1890.] the old Masters in Painting. 49 



books have been written on the history of painting with a view to 

 expounding the methods used during the best period of art. 



Unfortunately, however, in spite of the large amount of in- 

 formation thus at hand, many most important points remain 

 obscure. It is seldom those who best know the subject who write 

 the text-books. And these MSS. are necessarily difficult to interpret 

 owing to the careless unscientific spirit of the time. Weights are 

 hardly ever given and times measured by Paternosters. Names 

 are loosely used and are often impossible to translate, and probably 

 in most cases these receipts, collected from many sources, though 

 useful to artists as books of reference, do not give the actual 

 methods in use in the studio. If we imagine some one trying to 

 reconstruct modern industrial processes from the text-books made 

 use of in technical instruction, it would help us to realize the 

 difficulty of reconstructing processes of the middle ages from these 

 MSS. Unfortunately also those who have written the modern 

 books on this subject have been artists and archaeologists, but 

 have not been chemists. Consequently whole chapters of ingenious 

 learning may be devoted to proving that a certain process was used 

 by the old masters, which half an hour's work in a laboratory 

 would have shown to be impossible. 



I wish here to deal with the theory developed in one of these 

 works, namely, Eastlake's Materials for the History of Oil Painting, 

 to account for the durability of the early Flemish pictures. 



I shall assume that all that can be said from an historical point 

 of view has been said by Eastlake, and that it only remains to test 

 the truth of his conclusions by experiment. 



Eastlake's book is devoted practically to expounding the 

 method of painting used by Van Eyck and his followers. 



His method is of special interest for three reasons : 



He may claim to be the inventor of oil painting in the same 

 sense that Watt invented the steam engine. 



His pictures are remarkable for their durability. 



He was a Flemish painter, and had consequently to deal with 

 a damp climate very similar to our own. His methods of painting- 

 are therefore of far more value to us than the methods used in the 

 dry climate of Italy. 



In considering our subject, that is the vehicle used by the 

 painter, we may treat it from two points of view. 



Either considering the permanence of the vehicle itself, or con- 

 sidering the capabilities of the vehicle in protecting the pigment 

 mixed with it from air and moisture. 



I shall only consider here the question of the protection of the 

 pigment by the vehicle. For the more we study the old methods 

 of painting the more is the importance of this matter forced 

 upon us. 



