FIG. 64.Fig. 64.
The workman takes the ring-handle in his right hand, rests the shaft in the crook of his left elbow, puts the fork under an iron plate loaded with glass and weighing about forty pounds, and then, with tug and strain, lifts it, ready to slip off and smash at any moment, and, grunting, transfers it to the kiln. A little mechanical appliance would save nine-tenths of the labour, a stage on wheels raised or lowered at will (a thing which surely should not be hard to invent) would bring it from the bench to the kiln, andthen, ifneeds be, and no better method could be found, the fork might be used to put it in.
Meanwhile, as a temporary step in the right direction, I illustrate a little apparatus invented by Mr. Heaton, which, with the tray made of some lighter substance than iron, of which he has the secret, decreases the labour by certainly one-third, and I think a half (fig. 65).
FIG. 65.Fig. 65.
It is indeed only a sort of half-way house to the right thing, but, tested one against the other with equal batches of plates, its use is certainly less laborious than that of the fork. And that is a great gain; for the consequence of these rough ways is that the kiln-man, whom we want to be a quiet, observant man, with plenty of leisure andwith all his strength and attention free to watch the progress of a process or experiment, like a chemist in his laboratory, has often two-thirds of it distracted by the stress of needless work which is only fit for a navvy, and the only tendency of which can be towards turning him into one.
FIG. 66.Fig. 66.
A GLASS-RACK FOR WASTE PIECES.
Then the cutter, who throws away half the stuff under his bench! How easy it would be, if things were thought of from the beginning and the place built for the work, to have such width of bench and space of window that, along the latter, easily and comfortably within reach, should run stages, tier above tier, of strong sheet or thin plate glass, sloping at such an angle that the cuttings might lie along them against the light, with a fillet to stop them from falling off. Then it would be a pleasure, as all handy things are, for the workman to put his bits of glass there, and when he wanted a piece of similar colour, to raise his head and choose one, instead of wastefully cutting a fresh piece out of the unbroken sheet, or wasting his time rummaging amongst the bits on the bench. A stage on the same principle forchoosingglass is illustrated in fig. 67.
But it is in easels that improvement seems most wanted and would be most easy, and here I really must tell you a story.
AN INCONVENIENT EASEL.
Having once some very large lights to paint, against time, the friends in whoseshop I was to work (wishing to give me every advantage and tosave time), had had special easels made to take in the main part of each light at once. But an "Easel," in stained-glass work, meaning always the single slab of plate-glass in a wooden frame, these were of that type. I forget their exact size and could hazard no guess at their weight, but it took four men to get one from the ground on to the bench. Why, I wanted it done a dozen times an hour! and should have wished to be able to do it at any moment. Instead of that it was, "Now then, Bill; ease her over!" "Steady!" "Now lift!" "All together, boys!" and so forth. I wonder there wasn't astrike! But did no one, then, ever see in a club or hotel a plate-glass window about as big as a billiard-table, and a slim waiter come up to it, and, with a polite "Would you like the window open, sir?" quietly lift it with one hand?
FIG. 67.Fig. 67.
A CONVENIENT EASEL.
Fig. 68 is a diagram of the kind of easel I would suggest. It can either stand on the bench or on the floor, and with the touch of a hand can be lifted, weighing often well over a hundredweight, to any height the painter pleases, till it touches the roof, enabling him to see at any moment the whole of his work at a distance and against the sky, which one would rather call an absolute necessity than a mere convenience or advantage.
Some of these things were thought out roughly by myself, and have been added to and improved from time to time by my painters and apprentices, a matter which I shall say a word on by-and-by, when we consider the relations which should exist between these and the master.
AN IMPROVED TOOL FOR WAXING-UP.
Meanwhile here is another little tool (fig. 69), the invention of one of my youngest "hands" (and heads), and really a praiseworthy invention, though indeed a simple and self-evident matter enough. The usual tool for waxing-up is (1) a strip of glass, (2) a penknife, (3) a stick of wood. The thing most to be wished for in whatever is used being, of course, that itshould retain the heat. This youth argued: "If they use copper for soldering-bits because it retains heat so well, why not use copper for the waxing-up tool? besides, it can be made into a pen which will hold more wax."
FIG. 68.Fig. 68.
FIG. 69.Fig. 69.
So said, so done; nothing indeed to make a fuss about, but part of a very wholesome spirit of wishing to work with handy tools economically, instead of blundering and wasting.
