Thanks for your note. Yes, I do like the white oil, but I add copal to it if I want it to be very drying, or mix copal on the palette with a slow-drying colour, say a lake. This, I suppose, is all right; if so, don't trouble to acknowledge this. The oil of orange is delightful on account of its smell, but dries less quickly than turpentine (rectfd. spirit). Is it not always better to have some resin in a picture throughout since it has to be varnished at the end?
April 21, 1888.
I am so much enamoured with the method, so far as vehicle is concerned, which I have used during the last year, that I should like to feel quite certain that it is absolutely safe. I use a "single-primed" canvas, and underpaint with "Bell's medium" and rect. spir. turps., which, under your advice, I have in small bottles, so that using it freely a bottle lasts a very short time, and the stuff is therefore always fresh. The mixture I use up to the end (except when I now and then use the pigment alone), and letting the turps. rather preponderate as I advance. I have found to my amazement that this mixture dries even in winter weather excellently, and that I can use with it even scarlet madder and aureolin, which, at least the former, hitherto I never attempted to use except stiffened with amber or copal; and I further find that this mixture, though of course it "sinks" to some extent (and especially with the blues), in the main bears up very fairly, incomparably better than I should have expected, and in fact quite enough. Before beginning to paint I rub over the part each time with Bell's medium and saliva nearly equal parts, or say five oil to four saliva beaten up with the knife on the palette to a white mucilage. This, if left alone, makes a good varnish, and is delightful to paint into. So far, so good; at least I suppose so. (Do you see any elements of danger? cracking? darkening?) But at the end something must go over it all, if only to lock it up (I suppose), certainly to get uniform gloss and strength. I propose in the Academy to put Roberson's medium over the whole of my large one and to retouch with the same. A portrait on to which I don't intend to work I should cover with mastic and a little poppy oil; there is no harm in this, I suppose, and the small quantity of mastic is not likely to yellow, is it? I know this mixture won't come off, but why should it?
May 30, 1889.
Messrs. Reeves send me a colour in which I delight, but which I have hitherto always avoided as being unsafe, to wit, indigo. I suppose one ought not to use it, ought one? although my old friend, and in some ways my master, Robert Fleury, employed it extensively in underpainting blue draperies.
December 23, 1889.
I have got a recipe—a very simple one—from a friend of mine in Italy, who paints a good deal in distemper, and who in technical matters is quite the most leery person I ever came across. In this recipe he mentions what he calls "Gum Damar," which he, in his characteristic ignorance of spelling (for Italians are not very strong in orthography), writes with an apostrophe, D'Amar. Now I presume he means "Gum Dammar" (I believe there is such a thing, is there not?), but I should like to feel sure. Perhaps you will kindly enlighten me on a post-card.