REDS.

are all properly qualified for encaustic.

Care must be taken to have the lake good; that which is commonly sold under the name of Florence lacque, and recommended as the best, is in general the worst; it is usually in small hard grains, which hardness is owing to gum arabic, or what is worse, to that glutinous substance which oozes out from the cherry tree, put in by the fabricant (of the lake) to bind and keep the grains together, and make it appear better merchandise than it really is; such lake will scale off from the canvas; the gum it is impregnated with hinders the wax from penetrating its pores—every body knows that lacque is made of cochineal; there is a bastard lake made of Brazil wood, but that is easily known by its dullness. The best lake for our purpose is that which is of a fine, clear, deep hue, easily to be broken and crumbled between the fingers. The finest and best lacque I ever saw and used, is made here in England by an ingenious artist in the seal engraving way.

Vermilion, or cinnabar, answers in encaustic all the purposes it does in oil.

Minium, will be of infinite service for painting with the pencil and crayons; it will not change fixed with wax, as it does in oil; it may be used to advantage in some carnations or flesh tints; and in landscapes to enliven the oker, for great lights.

Light-red, or light-oker calcined, is of the same universal use in this manner of painting as it is in oil, or common water colours.

Brown-red, or brown-oker calcined, may be employed for the same use as in oil, or distemper painting.

Indian-red, the French call this colour, Terre d’Angleterre, English earth; this colour is particularly useful for distances, it makes the degradation of objects light and airy.

Terra di Siena, and Terra verte,

Terra di Siena, a yellow hard and clayish substance, so called from the city of Siena in Italy, from whence it comes.

This colour is very unfit to be used crude, either for painting in encaustic or crayons, its pores are too close for the wax to penetrate; or to say better, this colour or earth is very much impregnated with a nitrous principle, with which wax cannot sympathise, and for this very reason it is as unfit to be used crude in oil. Those painters that use it freely have always but too much reason to repent. But,

Terra di Siena calcined, is a very beautiful and useful colour for all manner of painting, and particularly encaustic. The fire having dispelled in some measure the nitrous principle, the wax may freely enter its pores. This colour gives a great, soft, and glowing strength in flesh, drapery and landscape; some painters call this colour Roman oker.

Terra verte; this colour too comes to us from Italy, and some from Germany, they are both alike, and ought to be entirely banished the pallette, as it grows so soon dirty and black when employed with oil. Terra verte differs from terra di Siena in little else but colour, it has a little vitriol. The too free use some of the older Italian painters made of this colour in flesh tints, is the cause that numbers of pictures of those masters are so black as we see them at this time.