this harmony, they must make a sketch. 
 
 The sketch is the composition reduced to the tenth, the 
 twentieth part of the picture. 
 
 Over this reduced composition your daughters will pass 
 the efifeot by means of a gray tone of ivory-black. They will 
 obtain this effect from the drawing that they made in char- 
 coal. 
 
 The eluaro-oacuro of the sketch being determined, they 
 will make their selections among all the pretty toilettes of 
 which the flowers and the butterflies offer so many models, 
 and will dress their composition as they would a single 
 person. 
 
 They will notice that the great masters have always 
 painted a white stuff between the skin and the colored stuffs. 
 
 They will not forget that there are tones which stand out 
 and tones which stand back of themselves. Thus, where 
 they wish to obtain brilliant lights, they know that yellow, 
 orange, red, and pink are the colors that stand out most with 
 white. They know that very bold black has also the power 
 to take possession of the foreground. Their studies in the 
 harmony of opposites in the flowers will be of great help to 
 them, without their suspecting it. In a word, they will dress 
 their composition as they dress themselves, with art and good 
 taste. 
 
84 cave's makual or coloe. 
 
 Nearly all painters are in the liabit of making their sketch 
 very small, in order to take in the ensemble at a glance ; this 
 is an excellent rule, and I have always been astonished that 
 the idea of making pupils begin by drawing from small 
 models has not occurred to all the professors, as it has to our 
 great artist, M. Ingres. In fact, by practicing at first with 
 small proioortions, we acquire the knowledge of masses be- 
 fore that of details, we catch more quickly the fittings and 
 jointings, that is to say, we know how to put a hand on an 
 arm, to put au eye in its place, before studying the hand and 
 the eye separately in all their details. "What an odd idea, to 
 teach a pupil how to draw an eye, a nose; a mouth, detached 
 from the head 1 Why not also make them draw the nails by 
 themselves? 
 
 Gifted artists, who have begun by drawing from memory, 
 work at first on a very small scale. Hence their aptitude in 
 catching the ensemble of persons, animals, all that they see. 
 In the presence of nature, as soon as they wish to make a de- 
 tailed study of it in large proportions, they are able, at the 
 first stroke, to place a figure in the desired movement. 
 
 Small proportions force us to bring out only what is 
 essential. We cannot, in a little bit of a figure, express all 
 that we see. We limit ourselves, therefore, to the choice of 
 that which characterizes the form, even exaggerating it to 
 make ourselves understood. Look at the little chefsS(X.uwe 
 engraved on antique gems ; as soon as we enlarge them by 
 the Rouillet process, they acquire a most extraordinary bold- 
 ness of form and expression. The admirable engravers 
 whose names they have handed down to us, liad caught all 
 
COMPOSING A PICTUEB. 85 
 
 the difBculties of the reduction ; they knew how to tint pre- 
 cisely the essential points ; for instance, out of three folds to 
 preserve that one which reveals the form, to take that wrin- 
 kle which characterizes the physiognomy, etc. We can copy 
 a large figure stupidly ; a small one, never. 
 
 So we find in the croquw, in the sketches of the great mas- 
 ters, all their spirit and all their fire. Their pictures always 
 seem colder. We see that by euBirging their figures they 
 have tamed down what I shall call the expression of form. 
 
 The expression of form is given only by memory ; it la 
 feeling expressed by movement, gesture, and physiognomy. 
 
 M. t. C. 
 
8C cavb's manual of color. 
 
 SEYENTEENTH LETTER 
 
 EBMAEKS— ON THE HAEMOITT OF COLORS m COMPOSITION 
 —THE SKETCH. 
 
 TouB daughters having ah-eady produced effects so 
 piquant that an engraver finds them worthy of his tools, I 
 sliall not, my dear Julia, recommend to them a fresh perusal 
 of my letter on composition, in the letters on Drawing. 
 That would be to insult them. 
 
 They have now reached the most difficult part of the art 
 of painting; and. Indeed, had they not carried out my in- 
 structions in every respect, I should fear that they might 
 recoil before the impossible. Fortunately, I have not got to 
 tliat extremity, and I write my thirty-second letter in confi- 
 dent assurance. 
 
 Thirty-two letters on the art of drawing and painting 
 would be a great deal to read in a day, but nothing to study 
 in two or three years. In expounding my doctrines, I have 
 been concise; for the pupil that is bored learns nothing. 
 But in sending you these letters at pretty long intervals, I 
 have probably indicated that I did not intend to be read at 
 one breath. In fact, it is only by practice that you will uu- 
 dci-stand me perfectly, unless you are already an artist. 
 
 The art of drawing and the art of painting require that 
 the hand should be the accurate expression of the thought. 
 We must then acquire an execution, an address, which the 
 
riAEMONY OF COLORS IN COMPOSITION. 87 
 
 art of writing does not require ; physical effort must be ' 
 joincil to iutellectual, we must become sliilful not only with 
 our minds, but with our hands. 
 
