1844.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



417 



<0N THE PRESENT STATE, THEORY AND PROSPECTS OF 

 PAINTING. 

 No. III. 

 Chalk Drawing, Chalk Fixing and Water Colour Painting. ' 



Having glanced at fresco, en passai}/, with the intention of recur- 

 ring to the subject again ; having hastily traced the more important 

 errors and desiderata of oil, and suggested the means of improving 

 the art to the full extent of our present or probable knowledge; let us 

 return, with Father Matthew, to water, without quoting Ezekiel for 

 trick ; although, niaugre any charge of egotism — for he who knows 

 must/ul he knows, and in saying so, in the confidence of his strength, 

 is the better man than be who, with lengthened chin, and upturned 

 eye, and oily tongue, and glavering yet half-masked smile, begins 

 with a certain bishop, "In all due humility, my Lords," or in private 

 life, " I confess I am an humble judge, &c. &c." and which, forsooth is 

 mocked with a titular " modesty of mien." Pshaw 1 as Timon would 

 say, and say truly, I am not thus modest. Sir, and hate the craft : — 

 inaugre, I say, the milk skimmers of life and all their opinions, "All 

 those who use water shall be comforted to the nethermost parts of the 

 earth ;" and if, with Dickon among the doctors, we show the fallacies 

 of the faculty, we shall not be classed with Morrison, for we have no 

 personal interests to puff", no motive to deceive. 



To chalk, in all human probability, or charcoal,' used as such, we 

 owe the origin of an art capable of, humanly speaking, defying time 

 and stampiDg immortality on the works of man. Take RatFaelle and 

 Caracci as the proofs; for if the cartoons had been fixed as we could 

 now fix them, fully, firmly, imperishably, evenly, without stain or 

 gloss, without size or gluten, without steaming or disorder, and finally 

 without injuring the slightest half tint,^ where is the man who could 

 approximate their possible age? and taking the constant copying and 

 multiplication of them, with the powers of the modern press, into 

 question as a beacon and a guide to posterity — where is the man 

 who could calculate the probable period of time at which, from the 

 contact of a comet with this earth's revolving ball, they should cease 

 to be ? 



I allude obviously to those cartoons and those drawings carefully 

 preserved and decently used ; while those in the print room of the 

 British Museum cry aloud for the cheesemonger's scale or the house- 

 maid's hand ; they are notoriously depreciated and depreciating,^ are 

 worth little and soon must be worth-/ess; imbedded in oatmeal and 

 guarded by wire-haired curs, no man leaves them gratified but the 

 ratcatcher serf, accustomed to thumb the thing he examines, and who 

 feels unusually pleased to be led humbly by self-important hands. 

 And if Isay, with deference to better judges, Haydon's " Black Prince* 

 leading Jolm through the streets of London," or his much abused and 

 ridiculously mangled "Curse," the so-called uglinesses of which have 

 been bandied abroad probably as ironic praises of Challon's figurantes, 

 or Corbould's powder blue and washing tub forms — candelabra orna- 

 ments aad sliced turnip bosoms; or real slurs upon Armitage's bandv 

 legs and Puddle-dock grandeur, — if these, I say, had been thus fixed, 

 the Duke of Sutherland might have left to his posterity heir-looms of 

 realwoith; and I say, also — for men are omnipotently so cast as to 

 differ in opinion as in form — the Commission of the Fine Arts thought 

 wisely, and did well in making chalk the nucleus of worth, aud have 

 done more to exalt it than all the patronage of the last half century 

 by the impetus thus given to art — would to Heaven the same impetus 

 bad developed its force in mind — aye, more than all the efforts of 

 genius during the last century. Had Watts's Caractacus been thus 

 fixed or the Fight for the Beacon been thus rendered permanent with- 

 out size, the steaming of which must disconnect the coluurman's pasted 

 sheets, disfigure the face of the cartoon by blisters, folds or curruca- 

 tions, and finally give so fierce an affinity for damp, so inherent a dis- 

 position to mildew, the twin sister of dry rot," as, in such a climate as 

 this, can never permit the drawing to reach a RatVaelle Age or Caracci 

 term — they might have infinitely surpassed both with reference to 



1 Such is Plutarch's account at least, 



2 This effect it. certainly p-oduced Ijy the Translixing Liquid sold, I believe, exclusively 

 by Newman, in Solui Square. 



3 This was modestly pointed out two years ago to tlie person in charge of the Print- 

 room, rather as a compliment than otherwise, as Sir Heniy Ellice was assuredly the most 

 proper person, and the means of Dreservation gratuitously sugL'ested; but either the man 

 mistook a gtntleman fur some brother of the north seeking to rob him of his jilace and no 

 gent eman at all, or he rememheied llie Spanish proverb — "There is a tig at Home for the 

 man who gives when nut asked, or gives more than be is asked (or;" Scotchmen pro- 

 verbially giving nothing, but bows to the rich aud insolence to the poor. 



4 And yet, it is but justice to say. Haydon's cartoons were as little disligured by this 

 UDsetting of the paste and bad joinings as any in the exhibi'.ioni some drawings there 

 were disgiislint; specimens of want ol mmd and matter too. 



fi So iuh rent and inevitable is this effect of size on exposed surfaces in damp atmos-- 

 pheres I cannot believe llailaelle or Caracci used it at all; and nothing but an experi- 

 menlal examination ol the carlouns by tests would change my belief that historians have 

 deceived or misled us ou the subject. 



mere preservation. The only obstacles are trouble and cost to the 

 artist; and these, a higher grade in life, more patronage, more means 

 as the result and increasing self-respect will teach him, ere long, to 

 scorn. 