AN EASEL WITH MOVABLE PLATES.
But to return for a moment to the easel. I find it very convenient not to have it made all of one plate of glass, but to divide it so that about four plates make the whole easel of five feet high. These plates slip in grooves, and can be let in either at the top or bottom, the latter being then stopped by a batten and thumbscrews. By this means a light of any length can be painted in sections without a break. For supposing you work from below upwards, and have done the first five feet of the window, take out all the glass except the top plate,shift this down to the bottom, and place three empty plates above it, and you can join the upper work to the lower by the sample of the latter left in its place to start you.
HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF A ROOM.
The great point is to be able to get away as far as you can from your work. And Iadvise you, if your room is small, to have a fair-sized mirror (a cheval-glass) and place it at the far end of your room opposite the easel where you are painting, and then, standing close by the side of your easel, look at your work in the mirror. This will double the distance at which you see it, and at the same time present it to you reversed; which is no disadvantage, for you then see everything under a fresh aspect and so with a fresh eye. Of course, by the use of two mirrors, if they be large enough, you can put your work away to any distance. You must have seen this in a restaurant where there were mirrors, and where you have had presented to you an endless procession of your own head, first front then back, going away into the far distance.
HOW TO HANDLE CARTOONS.
Well, it's really like insulting your intelligence! And if I hadn't seen fellows down on their hands and knees rolling and unrolling cartoons along the dirty floor, and sprawling all over the studio so that everybody had to get out of the way into corners, I wouldn't spend paper and ink to tell you that by standing the rolluprightand spinning it gently round with your hands, freeing first one edge and then another, you can easily and quietly unroll and sort out a bundle of a dozen cartoons, each twenty feet long, on the space of a small hearth-rug; but so it is (fig. 70), and in just the same way you can roll them up again.
NEATNESS AND CLEANLINESS.
You should have drawers in the tables, and put the palettes away in these with the colour neatly covered over with a basin when you leave work. Dust is a great enemy in a stained-glass shop, and it must be kept at arm's length.
YOU MUST TEAR OFF THE SELVAGE EDGE OF YOUR TRACING CLOTH,
otherwise the tracing cloth being all cockled at the edge, which, however, is not very noticeable, will not lie flat, and you will be puzzled to know why it is that you cannot get your cut-line straight; tear off the edge, and it lies perfectly flat, without a wrinkle.
HOW TO DRY A BIG BRUSH OR BADGER AFTER IT IS WASHED.
I expect you'd try to dry it in front of the fire, and there'd be a pretty eight-shillingfrizzle! But the way is this: First sweep the wet brush downwards with all your force, just as you shake the worst of the wet off a dripping umbrella, then take the handle of the brushbetween the palms of your hands, with the hair pointing downwards, and rub your hands smartly together, with the handle between them, just as an Italian waiter whisks up the chocolate. This sends the hair all out like a Catherine-wheel, and dries the brush with quite astonishing rapidity. Come now! you'd never have thought of that?
FIG. 70.Fig. 70.
And why have I reserved these hints till now? surely these are things of the work-bench, practical matters, and would have come more conveniently in their own place? Why have I—do you ask—after arousing your attention to the "great principles of art," gone back again all at once to these little matters?
Dear reader, I have done so deliberately to emphasise theFirstof principles, that the right learning of any craft is the learning it under a master, and that all else is makeshift; to drive home the lesson insisted on in the former volumes of this series of handbooks, and gatheredinto the sentence quoted as a motto on the fly-leaf of one of them, that "An art can only be learned in the workshop of those who are winning their bread by it."
These little things we have just been speaking of occurred to me after the practical part was all written; and I determined, since it happened so, to put them by themselves, to point this very lesson. They are just typical instances of hundreds of little matters which belong to the bench and the workshop, and which cannot all be told in any book; and even if told can never be so fully grasped as they would be if shown by master to pupil. Years—centuries of practice have made them the commonplaces of the shops; things told in a word and learnt in an instant, yet which one might go on for a whole lifetime without thinking of, and for lack of which our lifetime's work would suffer.
Man's work upon earth is all like that. The things are there under his very nose, but he never discovers them till some accident shows them; how many centuries of sailing, think you, passed by before men knew that the tides went with the moon?
Why then write a book at all, since it is not the best way?