 JI. Eugfine Delacroix' has said, on speaking of the letters 
 on Drawing: " I sliall not go to law with writers who, with- 
 out being thoroughly acquainted with painting, or ever 
 witliout having practiced its rudiments, write upon the art, 
 and give complacent advice to artisffi." 
 
 Why should not those same writers also give to physi- 
 cians and surgeons complacent advice on the art of healing 
 ■ and operating ? They would have just as much right. For- 
 tunately, the witty raillery of M. Delacroix is not applicable 
 to all. We have read some articles on painting which will 
 always remain master-pieces of acuteness and judgment. 
 But, nota bene, the litterateurs who wrote them lived with 
 painters, and used their fools, enough, at least, to know the 
 danger of handling them without practice and study. 
 
 Practice and experience, study and observation, that is 
 what my lessons must have given to your daughters, and that 
 is what tliey will need to-day in order to go boldly to the 
 attack of the sketch. 
 
 Tlie sketch of a composition — is the picture. 
 
 The picture should excel the sketch only in the superiority 
 of the details. Into the sketch the painter throws his spirit, 
 his soul, and his heart. Into the picture he puts all his 
 knowledge, his patient and devoted work, that is to say, his 
 firm resolve to submit to his sketch. The sketch is made 
 con amore ; the picture, with that calmer and more lasting 
 sentiment which I shall call friendship. The sketch is the 
 
88 cave's man^ual of coloe. 
 
 work of a day or an hour ; the picture is the work of a year 
 or of several months. Do you appreciate all the force of 
 will that is needed to execute in a year what has been con- 
 ceived in a day ? 
 
 So, my dear Julia, a great artist has said : " Tears are 
 needed before succeeding in putting into one's picture all that 
 there is in one's sketch." 
 
 Inspiration is fleeting. To sustain ourselves for a long 
 while at the pitch of inspiration is to make a fire by the cold 
 process, so to speak. We need for it that iron courage which 
 men claim to be their privilege, and which is only met with 
 in such of them as are in a measure women. 
 
 In saying to you, my dear Julia, that the sketch was the 
 work of a daj^ or an hour, I meant its execution on paper or 
 on canvas, as a thought. But we must reflect upon it a long 
 while, before making the first line. There are some sketches 
 that I have thought over whole years : and how many will 
 remain mere proj ects ! I let all my ideas germinate and ripen 
 in my head, and it is ouly when I see them, with my mind's 
 eye, complete and finished, that I decide upon realizing them 
 on paper. And then they drop from my brush as ripe fruit 
 falls from the tree. 
 
 And it should be thus, in order that the imagination may 
 be otherwise employed, not coming every moment to hinder 
 the execution of pictm'es by suggesting now this variation, 
 now that. Ever since my debut in art, I have succeeded in 
 securing a great resemblance between my sketch and my 
 picture. Artists, admiring my sang-froid, have often said to 
 me : " How is it that you contrive to make no change in youi 
 
HARMONY OF COLORS IS COMPOSITION. 89 
 
 fii-st idea ? " I compose, in pelto, pendants to the picture tlial 
 I am executing. In tliis way I can sit before it calm and 
 cold. 
 
 The sketch is the worli of observation in drawing and 
 colors, preserved in the memory for the use of the imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 All the parts of a picture reflect one another. Your 
 daughters have noticed, I am sure, that when they pass from 
 one room to another, their complexion changes at times ; that 
 they are prettier in certain places ; that their toilette shows 
 to more advantage in one parlor than another. The whole 
 science of color lies in this observation, that persons reflect 
 their surroundings. Hence, the harmony which prevails be- 
 tween them. This is what I called upon you to admire in 
 Watteau, when I said to you : " The figures belong so com- 
 pletely to the trees, and the trees to the figures, that we see 
 that they breathe the same air." Paul Veronese, beneath 
 those brilliant porticos, possesses, in an eminent degree, this 
 quality of atmosphere. The one formed his impressions 
 while following with his eyes, his personages frolicking in 
 the gardens of le Noire ; the other, while watching the forma- 
 tion of groups under the magnificent colonnades of the pal- 
 ace. We feel that their figures never came to them isolated 
 from their background, and that they have seen, in all their 
 entirety, the scenes that their genius has reproduced. 
 
 The grand dispute between colorists and drawers may bo 
 settled thus : the former see erne corner of nature completely, 
 in its ensemble, with its lines, its color, its atmosphere, and 
 out of the whole they make a poem. The latter see only 
 
90 cave's manual of color. 
 
 some beautiful lines here for their figures, other beautiful lines 
 there for their landscape, and out of these beautiful scattered 
 debris they try to make a whole. But nature comes to claim 
 her rights, and says : " You only put asunder what I have 
 united." She desires to have her pictures remain as she has 
 made them, because she alone linows how to make them, 
 and knows that those which are made without her have not 
 anything of her. Her variety is infinite, but her laws are the 
 same everywhere and in all ages. The scenes, of ancient his- 
 tory reappear to us in modern history. It was while seeing 
 a great worldly festival that Paul Veronese imagined the 
 " Wedding in Caua.'' It was in the presence of the beautiful 
 Eoman women suckling their infants, that Raphael composed 
 his admirable Virgins. 
 
