But there is a unity about nature’s tone arrangements that it is very difficult to improve upon; and it is usually advisable, if you can, to base the scheme of tone in your picture on a good study of values from nature.

Such effects as twilight, moonlight, or even sunlight were seldom attempted by the older painters, at any rate in their figure subjects.  All the lovely tone arrangements that nature presents in these more unusual aspects are a new study, and offer unlimited new material to the artist.  Many artists are content to use this simply for itself, the beauty of a rare tone effect being sufficient with the simplest accessories to make a picture.  But in figure composition, what new and wonderful things can be imagined in which some rare aspect of nature’s tone-music is combined with a fine figure design.

These values are not easily perceived with accuracy, although their influence may be felt by many.  A true eye for the accurate perception of subtle tone arrangements is a thing you should study very diligently to acquire.  How then is this to be done?  It is very difficult, if not impossible, to teach anybody to see.  Little more can be said than has already been written about this subject in the chapter on variety in mass.  Every mass has to be considered in relation to an imagined tone scale, taking black for your darkest and white for your highest light as we have seen.  A black glass, by reducing the light, enables you to observe these relationships more accurately; the dazzling quality of strong light making it difficult to judge them.  But this should only be used to correct one’s eye, and the comparison should be made between nature seen in the glass and your work seen also in the glass.  To look in a black glass and then compare what you saw with your work looked at direct is not a fair comparison, and will result in low-toned work with little brilliancy.

Now, to represent this scale of tones in painting we have white paint as our highest and black paint as our lowest notes.  It is never advisable to play either of these extremes, although you may go very near to them.  That is to say, there should never be pure white or pure black masses in a picture.  There is a kind of screaminess set up when one goes the whole gamut of tone, that gives a look of unrestraint and weakness; somewhat like the feeling experienced when a vocalist sings his or her very highest or very lowest note.  In a good singer one always feels he could have gone still higher or still lower, as the case may be, and this gives an added power to the impression of his singing.  And in art, likewise, it is always advisable to keep something of this reserve power.  Also, the highest lights in nature are never without colour, and this will lower the tone; neither are the deepest darks colourless, and this will raise their tone.  But perhaps this is dogmatising, and it may be that beautiful work is to be done with all the extremes you can “clap on,” though I think it very unlikely.