Speaking for myself only, the reasons appear to be: First, because none of these crafts is at present taught in its fulness in any ordinary shop, and I would wish to give you at least a longing to learn yours in that fulness; and, second, because it seems also very advisable to interest the general reader in this question of the complete teaching of the crafts to apprentices. To insist on the value and necessity of the daily and hourly lessons that come from the constant presence, handling, and use of all the tools and materials, all the apparatus and all the conditions of the craft, and from the interchange of ideas amongst those who are working, side by side, making fresh discoveries day by day as to what materials will do under the changes that occur in conditions that are ever changing.
However, one must not linger further over these little matters, and it now becomes my task to return to the great leading principles and try to deal with them, and the first cardinal principle of stained-glass work surely is that ofColour.
OF COLOUR
But how hopeless to deal with it by way of words in a book where actual colour cannot be shown!
Nevertheless, let us try.
... One thinks of morning and evening; ... of clouds passing over the sun; of the dappled glow and glitter, and of faint flushes cast from the windows on the cathedral pavement; of pearly white, like the lining of a shell; of purple bloom and azure haze, and grass-green and golden spots, like the budding of the spring; of all the gaiety, the sparkle, and the charm.
And then, as if the evening were drawing on, comes over the memory the picture of those graver harmonies, in the full glow of red and blue, which go with the deep notes of the great organ, playing requiem or evening hymn.
Of what use is it to speak of thesethings? The words fall upon the ear, but the eye is not filled.
All stained-glass gathers itself up into this one subject; the glory of the heavens is in it and the fulness of the earth, and we know that the showing forth of it cannot be in words.
Is it any use, for instance, to speak of these primroses along the railway bank, and those silver buds of the alder in the hollow of the copse?
One thinks of a hint here and a hint there; the very sentences come in fragments. Yet one thing we may say securely: that the practice of stained-glass is a very good way tolearncolour, or as much of it as can come by learning.
For, consider:—
A painter has his colour-box and palette;
And if he has a good master he may learn by degrees how to mix his colour into harmonies;
Doing a little first, cautiously;
Trying the problem in one or two simple tints; learning the combinations of these in their various degrees of lighter or darker:
Exhausting, as much as he can, thepossibilities of one or two pigments, and then adding another and another;
But always with a very limited number of actual separate ones to draw upon;
All the infinity of the whole world of colour being in his own hands, and the difficulty of dealing with it laid as a burden upon his own shoulders, as he combines, modifies, mixes, and dilutes them.
He perhaps has eight or ten spots of pure colour, ranged round his palette; and all the rest depends upon himself.
This gives him, indeed, one side of the practice of his art; and if he walks warily, yet daringly, step by step, learning day by day something more of the powers that lie in each single kind of paint, and as he learns it applying his knowledge, bravely and industriously, to add strength to strength, brightness to brightness, richness to richness, depth to depth, in ever clearer, fuller, and more gorgeous harmony, he may indeed become a great painter.
But a more timid or indolent man gets tired or afraid of putting the clear, sharp tints side by side to make new combinations of pure and vivid colour.
And even a man industrious, alert, and determined may lose his way and get confused amongst the infinity of choice, through being badly taught, and especially through being allowed at first too great a range, too wide a choice, too lavish riches.
A man so trained, so situated, so tempted, stands in danger of being contented to repeat old receipts and formulas over and over, as soon as he has acquired the knowledge of a few.
Or, bewildered with the lavishness of his means and confused in his choice, tends to fall into indecision, and to smear and dilute and weaken.
I cannot help thinking that it is to this want of a system of gradual teaching of the elementary stages of colour in painting that we owe, on the one side, the fashion of calling irresolute and undecided tints "art" colours; and, on the other hand, the garishness of our modern exhibitions compared with galleries of old paintings. For Titian's burning scarlet and crimson and palpitating blue; and Veronese's gold and green and white and rose are certainly not "art colours"; and I think we must feel the justice and truthof Ruskin's words spoken regarding a picture of Linnell's:—
"And what a relief it is for any wholesome human sight, after sickening itself among the blank horror of dirt, ditchwater, and malaria, which the imitators of the French schools have begrimed our various Exhibition walls with, to find once more a bit of blue in the sky and a glow of brown in the coppice, and to see that Hoppers in Kent can enjoy their scarlet and purple—like Empresses and Emperors." (Ruskin, "Royal Academy Notes," 1875.)
