: MURAL OR MONUMENTAL DECORATION |ts aims airtj HTctbous COMPRISING FRESCO. WATER-GLASS. ENCAUSTIC. MOSAIC. OIL PAINTING. WITH AN APPENDIX. BY W. CAVE THOMAS, AUTHOR OF "THE SCIENCE OF MODERATION," " METRONOMT, OR THE SCIENCE OF PROPORTION," ETC, ETC. Zv& profcat atttficent. LONDON: WINSOR AND NEWTON, 38, RATHBONE PLACE, W. hVji T4T- :,•'. \: . * ! . •• • • • • • ••••»•• •• ••- ••••.*• • • . - •.• LONDON': PH1NTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., 172, ST. JOHN STEEET, E.C. PREFACE In order to save students the trouble and loss of time incidental to searching for and consulting scattered authorities, a body of trustworthy in- formation will be found here collected, and arranged upon those processes which have been more or less used in Mural or Monumental Deco- ration, viz., Fresco, Encaustic, Water-glass, Mosaic, and Oil-Painting ; information too, which it is hoped will prove not altogether uninteresting to the general reader. The author having studied Fresco-painting in Munich under the direction of Professors Cornelius and Hess, was enabled to furnish the Koyal Commission on the Fine Arts with information on that special process, which was, together with other materials, carefully supervised by its Hon. Secretary the late Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and printed and published in the Com- missioners' Eeports. It may he recollected that the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts was in- stituted for the special purpose of promoting and encouraging a more extended practice of mural painting in this country. 3589ol IV PREFACE. By the moderns Encaustic painting lias been less practised than Fresco ; it is therefore in a more uncertain experimental condition, no one method being yet recognised and generally adopted. Various opinions and descriptions of experimental pro- cesses are consequently brought together, that the study of them may lead to some settled practice. In explanation of the new method of Water-glass adopted by Director Yon Kaulbach in the execution of the noble works in the Museum at Berlin, and more recently by our great painters Herbert and Maclise, in their pictures in the new palace at Westminster, the writer has been graciously permitted to reprint the pamphlet translated from the German of Professor Fuchs, which was issued and privately circulated by command of his Boyal Highness the late Prince Consort. As the final process in Mosaic is the province of the artist -workman rather than the artist, the subject is treated more in reference to its deco- rative capabilities than technicalities. In the chapter on Oil-painting, the writer has attempted to give the theory of the use of colours, a theory not specially confined to oil, but in some measure to all methods of painting. For the contents of this chapter he is entirely responsible. In the Appendix will be found a copious List of English and Foreign Works upon Art, published at various dates ; Lists of Painters chronologically arranged, their ages and styles ; and of the princi- PREFACE. V pal mural works now existing, where, by whom painted, and by what process. A second volume, containing Treatises upon Anatomy, Perspective, Proportion, &c, would com- plete the writer's original project, which was to bring all the useful subjects in connection with the practice of Painting, conveniently together for im- mediate reference, and in order to promote a more widely spread and accurate knowledge of them. One advantage in carrying out the original scheme would be, that the information thus brought together, might from time to time be revised and gradually perfected. ——A CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction .1 CHAPTER I.—FRESCO-PAINTING. Its Revival by the German Painters —Why it should be pre- ferred to Oil—Cartoons and Sketches of Colours necessary —The Construction and Preparation of the Wall— Selection of the Lime—Constitution of different Limes—Reduction of the Causticity of the Lime—The Nature of Lime— Slak- ing and Preparation of the Lime—The Composition of the Plaster or Mortar for the Ground— Implements— Colours Process of Painting—Preparation of Tints, &c.—Methods resembling Fresco in Effect—Works on Fresco-Painting . 17 CHAPTER IL—ENCAUSTIC. The Antiquity of the use of Wax against Atmospheric Corro- sion— The Nature of the Ancient Encaustic Painting— The Researches of Count Caylus and M. Bachelier—Experiments of Chev. Lorgna—Count Caylus's Explanation of a Passage in Pliny— Caylus's Method—Preparation of Grounds—Pre- paration of Tints—Retouching—Mode of Developing Pic- ture by Heat —Virtues of Encaustic Painting—Comparative Power of Colours in Oil and Wax to Resist Change — Werner of Neustadt's Method— Mrs. Hooker's Method— Recent Method—Works upon Encaustic Painting . 49 CHAPTER III.