Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439

The painter of Napoleon passed the self-satisfied dauber twice, not without some admiring glances at the way in which he was plastering the background of his landscape with indigo, by way of making a sky. At top of the sign, now nearly finished, was traced, in large characters, 'Break of Day;' a precaution as indispensable to point out the artist's design, as the inscription, 'Dutch and Flemish Beer,' was to announce the articles dealt in by the owner of the house upon which this masterpiece was to figure.

'Here's a pretty fellow!' said the artist to himself; 'with as much knowledge of perspective as a carthorse; and yet, I doubt not, thinking himself a second Rubens. He brushes away as if he were polishing a pair of boots. And what matter? Why should he not enjoy himself in his own way?' But when he passed the ladder for the third time, and saw a fresh layer of indigo putting over the first, his patience could hold out no longer, and he exclaimed, without stopping or even looking at the offender: 'There is too much blue!'

'Eh! Do you want anything, sir?' said the sign-painter; but he who had ventured the criticism was already at a distance.

Again, David passed by. Another glance at the 'Break of Day,' and another exclamation: 'Too much blue, you blockhead!' The insulted plasterer turned round to reconnoitre the speaker, and as if concluding, from his appearance, that he could be no very great connoisseur, he quietly set to work again, shrugging his shoulders in wonder how it could possibly be any business of his whether the sky was red, green, or blue. For the fourth time the unknown lounger repeated his unwelcome criticism: 'Too much blue!'

The Brussels Wouvermans coloured, but said, in the subdued tone of a man wishing to conceal anger he cannot help feeling: 'The gentleman may not be aware that I am painting a sky.' By this time he had come down from the ladder, and was standing surveying his work with one eye closed, and at the proper distance from it to judge of its effect; and his look of evident exultation shewed that nothing could be more ill-timed than any depreciation of his labours.

'It is because I suppose you do want to paint a sky, that for that very reason I wished to give you this little piece of advice, and to tell you that there is too much blue in it.'

'And pray, Mr Amateur, when was there ever a sky seen without blue?'

'I am no amateur; but I tell you once more, that there is too much blue. And now do as you like; and if you do not think you have enough, you can put more.'

'This is entirely too bad!' cried the now exasperated sign-painter. 'You are an old fool, and know nothing of painting. I should like to see you make a sky without blue.'

'I do not say I am a good hand at a sky; but if I did set about it, there should be no blue.'

'A pretty job it would be!'

'It would look like something, at all events.'

'That is as much as to say mine is like nothing at all.'

'No indeed, for it is very like a dish of spinach, and very like a vile daub, or like anything else you please.'

'A dish of spinach! a vile daub!' cried the artist of Brabant in a rage. 'I, the pupil of Ruysdael—I, fourth cousin to Gerard Dow! and you pretend to know more of my art than I do—an art I have practised with such credit at Antwerp, Louvain, and Liege! A dish of spinach, indeed!' And by this time the fury of the insulted painter had increased to such a degree, that he seized David by the arm, and shaking him violently, added: 'Do you know, you old dotard, that my character has been long established? I have a red horse at Mechlin, a stag at Namur, and a Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, that no one has ever seen without admiring!'

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