Lake,
Vermilion, or
Cinnabar,
Minium, or
Red-lead,
Light-red, or
Light-oker calcined
Brown-red, or
Brown-oker calcined
Indian-red,
are all properly qualified for encaustic.
Care must be taken to have the lake good; that which is commonly sold
under the name of Florence lacque, and recommended as the best, is in
general the worst; it is usually in small hard grains, which hardness
is owing to gum arabic, or what is worse, to that glutinous substance
which oozes out from the cherry tree, put in by the fabricant (of the
lake) to bind and keep the grains together, and make it appear better
merchandise than it really is; such lake will scale off from the
canvas; the gum it is impregnated with hinders the wax from penetrating
its pores--every body knows that lacque is made of cochineal; there
is a bastard lake made of Brazil wood, but that is easily known by its
dullness. The best lake for our purpose is that which is of a fine,
clear, deep hue, easily to be broken and crumbled between the fingers.
The finest and best lacque I ever saw and used, is made here in England
by an ingenious artist in the seal engraving way.
Vermilion, or cinnabar, answers in encaustic all the purposes it does
in oil.
Minium, will be of infinite service for painting with the pencil and
crayons; it will not change fixed with wax, as it does in oil; it
may be used to advantage in some carnations or flesh tints; and in
landscapes to enliven the oker, for great lights.
Light-red, or light-oker calcined, is of the same universal use in this
manner of painting as it is in oil, or common water colours.
Brown-red, or brown-oker calcined, may be employed for the same use as
in oil, or distemper painting.
Indian-red, the French call this colour, _Terre d’Angleterre_, English
earth; this colour is particularly useful for distances, it makes the
degradation of objects light and airy.
TERRA DI SIENA, and TERRA VERTE,
Terra di Siena, a yellow hard and clayish substance, so called from the
city of Siena in Italy, from whence it comes.
This colour is very unfit to be used crude, either for painting in
encaustic or crayons, its pores are too close for the wax to penetrate;
or to say better, this colour or earth is very much impregnated with a
nitrous principle, with which wax cannot sympathise, and for this very
reason it is as unfit to be used crude in oil. Those painters that use
it freely have always but too much reason to repent. But,
Terra di Siena calcined, is a very beautiful and useful colour for
all manner of painting, and particularly encaustic. The fire having
dispelled in some measure the nitrous principle, the wax may freely
enter its pores. This colour gives a great, soft, and glowing strength
in flesh, drapery and landscape; some painters call this colour Roman
oker.
Terra verte; this colour too comes to us from Italy, and some from
Germany, they are both alike, and ought to be entirely banished the
pallette, as it grows so soon dirty and black when employed with oil.
Terra verte differs from terra di Siena in little else but colour,
it has a little vitriol. The too free use some of the older Italian
painters made of this colour in flesh tints, is the cause that numbers
of pictures of those masters are so black as we see them at this time.