—MOSAIC. The Nature of Mosaic—Its Durability—Dr. Salviati's Revival of the Art—Mosaic first used in the East—The Art amongst the Greeks and Romans — Preserved by the Byzantine Greeks—Italian Mosaics—Remains of Ancient Mosaics List of Artists in Mosaic—Works upon Mosaic . .74 — Viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV.—OIL-PAINTING. Why Introduced in a Work upon Mural Painting—The Effect of the Invention of Oil-Painting upon Art—The Gradual Decline of the Influence of Architecture upon Painting The Method of the Old Masters Lost—Want of System in its Present Practice—Transparency in Oil-Painting—Opacity or Solidity in Oil-Painting—Painting into Wet White and into a Glaze upon White Grounds—Impasto—What to avoid — Painting upon Distemper Grounds —Works upon Oil- Painting 106 CHAPTER V—WATER-GLASS. Inventor's Preface — Sec. 1. Various kinds of Water-Glass, and their Manufacture— Sec. 2. Special Application of the Water-Glass 123 APPENDIX. Report of D. Maclise, Esq., R.A., on the "Water- Glass," or " Stereochromic" Method of Painting—Works upon Paint- ing — Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Ger- man—On the History of Painting in General—On the State of Painting amongst the Greeks and Romans—The Lives of Painters — On Taste — Dictionaries — Preservation of Pic- tures—List of Painters —List of Existing Mural Paintings 187 ON MUEAL DECOBATION. INTRODUCTION. The Aim of Mural or Monumental Painting. Architectural magnificence has invariably been the exponent, as well as one of the most enduring monuments, of a nation's tendencies—the inva- riable exponent, because national art is inevitably stamped by the ruling influence, be it religion, commerce, or arms, which sways the whole thoughts and activity of a people. Egyptian art, in its ponderous temples, tombs, and pyramids—constructed of the most enduring materials—its lavish hieroglyphics painted and incised, no less than the custom of embalming dusky generations, exhibits that love of perpetuation which consistently belonged to a nation teaching the doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul. There is about Egyptian relatively to Greek, and Roman monumental art too, a basic character correspond- B ; 2 MURAL DECORATION. ing with that which Egyptian teaching bore to the philosophies and civilizations which sprang out of it. The simplicity, harmony, and balanced propor- tion of Grecian monumental art indicate the nation's aspirations after the perfect idea, its belief in the Phidian power of education gradually to mould a people intellectually and physically to an ideal standard, and to form the rough plastic humanity into men-heroes. The whole product of Grecian thought bears the stamp of high cul- ture upon it, in its moderation, its completeness and the intellectual precedence of antiquity is given to the nation which enthroned the Parthenon on a rock, which made its Temple to Wisdom a beacon seaward, and to the ages a very palace of art, compelling us to confess that the ancients, in this respect at least, attained to an excellence which we, with all our boasted progress, seem only doomed to beat about and fall short of. How different the Pioman to the Grecian monu- ments ! for although the Eomans frequently enlisted Grecian artists in their service, they either impe- riously compelled or corrupted their taste, which, forced from its native purity, became ostentatious and florid in its adopted expression. There still remain triumphal arches, temples, arenas, camps, military roads, theatres, baths, and mural deco- rations on which lust of conquest, is indelibly branded. Rome, imperious in her strength, INTRODUCTION. 3 imperious in her fall, ruling by arms instead of moral force—was living, hated for her iron hand—is dead, a wonder to the antiquary. Her example has been a false light to the nations who have steered by it. Her very faults, even those of taste, cropped up, upas-like, to mar in after-ages a new art-development ; but the taste of the cinque-cento had Christianity and the power of several colossal intellects to preserve the grandeur and simplicity of Christian art from that entire perversion which threatened it, from the pseudo-classical fashion which took possession of the time. The ancient Roman taint, however, which showed itself slightly in the painting, more in the architecture, and most in the sculpture of that period, re-asserted itself to the full in the later Eenaissance of the Netherlands, springing from the same fashion, but wiiich, losing a more intellectual control, a greater national sensibility, and precipitated by the wonderfully facile genius of the Dutch painters, fell into the coarsest re- dundance in its application and forms. The architecture of the Middle Ages, which is commonly spoken of as the Gothic period, unmis- takably reveals the dominant influence of the Church, not only by the great purposes to which its principal