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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[November, 



ndeed not to stand, being, unlike our tliin tints and mere washes, in 

 fact, solid bodies of colour literally dredged upon, not mixed with the 

 vehicle ; — a species of painting followed also by the ancient inhabitants 

 of Peru. I question, also, whether Davy was quite correct as to 

 Egyptian azure. A blue pigment may be made, of course, by fluxing 

 flint, copper filings, &c., but it is a poor, weak, drossy, bodyless frit of 

 little worth; no painter of the presentday would use it twice ; indeed, 

 Davy," maugre the cackle of the F.R.S. tribe, though of brilliant mind 

 and ingenious, was infinitely more practical and practicable on salmon 

 fishing than on painting; on good living than on the arts. 



Distemper painting now claims our notice; and comes strictly 

 wiihin the express position laid down in my first paper, viz., that while 

 oil painting must place its reliance on the vehicle used, water painting 

 must rely only on the individual permanence of its pigment, to which 

 may be added, in the cases of tempera and distemper, its varnish. 

 The best vehicle for distemper is unquestionably parchment size, 

 which though inferior to sulutions of isinglass in colour and ior 

 glazing has none of the chilling or setting powers of it, and only 

 requires precautions to be taken against cracking from its drying 

 power," of which the use of sugar candy is the most eflScient, with 

 this advantage, that the bearing-out is also achieved by it; and the 

 painting may not only be looked upon, when dry, but looked into; its 

 very base and inmost core is open — deep, clothy, rich, and full. Lakes 

 and carmine should never be used a second time ; carmine and scarlet 

 lake deteriorate by every wetting with distilled water alone, that is, 

 go back to the purple hue of the cochineal, and only two means exist 

 to prevent it; either to use, as formerly, a purple-toned carmine, the 

 «e plus ultra of Guyton Morvean or Gay Lussac's day ; or, in using the 

 present butterfly of art, carried to excess in the scarlet tone by an ad- 

 mixture of a fugitive yellow, to keep up that tone by using on the 

 palette, as the flower painter does, citric acid, and still better citric 

 acid and nitrate of ammonia, in very minute quantities; the same 

 minute quantity of phosphate of lime (not burned bones as for oil, but 

 the artificial phosphate,) will retain the purple tone as long as any 

 modern water painting will last or can last. Barytic sulphate white 

 — commonly called permanent or often constant white — not the 

 native sulphate, which some anserine scribe, delighted with his grey 

 "goose quill," suggested to the Royal Commission of the Fine Arts 

 in the Athenaum some time back, but that which any respectable 

 colourman would use for his cakes — should be used in delicate pic- 

 tures and retouchings, while good German kremnitz suffices for others, 

 but requires very rapid varnishing, not being itself permanent. The 

 use of barytic white, however, is never fortunate in effect if impure 

 or at all iron-tainted water be employed ; for, this turns it foxy. 



Distemper, without a question, has manifold good qualities for de- 

 corative purposes; and as many of the Venetian masters, and in the 

 best days of art, employed distemper in the highest order of pictures, 

 two modern imitations of which 1 have before spoken of as executed 

 by Bonnington and Mr. Henderson in Paris, I am yet to be informed 

 why the junction of distemper and oil, in one painting, should be aban- 

 doned? The luce de dentru of a white ground of Cornish porcelain 

 clay, washed until clean, white and silky, would, in such cases, pro- 

 duce that grand ettect, that tone, that clearness and beauty which oil 

 alone can never reach ; and the glazing in oil, as a real varnish, pro- 

 tects you from the chief evil of water painting — viz., the «0H-perma- 

 nence of many colours where all ought to be ultramarines in pov/er. 



Much as I admire fresco in the mighty hall and majestic dome ; much 

 as t think fresco practice \\ill improve the arts ; durable as I know it is, 

 and practised well and successfully as I am sure it ?vitl be ere long; I 

 am still bound to confess I bi-lieve tempera, distemper, and oil will 

 infinitely suit us better, be more pleasing to the general eye, be more 

 patronised, more profitable, and ultimately more beneficial to man. 



Wax painting, of course, I exclude from present consideration. It 

 is very beautiful and very permanent in proper atmospheres; and cer- 

 tainly well adapted fur mural decoration. In the vestibules and por- 

 ticos of the anci( nt Balbec or Palmyra, in Carthage or Herculaneum 

 equallygrand; and, imperishable in the chambers of the pyramids, but 



s Such I am aw.ire. is high treason, and may raise a hornet's nest, of this I am reck- 

 less. Davy was hiyhiy gifted, ingenious, and showy; but, saving his detompositioo of 

 the alltalies —by such agency as Uaroo Born liad not possessed, and therefore could only 

 suggest the facts — he was practical and practicable in nothing else; and in the zenith of 

 his assumed name applied tr) iUr. Fitld, the author of Chromotography, to assist him in 

 ' getting iron from lapis lazuli.* Air. Field is still living, and his grey hairs hairs too re- 

 spectable for the splutterers about Uavy to impugn his veracity ; but more anon, when 

 lir. Faraday and his wether-bcU tingle about the " Uavy lamp" come fairly before me, 

 then this unwarrantable data-!ess assertion shall have justice, justice of the bhylock 

 school, to a hair. Indeed, the animus is simply this— sometliing must be said on emerg- 

 ing from his mission to the collieries, and Davy, the immortal Davy's mantle is the pano- 

 ply and shield. 'I'lie man of theory pockets his tea tor saying a practical nothing ; but 

 benelit he must, as the the ministers godsend. 



