CHAP. V. ON THE DURABILITY AND FUGACITY OF COLOURS. Parthenius thinks in Reynolds' steps he treads, And ev'ry day a different palette spreads; His white-the lily, and his red—the rose ; But soon aghast, amid his transient hues, The ghost of his departed picture views: Now burning minerals, fossils, bricks, and bones, He seeks more durable in dusky tones, And triumphs in such permanence of dye, That all seems fix'd, which time would wish to fly. SHEE. IN the preceding discussion colours are distinguished into inherent and transient, the latter of which, as their name implies, are essentially fugaceous; our present argument is, therefore, limited to the permanence and mutability of the inherent colours of pigments, as those which are principally important to the artist. All durability of colour is relative, because all material substances are changeable and in perpetual action and reaction; there is therefore no pigment so permanent as that nothing will change its colour, nor any colour so fugitive as not to last under some favouring circumstances; while time of short or long continuance has generally the immediate effect thereon of fire more or less intense, according to the laws of combustion and chemical agency. It is indeed some sort of criterion of the durability and changes of colour in pigments, that time and fire produce similar effects thereon :thus if fire deepen any colour, so will time;-if it cool or warm it, so will time;-if it vary it to other hues, so will time;-and if it consume or destroy a colour altogether, so also will time ultimately; but the power of time varies extremely with regard to the period in which it produces those effects which are instantly accomplished by fire :—fire is also a violent test, and subject to many exceptions. That there is no absolute but only relative durability of colour may be proved from the most celebrated pigments;-thus the colour of ultramarine, which, under the ordinary circumstances of a picture, will endure a hundred centuries, and pass through naked fire uninjured, is presently destroyed by the juice of a lemon or other acid. So again the carmine of cochineal, which is very fugitive and changeable, will, when secluded from light, air, and oxygen, continue half a century or more; while the fire or time which deepens the first colour will dissipate the latter altogether. Again, there have been works of art in which the white of lead has retained its freshness for ages in a pure atmosphere, and yet it has then been changed to blackness after a few days' or even hours' exposure to a foul air. These and other affections of colours will be instanced throughout when we come to the consideration of individual pigments; not for the purpose of destroying the artist's confidence in his materials, but as a caution and guide to the availing himself of their powers properly. It is therefore the lasting under the ordinary conditions of painting, and the common circumstances to which works of art are exposed, which entitle a colour or pigment to the character of permanence; and it is the not-soenduring which subjects it properly to the opposite character of fugacity; while it may obtain a false repute for either, by accidental preservation or destruction under unusually favourable or fatal circumstances, all of which has been frequently witnessed. It has been supposed by some that colours vitrified by intense heat are durable when levigated for painting in oil or water. Had this been true, the artist need not have looked farther for the furnishing of his palette than to a supply of well-burnt and levigated enamel colours;-but though these colours for the most part stand well when fluxed on glass, or in the glazing of enamel, porcelain, and pottery, they are almost without exception subject to the most serious changes when ground to the degree of fineness necessary to render them applicable to oil or water painting, and become liable to all the chemical changes and affinities of the substances which compose them. These remarks apply also to those who ascribe permanence to native pigments only, such as the coloured earths and metallic ores. Others, with some reason, have imagined that when pigments are locked up in varnishes and oils, they are safe from all possibility of change; and there would be much more truth in this position if we had an impenetrable varnish, and even then it would not hold with respect to the action of light, however well it might exclude the influences of air and moisture; but in truth varnishes and oils themselves yield to changes of temperature, to the action of a humid atmosphere, and to other chemical influences: their protection of colour from change is therefore far from perfect; and the above opinion of them is only in some degree true, but ought not to render the artist inattentive to the durability of his colours in themselves. Reynolds unfortunately entertained this opinion of the preserving power of varnishes; and although the practice of his own palette was exceedingly empirical, he was an utter condemner of such practice in others.