 After all, the subject is of so little importance to posterity, 
 that artists, genuine amateurs, never trouble themselves about 
 it. The action is given well or badly, the sentiment ex- 
 pressed well or badly, the picture is fine or it is ugly. A 
 painter is not a historian ; we have books for our instruction. 
 A beautiful picture is like a beautiful woman : we do not ask 
 her name or her address, to determine whether she is beauti- 
 ful. 
 
 To return to our subject. To commence by drawing and 
 grouping figures on white paper, without at the same time 
 making the background on whicli they are to stand out and 
 live, is to commit an absurdity, is to build in the air. Has 
 God commenced by creating man and the animals before 
 creating the earth ? The background is to the figures in a 
 picture what the earth is to man : they cannot be Isolated 
 
HARMONr OF COLOES IN COMPOSITION. 91 
 
 one from the other. Do your friends ever appear to you in 
 empty space ? "When you think of them, you always picture 
 them to yourself as being in some place or other, engaged in 
 some act or other ; thus it is that the figures of a picture 
 should present themselves to your daughters. This memory 
 I have trained in them has opened their eyes, doubtless 
 without their being aware of it, to the relations of all objects 
 to one another. The color of harmony, the color of reflec- 
 tion, will be sure to strike them, in consequence of the habit 
 I have taught them of composing the figures in front of the 
 background, instead of composing the background behind 
 the figures. In this way they have attained, in the most 
 natural manner, the science of sketching, the object of our 
 studies, the one that I have had in view ever since my first 
 lesson, and towards which I have constantly conducted them 
 step by step. 
 
 I said, in my last lesson, that they ought to dress their 
 sketches with art and good taste, as they dress themselves. 
 I should have said, as you dress them, you, who could give 
 every mother lessons on the art of dressing her children 
 gracefully, without overloading them with useless trinkets 
 that give them the appearance of learned poodles. How 
 many painters fall into this error, through trying to embellish 
 their sketches I They make a cheap jewelry shop of them, 
 that bears no resemblance to anything. Let us urge them to 
 greater simplicity; but let us be lenient to them, for the 
 sketch is the artist's well-beloved daughter. He creates it 
 with passion, he adorns it with tenderness, as a mother orna- 
 ments her daughter when she expects the young man for 
 
92 CAvil's MANUAL, OF COLOR. 
 
 whom she has destined her. The painter's sketch has a 
 somewhat similar destination: it awaits the amateur. 
 
 Since I am initiating you into the mysteries of painting, 
 I cannot refrain from telling you what an amateur is. I have 
 -been assured that, since the fortunate February revolution, 
 there are scarcely any more of them to be seen, and that per- 
 haps the species will become extinct. That would be a pity. 
 
 An amateur is not a great lord rolling in wealth because 
 his ancestors deserved to be hung, who, through vanity, scat- 
 ters his money among artists in order to purchase the title of 
 protector of the arts ; not the habitue of the Stock Exchange, 
 who, when stocks are rising, gets up a museum, only to sell 
 it in the rue des jeuneurs when the market falls. No, those 
 fellows are easily recognized : they enter the artist's studio 
 making a great fuss, higgl e over everything, even to the frames, 
 and pay liberally but insolently. With reluctance does the 
 artist deliver up his works to them. But who is that man, 
 hitherto unobserved, who has got into the studio, no one 
 knows how or when, and who seems to be at home? An 
 amateur. He does not visit every painter. There are only 
 three or four whom he fancies, and whose works he seeks 
 after, either at their studios or at sales. With what scruti- 
 nizing attention does he let his eye wander from the finished 
 picture to tie picture begun, from the picture begun to the 
 sketch ! What joy he feels at meeting with a successful first 
 eroquis ! It is a God-send. " Do not ftut another touch to 
 it," he says to the painter ; " you would only spoil it." And he 
 takes possession of it, in consideration of a few gold pieces 
 that the artist does not count, and he hastens to hang it up in 
 
THE SKETCH, 93 
 
 his cabin :t, taking great pains to put it in a good light, and 
 so tliat it will harmonize with the other mai-vels that sur- 
 round it : for on no account whatever would he sacrifice one 
 of them to another. He loves them all with the affection of 
 a father or a lover. Since we are admitted into the sanctuary, 
 let us cast our eyes about us. No luxury ; only a few obj ects of 
 antiquity, or some old tapestry, that merely serve to give re- 
 lief to the objects of his worship. How neat and well arranged 
 everything is! Are you astonished, then, that the amateur's 
 wife should be jealous of his collection ? Are you astonished 
 that he should rise from his lunch precipitately about one 
 o'clock, in a panic lest the servant might not have closed a 
 shutter and the sun should come in and devour one of hia 
 little cliefs-d'cBuoref He will console himself by admiring 
 their beauties once more : that is his happiness. And while 
 we are here, let us be careful not to evince any too great com 
 posure, to speak of things outside, or to see any defects. He 
 would hold us in sovereign contempt, and his doors would be 
 shut on us for ever. The poorer he Is, the greater the sacri- 
 fices he has made to gratify his passion. Let us not disturb 
 his delight : all passion is ferocious. 
 