From this irresolution and indecision and the dull-colour school begotten of it on the one hand, and from garishness on the other, stained-glass is a great means of salvation; for in practising this art the absolute judgment must, day by day, be exercised between this and that colour, there present before it; and the will is braced by the necessity of constant choice and decision. In short, by many of the modern, academical methods of teaching painting, and especially by the unfortunate arrangement, where it exists, of a pupil passing under a succession of different masters, I fear the colour-sense is perplexedand blunted; while by stained-glass, taught, as all art should be, from master to apprentice, while both make their bread by it, the colour-sense would be gradually and steadily cultivated and would have time to grow.
This at least seems certain: that all painters who have also done stained-glass, or indeed any other decorative work in colour, get stronger and braver in painting from its practice. So worked Titian, Giorgione, Veronese; and so in our days worked Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox-Brown, Morris; and if I were to advise and prate about what is, perhaps, not my proper business, I would say, even to the student of oil-painting, "Begin with burnt-umber, trying it in every degree with white; transparent over opaque and opaque over transparent; trying how near you can get to purple and orange by contrast (and you will get nearer than you think); then add sienna at one end and black at the other to enlarge the range;—and then get a set of glass samples".
I have said that stained-glass is "a great means of salvation," from irresolution and indecision on the one hand andfrom garishness on the other; but it is only a means—the fact of salvation lies always in one's own hands—for we must, I fear, admit that "garishness" and "irresolution" are not unknown in stained-glass itself, in spite of the resources and safeguardings we have attributed to the material. Speaking, therefore, now to stained-glass painters themselves, we might say that these faults in their own art, as too often practised in our days, arise, strange as it may seem, from ignorance of their own material, that very material theknowledgeof which we have just been recommending as a safeguard against these very faults to the students of another art.
And this brings us back to our subject.
For the foregoing discussion of painters' methods has all been written to draw a comparison and emphasise a contrast.
A contrast from which you, student of stained-glass, I hope may learn much.
For as we have tried to describe the methods of the painter in oil or water colours, and so point out his advantages and disadvantages, so we would now draw a picture of the glass-painter at work; if he works as he should do.
For the painter of pictures (we said) has his colour-box of a few pigments, from which all his harmonies must come by mixing them and diluting them in various proportions, dealing with infinity out of a very limited range of materials, and required to supply all the rest by his own skill and memory.
Coming each day to his work with his palette clean and his colours in their tubes;
Beginning, as it were, all over again each time; and perhaps with his heart cold and his memory dull.
But the glass-painter has his specimens of glass round him; some hundreds, perhaps, of all possible tints.
He has, with these, to compose a subject in colour;
There is no getting out of it or shirking it;
He places the bits side by side, with no possibility (which the palette gives) of slurring or diluting or dulling them; he must choose from the clear hard tints;
And he has the whole problem before him;
He removes one and substitutes another;
"This looks better;" "That is a pleasant harmony;" "Ah! but this makes it sing!"
He gets them into groups, and combines them into harmonies, tint with tint, group with group:
If he is wise he has them always by him;
Always ready to arrange in a movable frame against the window;
He cuts little bits of each; he waxes them, or gums them, into groups on sheets of glass;
He tries all his effects in the glass itself; he sketches in glass.
If he is wise he does this side by side with his water-colour sketch, making each help the other, and thinking in glass; even perhaps making his water-colour sketch afterwards from the glass.
Is it not reasonable?
Is it not far more easy, less dangerous?
He has not to rake in his cold and meagre memory to fish out some poor handful of all the possible harmonies;
To repeat himself over and over again.
He has all the colours burning round him; singing to him to use them; sounding all their chords.
Is it not the way? Is it not common sense?
Tints! pure tints! What great things they are.
I remember an old joke of the pleasant Du Maurier, a drawing representing two fashionable ladies discussing the afternoon's occupation. One says: "It's quite too dull to see colours at Madame St. Aldegonde's; suppose we go to the Old Masters' Exhibition!"
