Of all colours, except black, blue contrasts white most powerfully. In all harmonious combinations of colours, whether of mixture or neighbourhood, blue is the natural, prime, or predominating power. Accordingly, blue is universally agreeable to the eye in due relation to the composition, and may more frequently be repeated therein, pure or unbroken, than either of the other primaries; whence the employment of ultramarine by some masters throughout the colouring of a picture.
Blue pigments, like blue flowers, are more rare than those of the other primary colours. In permanent blues the palette is very deficient, the list being exhausted when the native and artificial ultramarines and the cobalts have been mentioned. That there is room for new blues, durable and distinct, cannot therefore be denied. A good addition has been made of late years in the German Coëlin, known here as Cerulian Blue and Cœruleum. What is chiefly wanted, however, is a colour combining the wonderful depth, richness, and transparency of Prussian blue with the strict stability of ultramarine. A permanent Prussian blue would be the most valued gift the palette could receive.
COBALT BLUES
comprise Cerulian Blue or Cœruleum, Cobalt Blue, Smalt, Royal Blue, Dumont's Blue, Saxon Blue, Thénard's Blue, Leithner's Blue, Hungary Blue, Dutch Ultramarine, Zaffre or Enamel Blue, Vienna Blue, Paris Blue, Azure, &c., and are obtained by the action of heat on mixtures of earthy or metallic bases with cobalt. They are divisible into three classes—the stannic cerulian blue, the aluminous cobalt blues, and the siliceous smalts. Of these, the first possesses the least depth; the second hold a middle position; while the third are marked by exceeding richness. Although not to be ranked with ultramarine, the stannic and aluminous blues may be described as durable, or at least as durable rather than semi-stable. There are, as we have before observed, different degrees of permanence, and the blues in question are not readily affected. With regard to smalts, they are, as artist's pigments, inferior in stability to other blues of cobalt.
123. CERULIAN BLUE,
or Cœruleum. Under the name Coëlin there has of late years been imported from Germany the cobalt blue with a tin base to which reference has just been made. This comparatively new pigment—which likewise contains or is mixed with gypsum, silica, and sometimes magnesia—has the distinctive property of appearing a pure blue by artificial light, tending neither to green on the one hand nor to purple on the other. This advantage, added to its permanence, has conferred a popularity upon cœruleum which its mere colour would scarcely have gained for it. A light and pleasing blue, with a greenish-grey cast by day, it possesses little depth or richness, and is far excelled in beauty by a good aluminous cobalt. A certain chalkiness, moreover, somewhat detracts from its transparency, and militates against its use in water. It is in oil, and as a night colour, that cœruleum becomes of service, as our present system of lighting picture galleries by gas affects the purity of blues generally. If those galleries were illuminated by means of the electric light, we have it on the authority of Chevreul that all colours and shades would show as well as by day: the same purpose would be answered by the magnesium light. Some artificial lights are the ruin of colours; in the soda flame (alcohol and salt) for instance, yellow chromate of lead appears white, while red ochre and aniline blue appear black.
Like other blues of cobalt, cœruleum assumes a greenish obscurity in time, but like them it resists for a lengthened period both the action of light and impure air, although chemically it is more open to the influence of the latter, owing to its tin base. In admixture it may safely be employed, as well as in fresco or enamel. For stage skies, &c., in high-art scenery, the blue is admirably adapted. Now that there are so many scene-painters who are artists—and so many artists who are scene-painters—in bringing Nature to the foot-lights the effect of gas on colours is of importance.
124. COBALT BLUE,
to which the various appellations have been given of Thénard's Blue, Vienna Blue, Paris Blue, Azure, Cobalt-Ultramarine, &c., is the name now exclusively confined to that preparation of cobalt which has a base of alumina. It may, therefore, be not improperly called a blue lake, the colour of which is brought up by fire, in the manner of enamel blues. The discovery of this important pigment was made in 1802 by M. Thénard, who obtained it by calcining a well-combined mixture of alumina and crystals of cobalt. There may be employed with the aluminous base, either the arseniate, the borate, or the phosphate of cobalt; but the latter in preference, as it produces the purest colour. The arseniate has always a violet tinge, more visible by gas-light than by day; while, on account of the arsenic, the blue is more apt to be greened by impure air, by reason of the formation of yellow sulphide of arsenic. The purity of the colour, however, does not altogether depend on the compound of cobalt used; in a great measure—as with other pigments—it rests on the purity of the materials. To obtain a perfect blue, neither inclining to purple nor green, the cobalt and alumina should be freed from iron, and the former, as much as possible, from nickel also. With the absence of these and proper skill, a true and brilliant blue may be produced, almost rivalling the finest ultramarine. Apart, too, from its increased beauty, a cobalt blue containing no iron or nickel is of greater permanence than the ordinary products, being less liable to that greenness and obscurity which time confers.
Though not possessing the body, transparency, and depth of ultramarine, nor its natural and modest hue, commercial cobalt blue works better in water than that pigment in general does; and is hence an acquisition to those who have not the management of the latter. Resisting the action of strong light and acids, its beauty declines by time, while impure air greens and ultimately blackens it. Nevertheless, these changes are not readily effected, especially in well made samples full of colour, and sometimes the green tone is mechanically imparted. What wheat is to a loaf, colour is to a pigment—it has to be ground and made up for use; in the one vehicle to be mixed with gums, in the other with oils. It often happens that colours have an antipathy to the latter, and refuse to compound kindly therewith. Occasionally this repugnance manifests itself in a few days, occasionally not for months. We know of a green which flatly declines to have anything to do with oils, sinking and separating therefrom in the course of a week, and leaving the clear oil on the top. Repeatedly have colours to be coaxed to behave themselves as pigments, coaxed not to 'run,' to work well, to dry well, &c.; and in the humouring of their likes and dislikes the skill and patience of the artist-colourman are sometimes severely taxed. Given a colour, it might puzzle most chemists to convert it into a pigment; luckily Commerce lends her aid. Lasting success, it is true, does not always follow, and oils will rise to the surface now and then, giving green hues to blues, orange hues to reds, and buff hues to yellows. Hence changes of colour have been imputed before now to chemical alteration, when in reality the results have been physical, caused by the subsidence of the pigments, and the floating of the vehicles employed.