Field's Chromatography / or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists

by George Field

Moreover, it is stated that in one painting eighty feet high and proportionably broad, which was divided into two ranges of gigantic figures, these were glowing with most exquisite colours, suited to the drapery and naked parts; and in which the azure, yellow, green, &c., were as well preserved as though they had been laid on yesterday. Again, an apartment was discovered among the stupendous ruins at Carnac, on the site of ancient Thebes, one hundred paces wide and sixty deep, completely crowded with pillars, which, together with the ceiling, roof, and walls, were decorated with figures in basso-relievo, and hieroglyphics—all marvellously beautiful and finely painted, and as fresh, splendid and glorious, after so many ages, as if they had just been finished.

In various accounts these colourings of the Egyptians are described in the warmest terms of admiration. The most charming are undoubtedly those on the tombs and temples: others of less merit have been found on the cases and cloths of mummies, and on papyrus rolls; but it is to the patterns on the walls and ceilings of their houses that they seem to have been most partial, and paid the most attention. The ordinary colours employed by them were red, yellow, green, and blue. Of the last there were two tints; black also was common. For white, the finely prepared stone-coloured ground was deemed sufficient. These colours were occasionally modified by mixture with chalk; but were always, or nearly always, applied singly, in an unmixed state. With regard to their composition, chemical analysis has shown several of the blues to be oxide of copper with a small proportion of iron; none containing cobalt. There is little doubt, however, that the most brilliant specimens—those which retain all their original force and beauty in the temples of Upper Egypt after an exposure of three thousand years, consist of ultramarine—the celebrated Armenian blue, possibly, of the ancients. The reds seem for the most part to be composed of oxide of iron mixed with lime, and were probably limited to iron earths and ochres, with a native cinnabar or vermilion. The yellows are said to have been, in many cases, vegetable colours; but it is likely earths and ochres were their chief source. The greens consist of yellow mixed with copper blue. The bluish-green which sometimes appears on Egyptian antiquities, is merely a faded blue. The blacks are both of vegetable and mineral origin, having been obtained from a variety of substances in a variety of ways.

But, as shown by Layard in his discoveries at Nineveh, a knowledge of colouring was not confined to the Egyptians; it was likewise possessed by the Assyrians. The painted ornaments of the latter are stated to have been remarkably elegant; and although the colours were limited to blue, red, white, yellow, and black, yet they were arranged with so much taste and skill, and the contrasts were so judiciously preserved, that the combinations were in general agreeable to the eye. The pale yellowish-white ground on which the designs were painted, resembled the tint on the walls of Egyptian monuments, and a strong well-defined black outline was found to be as peculiar a feature in Assyrian as in Egyptian painting, black frequently combining with white alone, or alternating with other colours. As far as they have been analysed, the pigments employed were mineral, the brightest being a blue derived from copper. No traces of vegetable colours have been found; it is presumed that they existed, but being subject to more rapid decay than the mineral pigments, they have disappeared. That all the colours, indeed, employed by the ancients were not permanent, was proved by the fact of certain blues and reds, brilliant and vivid when the earth was removed from them, fading rapidly when exposed to the air.

From Philocles, the Egyptian, and Gyges, a Lydian, both of whom, according to Pliny, acquired the knowledge of the art of painting in Egypt, the Greeks obtained the knowledge of their Ars Chromatica, which they are said to have carried by gradual advances during several centuries, from the monochromatic of their earlier painters, to the perfection of colouring under Zeuxis and Apelles, 450 to 350 B.C. Unfortunately, not long after, or about 300 B.C., art rapidly deteriorated; the invasion of the Romans commenced; and the principles of light, shade, and colours in painting as understood by the Greeks, together with their valuable treatises on the subject were lost. The early Roman and Florentine painters, so eminent in other respects, were almost destitute of those principles, and of truly refined feeling for the effects of colouring.

The partial restoration of this branch seems to have been coeval with the earliest practice of painting in oil. The glory of it belongs to the Venetians, to whom the art of painting passed with the last remains of the Greek schools after the capture of Constantinople at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Giovanni Bellini laid the foundation of colouring, and Titian carried it to its highest practical perfection. From the Venetian it extended to the Lombard, Flemish, and Spanish schools. In the practice of these, however, there was perhaps as much of instinct as principle, colouring still remaining to be established in its perfection as a science.

