that term) is not observed : but I by no means insist that 1 have succeeded 
in it, for some change may be found necessary, on trial, that my limited 
practice has not enabled me to make ; therefore, what I offer is with entire 
submission to future experience, whether it arise from my own practice, 
or that of others, though with some confidence as to the principles I have gone 
upon, which I believe are a sure guide to form a theory upon, though others 
may succeed better than I have done ; and should these pages fall into such 
hands, I must beg to be understood that I presume not to offer them to 
my fellow artists, but only to those pupils whom it is my lot, and my duty 
to instruct to the best of my power; and which a desire of doing more fully 
than the space of a short visit has sometimes enabled me to do as I wished, 
has been one cause, with other considerations, for making them public ; 
and my intention, I hope, will plead my apology for many imperfections, 
no doubt, there are in them, that I am unable at present to discover. 
It is scarcely necessary to add, that in speaking, as I have done, of the 
arrangement of colours in perspective succession, I mean as to the general 
mass ; and that all the colours, warm, cold, and compound, may be 
interspersed throughout the whole, independent of that, provided the ge¬ 
neral effect, or mass is not broken, or so much interrupted as to render it 
indistinct, and -not striking at the first view. A thousand lesser beauties 
may be introduced this way, that must entirely depend on the painter’s taste 
and judgment. 
I have endeavoured to shew, in the foregoing pages, the disposition of the 
Colours necessary to be observed in the objects represented, but I have often 
been at a loss, in my own practice, how to arrange them in the back-ground; 
to an ignorant person it may seem of little consequence, but I am not singulai 
in saying, it requires full as much judgment, to do it properly, as any part 
of the picture*; it depends entirely on the colours in the object you re¬ 
present, and must vary with them, keeping to one certain rule, to observe 
* Rubens was asked by a friend to take a young man under his care, and, as an inducement, was 
told he could already paint, and could paint him his back-grounds : Rubens replied,. “ If he can paint 
my back-grounds, he does not want my instruction in the art.” 
F 2 
