House-painting, carriage-painting, and graining. What to do, and how to do it.

Front matter

H O

< o c

HOUSE-PAINTING,

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — ColOes and their TJsEa . . , .13

II. — Light and Color ..... 18

Chapter I. Coloks Akd Their Uses

The use of colors for decoratiA^e and ornamental purposes antedates written history, and tliey Avere possibly employed by aboriginal man in or for the adornment of his person. To trace the progress of this fine art from its incipiency were an impossible task, because of the non-existence of historic records. Milton, the blind poet, with fine poetic frenzy, describes the gorgeous flower mosaics which glorified the nuptial bower in Eden's garden. So-called sacred books— according to Moses — tell us that long ago Tyre was famed among the nations of the earth for the skill of her workmen in gold and colors and broidery ; and that Huram, the King of Tyre, did send to Solomon, the ncw-macle King of Israel (even as beforetime he had sent to David cedar wood, or trees, whereof and wherewith the said David did build him a dwelliiig-house), a son of a woman of the

14 HOUSE AND CARRIAGE FAINTING, AND GRAINING.

daughters of -Dan, whose father was a Tyrian man, skillful in decorating in gold and silver and brass and iron, and in crimson and purple and gold, as also in embroidery and in fine linen. An accomplished artist was this man of Tyre !

We may suppose that during the earlier i^eriod of man's development the employment of color for decorative and ornamental purposes was confined mostly to the temples of worship and to the palaces and tombs of kings ; and, moreover, that colors had a significance beyond mere harmonious arrangement, and were used emblematically in the Egyptian, Jewish, and other pagan modes of worship. The enduring materials which monumentally record the glory of Egyptian civilization were, we suppose, colored to symbolize the mysteries of their strange and, to us, incomprehensible religion. And so through — as we know them — all succeeding forms and changes and religious inventions, until the use of color for sacred and sacerdotal purposes seemed to have attained its highest reach with the culminating temporal power of the Komish Church. We may suppose that there was a period in man's history when the average mind was educated in a knowledge of color-harmony. We know there was and is a time where in our civilization there exists an almost entire ignorance of and indifference to this subject, and a prevailing inability to discern harmony and distinguish discords in compositions of color.

The protest of Luther and his compeers against what they deemed errors in the Church, included more than the diversion of a portion of the religious thought of the so-

, COLORS AND THEIR USES. 15

called Christian world from the channel through which it had been accustomed to flow. The change in the spirit of those who followed in the footsteps of the protesters was radical and entire. The institution, founded by St. Peter, the repository of God's power on earth, the object of extremest veneration theretofore, on the part of those truly religious, who folloAved Luther out, became the thing abhorrent, the standing offense against the God of Abraham, the Antichrist, the devil's engine for the perversion of human souls.

All of art in painting, and sculpture, and architecture, which the Church had gathered and almost monopolized — the emblem of the cross, the Virgin Mother, the stained windows, the softened light of cathedral and minster — were become idols in the new light of Luther and his friends, and everything which savored of the Church was banished and put far away. Out of this, we may assume, grew that indisposition to, and consequent ignorance of, color-harmony, which has ever been the a<3Companiment of Protestant Puritanism.

Coming down to our own time, and looking back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, we may find the cause of our own want of taste and our indifference to the use of colors for decorative and ornamental purposes. The rigid teachings of the semi-theocracy of the Puritan Commonwealth were far-reaching in extent, wonderful in influence, and are most difficult to trace. They crop out to-day among all the forms and features of our diversified society and civilization. Modified by the influx of immigration, by eyer-increasing contact with tlie world, by accumulation of wealth and its consequent refinement and luxurious tendencies, they yet bear more or less of the rigidity and severity of their original features. To these teachings may be traced the entire indifference to the use of colors for decorative and ornamental purposes, and the inability to distinguish color-harmony, which has heretofore universally prevailed, and which may be said now generally to prevail, among us as a people. With those Puritan Fathers a knowledge of the simple names of colors was a frivolity, if not a sin, and the use of colors for church purposes would have been looked upon as a crime little less heinous than image-worship. Scarlet with them was significant of the *^ woman of Babylon" — she who sat upon the seven hills, drunken with the blood of saints. Purple suggested pagan idolatry, and red the right hand of wrath ! Colors, either as ornaments or emblems, could have no place in their purely intellectual and ideal faith. To have rendered their places of worship attractive by ornamentation would have given the lie to their whole profession. The rigid morality of those God-fearing ascetics found proper and fitting expression in the rectangular shelters, under the wooden roofs of which they assembled to worship ^Mn spirit and in truth," so far as they were conscious of their own spiritual impulses. May we not rejoice that the materials which architecturally symbolized the simplicity of their religion were not enduring as monumental brass or marble ? In tracing backward the cause of our want of taste and our indifference to the use of colors, it seems not necessary to

COLORS AND THEIR USES. I7

go beyond the period of that settlement and that civilization which has given the key-note to the moral and intellectual tone of succeeding generations.

