#This quality of tone music is most dominant when the masses are large and simple#, when the contemplation of them is not disturbed by much variety, and they have little variation of texture and gradation.  A slight mist will often improve the tone of a landscape for this reason.  It simplifies the tones, masses them together, obliterating many smaller varieties.  I have even heard of the tone of a picture being improved by such a mist scrambled or glazed over it.

[Illustration:  Plate XLIII.

MONTE SOLARO CAPRI

Study on brown paper in charcoal and white chalk.]

The powder on a lady’s face, when not over-done, is an improvement for the same reason.  It simplifies the tones by destroying the distressing shining lights that were cutting up the masses; and it also destroys a large amount of half tone, broadening the lights almost up to the commencement of the shadows.

#Tone relationships are most sympathetic when the middle values of your scale only are used, that is to say, when the lights are low in tone and the darks high.#

#They are most dramatic and intense when the contrasts are great and the jumps from dark to light sudden.#

The sympathetic charm of half-light effects is due largely to the tones being of this middle range only; whereas the striking dramatic effect of a storm clearing, in which you may get a landscape brilliantly lit by the sudden appearance of the sun, seen against the dark clouds of the retreating storm, owes much of its dramatic quality to contrast.  The strong contrasts of tone values coupled with the strong colour contrast between the warm sunlit land and the cold angry blue of the storm, gives such a scene much dramatic effect and power.

The subject of values will be further treated in dealing with unity of tone.

[Sidenote:  Variety in Quality and Texture]

Variety in quality and nature is almost too subtle to write about with any prospect of being understood.  The play of different qualities and textures in the masses that go to form a picture must be appreciated at first hand, and little can be written about it.  Oil paint is capable of almost unlimited variety in this way.  But it is better to leave the study of such qualities until you have mastered the medium in its more simple aspects.

The particular tone music of which we were speaking is not helped by any great use of this variety.  A oneness of quality throughout the work is best suited to exhibit it.  Masters of tone, like Whistler, preserve this oneness of quality very carefully in their work, relying chiefly on the grain of a rough canvas to give the necessary variety and prevent a deadness in the quality of the tones.