126 Proceedings of the 



of which it has been supposed water colours are incapable, which 

 were considered, till within these few years, to be fit for little else 

 than the slight sketchy works of amateurs ; and, indeed, notwith- 

 standing the great and rapid improvements made within the last 

 thirty years, and the beautiful specimens that have been seen in the 

 annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in water colours, the 

 works painted in water have hardly yet established their just claim 

 to be called paintings, being usually named drawings, to distinguish 

 them from works in oil. Still, every lover of art has felt and appre- 

 ciated the superior brilliancy and purity of the tints of water-colour 

 pictures. This they owe to their being painted with transparent 

 colours on a white ground, where the rays of light passing through 

 the diaphanous colours to the paper, are reflected back to the spec- 

 tator, producing a similar effect to the light reflected through 

 a jewel from the foil at the back ; while pictures in oil, being 

 painted for the most part with opaque colours, give back the light 

 from the surface, and deprive them of that fulness of tint which is 

 possessed by water colours, in this case resembling the light re- 

 flected from the surface of a jewel which, in those of the deepest 

 colour, appears nearly colourless. Now the question of durability 

 is not so easily disposed of as a hasty adopted prejudice would 

 assert. If any collection of oil pictures be carefully examined, those 

 in the highest state of preservation will be found to have suffered 

 considerably, while the majority are obscured from various causes ; 

 the oil itself becomes dark and opaque by time, and acts chemically 

 upon many of the colours ; which again being mixed upon the pain- 

 ter's pallet without regard to their chemical nature, also act upon 

 each other : thus the light colours become browner, "and the deeper 

 colours mealy ; then follows the ruinous practice of cleaning arid 

 varnishing, the evils of which our space will not allow us to enume- 

 rate, but which are well known to those interested in the subject. 

 On the other hand, pictures in water-colours, by the usual modes, 

 require a glass to preserve them from the injuries of dirt and mois- 

 ture, and if they become stained or dirty, cannot be cleanedfwithout 

 the greatest risk of destruction. 



The risk of breaking, the weight, and the expense of plate glass, 

 would necessarily limit the size, did not the inferior force of water- 

 colours, by the old method, preclude the attempting a large picture. 

 But our limits warn us that we must proceed to describe briefly the 

 new method as proposed by Mr. Robertson, which he illustrated 

 by pictures, one of them containing about forty square feet of sur- 

 face, with whole-length figures the size of life, the production of 

 which excited the full approbation of the audience. Mr. Robert- 

 son attaches the paper upon which he paints, by means of glue 

 and paste, to a strong linen, the back of which he defends by 

 tin foil, also firmly attached by the same means^whichjsecures that 

 part from the effects of damp, a great source of injury to pictures. 

 Beginning with a neutral tint, he washes in all his colours sepa- 