Be it a matter to deplore, or to rejoice at, it is not to be denied that Puritanism, as a system, with its severe morals and its simple tastes, has become a thing of the past. We find ourselves now npon the other road. The paintless structures which were the vanity of our severe predecessors, gave place to the diluted Puritanism of white and green. Let us congratulate ourselves that the latter discordant combination has run its course, and has given place to a disposition, at least, to color the exteriors of our dwelling-places with some regard to harmony and the general fitness of things. Encouraging as is the partial recovery from the white-and-green mania, there is much yet to be done in educating the people as to what colors and tones of color, what tints and shades, may properly be displayed in the coloristic decoration of domestic architecture.

Chapter II

LIGHT AND. COLOR.

Color is an attribute of light. In other phrase, color belongs to light, and in the absence of light all objects are black. The mind becomes conscious of color because of the eye, and without that organ there can be no intelligent comprehension of the sensation which color causes. To assert that light was made for the eye, or that the eye was made for light, might possibly give rise to cavil ; but the ultra-caviler will hardly deny the adaptability of each to the other.

As no two material objects can occupy the same space at the same time, so no two persons can view the same object under exactly similar conditions at the same moment ; and it is doubtful if an object is ever seen twice by any one beholder under exactly like conditions of time, place, and circumstance. This construction may cause us to take a charitable view of many differences of opinion as to the merits or demerits of works of art or of impressions produced by natural phenomena, which would otherwise be

LIGHT AND COLOR. 19

charged to stubbornness, or captiousness, or perhaps to willful blindness. This diversity, however, must not lead us to the conclusion that we can arrive at no positive knowledge of the effects produced on the general mind by certain combinations and contrasts of colors and of light and shade. Notwithstanding the fact that the visual organs of many people are so imperfect that the possessors can not distinguish green from red, it can not reasonably be denied that the sensation produced by the sight of these colors is, as a rule, identical among all whose perceptive faculties are ordinarily susceptible to color impressions. Chevreul, in his work on ^^Laws of Contrast of Colors" (page 198, English translation), says : *^ As soon as I felt the necessity of this study, my first care was to discover whether I saw colors as the generality of persons see them. I was soon perfectly convinced that I did." This, it will be seen, was a very important matter about which to come to a decision, for the reason that time spent in teaching the laws which govern color contrasts, and discords and harmony, would be worse than wasted if, in such matters, every man was to be '^a law unto himself." There have been, and are, and always will be, perhaps, individuals who claim that in all questions of taste there is no room for dispute, and that in such matters nobody has the right or the calling to propound laws for others. Such protesters are, fortunately, not the rule but the exception, and the fact still remains that the generality of persons see colors as Chevreul says he saw them. Upon this assumption, laws have been propounded, from time to time, which are supposed to be in accordance with Nature's requirements in tlie disposition of colors in coloristic decoration and ornamentation.

In treating the question of color-harmony, formidable difficulties are met with, and are hard to oyercome, for the reason that all the natural laws relating thereto are so altered and modified by conditions and circumstances that they become liable to endless interpretations. It is a fixed and arbitrary natural law in color-harmony that gold harmonizes with and is pleasing to the eye in combination or contrast with all colors and tints positive and neutral. Not equally so with all : gold is better with scarlet, or crimson, or purple, than with olive-green or greenish-drab, but it can not be made to discord with any color. Proportion and place, too, are powerful influences in the combination of colors : a color used in a composition in certain proportions will be disagreeable, and decrease the good efl'ect of all ; whereas, had the same color been in proper proportion to its neighbors, it would have heightened the good effect of all. So much, indeed, depends upon proportion, that disagreeable results will follow from any offense against these conditions. Rules may be given for putting together certain colors, so as to produce harmony and avoid discords, but no rule can be given for the relative proportions which these colors must bear to each other. A few general rules, indeed, may be laid down, such as follow : With blue and white, the white should be in excess, as a white ground with blue spots would have a more pleasing effect than a blue ground with white spots. So with red and white ; the white should be in excess, and the remarks as to blue and white

