The materials of the painter's craft in Europe and Egypt : from earliest times to the end of the XVIIth century, with some account of their preparation and use / [Arthur Pillans Laurie].

  • Arthur Laurie
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The materials of the painter's craft in Europe and Egypt : from earliest times to the end of the XVIIth century, with some account of their preparation and use / [Arthur Pillans Laurie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    also owes much to the art of the dyer. The dis- covery that certain herbs could be used to dye tex- tile fabrics, and that certain agents could be used as mordants to fix these dyes, would naturally lead to the attempt to fix the dyes upon some white chalky ground and so utilise them for painting; and we con- sequently find that the most famous dye of classical times, the murex, or royal purple, was also used to prepare a pigment for the artist. It is impossible to say which of these many discoveries may have preceded the other, and whether the attempt to make a pigment from the vegetal dye preceded the attempt to use it for dyeing the textile fabric ; but, at any rate, the artist has throughout been able greatly to increase the number of pigments at his command as the sister arts have developed, while at the present day the discoveries of modern chem- istry have added many valuable, and also many treacherous, pigments to the artist’s paint-box. It is, therefore, not surprising to find in the earliest his- toric times that complex decorative schemes could be carried out with a great variety of colour. The necessity of fixing the pigment to the surface would also naturally lead to the investigation of possible mediums which could be mixed with the pigment and used to attach it. In Egypt the acacia supplies
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