 He would not have this sensitiveness towards the painter. 
 Between them there is an inexplicable bond of union. De- 
 fine, if you can, this iiTcsistible feeling which causes one man 
 to attach himself to another, to give an almost exclusive 
 preference to his works, to pass entire hours in watching him 
 at work, following with his eye every movement of his brush, 
 and holding his breath so as not to disturb him. If the artist 
 were to permit it, the amateur would follow him like hia 
 
94 cave's majs^ual of color. 
 
 shadow, and end by making himself a sharer in all his happj 
 or unhappy emotions. 
 
 I understand perfectly the pleasure that one who is not 
 an amateur finds in watching a man of talent work. We are 
 present at an act of creation. It is a beautiful dream that we 
 pass through wide awake. Louis Philippe often indulged in 
 this pastime, but not in silence. He was fond of giving ad- 
 vice to the artists, readily sacrificing the pictm-esque part of a 
 picture to historical accuracy. 
 
 People know that the Emperor of Bussia takes great de- 
 light in seeing Horace Vernet work. 
 
 But there is one thing that they do not know ; would 
 Horace Vernet have given his talent to be Emperor of Rus- 
 sia or King of the French ? Would the Emperor of Russia 
 or Louis Philippe have exchanged their crown for the talent 
 of Horace Vernet? 
 
 This much is sure, that Horace Vernet has experienced 
 more pleasure and less ennui, that his kingdom is secure 
 from revolutions and the ingratitude of nations. Happy 
 privilege of the arts ! Nor is this the only one. However 
 great Alexander and Erancis I. may have been, they have 
 left fewer souvenirs than Raphael and Titian ; and if we go 
 back still further, what are the heroes of the Iliad along-side 
 of him who has sung them ? M. ^. 0. 
 
 P. S. — I have made you fully recognize all the difficulty 
 there is in reducing the tones of the models who sit in your 
 studio to the tones that you have given them in your sketch, 
 but I have forgotten to teach you the means of overcoming 
 
THE SKETCH. 99 
 
 this difficulty. An instance. If you have an operi-air bacli- 
 ground, it is impossible for the walls of your studio to pro 
 duce on your model all the reflections from the sliy acd the 
 trees that must be cut upon your figures, and wliioh your 
 daughters have noticed in their sketch. Here if the rule. 
 Talie pieces of white, yellow, green, and other satin, and ar- 
 range them so as to reflect your model in the tones of the 
 sketch. By this process I have always obtained all the 
 tones that I found in nature. 
 
96 cave's manual op color. 
 
 EIGHTEEKTH LETTER 
 
 PAINTING IN OILS. 
 
 Let us begin, my dear Julia, by saying that colors lu tubes 
 are more convenient tlian colors in bladders. 
 
 The principal colors are the same as those in water-colors, 
 and they must be well studied and known Defore any new 
 ones are added. 
 
 You see Mary has made herself quite familiar with all the 
 tones, by making water-colors from oil-paintinga. 
 
 I shall now say to her : Make your studies in oils from 
 water-colors, in order to understand well the tones and their 
 yalue in the shadow. 
 
 But, in the next place, Mary must devote her entire intel- 
 ligence, her entire skill, to one or the other of the two meth- 
 ods of painting ; let her consider well which of the two is 
 more in accordance with her taste. I shall always say to 
 young girls who are intending to marry: Select water-colors, 
 because you will never give them up, because they are 
 cleanly work, because you cau paint an hour, a half-hour. 
 The palette is always ready, and does not dry, while oil- 
 painting calls for at least three hours without interruption, 
 and the palette, when once changed, is lost unless used. 
 
 I repeat : if you wish to have a genuine talent, take your 
 choice, do not seek to excel in both ; it is too difficult to be 
 
PAINTING IN OILS. 97 
 
 incessantly claanging one's palette, one's brush, consequently 
 one's way of painting. But remember, if you adopt oil- 
 painting, that you must always continue to make your 
 sketches in water-colors, in order to have a free and decidea 
 chiaro-oacuro. 
 
 However, it is needless to say this to Mary ; a conscientious 
 pupil of my method, the contrary will never occur to her. 
 A.S soon as she has understood the art of making a picture in 
 charcoal, the art of reproducing it in color without changing 
 the cMaro-oscuro, without altering the arrangement of the 
 light, she is born with the sense of composition and color, 
 she will become a painter, I have no doubt of it. 
 
