arabic, are used. Two courses are open to the artist. He may either merely wash-in a drawing in sepia or Indian ink, or he may fully color it. In both processes, however, the shading would be done with a brush. Painting in water-colors is carried to greater perfection in England than in any other country. But the works contributed by modern Dutch water-color artists to the exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery in the winter of 1879-80 proved that they are by no means backward in the art.

In drawings of the quality known by the French as gouache, opaque colors are thickly spread over the drawing. They look heavy and massive, but present a favorable opportunity for the development of pure effects of coloring. By this method, which is extensively practiced at Naples and elsewhere on the Continent, though little known in England, glowing effects of color can be represented with truth and force.

The modern water-color artists have, many of them, now adopted a slightly altered mode of painting, depending largely upon the employment of opaque colors for its effects. This borders closely on oil painting, and seems wanting in the peculiar softness and transparent depth of color which are the distinctive property of true water colors.

In the middle ages, wood was principally employed as the ground for movable pictures; but, as it was liable to rot and to destruction by worms, it was supplanted in the fifteenth century by canvas, which was first used, it is said, by Rogier van der Weyden, and which is now almost universally preferred. Copper has been not unfrequently used as a ground by painters, and a few pictures have been executed on marble, and even on silver.

Before oil painting was adopted, other materials were in use, to which the name of tempera or distemper colors has been given. In tempera painting the color is mixed with white of egg, glue or size.

A painter's colors are called pigments; those employed by the ancients appear to have been earths or oxides, mixed with gum or glue, instead of oils. Unfortunately, however, colors so obtained are wanting in freshness and soon peel off. They are now only used for scene-painting and staining wallpapers, although the old masters often executed portions of their pictures in distemper, and oiled them afterward. Toward the close of the middle ages the Italians discovered that by using albumen,

or white of egg, instead of size, as a means of union between the particles of coloring matter, they obtained a better substance for tempera painting and one less liable to be affected by damp than materials dissolved in water. Paintings in this medium, however, dry too quickly for any elaborate workingup, and require some kind of varnish to protect them.

Painting in Oils.-As early as A.D. 1000, linseed oil was used in painting in Italy, and there are records which prove that oil was used as a medium in painting in Germany, in France, and even in England before the time of the Van Eycks; but it was not until the fifteenth century that the best method of mixing colors with oil was discovered by the brothers Van Eyck, who quickly attained to a skill in coloring perhaps never surpassed. The old method practiced by the Italians did not allow of one color being laid on until the previous coat had dried; and it was this inconvenience that caused Jan van Eyck to make experiments which resulted in the discovery of a better kind of oil painting-a kind which has practically prevailed until the present day. This new process was first adopted in Italy by Antonello de Messina and the painters of Naples. How or by whom it was introduced to North Italy is not certain.

The implements required by a painter in oils are charcoal, chalk, or pencils for drawing his sketch; hair-pencils or brushes; a knife to mix, and a palette to hold his colors; an easel on which to rest his canvas, and a rod called a maul-stick to steady his hand. His colors are mostly mineral earths and oxides, such as ochers; or organic substances, such as cochineal, mixed with white-lead, and worked up with it and oil into a kind of paste, and subsequently diluted in using with what is technically called a medium, consisting generally of a compound of mastic-varnish and boiled linseed-oil, called magilp. Large oil paintings are generally executed on canvas stretched on a frame and coated with paint. The color of the ground-coating varies according to the taste of the artist,-in England light grounds are preferred, and every artist has his own peculiar methods alike of working and mixing his colors.

The ordinary mode of procedure is to sketch the outline on the canvas with charcoal or pencil, and then either the color which each portion is to exhibit is at once employed and gradually worked-up

to a sufficient finish; or, as is more frequently the case, the entire effect of light and shadow is painted in first in monochrome (one color), and then the colors are added in a series of transparent coats, technically called glazes, the highest lights being indicated last of all inopaque color.

Oil painting, from the great range and scope which it affords the painter, and the infinite variety of effects he is able to produce by the means at his command, has for long been the favorite manner of almost all artists, and by far the largest number of important paintings which have been executed since the discovery of this method have been carried out in it; yet there are certain qualities in which watercolors, on the one hand, and fresco, on the other, surpass it.

Easel pictures, as they are called (i. e. movable oil paintings), occupy a kind of intermediate position between perishable paper drawings and mural paintings.

Fresco-painting.-The ancients were acquainted with several modes of painting on wall surfaces, and discovered at a very remote age that any coloring substance mixed with plaster when wet would remain in it when dry.

The term fresco-an Italian word signifying fresh -has been given to paintings made upon plaster still wet or fresh. In fresco painting a design is first sketched the full size of the subject to be represented, and a careful study in color is made on a small scale. The pigments are generally earths or minerals, as other substances would be injured by the action of time. The ground painted on is the last coating of plaster, which is laid on just before. the artist begins his work. He first transfers the exact outlines of his composition to the wet smooth surface by pricking them through transfer-paper with some sharp instrument. The actual painting has to be done very rapidly, and the greatest skill and decision are necessary, as no subsequent alteration can be made. Any portions of plaster unpainted on when the day's work is done are cut away. The process just described is called fresco buono, to distinguish it from an inferior kind of mural painting paradoxically known as fresco secco, in which the colors mixed with water are laid on to the dry plaster. Pictures in fresco secco are in every respect inferior to those in fresco buono. A few years ago great importance was attached to

the discovery by Dr. Fuchs of a substance called water-glass (soluble alkaline silicate), which appeared to possess the property of giving brightness and durability to fresco-secco painting. Colors mixed with water-glass are called stereo-chromatic (i. e. strong colored): many important works were executed in them, e. g. Maclise's Waterloo and Trafalgar, in the houses of Parliament, and Kaulbach's mural paintings of the new Berlin Museum, but the two former already show signs of decay.

The true fresco is distinguished by a singularly luminous quality of color; and the best Italian frescoes exhibit a breadth of effect and simplicity of execution which impart to them a dignity unapproached (perhaps unapproachable) in oil.

Another process employed by the ancients for mural painting was that called encaustic, in which wax melted by heat appears to have been the chief ingredient for fixing and melting the colors. Paul Delaroche's large work of the Hemicycle in the Palais des Beaux Arts, Paris, is an important example of modern times. And lastly there is spirit-fresco, invented by Mr. Gambier Parry, who used it in paintings in Highman Church, and in St. Andrew's Chapel in Gloucester Cathedral; it was also employed by Sir Frederick Leighton in his mural painting of the Arts of War in the South Kensington Museum, which was completed early in 1880, and by Mr. Madox Brown in his decoration of the Town Hall of Manchester with scenes from the history of that city.

The advantages claimed for it are five-fold-durability, power to resist external damp and changes of temperature, luminous effect, a dead surface, and freedom from all chemical action on colors. It will also stand being washed with soap and water, as Mr. Madox Brown, it is said, proved by so cleaning a trial picture which he painted before beginning his work in the Manchester Town Hall. The surface to be painted on should be perfectly dry and porous, e. g. a good common stucco. The medium is composed of Elemi resin, pure white wax, oil of spike lavender, and the finest preparation of artist's copal; and with these, when incorporated by heat, must be mixed the colors in dry powder. If mixed on a slab, as for oil colors, and placed in tubes, they will last for years. The surface to be painted on is prepared with two washes of the medium diluted with one and a half its bulk of turpentine, and finally with