NOTES. ioi 



fmiled at his Simplicity, and told him, that if the youth was 

 capable of painting his back-grounds he flood in no need of 

 his inftruclions ; that the regulation and management of them 

 required the moft comprehenfive knowledge of the art. This 

 Painters know to be no exaggerated account of a back-ground, 

 when we confider how much the efFecl of the picture depends 

 upon it. 



It muft be in union with the figure, fo that it mall not have 

 the appearance, as if it was inlaid like Holbein's portraits, 

 which are often on a bright green or blue ground : To pre- 

 vent this efFecl, the ground muft partake of the colour of the 

 figure ; or, as exprefled in a fubfequent line, receive all the 

 treafures of the palette; the back-ground regulates likewife 

 where and in what part the figure is to be relieved. When 

 the form is beautiful, it is to be feen diftinclly, when, on the 

 contrary, it is uncouth or too angular, it may be loft in the 

 ground : Sometimes a light is introduced in order to join and 

 extend the light on the figure, and the dark fide of the figure 

 is loft in a ftill darker back-ground ; for the fewer the outlines 

 are which cut-againft the ground the richer will be the efFecl, 

 as the contrary produces what is called the dry manner. 



One of the arts of fupplying the defect of a fcantinefs of 

 drefs by means of the back-ground, may be obferved in a 

 whole-length portrait by Vandyke, which is in the cabinet of 

 the Duke of Montagu ; the drefs of this figure would have an 

 ungraceful efFecl; he has, therefore, by means of a light back- 

 ground, oppofed to the light of the figure, and by the help 

 of a curtain that catches the light near the figure, made the 

 efFed of the whole together full and rich to the eye. R. 



N 3 NOTE 