Rather too bad! but the ladies were not so altogether frivolous as might at first appear. I am afraidPunchmeant that they were triflers who looked upon colour in dress as important, and colour in pictures as a thing which would do for a dull day. But they were not quite so far astray as this! There are other things in pictures besides colour which can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our academiesand schools of art. A curious matter this is, that a painter's training leaves this great resource of knowledge neglected, leaves the whole thing to memory. Out of all the infinite possible harmonies only getting what rise in the mind at the moment from the unseen. While ladies who want to dress beautifully look at the things themselves, and compare one with another. And how nicely they dress. If only painters painted half as well. If the pictures in our galleries only looked half as harmonious as the crowd of spectators below them! I would have it part of every painter's training to practise some craft, or at least that branch of some craft, which compels the choosing and arranging, in due proportions for harmony, of clear, sharp glowing colours in some definite material, from a full and lavish range of existing samples. It is true that here and there a painter will arise who has by nature that kind of instinct or memory, or whatever it is, that seems to feel harmonies beforehand, note by note, and add them to one another with infallible accuracy; but very few possess this, and for those who lack Iam urging this training. For it is a case of
"the little more and how much it is,And the little less and what worlds away."
"the little more and how much it is,And the little less and what worlds away."
Millais hung a daring crimson sash over the creamy-white bed-quilt, in the glow of the subdued night-lamp, in his picture of "Asleep," and we all thought what a fine thing it was. But we have not thought it so fine for the whole art world to burst into the subsequent imitative paroxysm of crashing discords in chalk, lip-salve, and skim-milk, which has lasted almost to this day.
At any rate, I throw out this hint for pupils and students, that if they will get a set of glass samples and try combinations of colour in them, they will have a bracing and guiding influence, the strength of which they little dream of, regarding one of the hardest problems of their art.
This for the student of painting in general: but for the glass-painter it is absolutely essential—the central point, the breath-of-life of his art.
To live in it daily and all day.
To be ever dealing with it thus.
To handle with the hands constantly.
To try this piece, and that piece, the little more and the little less.
This is the be-all and end-all, the beginning and the end of the whole matter, and here therefore follow a few hints with regard to it.
And there is one rule of such dominating importance that all other hints group themselves round it; and yet, strangely enough, I cannot remember seeing it anywhere written down.
Take three tints of glass—a purple, let us say, a crimson, and a green.
Let it be supposed that, for some reason, you desire that this should form a scheme of colour for a window, or part of a window, with, of course, in addition, pure white, and probably some tints more neutral, greenish-whites and olives or greys, for background.
You choose your purple (and, by-the-bye, almost the only way to get a satisfactory one, except by a happy accident now and then, is to double gold-pink with blue; this is the only way to get a purple that will vibrate, palpitating against the eye like the petal of a pansy in the sun). Well, you get your purple, and you getyour green—not a sage-green, or an "art-green," but a cold, sharp green, like a leaf of parsley, an aquamarine, the tree in the "Eve" window at Fairford, grass in an orchard about sunset, or a railway-signal lamp at night.
Your crimson like a peony, your white like white silk; and now you are started.
You put slabs of these—equal-sized samples, we will suppose—side by side, and see "if they will do."
And they don't "do" at all.
Take away the red.
The green and the purple do well enough, and the white.
But youwantthe red, you say.
Well,put back a tenth part of it.
And how now?
Add a still smaller bit of pale pink.
And how now?
Do you see what it all means? It means the rule we spoke of, and which we may as well, therefore, now announce:
"Harmony in colour depends not only upon the arranging of right colours together, but the arranging of the right quantities and the right degrees of them together."
To which may be added another,à proposof our bit of "pale pink."
The harshest contrasts, even discords, may often be brought into harmony by added notes.
I believe that these are the two, and I would even almost say the only two, great leading principles of the science of colour, as used in the service of Art; and we might learn them, in all their fulness, in a country walk, if we were simple enough to like things because we like them, and let the kind nurse, Nature, take us by the hand. This very problem, to wit: Did you never see a purple anemone? against its green leaves? with a white centre? and with a thin ring of crimson shaded off into pink? And did you never wonder at its beauty, and wonder how so simple a thing could strike you almost breathless with pure physical delight and pleasure? No doubt you did; but you probably may not have asked yourself whether you would have been equally pleased if the purple, green, and red had all been equal in quantity, and the pale pink omitted.
I remember especially in one particular window where this colour scheme wasadopted—an "Anemone-coloured" window—the modification of the one splash of red by the introduction of a lighter pink which suggested itself in the course of work as it went along, and was the pet fancy of an assistant—readily accepted.
The window in question is small and in nowise remarkable, but it was in the course of a ride taken to see it in its place, on one of those glorious mornings when Spring puts on all the pageantry of Summer, that the thoughts with which we are now dealing, and especially the thoughts of the infinite suggestion which Nature gives in untouched country and of the need we have to drink often at that fountain, were borne in upon the writer with more than usual force.
