General power of the Moderns in painting quiet water. The lakes of Fielding.

There are few men among modern landscape painters who cannot paint quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. Those who are incapable of doing this would scarcely be considered artists at all; and anything like the ripples of Canaletto, or the black shadows of Vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising, even in the work of a novice. Among those who most fully appreciate and render the qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps Copley Fielding stands first. His expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult, lustrous. He is less dependent than most of our artists upon reflection; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of colour. Nothing, indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity, a fondness for pretty, rather than impressive colour, and a consequent want of some of the higher expression of repose.