LIGHT AND COLOR. 21

are equally pertinent as to red and white. Blue and red and yellow make perfect harmony in combination ; yet they are not as pleasing when the yellow shows in the same quantity as the other colors. When these colors are presented together, the blue should be first in quantity, the red next, and lastly the yellow. Of course, it is difficult to determine the exact quantity of each, and hence arises the hopelessness of the task of educating one in this art whose perceptive faculties are naturally deficient in this most important requirement ; and one may almost as well be color-blind as to be without the ability to distinguish intuitively what are and what are not proper proportions. Few persons are color-blind to the extent of not experiencing the disagreeable effect of placing side by side, in direct contact, alternate stripes of red and green, or olive-green and brown. But this is not all that is required. Discords in two colors may be changed to concords by the addition of a third ; or, a discord — in two colors which can not be made to harmonize — may be toned down and rendered less disagreeable by the introduction of a third ; but, when and where and how this may be done, can not be taught by written rules, from the fact that the eye can not be educated in color-harmony through the ear, any better than the latter organ can be taught harmony of sounds through the medium of the eye. "We say a black next a green, or between red and green, becomes dull and rusty, and both the other colors lose by the arrangement. Introduce a white or yellow next the black, and it at once shows its own color. Suoh rules as these, however, can not prop-

22 HOUSE AND CARRIAGE PAINTINa, AND GRAINING.

erly be called instructive, for the reason that such knowledge should come by intuition ; otherwise it would seem to be of no particular value to its possessor. It is easy to say that notes three and four in the musical scale struck together give forth discordant sounds ; but to the ear which does not know this by intuition, the fact taught through written rules would be as seed sown on stony ground. The writer moralizes a little here, because he knows some reader will expect to find full and complete directions for the combination of colors in color compositions, which will be applicable under any and all conditions. As said before, this knowledge comes only through the eye by practice, and by the study of good examples.

Chapter III. Oen"amektikg With Colors

l2^ view of the fact tliat tlie sole object in ornamenting with color is to please the eye, that organ alone must be consulted as to what is good. We haye now to deal with art, not science ; with what is empirical and not what is rational. We propose to furnish rules, not reasons.

That two or more colors bear to each other certain relations, when chemically or scientifically considered, is not, of itself, a good reason why, in color ornamentation, these colors may be displayed in juxtaposition with good effect. Chemistry is interesting in this connection, not because of its processes, but its results. The theory of color is interesting, as a fact ; but it interests the intellectual, not the perceptive, faculties. A knowledge of color-harmony is intuitive, not acquired. The faculty, where it exists, may be improved by the study of good examples ; but where the natural faculty is wanting it can not be acquired. With the man who dogmatically asserts that a thing is good because it suits his tast^, or want of taste, there is an end to argument. To discuss the question of color-harmony with the stone-blind or color-blind were altogether vanity. Such have no part or lot in this matter, only to accept the rules laid down by those who possess the natural gift of distinguishing harmony in color, improved by the study of good examples.

Undue importance has been given to the place and proportion of colors as displayed in Nature ; but Nature's examples are worthy of imitation only so far as they conform to the rules of harmonious combination. To assert that the combinations and contrasts of colors as displayed in natural objects must necessarily be harmonious and pleasing to tlie eye, were as absurd as to declare that all natural sounds must necessarily be pleasing to the ear, or all natural odors grateful to the nostrils, or natural tastes to the palate. Again : a house, or other modern building, is not in any sense a natural object ; but, with its formal lines and angles, is artificial to the last degree ; and any attempt to give it the appearance of a natural object, by coloring it with those colors which Nature most largely displays, would be simply absurd. Nature, too, exhibits her colors and her color combinations, many of which are highly pleasing and delightful, while others are equally violent and incongruous in contrast, by the light of day ; while colors used in interior decoration are intended to have their best effect, necessarily, under subdued light, and frequently under artificial light. Now, certain colors appear very different, when viewed by artificial light, than when seen by daylight ; and, in ornamenting with colors, provision must be made for

ORNAMEKTIXG WITH COLORS. 25

this difference. For example : yellow light lends to red, and causes it to approach to scarlet, and crimson looks brighter than by day. Blue — that is, the darker tones of this color — loses by the absorption of too much light, and appears almost black ; and light blues and greens are apt to be confounded. Therefore, blue intended for exhibition by gaslight should be of a bright tone, and, if dark blue be indispensable, it should be lightened with white, or a brighter tone of the same.