To take in fully and often the glowing life and strength and renewal direct from Nature is part of every man's proper manhood, still more then of every artist's artistry and student's studentship.
And truly 'tis no great hardship to go out to meet the salutary discipline when the country is beautiful in mid-April, and the road good and the sun pleasant. The Spring air sets the blood racing as you ride, and when you stopand stand for a moment to enjoy these things, ankle-deep in roadside grass, you can seem to hear the healthy pulses beating and see the wavy line of hills beating with them, as you look at the sun-warmed world.
It is good sometimes to think where we are in the scheme of things, to realise that we are under the bell-glass of this balmy air, which shuts us in, safe from the pitch-dark spaces of infinite cold, through which the world is sweeping at eighteen miles a second; while we, with all our little problems to solve and work to do, are riding warm by this fireside, and the orange-tip butterflies with that curious pertinacity of flight which is speed without haste are keeping up their incessant, rippling patrol, to and fro along the length of every sunny lane, above the ditch-side border of white-blossomed keck!
What has all this to do with stained-glass?
Everything, my boy! Be a human! For you have got to choose your place in things, and to choose on which side you will work.
A choice which, in these days, more than ever perhaps before, is one betweensuch things as these and the money-getting which cares so little for them. I have tried to show you one side by speaking of a little part of what may be seen and felt on a spring morning, along a ridge of untouched hills in "pleasant Hertfordshire:"[1]if you want to see the other side of things ride across to Buntingford, and take the train back up the Lea Valley. Look at Stratford (and smell it) and imagine it spreading, as no doubt it will, where its outposts of oil-mill and factory have already led the way, and think of the valley full up with slums, from Lea Bridge to Ponders End! For the present writer can remember—and that not half a lifetime back—Edmonton and Tottenham, Brondesbury and Upton Park, sweet country villages where quiet people lived and farmed and gardened amidst the orchards, fields, and hawthorn lanes.
[1]West of the road between Welwyn and Hitchin.
[1]West of the road between Welwyn and Hitchin.
Here now live, in mile after mile of jerry-building, the "hands" who, never taught any craft or work worthy of a man, spend their lives in some little single operation that, as it happens, no machine has yet been invented to perform; month after month, year after year, painting, letus say, endless repeats of one pattern to use as they are required for the borders of pious windows in the churches of this land.
This is the "other side of things," much commended by what is looked on as "robust common sense"; and with this you have—nothing to do. Your place is elsewhere, and if it needs be that it seems an isolated one, you must bear it and accept it. Nature and your craft will solve all; live in them, bathe in them to the lips; and let nothing tempt you away from them to measure things by the standard of the mart.
Let us go back to our sunny hillside. "It is good for us to be here," for this also is Holy Ground; and you must indeed be much amongst such things if you would do stained-glass, for you will never learn all the joy of it in a dusty shop.
"So hard to get out of London?"
But get a bicycle then;—only sit upright on it and go slow—and get away from these bricks and mortar, to where we can see things like these! those dandelions and daisies against the deep, green grass; the blazing candles of the sycamorebuds against the purple haze of the oak copse; and those willows like puffs of grey smoke where the stream winds. Did you ever? No, you never! Well—do it then!
But indeed, having stated ourprinciplesof colour, the practice of those principles and the influence of nature and of nature's hints upon that practice are infinite, both in number and variety. The flowers of the field and garden; butterflies, birds, and shells; the pebbles of the shore; above all, the dry seaweeds, lying there, with the evening sun slanting through them. These last are exceedingly like both in colour and texture, or rather in colour and the amount of translucency, to fine old stained-glass; so also are dead leaves. But, in short, the thing is endless. The "wine when it is red" (or amber, as the case may be), even the whisky and water, and whiskywithoutwater, side by side, make just those straw and ripe-corn coloured golden-yellows that are so hard to attain in stained-glass (impossible indeed by means of yellow-stain), and yet so much to be desired and sought after.