y More than half the nonsensical praises lavished on the Chinese flexible varnishes 

 originate in ignorance of the fact that many of their very bad ones are flexible merely be- 

 cause sugar candy is used in the colouring beneath, which therefore cannot crack. 



in the name of common sense, I ask, what figure will it cut in Corne- 

 lius's very a(/;/»>a6fe situation for a palace? How will it look near 

 Sir John Cowan's candle shop, in defiance of Gresham's name or 

 Sang's flowery festoons, fat grffins and incomprehensible shapes of 

 nameless things, neither seen in the earth or the sea, in the heavens or 

 the regions below? Can it be supposed possible that, in seven years, 

 the smoke and filth and cent, per cent, degradation of the city of 

 London should leave his yellows, and greens, and reds, and blues visi- 

 ble at all except as the finger posts of scorn? But Sang probably fol- 

 lows the Turner school, and they will last "his time." Oh, that he 

 had been patronized by persons of more faith — yes, a little more, 

 faith, and a thousand sovereigns down had shone brighter far than 

 Indian red; and, Sang's important secrets burst forth in more than 

 meteor glare ; then, indeed, might high art have hidden her head, 

 beneath her vest and sat like "Patience on a monument smiling at 

 grief;" but, Sang was right thus far; it is dangerous to be a volunteer 

 with "more fighting and 7io pay," for as the Spanish proverb says — 

 "there is a fig at Rome for him who gives advice when not asked, or 

 gives more than he is asked/or." 



Looking to men, manners, and things of real life — things as Nature 

 made them or as they are, for I detest polished frippery as much as 

 learned, pious, philanthropic, or artistic affectation — 1 hate the trum- 

 pery fig leaf of Haydon's Curse'" equally with the unnatural and mon- 

 strously denuded Omphale at Gwydyr House ; looking at things as 

 they are in actual life, ninety persons out of every hundred stand too 

 close to all pictures: how disgusting then the general effect of the 

 fresco must be — I mean the genuine fresco, not the frittered-away, 

 tempera-loaded dowdy of a small apartment — to such a near-sighted 

 race? 



I now repeat the axiom, that with reference to permanence, water 

 colour must place no reliance whatever upon media, but wholly and 

 solely on the individual permanence of each pigment wherever such 

 can be attained, or, on subsequent varnish : water colour may, with 

 glazing, become an approach to oil effc'ct, but except in such cases as 

 those spoken of before, viz., a mixed style, never can equal it. Still 

 may greater richness, bearing out and effect, be gained when colour- 

 men advance a step beyond A, B, C. 



I have said nothing of the ordinary cakes now made by three" of 

 the makers, both neatly and free from that miserable mixture of trash 

 common thirty years ago: the late Mr. Reeves used to boast that his 

 colours mashed injinitely better than those of other men ; and well they 

 might, Windsor soap was a very conspicuous ingredient, and Windsor 

 soap washes neatly enough, a slight dash of water will wash it out. 

 The chief defects of cake colours are, the total vvant of " bearing out 

 powers," when dry; and total absence of all " resisting" or preserva- 

 tive power in the compound ; so that scarlet carmine becomes purple, 

 in fact depreciated by the making and worthless, if used, from the 

 palette a second time ; hence miniature and flower painters have each 

 their nostrums, like Sir William Newton's solution of jujubes, better 

 adapted to the mouth than the pencil, and bespeaking an infinitely 

 greater degree of intelligence in the stomach than the head; or Mister 

 Bartholomew's colour cups, adapted to nothing earthly beside ; for 

 these are marked blue esquire, yellow esquire, green esquire, and so 

 forth, — and yet Bartholomew, maugre this weakness of oar Uiitiire, is 

 a man of unquestionable talent, and by supplying what the colourman 

 ought to have supplied before hand— produces fine work, — flowers 

 which might have deceived King Solomon's bees, and placed his far- 

 famed wisdom at a discount. 



WiLHELM BE WiNTERTON. 



November 8, 1844. 



1 o To shew the mawkish affectation and mere caprice of such pseudo-delicacy — a gen- 

 tleman who had just been descanting on the indecency of a certain nude ligure in a line 

 picture and really dignified subject, went to prayers in the cathedral at Lincoln with bis 

 daughters, over the doorvvav of \vhich an immense casting, in high relief, of the fieeds of 

 .Sodom and Gomorrba stands too conspicuous tu pass unseen. O tempora ! O mores ' 

 The authorities would have been petrified if an engraving of such a thing iiad appeared in 

 a book, or had it been painted ou canvas, while that which had nothing impure in it gave 

 real ott'et'ce ; veritably, we have academical as well as polemical Agueivs, and the artistic 

 as well as dramatic Miss Nancy. 



1 J Newman. Winsiu- and Newton, and Roberson; the rest may be taken by the lump at 

 twenty-live per cent, discount for sale, with an extra hve percent, for the drawing master's 

 recommendation. 



Iron Ships. — The National states, that ihc Government proposes to permit 

 the importation of iron ships, subject to a duty of 45 francs the 100 kilo- 

 f;rammcs. 