The writer would impress most strongly the importance of a full and complete concej)tion of the effect before taking the initial step in decorating with colors. There should be extended surfaces of a uniform tint for the eye to rest upon, and the colors used in ornamentation should be decided and contrasting. Cold gray tones and flowing lines and perspective drawing are not in harmony with the formal lines of our domestic architecture. With a true artist the work is complete before the brush is applied, even as in sculpture the ideal statue is the inspiration, the marble form the exposition only. The plastic clay, under the hands of the sculptor, enables the author to make patent his invention. So with the true artist in coloristic decoration. The colored pigments are the signs whereby others versed in the language may read his inspirations. If a design be faulty in conception, no amount of elaboration or perfectness in detail will remedy the defect. The result only is important, the process and the parts are insignificant. Undue attention to detail, and a fondness for

copying natural objects and forms, show a barrenness of invention and a sad want of appreciation of wliat is genuine in art.

In color ornamentation care must be taken, not only in the selection of tlie colors, but in the relative quantities or proportions which each shall bear to the other ; the latter requirement being almost equally important with the first.

In the house of the writer is a chamber set apart for state purposes. Its ample ceiling is ornamented in water-colors, the work of a so-called fresco-painter who possessed correct taste in color-harmony (all of them do not), and a hand most cunning and skillful in execution. This chamber becomes a common room when the invalid wife and mother is prostrated by one of those peculiar attacks which the doctors say require in curative treatment that the body must lie supinely. This position would of course bring the ceiling in the direct scope of the patient's vision. My reader will, if he can, imagine the satisfaction of the writer and his gratitude toward the artist when the patient sufferer exclaimed, in a period of convalescence : " Oh, what a luxury to be sick in this room ! How many hours of dull pain have been brightened and made endurable by the delicacy of those lines and the sweet harmonies of those color blendings and contrasts— those exquisite shadings, which keep the mind ever in a pleasant doubt as to whether the figures be the work of the pencil or the chisel ! In all the many hours of my painful illness this ceiling has been an unfailing source of joy, and I have come to know how beautiful it is only by studying its lines and tracings and colors a thousand and a thousand times again ! It has

ORNAMENTING WITH COLORS. 27

made more than tolerable the otherwise weary hours of my past sickness, and robs the anticipated future hours of illness of half their terrors."

Think of this in comparison with cold, plain ceilings in Puritan whiteness ! ^^ Oh, what a luxury to be sick in such a room ! " Is there any medicament, any sirup of drowsy poppy or mandragora, to challenge comparison in healing power with the work of the artist-painter ? The great terror, in bodily sickness which prostrates, is the want of mental occupation. Given agreeable mental occupation, and bodily prostration becomes easy to bear.

Suppose a case. Eeading of books is for sanitary reasons, or in the nature of things, forbidden. The exercise of the industrial faculties is equally out of the question ; the great Desert of Sahara does not suggest so fearful a blank as protracted sickness under such circumstances ; and where look for hope ? Eeading is forbidden ; employment of the industrial faculties is out of the question ; music and mirth are not in harmony with the sick-chamber. Where look for hope ? Kind reader, the Bountiful Giver has bestowed on us perceptive faculties, and color whereupon to exercise those faculties. Therein lies hope ! There is not a shadow of doubt in the mind of the writer that many of the dreary hours of sick-room existence may be rendered hours of joy ; that the long, long, weary days — those days of mental and physical inanition, the very recollection of which one would for ever blot from memory — may be made pleasant recollections by a simple display of color, harmonious in tints and proportions. But the design of

28 HOUSE AND CARRIAGE PAINTmG, AND GRAINING.

work must not be intrusted to eyes which see not, nor its execution to unskilled hands. To produce good results, eyen in so small a matter as the coloring of a sleei^ingroom, requires the pencil of an artist just as certainly as did those productions of the great masters, Titian and Tintoret, which enchant the world. But let us not forget that these same colors, so powerful for good, are not impotent for evil ; and that we may, '^ according' as we build," from our painted ceiling, call down curses as from the brow of Ebal, rather than blessings from the heights of Gerizim. Exaggerated outlines, fanciful drawings, wreaths, flowers, vines, and all imitations of natural objects, must be strictly avoided. The figures must be purely conventional, and so severely simple that they can not, by the aid of a distempered fancy, take on shapes either grotesque or horrible, thereby converting our sick-room into a ^' chamber of horrors." Faces, portraits, Cupids, nor dancing-girls, should look down ujoon us from ceilings in domestic architecture. They are as much out of place there as they would be on the carpet : they are certain to be upside down, or standing on their heads, when we view them, and a sick person has not strength of mind sufficient to set them right. Bouquets, vines, and other imitations of natural objects, are not good, because they cease to interest when they cease to be objects of wonder or curiosity. However beautiful at first sight, they are in the nature of things inferior to the objects they are intended to imitate, and, what is of most importance, entirely out of place. There can be no sentiment in a painted bunch of flowers on a ceiling, however fault-

