Principle Under The Name Of Wongshy And Consisting Of The

: ON THE PRIMARY, RED.

seed-capsule of a species of gentian. The aqueous extract, freed from

the pectin which it contains, yields with baryta- and lime-water yellow

precipitates, from which acids separate the colouring matter of a

vermilion hue. When thus prepared it is insoluble in water, and would so

far be adapted for a pigment. The red has not, however, been employed as

such, and we are unacquainted with its habitudes.



* * * * *



The concluding remarks appended to the chapter on yellow apply equally

to red, and indeed to all other colours. It is not assumed that the list

is exhausted: there are other reds, but they are, like some we have

mentioned, ineligible as pigments, either by reason of their fugacity,

their costliness, the difficulty of producing them on a scale, or the

sources whence they are derived being commercially unavailable. While

endeavouring throughout the work to render complete the collection of

pigments actually in use, it is our object to give a selection only of

numbered italicised colours; ample enough, however, to include those

which have become obsolete or nearly so, and full enough to afford some

insight into our resources. The nearer we approach perfection, the more

eager we are to arrive at it: the path before us, therefore, cannot fail

to be of interest.



Looking back, and noting those pigments commonly employed, we find that

the reds like the yellows are divisible into three classes--the good,

bad, and indifferent; or the permanent, the semi-stable, and the

fugitive.



Among permanent reds, rank cadmium red, madder reds, Mars red, the

ochres, and vermilions.



In the second or semi-stable class, must be placed cochineal lakes,

Indian lake, and red chrome.



To the third division, or the fugitive, belong dragon's blood, pure

scarlet, red lead, and the coal-tar reds.



With regard to the foregoing classification, it must be borne in mind

that the properties and effects of pigments are much influenced by

adventitious circumstances. Sometimes pigments are varied or altogether

changed by the grounds on which they are employed, the vehicles in which

they are used, the siccatives and colours with which they are mixed, and

the varnishes by which they are covered. And as there is no exact and

constant agreement in different specimens of like pigments, so there is

no exact and constant result in their use. Artists vary as much as the

pigments they employ: some resemble the old masters in the delicacy with

which they treat their colours, the cleanliness with which they surround

them, and the care with which they compound them: in the hands of such

artists pigments have every chance. Some, however, are characterized by

a careless manipulation, a dirty mode of working, an utter disregard for

all rules of admixture: with such painters the best colours may be

ruined. And here, indeed, it may be asked, whether these latter are not

more properly termed painters than artists, chiefly belonging as they do

to that slap-dash school which manufactures pictures simply to sell

them. Duly subordinated, the commercial side of art has a value which it

were affectation to ignore; but to paint merely for the present,

heedless of the future, is to sink art to the level of a trade, not the

most honest. For it is the purchaser who suffers from the want of

thought bestowed on the materials, the sloppy manipulation, the careless

compounding; sins of omission and commission that cause him, on finding

his picture becoming chaos, to join the detractors of modern pigments.

In classifying colours therefore, those also should be classified who

use them:--into artists, whose love for art would render it more lasting