Euphorion Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance - (I) (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...is white with mist; or pinkish grey with the unseen agglomeration of bare tree boughs and trunks, of sere field; till, nearer us, the trees become more visible, the short vinebearing elms in the fields, interlacing their branches compressed by distance, the clumps of poplars, so scant and far between from nearly, so serried and compact from afar; and between them an occasional flush, a tawny vapour of the orange twigged osiers; and then, still nearer, the expanse of sere field, of mottled, crushed-together, yellowed grass and grey brown leaves; things of the summer which winter is burying to make room for spring. Along the reaches of the river the clumps of leafless poplars are grey against the pale, palest blue sky; grey but with a warmth of delicate brown, almost of rosiness. Grey also the shingle in the river bed; the river itself either (if after rain) pale brown, streaked with pale blue sky reflections; or (after a drought), low, grey, luminous throughout its surface, you might think, were it not that the metallic sheen, the vacillating sparkles of where the sun, smiting down, frets it into a shifting mass of scintillating facets, gives you the impression that this other luminousness of silvery water must be dull and dead. And, looking up the river, it gradually disappears, its place marked only, against the all-pervading pale blue haze, by the brownish grey spectre of the furthest poplar clumps. This, I have said, is an effect which winter produces, nay, even a southern winter, with those comparatively few and slight elements at its disposal. We see it, notice it, and enjoy its delicate loveliness; but while so doing we do not think, or we forget, that the habit of noticing, nay, the power of perceiving such effects as this, is one of those habits and powers which we possess, so to speak, only since yesterday. The possibility of reproducing in painting effects like this one; or, more truthfully, the wish to reproduce them, is scarcely as old...