 I shall only say to her that there is nothing more useful, 
 when one wishes to attain to genuine talent as a water-color- 
 ist, than to make rough draughts in oils. 
 
 I am going to give her, then, the first principles of the 
 method of painting in oils ; with these principles, she will 
 make draughts only, if she decides upon being a water-color- 
 ist. If, on the contrary, she wishes to make oil-painting a 
 serious study, she can, with this method, perfect it, to her 
 heart's content ; but, by devoting all her time, all her skill, 
 and all her intelligence. 
 
 A draught is not a draught because it is done quickly ; 
 at that rate, the greater part of the Velasquez, the Rubenses, 
 the Paul Veroneses, and even the Raphaels would be 
 draughts. 
 
 My profile, made by M. Ingres, would be a draught ; he 
 made it in an hour, and, nevertheless, it is one of his master- 
 pieces. 
 
 5 
 
98 CAVil's IWAXTJAX OF COLOE. 
 
 Time counts for nothing in a work, there must be knowl- 
 edge and inspiration. 
 
 Tou must work seriously, then, not straying continually 
 from oil-painting to water-colors, otherwise you will make 
 nothing but sketches; finish, skill, are acquired only by 
 means of a continuous succession of experiments in the same 
 direction, upon the same thing. 
 
 This being settled, let us return to oil-painting ; I say to 
 Mary, then : 
 
 You must choose canvas that is fine-grained but primed 
 dull , not shining. 
 
 On this canvas you will draw in ink what you wish to 
 paint. 
 
 In order to paint, you must buy hair-pencils and brushes ; 
 the pencil pointed and flat, the brushes pointed and flat, two 
 or three blender brushes ; different sizes of each. 
 
 In order to accustom yourself to the brushes and oil-color, 
 you will first paint a head in monochrome eamaieu. As I 
 have accustomed you to 'vashing-in a single tone, so you 
 must accustom yourself to impasting in a single tone. Tou 
 must get the knack of the easel and the maul-stick. For the 
 canvas is placed right before you on your easel, and you lean 
 upon the maul-stick to steady yourself. By occasionally 
 putting the end of the maul-stick on the canvas or the easel, 
 you can spare yourself some fatigue. To take one's position 
 well is itself a study, but a study that experience only can 
 give ; so also the handling of the brushes, the appropriate 
 selection of them according to one's native skill, is a study 
 and an experience. 
 
PAINTING IN OILS. 99 
 
 Do I need to tell you that, in order to draw the lines, you 
 must take a pointed brush ; to model, a flat brugh ? 
 
 Tour lines having been drawn in ink, yon will pass over 
 the whole canvas burnt sienna mixed with fatty oil ; for it is 
 difficult to learn to model upon white canvas. 
 
 This preparation well dried, you make your monochrome 
 tones from an engraved head, or a plaster model ; the half- 
 tint, the shadow of reflection, and the shadow of projection, 
 and the pure white for the light. 
 
 Witli these four tones you can learn to model by painting 
 
 You set about it in the manner I am going to tell you: 
 
 You pass the tone of the half-tint over the whole figure, 
 laying it on lightly where there are lines. 
 
 You take the lightest shadow-tone and you go to work on 
 the masses of shadow ; you next tuke the white and go to 
 work on the light, leaving the half-tint where it is to remain. 
 
 You draw your lines in the paste. But the difficulty lies 
 in uniting all this together, with a flat brush, preserving the 
 direction of the drawing and the modelling. 
 
 When, in your modelling, you -have joined the light with 
 the half-tint, you go over your bright lights with pure white, 
 and you soften this light again, on the edges, with your flat 
 brush. 
 
 In the same way you restore vigor to the shadows that 
 you have weakened while modelling ; and finally, at the very 
 last, you put your bold shadows under the nose, in the corner 
 of the nose and the eye. 
 
 You then put all the half-tint on the hair, you fix your 
 light correctly, and you go to work on the shadows- 
 
100 cave's manual of qOLOK. 
 
 You see, my dear Mary, that the study of shadow, half 
 tint, and light that you have made, first with the charcoal, 
 secondly by washing, are now becoming most invaluable to 
 you. 
 
 You know how to model. This is for you only a change 
 of material. It is only your skill that you have to exercise. 
 
 In a word, you know the art of modelling ; you must 
 practice yourself in expressing your thought by a new handi- 
 craft. 
 
 I leave you, then, to handle your oil-color in monochrome, 
 before speaking to you of color. 
 
 You must have seen by the difference In process that I 
 have made between the hair and the figure, that it would 
 answer equally well to put the lights first on the half-tint, or 
 else to commence by attacking the shadows. 
 
 In beginning with the light, you follow altogether the plan 
 of charcoal-drawing and washing, which commence by show- 
 ing the half-tint and the light. 
 