What the means are, and the modus operandi of their action, I do 

 ncit feel at liberty to develope, the confidence of friendship having 

 placed them in my keeping by one who had also sold the result of his 

 labours to an artist's colourman^ in the way of existence ; more espe- 

 cially too, as the existence of such men, among the moderns, vastly 

 resembles that of their brethren of old — a wearied, incessant, restless, 

 laborious, costly and precarious scene ; they are men who none but 

 the street mendicant can envy, and he only because he cannot as clas- 

 sically ask the Data obolum Beisarto ? Men on whom the shopo- 

 crat looks with all the scorn of a till; and merely adopts, aids or 

 trusts, in fact tolerates, at all in the " pale of civil and social relations" 

 as the stage autocrat does the talented buffoon — because he feels his 

 own nothingness, and that he caimot live without him; men who, if 

 they serve the trader are served out — if they serve the ])ublic weal 

 are treated with a letter of thanks, equally matter of course and un- 

 meaning, as it is void of intrinsic use, in a word delusive, vain, empty, 

 and a blight; the principle, however, is the simple evaporation of 

 spirit from the surface after permeating the texture of the paper, when 

 applied to theback — and leaving, in such evaporation, sufficiently well 

 modified matter behind as effects the desired end; many trashy at- 

 tempts at which have been formed of camphor aud other powerless 

 and objectionable agents before for sale. Let us now examine for 

 the painter in water colour the present state of his art, its wants, 

 wishes, and hopes; its historj, origin and present usage, open as it is 

 like oil, from his not being his own manipulator, to every trick of 

 trade. 



Of tempera, so long and so beautifully practised in Greece, and by 

 no means to be confused, much less identified with distemper, from 

 which it markedly differs in vehicle and effect, Mr. C. L. Eastlake has 

 given, in the Report of the Commission of the Fine Arts, a better his- 

 tory and description with more elaborate authority than I can presume 

 on, or the space of this Journal permits. Suffice it then to say, it is 

 one of the most permanent species of painting, very brilliant in effect 

 and worthy of more consideration than it has hitherto received among 

 us; and I can hardly conceive a more to be wished for improvement 

 in the amusements of our amateurs and occupation of our artists of 

 the lighter class, or a more delicate one either for our females, than 

 tempera painting on artificial marble slabs. The chief defccis of thi; 

 art, as handed down to us by ancient historians, — however, much what 

 Plutarch says casually and delusively may be relied upon infinitely 

 more than all the gossiping twaddle and bookinakiiig detail of Pliny, 

 who in all probability was in the constant pay of some Longman of his 

 day, — were the use of the yolk abounding in colour, and sulphur in 

 lieu of the white of the egg, and the disposition of that agent to scale 

 or crack, and these are real defects indeed ; but, acetic acid and sugar 

 candy, pure boracic acid and ether, or both, might do more than 

 liquorish-toothed jujubes, a trashy mixture of East Indian gum, 

 jujubes, currants and lump sugar do for Sir William Newton in lieu of 

 mure simple, dignified and intelligent agents; by the bye, why not 

 enquire about the nature of sugar candy. Sir William ? — Ask Etty I 



The Egyptians evidently painted much and, in their way, well in 

 tempera, and in all probability were the discoverers of it, and they, 

 like the Greeks, varnished with wax ; with reference to which I 

 would ask — does it follow, of necessity, that what Plutarch describes 

 as " cera punica in oko liqmjacta" should have really been bleached 

 wax ? ' Plutarch would have described, and his Latin followers surely 

 reiterated, the cera alba or ceia decolorata by some definite language 

 if the wax had been bleached at all. 1 would also enquire whether 

 many Egyptian paintings, very beautiful in aspect to the inex])erienced 

 eyes of some travellers, might not be indebted greatly to mere contrast 

 for that beauty as to effect, and to density of body for their permanence? 

 giving thereby a false idea of the permanence of the vehicle. Some 

 Chinese paintings, at a hasty view, are equally beautiful, though mere 

 trash — real Poonali-daubings as to art, because of this contrast uf dense, 

 unsuftened, unblended purple and gold, gaudy yellow and scarlet, 

 deep black, and sky-blue ; while the pigment must be changeable 



G Newman. 



7 III this translation, therefore, of "cera Punica in oleo liquefacto," we must differ with 

 Mr. C. L. Eastiake's report, in which it is translated white wax ; now surely cera alba 

 would have been used, or cera cindid.a— in fact there was no paucity of language— cera 

 depurata, cera purilicata, or some expression to dehne or express bleached wax. Vitru- 

 vins was probably his authority, and Vilruvius used tlie txpression as a vulgarism eqUrilly 

 aoplied to red wax. Cera Punica I humbly conceive could only be properly translated or 

 spoken of as * Punic or Carthaginian wax in its natural state ■,' and, en passant, I may 

 here notice a very ignorant, silly thing transmitted to iilr. Eastlake, vii. a recommenda- 

 tion to use ** salt of tarter, cream of tarter, or soluble tarter," as synonymes for one and 

 the ^ame end, when, equ:illy as to language anil chemistry, they are diifeient things— op- 

 positea and inefficient; caustic ammonia being tlie proper agent for maliiiig wax soap, or, 

 i potas must be used, caustic not carbonated polas. 



