1844.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



379 



copal, anime and umber with oxide of lead. In vvbicli we see again 

 exemplified tlie folly of the mania for fierce dryers, as well as the 

 deceptions practised upon artists (not being, as of old, their own 

 manipulators). Could M. Merimee have evan suspected, or can you 

 digest this good translator of Le grand (Euvre? but to ask such a 

 question of sucli a man is supererogation wild. The. varnish maker, 

 in nine cases out of ten, is himself ignorant of the theory of the pro- 

 cess ; and can your looking glass, can your kid gloves or eagle's quill 

 assume even a varnish maker's head? Fie; dissolve, like a Poly- 

 technic view for a fourpenny bit instead of a shilling fee, the Physios- 

 cope suits you not, and will-o'-\visps suit not me ; while I love and 

 honour the humblest image of his God who serves mankind, I look 

 with ineffable contempt on learned men of the pseudo school, the but- 

 terflies of the race : and, to close this digression, I assert — first, that 

 which it sold as such is not copal ; secondly, there is no copal, nor any 

 copal and anime, sold dissolved in raw oil ; thirdly, the compound sold 

 both browns and cracks, as every coach [lainter's bey knows; fourthly, 

 Theophilus never made any, and, in all human probability, never saw 

 copal ; fifthly, M. Merimee, in bis enthusiasm over his crotchet, fol- 

 lowed Theophilus' example, and assumed his facts precisely as the 

 broom seller undersold all his competitors, simply by stealing brooms 

 and ready made; sixthly, that if his translator were to try the experi- 

 ment with raw oiV, in a glass vessel, he would not have a/all back, as the 

 varnish maker calls it, but fall inlo the fire, and, albeit the Tailors are 

 a numerous brotherhood, of similar mental calibre, he might prove 

 equally unlike Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego with reference to 

 practical scorching. 



Now let us return to oil. This should be chosen, like the dryer, 

 with reference first to climate, next to body; poppy oil then, I repeat, 

 for small pictures and high finish, linseed for larger ones, and the 

 loaded brush and free touch in this and all similar climates ; sulphate 

 of zinc, dried but twi calcined, alone where a metallic dryer is added ; 

 or, the zinco-crystal dryer prepared by Messrs. Winsor and Newton. 

 But for Italy, the East Indies, or similar temperatures, walnut oil and 

 calcined bones in lieu of zinc, for the simplest of all reasons, the climate 

 requires such adaptation, and the duplicate effect drying and bleach- 

 ing are alike the desired end ; but to yellowing and subsequent horn. 



it must be known to many artists that oil bleaches by exposure to 

 light, and further, that this bleaching or deoxidizing process is in- 

 creased materially by adding water and sulphate of zinc^ (undried), 

 but it is not known that while this salt leaves the oil in slalti qau as to 

 drying power, so bleaches it, while acetate of lead acts in an opposite 

 way, and increases the yellowing and drying power, giving a still 

 stronger tendency to skin, because a still stronger affinity for oxygen; 

 in fact, though paler and weaker, it is a solution of lead, an analogy of 

 boiled oil. To recapitulate then — the object should be first to lessen 

 the tendency to rise ; secondly, to lessen the avidity for oxygen ; 

 thirdly, to bleach, if possible, that which now yellows in drying ; and 

 how are these desiderata to be accomplished? First, by choosing, as 

 before said, an oil adapted to climate; secondly, a dryer to supersede 

 boiled oil, Mae Gellup gumption, or japanner's gold size, and which 

 must dry by evaporation alone, not by forming a skin; and thickeriog 

 by such evaporation, so as preclude rising as much as possible, that 

 is, acting as a biuder of the oil and colour; and lastly, such a metallic 

 matter "as, by deoxidising and bleaching, prevents the yellowing as 

 the colour sets, for when once fixed, especially if painted in a fine 

 light, it never, under ami ordinary circumstance, chiuiges or can change 

 at all." * ^ 



I have said a fine light, and such is a sine qua non in my estimation, 

 and I fancy I can perceive a difference between such pictures as 

 Wilkie painted in Phillimore Place and those he subsequently finished 

 in the studio of the Manor House ; and were I a painter possessing 

 the means to the finest possible light and air I would add the tempe- 

 rature of Italy, by steam pipes, never by stoves, and, above all things, 

 never turning the face of the picture to the wall. 



Here, too, it is necessary to say Davy's assertion was correct, " all 

 oils become varnishes by time ;" nay, he might have said, are vfirnts/ies 

 of the htghesi cast. How then could Merimee or Reynolds, or the ex- 

 quisite Taylor distinguish a metamorphosed oil from an admixed 



varnish ? Artificial ones were used, but not to brighten colours they 



\vere used to modify the drying power and lessen the skin, too ob- 

 viously conspicuous to escape tfie keen eyes of men who were their 

 own manipulators aad varnish makers, and in ages of close observa- 

 tion and absolute work, not theory, impudence and trick. John Var- 

 ley, many years ago, painted a landscape in oil (inTitchfieUl Street) with 

 ordinary ochres and natural pigments of the commonest cast, on this 

 principle with very fine effect; and Bonniiigto.i painted, in Paris, for 



5 This must not be confounded with tlie object of the luanufKcturer in a vjtluuble pro- 

 cess given by Dr. Andrew tJre in his Dictionary of Arts, Jiiannfactures^and Miues— tiiere 

 the object is to get rid of mucilage, iacrease limpidity, and malie it more saleable. 



the Exposition, iissisted by an amateur" of great judgment and obser- 

 vation, two others in distemper glazed in oil which gained great eclat, 

 were brought to Colnaghi's and sold as oil of the finest grade, and in 

 neither did boiled oil exist at all, or any of its analogies. 