 You must try to find out what is easiest, and make and 
 re-make until you succeed, without becoming discouraged ; 
 for, if the first production is tolerable, very good ; if it Is poor, 
 that is only to be expected, the usual way of things. 
 
 For the draperies, furniture, pottery, the half-tint over the 
 whole object, same repetition ; the light well arranged, and 
 the shadows afterwards. 
 
 Do your monochroming, then, courageously, and make an 
 entire picture ; dabble in it ; do not seek to make a finished 
 production, but a rough draught ; and by making draught after 
 draught you will acquire the art of finishing. M. fi. C. 
 
PAINTING IN OILS. 10] 
 
 NINETEENTH LETTER. 
 
 PAXNTING IN OILS CONTINUED— COLORED COLORS. 
 
 From oil-color without color let us pass to oil-color with 
 color. 
 
 You still prepare the canvas with sienna, as soon as you 
 have drawn the design in ink. 
 
 As soon as the drawing is thoroughly dry, pass over the 
 entire canvas a layer of burnt sienna with fatty oil, and let 
 it dry well. 
 
 Do not think that this preparation repels the color and 
 renders it black in time. No. The pictures that I rough- 
 draughted fifteen years ago have become bolder, but they are 
 not black. 
 
 Moreover, it was the unfinished pictures of Rubens and 
 Greuze that led me to discover the processes that I have em- 
 ployed, and that I am going to transmit to you. 
 
 Let us take the flesh-tints to begin with. This blue tone 
 of half-tint, that' you make with indigo in water-colors, you 
 make in oil-i(olors with white, cobalt blue, and a little 
 ivory-black, which you take darker or lighter according as 
 the flesh-tint is blonde or brunette ; finally, you must hunt for 
 the tone of the half-tint of the very complexion that you are 
 copying. 
 
 Having found the half-tint, you pass it over all that pari 
 
102 cave's manual of coi.ok. 
 
 that you wish to paint during your sitting. Let us take a 
 head. Where you come to a line, you put it on thinner, so 
 as not to lose the line altogether. 
 
 Then you take, as in water-colors, burnt sienna and Na- 
 ples yellow, and you attack boldly, over your half-tint, all the 
 shadow-parts. Bright yellow and yellow ochre may also be 
 used with burnt sienna, according as the shadows are warmer 
 or greener. It is a matter of trial and experiment, as in water- 
 ccdors. 
 
 You always draw your lines in the paste, with red brown 
 and cobalt blue. This being disposed of, you have a pink 
 flesh-tone that you place over the half-tint on the side where 
 the light is, leaving, however, a, slight half-tint between this 
 pink light and the tone of the shadow. 
 
 You see that you are following the principles of water- 
 colors. 
 
 With a iJat brush you model these tones as you modelled 
 the gray tones, always in the direction of the form. 
 
 Sometimes you can make use, lightly, of little blender- 
 brushes ; but you must be on your guard against them, if 
 _^ they tend to make the work soft and round. On that account 
 I prefer the hair-pencil and the flat brush. 
 
 And now you are to put on the grand liglit of the flesh- 
 tint. It is made with white and with yellow ochre, and by 
 joining it skilfully to the rose tone, you will model admira- 
 bly, and you will find live flesh-tints like those of Rubena 
 and Greuze. 
 
 The rose of the lips and the cheeks you leave to the last, 
 as also the bold parts under the nose and in the eyes ; these 
 
PAINTING IN OILS. 103 
 
 are made with lakes andf yellow ochre. Tou put the half- 
 tint of your hair over all the hair, then you attack the shad- 
 ow and the light: precisely the same tones as iu wafer- 
 colors. 
 
 You know them, then ; you have handled the brush enough 
 in painting hair in monochrome to have found out how im- 
 portant it is to have the stroke of the brush in the direction 
 of the head or the lock, how much delicacy is required for 
 the roots of the hair along the forehead. 
 
 When the head is dressed, you come back to drawing 
 your lines, which are always indented inwards ; that is why, 
 with this manner of painting, you will make your work firm 
 and soft at the same time. 
 
 For everything that you wish to paint, the same system : 
 always spread the half-tint over all the part that you wish to 
 paint. These half-tints are the same as those in water-colors, 
 always the opposites to the light ; you know them as well as 
 I do, since you are acquainted with all the values of the 
 tones. 
 
 For objects and persons in the background, water-colors 
 also teach you that you must put ivory-black in the white 
 that you use. So, no more white on your palette as soon as 
 you attack your background, graduated gray tones taking 
 the place of the white, and mixing themselves with all the 
 colors. 
 
 The further oif the things are, the more you must force 
 the gray tone. 
 
 Now understand me perfectly. You paint with the same 
 colors as in the light, ynu put on the same liii,'ht ; mily, in 
 
104 CAvi)'s MANUAL OF COLOK. 
 
 proportion as the objects recede, your luminous wliite 
 becomes more and more gray. 
 
 This gray white is the shadow, the atmosphere, growing 
 more and more dense between yourself and your figures in 
 proporlion as you multiply the perceptive planes of your 
 picture. 
 
