INTRODUCTION

IT is astonishing that, in these days of progress, no corresponding advance has been made in practical instruction in the composition of pigments, mediums and all material necessary to the production of permanent works of art, whether they are easel paintings, or water colors for the adornment of the home or public places, or in tempera and fresco for decorations.

There is not, to my knowledge, a regular course of lectures on this subject at any of the Art Schools in England, Italy, France or America, in which students are taught what materials to use and what to avoid.

During an experience of more than thirty years in the manufacture of pigments and mediums for all types of painting, I have investigated the methods, analyzed the material and demonstrated the folly of most of the procedures in common use to-day, and feel that there is a demand for a little book of this kind, which painters can use, and from which art students can acquire a sane method of producing permanent results.

If the painter once knows, either mechanically or unconsciously, the pigments that are absolutely permanent, and the principle involved in producing paintings which will not crack, fade, darken, peel, blister or decompose, his or her mind can be taken up completely with the artistic effect to be produced, without thinking for a moment of either the mechanical or the scientific side of the question, and without his or her artistic feeling being disturbed during the process of painting. It is quite natural that a man in my position, who has met many painters and who has discoursed with them on this subject, has had many of them confess time and again that the practical and technical side of painting has always disturbed their peace of mind whenever they have been in the midst of serious work.

And so, the object of this book is to convey to the painter, in simple language, and without going into any abstruse science of any kind, the reasons why certain materials should be used and certain materials should be avoided. I wrote a book which went into the subject of all the pigments and all the mediums in a more scientific manner[1] and in that book I gave what is regarded as the simple permanent palette. But it is obviously essential that a more complete and practical dissertation on this subject will be of benefit to those who have selected artistic painting as their life work. I have heard, time and again, the statement that we do not know in this age how to make the materials which the older and great masters used. It has been dinned in my ears frequently that our materials are so worthless that uniform and permanent results cannot be obtained. Nothing is further from the truth, and all one has to do is to see the enormous amount of permanent painting that exists outside of the artistic field to realize that the science of paint making is more perfect to-day than it ever has been.

The manufacturers of ordinary house paints in the United States all, more or less, guarantee, within reasonable limits, that the paints which are applied to the exterior of buildings will last five years. I have a case in mind where four huge smokestacks were painted, near the seashore, and at the end of ten years the paint was still in perfectly good condition. I ask anyone who reads this, and who is an artistic painter, how long does he or she think an artistic painting would stand, exposed to the sea air, to the sun, rain, frost and winds? The chances are that no artistic painting, executed with the same thickness of coating as structural paint, would last three months. This is fair evidence of the fact that structural paint, which is really simple paint, contains the inherent quality of permanence, for reasons which I will explain later. Take the case of entrance doors in France, England and the United States, which are painted and varnished and exposed to the elements, and see how perfectly these stand for several years. It is on this principle that artistic painting must be based for absolute permanence, for artistic painting is never subjected to the elements and is never subjected to the extremes of temperature which menace the longevity of house or automobile painting. In fact, there is no reason why a painting on the interior of any building, or suitably framed or covered in any gallery, with reasonable care should not last for an unlimited time. I have seen the fresco decorations in Italy, which are as good to-day, so far as I know, as the day they were applied. Many of the primitive Italian paintings are simply remarkable for their permanence, even though the wooden panels on which they were painted are worm-eaten and rotted; and I have seen any number of paintings executed within my time by prominent painters that have cracked, faded and deteriorated because wrong materials were applied and insufficient care was exercised in the application and proper sequence of the pigments and mediums employed.

There are not more than fifteen pigments necessary for the painting of a work of art; and, out of these fifteen, nine or ten are sufficient for every purpose. To show the folly of so many colors, you can pick up any catalogue and find the following Green Pigments:

One German manufacturer of considerable reputation mentions seventy-nine varieties of Green; one hundred and twenty-three varieties of Yellow; one hundred and seventy-nine of Red; seventy-five of Brown; seventy-nine of Blue; thirty-two of Black and twelve of White. There is absolutely no license for the manufacture of such an enormous variety of pigments, when, at most a dozen will do. All in all, one German catalogue contains five hundred and seventy-nine varieties of colors.

In addition to these, there are probably a number of others that are sold under proprietary names, and I ask any painter who has the slightest skill, whether it is necessary to have more than one or two Greens to produce any and every shade that he may desire. If he is a painter of any skill, there is no need for him to have all of these Greens, some of which are good—most of which are fugitive. In addition to the one or two Greens which he may have on his palette, various mixtures of Yellow and Blue give various tones and shades of Green. I have singled out Green as an example of the multiplicity of colors that exists.

The same repetition and duplication of pigments will be found under the Yellows, Reds, Blues and Blacks.

As far as Whites are concerned, there are a large number of proprietary Whites; and, in addition, there are Silver White, Zinc White, Flake White, White Lead, Permanent White, &c.; whereas, the only two necessary on the painter’s palette are Zinc White and Flake White (White Lead), and perhaps, occasionally, Permanent White (Blanc Fixe).

The more colors that are presented to the painter, the more embarrassed he will become as to which he really ought to use. Painters make the one serious mistake of attempting to get immediate results. It was told of Sir Joshua Reynolds that he would not use permanent Vermilion in order to obtain flesh tints; for, he said he wanted certain warm tones produced by mixtures of Lakes and other pigments, so that when his pictures were finished they would be pleasing to him. The results showed that even during his lifetime they were displeasing to his patrons, and particularly to him, but yet he would not learn the lesson that the multiplicity of the application of pigments involved.

It is very unfortunate that the artificial coal tar dyes are so beautifully brilliant and give such immediately enticing results. It is equally unfortunate that when these artificial colors are exposed to our civilized atmosphere, which contains chemical substance due to the gases of cooking and of manufacture, many of these pigments are attacked. They tone down, and not only do they oftimes lose their brilliancy, but frequently they lose the characteristic shades for which they were employed. Then, again, sunlight, as we all know, has a deleterious effect on all of the organic pigments, and darkness has an equally deleterious effect on many of the varnishes and all the drying oils.

Sir Joshua Reynolds must have glazed his portraits with a great variety of Lakes, including Madder; and, where he used vegetable Lakes and Carmine as a glaze, the faces have assumed, in time, a ghost-like appearance.