Now to the much talked of vitrifiable powers of Venetian pigments ; 

 till- miserable impostures called glass media, silica media, &c. &c. ; 

 and the ridiculous assertions about John Van Eyck, which two years 

 ago infested the papers and poisoned the minds of the younger artists 

 and amateurs, nay, one paper I could name was occupied, and by very 

 talented pens too, in suggesting means of doing the impossible. 



History would lead the rational man to infer no more than this — 

 John Van Eyck revived a then almost disused system of painting; and 

 having placed a jiicture to dry in the sun it cracked to pieces, when, 

 as a student, he set himself about lessening the drying power which, 

 even in his climate, was too fierce, and by the addenda, wax and 

 burned bones — then to be found in every apothecary's shop and 

 every student's laboratory— he fully accomplished his object. The 

 peculiar flatness alone of Van Eyck's pictures, as quite distinct from 

 that of Hans Holbein who never could paint a round surface, amply 

 testifies the fact, for wax entails this painful consequence if largely 

 used ; and I should sooner expect to find Van Eyck's bones marked 

 with Hume's permanent ink in his pictures, than any other agent ; 

 whence, then, arose the maniacal assumptions referring to borax or 

 borate of soda, a fourth of which may be considered as better fitted 

 for the laundress who frets her day at the tub, for it is soda, veritable 

 common soda equal to Scotch? whence came the ridculous assertions 

 respecting this salt when vitrified, and called, for similitude sake onlvt 

 glass of borax ; whence, above all, came the brazen assertion of its 

 being a good dryer at all? or how came the salesmen to tack to its 

 mixtures the idle, unmeaning imposture of, not glass alone, but silica 

 media '. for neither glass nor silex ever entered this more than Mor- 

 lisonian hotch potch. Why simply thus : an ingenious mar, I be- 

 lieve of the navy, who had read, in the cockpit, of Venetian pictures 

 staggering the chemists of France by their often vitrifiable powers; 

 and knew that a precocious son of Galen had surprised his pupil by 

 seeing in the Hippocratic visage of his patient proofs of his having 

 supped from oysters, simply because. Nature having endowed him 

 with ubiquity of vision, he saw, at the same time, shells beneath the 

 bed ; which the gifted boy turned at once to profit, for, on visiting the 

 man on the following morning and perceiving a saddle beneath his bed, 

 declared promptly the fellow had swallovved'a horse ! Knowing these 

 facts, I say, and that borax is often used to fuse enamels, &e. this in- 

 genious man at once declared borax was the agent of John Van Eyck, 

 and conveyed by his pupil, Antonio de Messina, to Italy where, it died 

 a natural death, and bore over the tomb of ages this inscription " Re- 

 surgat in Brittania." 



U is needless to add, in water the thing is worthless, nay injurious, 

 as an alkaline efl!lorescent salt; in oil worse, as a bad dryei-, a great 

 yellower, in fact, a filthy soap making, silly compound. And, while 

 neither glass nor silica ever existed in any of it, and therefore the 

 name alone was a fraud, one fact is clear, the man who used it needed 

 no glass in his os frontis to render visible as he ran, this gratifying 

 proof of phrenology -I am a goose. So gullible, however, are we, 

 proverbially, every colourman in the metropolis, save Newman, and 

 Messrs. Winsor, Newton, stocked himself with bottles, pots, and pa- 

 pers of the trash, which was openly asserted to be capable of convey- 

 ing all the powers of enamel, liitherto given by fire alone, to everv 

 pigment with which it was blended ; and one Paracelsus of the arts 

 actually asserted that a silver cup had been voted to him by artists of 

 rank for vitrifying an ass's skin! tempera.' mores : along list 

 of artistic names actually followed, and were blazoned again and 

 again in the Art Union, which of course was not answerable for the 

 truth of an advertised puff. 



It has been asserted that Apelles possessed the secret of a com- 

 pound which conveyed to the likeness of Alexander the immortality 

 of the raati. If this be true, like the dismantled statue of Ozimandias 

 king of kings, or the famous Pharos and its duplicate inscription, the 

 day of its glory has been the life of the Mav Hy, and the sun which 

 rose on its birth set o'er its death. History is silent, as far as proof 

 goes, and her assertions only assure us, first that Apelles systemati- 

 cally flattered his sitters by keeping ideal beauty in view; that se- 

 condly his pictures had something of the Murillo tone, as the name of 

 his vehicle would lead us to think; that thirdly men, women, and 

 children were equally Getana; or gipsies in hue; and, therefore, the 

 only conjecture left to the hypothesist of posterity is, that Apelles 

 used Jew's pitcii nr asphaltum probablv dissolved in natural naplitha; 

 for even amber, then and long after constantiv used, would not pro- 

 duce these combined effects ; the whole question, however, belongs 



This valuable uiau is still, I believe, living, vii. — Henderson, Esq. 