 Do you now understand how the monochrome modellings 
 that you have made will be of service to you ? 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci and Prudhou have sometimes let their 
 monochromes dry, and painted by glazing ; but I am not ac- 
 quainted with that system. 
 
 Only, you must see that colorists .^re not afraid of the 
 gray, for the Endymiou of Correggio may be admirably 
 copied in this way. 
 
 Odd, is it not, to put so much gray in a blonde and gold- 
 en picture lilie the one I am trying to malie ? "Well, the 
 secret of malting the picture blonde and golden in the back- 
 ground is to employ the gray underneath the shadows and 
 the lights. 
 
 For the baclsground of a room, the same process. A white 
 wall is never while in the bacliground, in the light of the 
 white. If you have a stone in the foreground, that is white. 
 
 In the same way the most brilliant clouds are never white. 
 But the water-colors that you have made, to begin with, and 
 the monochromes you have painted afterwards, have given 
 you all these lessons. 
 
 If you have any black depths, you know also that you 
 must use red brown and cobalt blue, or else indigo ; Naples 
 yellow and ivory-black mixed will accomplish wonders. 
 
PAINTING IN OIL. 105 
 
 Remember that crude lakes, however dark they may be, 
 always advance. Transparent colors recede only in glazing 
 over grays. 
 
 Painting on ivory, on earthen-ware, on porcelain, can al- 
 ways keep abreast with water-colors. You have only to take 
 a few lessons from the first artists in this line, to learn the 
 trade ; but you must not change these principles of color in 
 any respect. 
 
 You will be glad to hear that my two large water-colors, 
 the " Tournament," and the " Convalescence of Louis XIII. 
 in Childhood," have been placed in the gallery of the Luxem- 
 bourg. 
 
 That is the place to find the truth of what I am teaching 
 you, on throwing the figures in shadow, and making the 
 background recede. M. fi. 0. 
 
 6* 
 
106 cave's manxtal of color. 
 
 TWENTIETH LETTER 
 
 SERIOUS "WOMElSr— TRIFLING WOMEN. 
 
 One more word, my dear Julia, before closing this coire- 
 spondenoe, which has put me to some trouble, but which, 
 nevertheless, I shall not leave off without a certain feeling 
 of regret; for the labor that we have undertaken for our 
 friends has about it a charm, which grows in attractiveness. 
 But what could I say further? Besides, I have found for 
 myself occupations that consume all my leisure ; Stni, as you 
 know, I am not a writer ; I do not even like the art in 
 woman, who has no motive for publishing her thoughts and 
 sentiments ; who should, on the contrary, sacredly seclude her 
 life in that mystery of intimacy for which she Is bom. I have 
 written these letters only in an effort of friendship for you 
 and your dear daughters. The publicity they have met with 
 has embarrassed me somewhat. I have received congratula- 
 tions that flattered me, no doubt (for they come from artists 
 whom I admire), but wliich would have been rather oppres- 
 sive than agreeable, had I not been free to believe that they 
 were more especially addressed to the painter, and I am noth- 
 ing more. 
 
 They have seen that, however, without my telling them. 
 I wish to bear in mind that I took up my pen only to excuse 
 myself for having taken it up, and to demand pardon for my 
 
SERIOUS WOMEN. 107 
 
 complete ignorance of the art of writing. Have I expressed 
 myself clearly ? That is all I desire. Let people say that 
 my method has nothing methodical about it, that my 
 thought wanders, that I often come back to the same ideas, 
 aa in conversing or teaching — they will not hurt my feelings. 
 On the contrary, they will judge of me just as I am, just as I 
 wished to appear. I might have worked on my letters with 
 greater care, or resorted to scftne practiced pen, so as to ac- 
 quire an usurped reputation. Why should I have done so ? 
 Would my pupils have been any better taught ? Would I 
 have painted any better pictures ? I should have followed an 
 aim foreign to me. 
 
 I like painting above all things. I like it better than 
 music, because it permits a woman to remain at home, because 
 it does not require a public and a theatre. The woman who 
 is a musician must have a little of the audacity of the come- 
 dienne; she must expose herself, like the actress. With 
 painting, however, we need never emerge from that modesty 
 which is one of the virtues and charms of our sex. 
 
 Still, we must not misuse the word modesty as the word 
 equality is misused. There is, in certain circles, a tendency 
 to wish that woman should not be anything more than a 
 doll, pleasing her husband and taking the part of mother for 
 his cliildren. This is not ray understanding of it. I desire 
 for her a more useful part, one worthier of her, more re- 
 spectable. Woman should be the intelligent companion of 
 man, that is to say, his associate in the ofttimes painful 
 struggles of life, his supporter, his counsellor, his consoler. 
 She should be for his chUdren not merely a well-dressed idol 
 
108 cave's manual of color. 
 
 that tliey are to come and kiss evenings and mornings, not a 
 box of sugar-plums, but a vigilant guardian and an attentive 
 phj'sician, the professor of all that is learned at the home 
 fireside. I wish her to be like the gardener who raises a 
 choice shrub, protecting it from frost and the heat of the sun, 
 jiruuing it, cleaning it of weeds, straightening it, giving it, 
 in short, all the vigor and all the beauty that it can acquire. 
 
