ON THE SEMI-NEUTRAL, MARRONE.
We have adopted the term MARRONE, or _maroon_ as it is sometimes called,
for our second and middle semi-neutral, as applicable to a class of
impure colours composed of black and red, black and purple, or black and
russet, or of black and any other denomination in which red
predominates. It is a mean between the warm, broken, semi-neutral
_browns_, and the cold, semi-neutral _grays_. Marrone is practically to
shade, what red is to light; and its relations to other colours are
those of red, &c., when we invert the scale from black to white. It is
therefore a following, or shading, colour of red and its derivatives;
and hence its accordances, contrasts, and expressions agree with those
of red degraded; consequently red added to dark brown converts it into
marrone if in sufficient quantity to prevail. In smaller proportions,
red gives to lighter browns the names of bay, chestnut, sorrel, &c.
Owing to confused nomenclature, most of the colours and pigments of
this class have been assigned to other denominations--puce, murrey,
morelle, chocolate, columbine, pavonazzo, &c., being variously ranked
among reds, browns, and purples. This vagueness also accounts for
pigments having been ranged under heads not suited to the names they
bear, and explains why Brown Ochre has been classed among the yellows,
Italian Pink among the same, Brown Pink among the citrines, &c.
As adapted to the walls of a picture gallery, marrone, more or less deep
and inclined to crimson, is one of the best colours known. For the
reason that each colour has its antagonist, and consequently may affect
a picture well or ill, according to its tone or general hue, there can
be no universally good colour for such a purpose. What suits one picture
or style of painting may not suit another: with a blood-red sunset, for
instance, or portrait with crimson drapery, marrone would be out of
place. But as it is impossible to provide each picture with a separate
background, all that can be done in large collections is to study the
general effect, sacrificing the interests of the few to the good of the
many. If cool-coloured landscapes predominate, with blue skies and green
foliage, it will be found that the orange-yellow of the frames agreeably
contrasts the former, and the crimson-marrone of walls as agreeably sets
off the latter. If portraits and historic paintings prevail, which are
in general of a warm advancing nature, then a modest green may prove
eligible. And if engravings form the staple, the grey hue of the print
is best opposed by a bright fawn colour. Where several rooms are devoted
to pictures, a suitable wall colour is most easily secured by
classifying the paintings as far as possible according to their general
hue, and placing them in different chambers: in each there will be a
prevailing character in the colouring of its pictures, and each can be
painted or papered accordingly. However, whether this plan is adopted or
not--and it may be objected to as involving a certain monotony--care
should be taken to have a wall colour of some sort or other, that is, to
let it be seen. Pictures crammed together kill each other: without a
pin's point between them, a speck of wall space visible, much of the
illusion is destroyed. "It is only," says Chevreul, "the intelligent
connoisseur and amateur who, on seeing a picture exhibited in a gallery,
experience all the effect which the artist has wished to produce;
because they alone know the best point of view, and because, while their
attention is fixed on the work they are observing, they alone end by no
longer seeing the surrounding pictures, or even the frame of that one
they contemplate." Amid a moving crowd of people, inseparable from
nearly all public exhibitions, it becomes difficult for the visitor,
intelligent or otherwise, thus to concentrate his attention on one work.
As far, therefore, as space will allow, paintings should be kept
separate: larger rooms, or fewer pictures, are what is wanted.[B]
From this digression, pardonable, let us hope, because in the interests
of art, we will pass on to a consideration of marrone pigments.
276. BROWN MADDER
is an exceedingly rich marrone or russet-marrone brown, bearing the same
relation to the colour marrone that raw umber bears to the colour
citrine. One of the most valuable products of the madder root, it has
supplied a great desideratum, and in water especially is indispensable,
both as a local and auxiliary colour. Of intense depth and transparency,
if made with skill, it affords the richest description of shadows,
either alone or compounded with blue, and the most delicate pale tints.
Being quite permanent, a good drier, and working most kindly, it is a
pigment which cannot be too strongly recommended to the landscape
painter's notice. Containing a large proportion of red, it is eligible,
with yellow or blue, for mixed orange or mixed purple of a subdued tone.
It may be used tolower red curtains or draperies, and for the darkest
touches in flesh. Mixed with cobalt, it forms a fine shadow colour for
distant objects; and with indigo or Prussian blue and black, is
serviceable for the shades of those nearer the foreground. It is
similarly useful when mixed with black, and will be found advantageous
in rusty iron, as anchors, chains, &c. For the deepest and richest parts
of foregrounds it may be employed alone, as also for deep dark cracks
and fissures, or strong markings in other near objects, as boats and
figures. With French blue, or cobalt and white, a set of beautiful warm
or cold grays may be obtained, in proportion as the brown or blue
predominates. Compounded with blues and bright yellows such as aureolin,
it gives fine autumnal russet greens. A good purple for soft aerial
clouds is furnished by cobalt and brown madder, or for stormy clouds
by the brown, Prussian blue, and black: an equally good slate colour
is obtained from cobalt, sepia, and the brown. For glazing over foliage
and herbage, a mixture of the madder with aureolin or gamboge is adapted;
and for brooks and running streams compounds of this brown with raw Sienna,
cobalt and raw Sienna, Vandyke brown, and French blue, will each be found
useful. Black sails are well represented by burnt Sienna, French blue, and
brown madder; and red sails by light red or burnt Sienna with the brown.
