2 1 8 July — The Black Shadow. 



'dark* not being dark enough. It would be easy, too, 

 to prove that a painter who conveys the impression of 

 the black shadow paints it falsely. Auguste Bonheur 

 may be mentioned as an example. He paints southern 

 sunshine truly so far as the impression on the spectator 

 is concerned, falsely as to imitation of particular tints. 

 In very intense sunshine the eye adapts itself to cir- 

 cumstan *es, and for its own protection contracts so that 

 a glaring thing, such as a white ox, shall not hurt it. 

 Now, if you can look at a white ox at all in the glare of 

 a Burgundy July, even the lighted side of an oak-tree 

 will seem dark to you, and a cast shadow on foliage 

 will seem what in popular language is called 'black.' 

 Auguste Bonheur renders this effect with great truth, 

 but necessarily in a much lower key than Nature's. 

 And now comes the one important consideration which 

 reconciles art with Nature, and is always overlooked by 

 writers on these subjects. The eye looking at Nature 

 in glaring light, and the eye looking at a picture in 

 the quiet light of a gallery, is not in the same state ; 

 but a picture of sunshine painted on Auguste Bonheur' s 

 principles bears the same relation to the open pupil 

 in a shaded room that the natural scene bore to the 

 contracted pupil in the brilliant sunshine out of doors. 

 The rule which affirms that if you match shades by 

 holding the palette-knife up to Nature you will get right 

 relations of color, is true only of figure-painting and 

 still-life, when the model is carefully placed in a gal- 

 lery light. In open sunshine such a practice would 

 induce an artist to paint in too high a key, so that he 