Will you have more hints still? Well, there are many tropical butterflies, chieflyamong thePierinf, with broad spaces of yellow dashed with one small spot or flush of vivid orange or red. Now you know how terrible yellow and red may be made to look in a window; for you have seen "ruby" robes in conjunction with "yellow-stain," or the still more horrible combination where ruby has been acided off from a yellow base. But it is a question of the actual quality of the two tints and also of their quantity. What I have spoken of looks horrible because the yellow is of a brassy tone, as stain so often is, especially on green-white glasses, and the red inclining to puce—jam-colour. It is no use talking, therefore, of "red and yellow"—we must saywhatred andwhatyellow, and how much of each. A magenta-coloured dahlia and a lemon put together would set, I should think, any teeth on edge; yet ripe corn goes well with poppies, but not too many poppies—while if one wing of our butterfly were of its present yellow and the other wing of the same scarlet as the spot, it would be an ugly object instead of one of the delights of God. It is interesting, it is fascinating to take the hint from such things—to splash the golden wings ofyour Resurrection Angel as he rolls away the stone with scarlet beads of sunrise, not seen butfeltfrom where you stand on the pavement below. I want the reader to fully grasp this question ofquantity, so I will instance the flower of the mullein which contains almost the very tints of the "lemon," and the "dahlia" I quoted, and yet is beautiful by virtue of itsquantities: which may be said to be of a "lemon" yellow and yet can bear (ay! can itnot?) the little crimson stamens in the heart of it and its sage-green leaves around.
And there is even something besides "tint" and "quantity." The way youdistributeyour colour matters very much. Some in washes, some in splashes, some in spots, some in stripes. What will "not do" in one way will often be just right in the other: yes, and the very way you treat your glass when all is chosen and placed together—matt in one place, film in another, chequering, cross-hatching, clothing the raw glass with texture and bringing out its nature and its life.
Do not be afraid; for the things that yet remain to do are numberless. Doyou like the look of deep vivid vermilion-red, upon dark cold green? Look at the hip-loaded rose-briar burning in the last rays of a red October sunset! You get physical pleasure from the sight; the eye seems to vibrate to the harmony as the ear enjoys a chord struck upon the strings. Therefore do not fear. But mind, it must be in nature's actual colour, not merely "green" and "red": for I once saw the head of a celebrated tragic actress painted by a Dutch artist who, to make it as deathly as he could, had placed the ashen face upon a background of emerald-green with spots of actual red sealing-wax. The eye was so affected that the colours swung to and fro, producing in a short time a nausea like sea-sickness. That is not pleasure.
The training of the colour-sense, like all else, should be gradual; springing as it were from small seed. Be reticent, try small things first. You are not likely to be asked to do a great window all at once, even if you have the misfortune to be an independent artist approaching this new art without a gradual training under the service of others. Try some simple scheme from the things of Nature.Hyacinths look well with their leaves: thereforethatgreen andthatblue, with the white of April clouds and the black of the tree-stems in the wood are colours that can be used together.
You must be prepared to find almost a sort of penalty in this habit of looking at everything with the eye of a stained-glass artist. One seems after a time to see natural objects with numbers attached to them corresponding with the numbers of one's glasses in the racks: butterflies flying about labelled "No. 50, deep," or "75a, pale," or a bit of "123, special streaky" in the sunset. But if one does not obtrude this so as to bore one's friends, the little personal discomfort, if it exists, is a very small price to pay for the delight of living in this glorious fairyland of colour.
Do not think it beneath your dignity or as if you were shirking some vital artistic obligation, to take hints from these natural objects, or from ancient or modern glass, in a perfectly frank and simple manner; nay, even to match your whole colour scheme, tint for tint, by them if it seems well to you. You may get help anywhere and from anything, and as muchas you like; it will only be so much more chance for you; so much richer a store to choose from, so much stronger resource to guide to good end; for after all, with all the helps you can get, much lies in the doing. Do what you like then—as a child: but be sure youdolike it: and if the window wants a bit of any particular tint, put it there, meaning or no meaning. If there is no robe or other feature to excuse and account for it in the spot which seems to crave for it,—put the colour in, anywhere and anyhow—in the background if need be—a sudden orange or ruby "quarry" or bit of a quarry, as if the thing were done in purest waywardness. "You would like a bit there if there were an excuse for it?" Then thereisan excuse—the best of all—that the eye demands it. Do it fearlessly.
But to work in this way (it hardly need be said) you must watch and work at your glass yourself; for these hints come late on in the work, when colour, light and shade, and design are all fusing together into a harmony. You can no more forecast these final accidents, which are the flower and crown and finish ofthe whole, than you could forecast the lost "Chord";—