Abstract
IN the majority of cases when a student of painting has seriously entered upon his work in a school of art, he has no wish, he makes no attempt to investigate the chemical and physical properties of the materials he employs. He is content to copy the practice of his teachers and fellow-learners; facility in working and immediate effectiveness are all he demands. He may even go so far as to resent the intrusion of science into the domain of art. To ask a painter to study exhaustively the chemistry of the materials and processes of painting would be unreasonable, for a whole-hearted devotion to the prime business of his life must be his first concern. Nor can an adequate grasp of the difficult and varied problems offered by pigments and vehicles and painting-grounds be acquired by listening to a few lectures, witnessing a few experiments, and reading a few chapters in a manual. The author of the little book before us makes a very modest demand upon the time and patience of the student of painting. Here are no symbols and formulæ to repel the uninitiated, no tables of constants, no complex theories of reaction and change. Mr. Laurie's readers are first furnished with a set of easy experiments which have been devised to show in an obvious way the nature and treatment of the chief pigments and vehicles. Then, in part ii., some notes on methods of painting in tempera, fresco, water, and oil are given, while the volume concludes with a glossary of pigments and a list of the chemicals and apparatus needed for carrying out the experimental work described in the earlier chapters of the book. There is one section of the volume which seems somewhat incongruous—a description of “drawing for process” and an endeavour to estimate the artistic value of the leading methods of photographic reproduction. Mr. Laurie will doubtless effect some improvements in a second edition—a little more attention to literary style is desirable. The late Mr. Gambier Parry of Highnam Court would have been surprised to find himself described as French. There are, indeed, very few slips or errors in this little volume—very few statements and explanations with which the writer of this notice does not agree.
Facts about Processes, Pigments and Vehicles; a Manual for Art Students.
By A. P. Laurie (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895.)
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CHURCH, A. Facts about Processes, Pigments and Vehicles; a Manual for Art Students. Nature 53, 28 (1895). https://doi.org/10.1038/053028b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/053028b0