* On the other hand, want of attention to the unceasing mutability of all chemical substances, and their reciprocal actions, has occasioned those changes of colour to be ascribed to fugitiveness of the pigment, which belong to the affinities of other substances with which they have been improperly mixed and applied. It is thus that the best pigments have sometimes suffered in reputation under the injudicious processes of the painter, and that these effects and results have not been uniform in consequence of a desultory practice. If a pigment be not extremely permanent, diluting it will render it in some measure more weak and fugitive; and this occurs in several ways,-by a too free use of the vehicle, by complex mixture in the formation of tints, and, by distribution, in glazing colours upon the lights downward, or scumbling colours upon the shades upward, &c. The foregoing circumstances, added to the variableness of pigments by nature, preparation, and sophistication, have often rendered their effects equivocal, and their powers questionable; all which considerations enforce the expediency of using colours as pure and free from unnecessary mixture as possible; for simplicity of composition and management is equally a maxim of good mechanism, good chemistry, and good colouring. Accordingly, in the latter respect, Sir Joshua Reynolds gives it as a maxim, that the less colours are mixed, the brighter they appear; the causes of which we have mentioned already. His words are: "Two colours mixed together will not preserve the brightness of either of them single, nor will three be as bright as two of this observation, simple as it is, an artist who wishes to *Northcote's" Memoirs of Sir J. R."-Supplement, p. LXXX. colour bright will know the value."-Note xXXVII. to Dufresnoy's Art of Painting. There prevail, notwithstanding, two principles of practice on the palette, opposed to each other-the one, simple; the other, multiple. That of simplicity consists in employing as few pigments, &c. as possible; according to the extreme of which principle the three primary colours are sufficient for every purpose of the art. This is the principle of composition in colouring, the opposite of which may be called the principle of aggregation, and is in its extreme that of having as many pigments, if possible, as there are hues and shades of colour. On the first plan every tint requires to be compounded; on the latter, one pigment supplies the place of several, which would be requisite in the first case to compose a tint ;-and as the more pigments and colours are compounded, the more they are deteriorated or defiled in colour, attenuated, and chemically set at variance, while original pigments are in general purer in colour as well as more dense and durable than compound tints, there appear to be sufficient reasons for both these modes of practice; whence it may fairly be inferred, that a practice composed of both will be best, and that the artist who aims at just and permanent effects should neither compound his pigments to the dilution and injury of their colours, when he can obtain pure intermediate tints in single, permanent, original pigments, nor yet multiply his pigments unnecessarily with such as are of hues and tints he can safely compose extemporaneously of original colours upon his palette. This will require experience; and to facilitate the acquisition of such experience is one of the objects of this work. Examples are to be found of each of these modes in the practice of the most eminent artists; and if the records left us of their palettes prove the fact, the mode of Rubens, Teniers, Hogarth, and Wilson, was more or les that of simplicity. With respect to Sir Joshua Reynolds, we have been assured by his favourite pupil, the venerable Northcote, who was every way interested in remarking and remembering his methods, that however he might have been betrayed by his materials, his practice in using them was regulated by that breadth, simplicity, and generality which marked his great mind, and that hence he placed no expletive tints upon his palette, nor did he torture his colours with the palette-knife or pencil: by which judicious practice, his pictures, notwithstanding partial failures, have triumphed over the imperfection of his materials, and such of his works as have been preserved will remain to posterity with a permanence of hue not inferior to those of any of his great predecessors; while there is a grace and refinement in all his productions, that insure lasting esteem to those even of which the colouring may have partially flown, owing to the employment of the carmine of cochineal and orpiment with blue-black in the formation of his tints; which three, with black and white, constituted the ordinary setting of his palette, till he was forced very unwillingly to give up the two first for vermilion and Naples yellow, which he afterwards continued to employ as long as he painted. Rubens's advice to his pupils, preserved by the Chevalier Mechel, is that of the utmost simplicity; thus, in the painting of flesh, he says: "Paint your high lights white; place next to it yellow, then red, using dark red as it passes into shadow; then with a brush filled with cool gray, pass gently over the whole until they are tempered and sweetened to the tone you wish." Vandyke's practice was similar to his master's; and such also was that of Correggio, who painted his flesh with the three primary colours, loaded or embossed his lights, and moderately softened them into his mezzotints, carefully preserving his shadows uncontaminated with white. There is indeed ever something in simplicity which associates it with grace, truth, beauty, and excellence : O sister meek of Truth, To my admiring youth Thy sober aid and native charms infuse ! Though beauty cull'd the wreath, Still ask thy hand to range their order'd hues. COLLINS, ODE TO SIMPLICITY. The practice of Sir Thomas Lawrence and the late Mr. Owen afford examples of the aggregate mode, which is well suited also to the painters of flowers and subjects of natural history; and many of the ablest living artists practice in the middle mode, which is certainly less dangerous in respect to permanence. The first of these three plans, it is true, is the most scientific, since it depends upon the mind, and a thorough knowledge of the relations and effects of colours; while the second depends wholly upon the eye, and is simply the method of sense. This distinction applies also to the two methods which have prevailed with different artists, by the most ordinary of |