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| James McNeill Whistler Soupe à Trois Sous (Threepenny Soup) 1859 etching Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| James McNeill Whistler Reading by Lamplight 1858 etching Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| after Filippo Lippi Drapery Studies ca. 1450 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Alphonse Legros Death of the Vagabond 1875 etching, aquatint Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
"It is once more in Constable's correspondence that we find rich documentation of this difficulty which besets the path of the artist-innovator. Hearing of that rare bird, a prospective buyer for one of his landscapes, the embittered painter writes: 'Had I not better grime it down with slime and soot, as he is a connoisseur, and perhaps prefers filth and dirt to freshness and beauty?' 'Rubbed and dirty canvases,' he writes elsewhere, 'take the place of God's own works.' Intent as he was on the rendering of light, he could not but deplore and despise the visual habits of the public that had adjusted its eyes to the gloom of old varnish. His point of view, as we know, has prevailed. The yellow varnish that was spread over paintings in the nineteenth century to give them what was called a 'gallery tone' has disappeared with the Claude glass. We have been taught to look into light without putting on black spectacles."
"But it would be a little rash to assume that this revolution has at last given us the truth and that we now know what pictures should look like. Constable rightly deplored the visual habits of those who were used to looking at dirty canvases, and he went so far as to deplore the founding of the National Gallery in London, which would mean 'the end of art in poor old England'. But today the position may be reversed. The brighter palette, the strong and even loud colours to which first impressionism and then twentieth-century paintings (not to mention posters and neon lights) have inured us may have made it difficult for us to accept the quiet tonal gradations of earlier styles."
"The question of what paintings looked like when they were made is more easily asked than answered. Luckily we have additional evidence in images that neither fade nor change – I mean particularly the works of graphic art. Some of Rembrandt's prints, I believe, provide an astounding object lesson in reliance on dark tones and subdued contrasts. Is it an accident that there are fewer print lovers now than there ever were? Those who got used to the sound of the concert grand find it difficult to adjust their ears to the harpsichord."
– E.H. Gombrich, from Art and Illusion: a Study of the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, originally delivered as the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, 1956
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| Giovanni Battista Piazzetta Standing model posed against a tree ca. 1715-20 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Francesco del Pedro after Jacopo Tintoretto Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne ca. 1790 etching, engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| follower of Giovanni Battista Franco after a medal by Danese Cattaneo Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo ca. 1560-61 engraving Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Paulus Moreelse Two young women dancing with Cupid 1612 chiaroscuro woodcut Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| after Giuseppe Salviati Warrior and Three Women attending a Dying Woman ca. 1550-75 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Simone Cantarini Rest on the Flight into Egypt ca. 1639 etching Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Johannes van Somer after Karel Dujardin Four Figures gathered among Tombs (The Soldier's Tale) ca. 1670-80 mezzotint Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Edgar Degas Marguerite De Gas, the artist's sister ca. 1860-62 etching Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Jean-Léon Gérôme Fallen Gladiator ca. 1870 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| attributed to Giuseppe Marchesi Holy Family with St Anne and the infant St John the Baptist before 1771 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |