His touch is swift as air; his coloring
is vivid as light; he has learned, I know not how, the secrets of hidden
places in all lands; and he paints, now a tufted clump of soft cocoa
palms; now the spires and walls of an iceberg, glittering in yellow
sunlight; now a desolate, sandy waste, where black rocks and a few
crumbling ruins are lit up by a lurid glow; then a cathedral front, with
carvings like lace; then the skeleton of a wrecked ship, with bare ribs
and broken masts,--and all so exact, so minute, so life-like, that you
believe no man could paint thus any thing which he had not seen.
He has a special love for mosaics, and a marvellous faculty for making
drawings of curious old patterns. Nothing is too complicated for his
memory, and he revels in the most fantastic and intricate shapes. I have
known him in a single evening throw off a score of designs, all beautiful,
and many of them rare: fiery scorpions on a black ground; pale lavender
filagrees over scarlet; white and black squares blocked out as for tiles
of a pavement, and crimson and yellow threads interlaced over them; odd
Chinese patterns in brilliant colors, all angles and surprises, with no
likeness to any thing in nature; and exquisite little bits of landscape in
soft grays and whites.
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