is an oxide of a deep dull green colour, inclining to olive, and nearly black when in lumps. A durable but unattractive preparation, equalled in permanence and far surpassed in beauty by many cheaper compounds.
207. Vanadium Green
falls when ferrocyanide of potassium is added to vanadic acid dissolved in a strong acid. It is a beautiful green precipitate, but at present simply a curiosity, owing to the rarity of the metal vanadium.
Adopting our usual custom of separating the wheat from the chaff, we point to the opaque and transparent oxides of chromium, Veronese green, viridian, emerald green, Scheele's green, and terre verte, as more or less worthy of being dubbed durable.
As semi-stable, malachite green, bronze, Hooker's green, and Prussian green, must be classed.
Verdigris, chrome greens, and sap green, should be branded as fugitive: the chrome greens, because they are always commercially composed of chromate of lead and Prussian blue, two compounds which are semi-stable in themselves, but become fugacious when compounded.
A reference to the numbered italicised greens will show that there are many not known to the palette, which are nevertheless very greatly superior, as regards permanence, to some that disgrace it. Why these latter are suffered to hold their position is a mystery not easily explained: it is hard to reconcile the deplored degeneracy of modern pigments with the popularity of semi-stable and fugitive colours. Pictures do not stand, is the common cry; therefore, says the public, there are no good pigments now-a-days. To which we answer, newly built houses are constantly falling down; therefore there are no good bricks in these times. Of a truth, one conclusion is as reasonable as the other: in either case, if rotten materials be used, the result cannot be lasting; but in neither case does it follow, because such materials are employed, that there are no better obtainable. A well-built house implies a conscientious builder, and a well-painted picture implies a conscientious artist. It is because, we fear, that there are so few conscientious artists, that there are so few permanent paintings; not, certainly, because there are no good pigments. In this last belief, however, the public is encouraged by certain painters, who seek thereby to excuse their own shortcomings, forgetting that it is a bad workman who finds fault with his tools. It has been well observed that when artists speak regrettingly of lost 'systems,' or pigments enjoyed by the mediævalists and unattainable now, it would be far better were they to make the best use of existing materials, and study their further development. There is no need for this cant cry of fugacity, which casts such a blight on modern art. Durable pigments are not yet obsolete, they have only to be employed and employed properly to furnish paintings equal in permanence to those of the old masters. "Titian," says Haydon, "got his colours from the colour shops on the Rialto, as we get ours from Brown's; and if Apelles or Titian were living now, they would paint just as good works with our brushes and colours as with their own."