Mummy Brown Or Egyptian Brown Is A Bituminous Product Mixed With

: ON THE SEMI-NEUTRAL, BROWN.

animal remains, brought from the catacombs of Egypt, where liquid

bitumen was employed three thousand years ago in embalming. By a slow

chemical change, it has combined during so many ages with substances

which give it, as a rule, a more solid and lasting texture than simple

asphaltum. Generally resembling the latter in its other properties and

uses as a pigment, mummy is often substituted for it, being less liable

to rack or move on the canvass. It must be remembered, however, that

mummy varies exceedingly both in its composition and qualities; and as

from its very nature and origin nothing certain can be said of it, but

little reliance should be placed on this brown. Mummy belongs to the

class of pigments which are either good or bad, according as they turn

out. On the whole, we agree with the American artist, who has been more

than once quoted in these pages, that nothing is to be gained by

smearing one's canvass with a part, perhaps, of the wife of Potiphar.

With a preference for materials less frail and of a more sober

character, we likewise hold with Bouvier, that it is not particularly

prudent to employ without necessity these crumbled remains of dead

bodies, which must contain ammonia and particles of fat in a concrete

state and so be more or less apt to injure the colours with which they

may be united. The use of mummy is now confined to oil, in which, says

Mr. Carmichael, a mixture of mummy and bitumen will dry and never crack.

If this be the case, the compound would be preferable to either

separate.



TTITLE PRUSSIAN BROWN



is an iron oxide, containing more or less alumina, and prepared by

calcining an aluminous Prussian blue, or treating an aluminous

ferrocyanide of peroxide of iron with an alkali. Possessing the nature

and properties of burnt Sienna, it is transparent, permanent, and dries

well in oil. Of an orange hue, it is neither so rich nor so powerful as

that pigment, and is better employed as a glaze than in body.



TTITLE SEPIA,