Of color without form

Color, without form, is less frequently obtainable, and it may be doubted whether it be desirable: yet I think that to the full enjoyment of it, a certain abandonment of form is necessary; sometimes by reducing it to the shapeless glitter of the gem, as often Tintoret and Bassano; sometimes by loss of outline and blending of parts,abstract oil painting, as Turner; sometimes by flatness of mass, as often Giorgione and Titian. How far it is possible for the painter to represent those mountains of Shelley as the poet sees them, "mingling their flameswith twilight," I cannot say; but my impression is, that there is no true abstract mode of considering color; and that all the loss of form in the works of Titian or Turner, is not ideal, but the representation of the natural conditions under which bright color is seen; for form is always in a measure lost by nature herself when color is very vivid. oil paintings for sale cheap