Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by ArtistsField, George
Science
Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists
Field, George
Color; Colors; Painting -- Technique
By treating the yellow sulphite of uranium with a prolonged current of
sulphuretted hydrogen, and saturating gradually with ammonia, a red
finally results. This colour is insoluble in water, and it has the
objection of remaining partially suspended for an almost indefinite
time, colouring the liquid light red. The product is brighter and more
beautiful while moist; when dried and powdered, its tone--slightly
approaching vermilion--is duller. The colour may be obtained of several
degrees of brilliancy, but, apart from the question of expense, it would
be inadmissible in oil, the red gradually altering by contact therewith.
The most persistent tint at length resembles burnt Sienna.
122. _Wongshy Red._
There was imported a few years ago from Batavia a new colouring
principle, under the name of _wongshy_, and consisting of the
seed-capsule of a species of gentian. The aqueous extract, freed from
the pectin which it contains, yields with baryta- and lime-water yellow
precipitates, from which acids separate the colouring matter of a
vermilion hue. When thus prepared it is insoluble in water, and would so
far be adapted for a pigment. The red has not, however, been employed as
such, and we are unacquainted with its habitudes.
* * * * *
The concluding remarks appended to the chapter on yellow apply equally
to red, and indeed to all other colours. It is not assumed that the list
is exhausted: there are other reds, but they are, like some we have
mentioned, ineligible as pigments, either by reason of their fugacity,
their costliness, the difficulty of producing them on a scale, or the
sources whence they are derived being commercially unavailable. While
endeavouring throughout the work to render complete the collection of
pigments actually in use, it is our object to give a selection only of
numbered italicised colours; ample enough, however, to include those
which have become obsolete or nearly so, and full enough to afford some
insight into our resources. The nearer we approach perfection, the more
eager we are to arrive at it: the path before us, therefore, cannot fail
to be of interest.
Looking back, and noting those pigments commonly employed, we find that
the reds like the yellows are divisible into three classes--the good,
bad, and indifferent; or the permanent, the semi-stable, and the
fugitive.
Among permanent reds, rank cadmium red, madder reds, Mars red, the
ochres, and vermilions.
In the second or semi-stable class, must be placed cochineal lakes,
Indian lake, and red chrome.
To the third division, or the fugitive, belong dragon's blood, pure
scarlet, red lead, and the coal-tar reds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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