According to the true, natural, and philosophical classification of painting, there are but three principal classes or schools; viz.: the gross and material which is content with mere nature, and to which belong the Dutch and Flemish schools; the sensible, which aims at refined and select nature, and accords with the Venetian school; and the intellectual, which aspires to the ideal in beauty, grandeur, and sublimity, and corresponds with the Greek, Roman, and Florentine schools. Modern art as founded upon the intellectual school of the ancient Greeks, became grand, scientific, and severe in the practice of Michael Angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci; graceful, beautiful and expressive in Raphael, Correggio, Dominichino, and Guido; and, aiming at sensible perfection, it attained harmony of colouring and effect in the works of Titian and Tintoret; but it sunk into grossness and sensuality while perfecting itself materially among the Flemish and Dutch.

In the practice of the individual in painting, as well as in all revolutions of pictorial art, in ancient Greece as in modern Italy, colouring in its perfection has been the last attainment of excellence in every school. It has been justly observed, indeed, that for near three hundred years, since painting was revived, we could hardly reckon six painters that had been good colourists, among the thousands who had laboured to become such. But there is reason to hope that as Zeuxis succeeded and excelled Polygnotus, and Titian Raphael, the artists of Britain will transcend all preceding schools in the chromatic department of painting. It is even probable that they may surpass them in all other branches, and in every mode and application of the art, as they have already more particularly done in an original and unrivalled use of water-colours.

Happily, too, there has arisen among us a school of colouring that confirms this expectation, strengthened as it is, by the suitableness of our climate to perfect vision. For in it we have that mean degree of light which is best adapted to the distinguishing of colours, a boundless diversity of hue in nature relieved by those fine effects of light and shade which are denied to more vertical suns, besides those beauties of complexion and feature in our females peculiar to England; respects in which at least our country is not unfavourable to art.

Even now it is urged by some to the disparagement of the British school, that it excels in colouring; as if this were incompatible with any other excellence, or as if nature, the great prototype of art, ever dispensed with it. The graphic branches of painting, owe everything to colour, which, if it does not constitute a picture, is its flesh and blood. Without it, the finest performances remain lifeless skeletons, and yield no pleasure. Painting is the art of representing visible things by light, shade, form, and colour; but of these, colour—and colour alone—is the immediate object which attracts the eye. Colouring is, therefore, the first requisite—the one thing imparting warmth and life—the chief quality engaging attention; in short, the best introduction to a picture, and that which continues to give it value so long as it is regarded. It is a power, too, which is with the most difficulty retained, being the first to leave the artist himself, and the first to quit a school on its decline. Graphic art without colouring, is as food without flavour; and it was the deficiency of colouring in the great works of the Roman and Florentine schools that caused Sir Joshua Reynolds to confess a certain want of attraction in them. To relish and estimate truly their greatness, required, he said, a forced and often-repeated attention, and "it was only those persons incapable of appreciating such divine performances, who made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them." Gainsborough also, with a candour similar to that of Reynolds, upon viewing the cartoons at Hampton Court, acknowledged that their beauty was of a class he could neither appreciate nor enjoy.

Colouring, then, is a necessity; but there is in it a vicious extreme; that in which it is rendered so principal as, by want of subordination, to overlay the subject. There is also a negative excellence which consists in not always employing pleasing tints, but of sometimes taking advantage of the effects to be derived from impure hues, as Poussin did in his "Deluge." In this work, neither black nor white, blue, red, nor yellow appears; the whole mass being, with little variation, of a sombre grey, the true resemblance of a dark and humid atmosphere, by which every object is rendered indistinct and almost colourless. This absence of colour, however, is a merit, and not a fault. Vandyke employed such means with admirable effect in the background of a Crucifixion, and in his Pieta; and the Phaëton of Giulio Romano is celebrated for a suffusion of smothered red, which powerfully excites the idea of a world on fire.