 I wish still more ; I wish her to take pride in this noble 
 mission on earth. How can an idle and useless woman re- 
 spect herself and be respected ? And who would dare not to 
 respect the woman and mother as I have described her? 
 
 That is a reasonable pride. Kot that fault which caused 
 the loss of the fallen angels, that exaggerated feeling of one's 
 own worth which leads us to over-estimate ourselves and to 
 wish to domineer others — an error that is punished sooner or 
 iater, that produces so many faults, so many deceptions and 
 evils. But that virtue without affectation, that gives us the 
 will and the courage to be worth something, to be useful in 
 our lot, and beyond it, if possible ; that calm strength and 
 that serene conscience before which the boldest recoil. Let 
 us respect ourselves, and idle talk will not come and buzz in 
 our ears. 
 
 People generally say : " Women are trifling." They 
 should have limited themselves to saying : " There are tri- 
 fling women." How many women, how many mothers of 
 families, could smile with pity at this word. 
 
 "We must come to an understanding about this word tri- 
 fling, that is flung in our faces. 
 
 If a pretty young person, adorned with her natural beauty 
 
TRIFLING WOMEIT. 109 
 
 and all that fashion knows how to add to it, enters a parlor 
 gracefully ; if she sits down with a smile and enters into a 
 lively interchange of those thousand little nothings that make 
 np the substance of conversation in society ; if, at the first 
 tap of the bow, she flies away like a bird, whirling on the 
 arm of a cavalier with that expression of pleasure which is 
 ' so becoming to youth, without which we might say there 
 was no youth, you exclaim : *' A trifling woman ! " 
 
 You are very trifling yourself. Trifling ! "What do you 
 know about it ? 
 
 In society she is just what she should be, natural, charm- 
 ing, elegant ; in a word, a woman. 
 
 But, on the morrow of the ball, get access to her home, 
 come and sit down by her fireside. Tou will find her up 
 early, having already laid aside the flowers of the night be- 
 fore, and given her first attention to her beautiful children. 
 She receives you in a toilette that is simple and elegant, like 
 the apartments in which she resides. Speak to her on serious 
 matters, she listens to you with attention, and you are not a 
 little surprised at the good sense of her answers. Is this not 
 enough to make you blush for your prejudice ? "Well, look 
 around you ; do you not see, off there, near the window, a 
 palette and brushes ? That water-color is our work. An ama- 
 teur bought it, and it paid for our last night's toilette, for we 
 are not rich. That other one will give our husband a hand- 
 some pony that he regrets not being able to buy. As to that 
 pastel, it is going to enrich a lottery for the benefit of the 
 poor mothers of the ward. 
 
 I do not say all I might, for I do not wish to be accused 
 
110 ca.ve's manual of coloe. 
 
 of vaunting my sex and soliciting Mbniy on -prizes for it. Bui 
 how many cruel sufferings I could cite, borne without mur- 
 mur and with a smiling face ! What long, unrecognized de- 
 votion, without any other prospect than ingratitude I Oh 1 
 ■women are triiiing I 
 
 Let us be on our guard, however, my dear Julia, against 
 presuming too much on ourselves, and let us be what we can 
 be, and Iseep our places. Men really love us only for what 
 ■we are worlli. A puerile book has been written on the art 
 of pleasing ; no one has ever thought of the art of making 
 one's self beloved. If it should happen that I were obliged to 
 give up painting, I should publish some letters on this subject. 
 
 I have decided to publish the third part of this work, 
 tinder the title : " The Woman of To-Day, the Woman of 
 Yesterday." It will be the resume of my meditation on the 
 necessity of turning our attention to woman.'* 
 
 MARIE-ELISABETH OAVl;. 
 
 * After no little hesitation, I offer the above as a conjectural rendering 
 of the original : " surlanecessite de s'oceuper de lafemme." It may mean 
 " The need of occupation for woman."— Tk. 
 
COLORS FOR THE PALETTE. 
 
 These colors can be had in leaden tubes, like oil-colors. 
 
 In this way they do not dry, and they can be put on the 
 paper as clear and as thick as may be desired. 
 
 Pastilles have this inconvenience : they come unglued, 
 and if you are so unlucky as to drop your palette, they will 
 break, because they dry so far as to lose their transparency. 
 
 Of course, if you find an unusual tone that is not put 
 down here, you must use it ; for the richness of your palette 
 will not do any harm when you are very familiar with the 
 first necessary colors. 
 
 You must first familiarize yourself with these and be mis- 
 trustful of the others for the flesh-tints.