277. MIXED MARRONE.
Marrone is a retiring colour easily compounded in all its hues and
shades by the mixture variously of red, and black or brown; or of any
other warm colours in which red and black predominate. A reference to
the permanent brown, black, and red or reddish pigments will show to
what extent the colour marrone may safely be produced by admixture. In
compounding marrone, the brown or black may be itself compounded, before
the addition of the red, reddish-purple, or russet, requisite for its
conversion.
* * * * *
278. _Chica Marrone_.
Chica, the red colouring principle alluded to in the ninth chapter, is
extracted from the _Bignonia chica_, by boiling its leaves in water,
decanting the decoction, and allowing it to cool, when a red matter
falls down, which is formed into cakes and dried. Insoluble in cold
water, it dissolves in alcohol and alkalies; is precipitated from
alkaline solutions by acids without alteration; and is bleached by
chlorine. Another variety of the same substance, obtained from Para in
Brazil, and known as crajuru, carajuru, or caracuru, behaves in a
similar manner. This is said to be superior to the former sort.
A chica pigment, brought from South America, and examined by the author,
was of a soft powdery texture, and rich marrone colour. Somewhat
resembling Rubens' madder in hue, it was equal in body and transparency
to the carmine of cochineal, though by no means approaching it in
beauty, or even in durability. Simply exposed to the light of a window,
without sun, the colour was soon changed and destroyed. Conclusive
evidence as this is that the sample submitted to Mr. Field was
worthless, it remains to be seen whether all the colours to be derived
from chica, by different modes and from different kinds, are equally
valueless as pigments.
279. _Chocolate Lead_,
or Marrone Red, is a pigment prepared by calcining oxide of lead with
about a third of copper oxide, and reducing the compound to a uniform
tint by levigation. It is of a chocolate hue, strong opaque body, and
dries freely. Like all lead and copper colours, it is blackened by
impure air.
280. _Cobalt Marrone._
There is obtainable from cobalt a very rich marrone brown, which, like
many other colours, is more beautiful while moist than when dried.
Permanent, if carefully made and most thoroughly washed, it is an
expensive compound, and must rank among those colours which are
interesting in the laboratory but superfluous in the studio.
281. _Madder Marrone_,
or Marrone Lake, was a preparation of madder, of great depth,
transparency, and stability. Working well in water, glazing and drying
in oil, and in every respect a good pigment, it was one of those colours
which gradually--and often, as in this case, unfortunately--become
obsolete, on account of their hues being easily given by admixture of
other pigments. There was likewise a deeper kind, called Purple Black. A
good madder marrone may be produced by adding to brown madder either
rose madder, madder carmine, or Rubens' madder, with a slight portion of
black or blue if required.
282. _Mars Marrone._
Under the heading of a New Marrone Pigment there appeared some months
back in a chemical journal the following:--"The blood-red compound
obtained by adding a soluble sulphocyanide to a salt of iron in solution
can be made (apparently at least) to combine with resin thus: To a
concentrated solution of sesquichloride of iron and sulphocyanide of
potassium in ether, an etherial solution of common resin is added, and
the whole well shaken together. There is then mixed with it a
sufficiency of water to cause a precipitate, when it will be found,
after the mixture has stood a few hours, that the whole or nearly the
whole of the red-coloured iron compound has united with the precipitated
resin, forming the marrone-coloured pigment in question. When this
coloured substance is finely powdered and mixed with water, the liquid
is not the least coloured; whence it is inferred that the red iron
compound has chemically united itself with the resin."
The foregoing account is rather to be regarded as of scientific interest
than of practical utility. The blood-red solution of sulphocyanide of
iron is in itself not stable: when the red solution of this salt is so
exposed to the sun, that the rays pass through the glass jar containing
it, it is rendered colourless, but the colour is retained or restored
when the rays pass directly from the air into the fluid; so that when a
properly diluted solution is placed in a cylindrical glass vessel in
direct sunshine, it loses colour in the morning till about eleven in the
forenoon, when the rays beginning to fall upon the surface exposed to
the air, gradually restore the colour, which attains its maximum about
two o'clock. Moreover, the solution is immediately decolourised by
sulphuretted hydrogen and other deoxidizing agents, as well as by
alkalies and many acids. It is scarcely probable that the union of the
red colouring matter with the resin would suffice to secure it from
change; and there is little doubt that the new marrone pigment would be
a chameleon colour.
* * * * *
Failures in the process of burning carmines, and preparing the purple of
gold, frequently afford good marrones. Compounds more or less of that
hue are likewise furnished by copper, mercury, &c. Some ochres incline
to marrone when calcined: indeed we have remarked in many instances that
the action of fire anticipates the effects of long continued time; and
that several of the primary and secondary colours may, by different
degrees of burning, be converted into their analogous secondary,
tertiary, or semi-neutral colours.
The one marrone or brown-marrone pigment at present employed, brown
madder, is permanent.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] This was written previous to the opening of the new rooms of the
Royal Academy at Burlington House. In these, among other improvements,
the subject of wall space has been considered.