There exist special directions for making a
Rhine landscape and for infallibly bestowing upon it the genuine
coloring of the Rhine, which appeared in the book-market about a hundred
and fifty years ago, side by side with directions for preparing the best
vinegar, the best sealing-wax, etc.--I do not know whether it was also
sealed up as a secret recipe, as they were. By genuine Rhine coloring
was meant that sentimental, mistily indistinct tone in the dullest
possible half tints formerly so much in vogue. The fact that such a
booklet could be written and sold with profit affords us instructive
hints regarding the eye of the multitude for natural scenery in those
days, and the tone of that infallible Rhine coloring is, in its way,
also a color-tone of the age. Nowadays, when Alpine landscapes are
painted even on the rough stones from the Alpine rivers (for
paper-weights), it would be very easy to write out a recipe for genuine
mountain coloring. Mountain peaks, rugged as possible, painted in thick
Venetian white, must detach themselves from a sky of almost pure Berlin
blue; with these again contrasts a centre-ground partly composed of
clumps of dark green fir-trees and partly of a poisonous yellow-green
meadow; finally the rocks of the foreground must be painted in glaring
ochre tones, just as they are squeezed out of the paint tube. Such
factory goods are, for the historian of culture, just as necessary a
supplement to Zimmermann and Schirmer and Calame as that "genuine Rhine
coloring" is to Koch and Rheinhard, to Schuetz and Reinermann.
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