Tin Violet
:
ON THE TERTIARY, CITRINE.
By heating chromate of stannic oxide to bright redness, a dark violet
mass is obtained, which is better adapted to enamel painting than to the
palette. It communicates in glazings a variety of tints, from rose-red
to violet.
* * * * *
So scant is the number of good purples in common use, that there are but
two which can be classed as durable, namely, purple mad
er and the true
Mars violet.
Foremost in the second group stands burnt carmine. As there are
different degrees both of permanence and fugacity, so are there
different degrees of semi-stability. Burnt carmine, burnt lake, Indian
purple, and violet carmine, all belong to this division; but the first
certainly is more permanent than the rest.
Rich and beautiful as it is, purple madder cannot be called brilliant;
while Mars violet is, of course, ochrous. Unlike green and orange,
therefore, purple can point to no original pigment at once vivid and
durable: as regards purple, brilliancy implies a semi-stability that
borders more or less closely on fugacity. Until the advent of a perfect
palette, however, brilliancy and semi-stability will doubtless hold
their own. Their present popularity may be seen by a glance at the lists
of artist-colours--lists compiled, be it remembered, in obedience to
the law of demand and supply. If art were really so much honoured as
some of its disciples pretend, none but durable colours would be
employed. In our opinion, if a picture be worth painting at all, it is
worth painting with permanent pigments; but many evidently think
otherwise. Deploring an error neither flattering to the craft they
practise nor to themselves, we would urge such to bear in mind this
axiom, semi-stable pigments become fugitive when used in thin washes.
Even in body they do not preserve their primitive hue, but in glazing
and the like, their colour altogether flies or is wholly destroyed.
It is this semi-stability, recommended to the thoughtless and
indifferent by the beauty which generally accompanies it, that is the
bane of modern art. Even our greatest painters have yielded to its
fascination. Who has not gazed upon one of Turner's fading pictures with
still more of sadness than enjoyment, that anything so grand, so
beautiful, so true, should slowly but surely be passing away? A feeling
akin to pity is conjured up at the sight of the helpless wreck,
abandoned amid the treacherous materials employed, and sinking deeper
and deeper. Mournful, indeed, is that mighty ruin of mind amid matter;
mournful the thought that in years to come, the monument sought for will
not be found.
TTITLE TERTIARY CITRINE
Citrine, or the colour of the citron, is the first of the tertiary class
of colours, or ultimate compounds of the primary triad, yellow, red, and
blue; in which yellow is the archeus or predominating colour, and blue
the extreme subordinate. For citrine being an immediate compound of the