ORNAMENTING WITH COLORS. 29

less the drawing and coloring may be ; and such objects soon become matters of indifference or disgust. On the contrary, purely conventional designs and figures — the same being artistically drawn, and kept subseryient to the main object, which is the display of colors — always present themselves with a fresh charm, and seem never to lose their attractiveness. In tracing the lines and curves, the shadings and contrasts, the mind finds agreeable and pleasant occupation when by sickness it is deprived of its usual resources. Ifc will hardly be claimed by the most enthusiastic devotee of realistic art that the copying of natural' objects or imitations of nature gives room for play of the imagination, or that such art has the remotest connection with inspiration. No work of art can move the beholder with any sentiment which did not necessarily belong to its concej)- tion or production. None will deny that the drawing of purely conventional forms and figures affords good scope for the imagination, and for the display of true artistic taste. Therefore, the artist who, with real artistic fervor, changes the dead level of a plain white ceiling into a ^'^ thing of beauty," is practicing art in the better sense of the word, and is reaching out toward its highest significance.

This digression is made as a protest against the growing disposition of the times, which seems to be to elevate horsepainting and cow-painting above art as practiced by the masters above named. Landscape and cattle painting, and flower and insect painting, and rabbits and rats and Guineapigs and ducks and jiucklings, and chanticleer with all his cackling harem, though given on canvas more natural than life, only serve to show how expert and skillful men may become in copying natural forms and imitating natural objects. Talent of this kind of a high order is certainly respectable, and such a display of skill is truly wonderful ; but the practice of it does not necessarily include inspiration, invention, or genius, without which fine art can not be said to exist.

Chapter IV

The mineral kingdom yields the great bulk of pigments used in plain and decorative house-painting. Native paints are found, in certain geological formations, in inexhaustible and boundless supply.

These are generally neutral tints or shades, being mostly silica colored with iron oxides. They are useful and durable both in color and substance, and as a rule are not as liable to change as are the colors produced by chemical agency. The animal kingdom furnishes the bright scarlet known as carmine, and crimson and purple lakes, as also Prussian and Antwerp blues.

Colors extracted from vegetable substances have been mostly discarded in painting, by reason of their fugitive character. Among those retained are the madder-colors, indigo, and gamboge. The important pigment lampblack is also classed among vegetable colors.

All the metals yield pigments of some sort.

Lead yields white-lead, and other whites of similar nature and composition, distinguished by various names, as silver- white, Krem's wliite, China white, etc. ; also orange mineral, red oxide, called red-lead, and the gray oxide, called litharge.

Zinc furnishes the beautiful paint known as zinc-white.

Copper gives verdigris, and, in combination with arsenic, the unrivaled green known as Paris or emerald green — for a comprehensive and detailed description of which see Chapter XI, entitled '^ Paris Green as a Pigment. "

Iron furnishes Indian red. Mars brown. Mars orange and yellow, and Venetian red. Mercury produces in combination with sulphur what is known as true vermilion.

Arsenicum supplies King's yellow and orpiment. Cobaltblue and smalt are made from the metal cobalt, and the recently-found metals, such as uranium, cadmium, molybdenum, etc. 3 produce colors of peculiar beauty and brilliancy.

AVhite-lead, the comprehensive term for white pigments, for ages the only substance which includes all the qualities or properties required by the painter, is an oxide of that familiar metal, lead, more popularly known, perhaps, than any except iron. The metal, liquefied by heat, is run into molds forming a circle or ring, with bars across something like a round gridiron ; the object being to present as much surface as possible, conformably to certain other requirements. These shapes — buckles, as they are technically called — are exposed some weeks, more or less, in covered earthen pots, to the action of vinegar, or other acetic acid, volatilized by gentle heat. Through the action of this vaporized acid, the metal gradually loses its metallic struct-

PAINTS: THEIR ORIGIN AND SOURCES. 33

lire and character, and takes on the appearance of a whitish, friable substance, which is chemically known as carbonate of lead. This, after being washed and crushed, and ground in oil, is the white-lead paint of the painter. The other white pigment (white oxide of zinc) is produced as follow^s : The ores, crushed to the size of coarse sand, and mixed with fine coal, are spread on the fire, and, when raised to 2,000° Fahrenheit, are deoxidized ; the oxygen of the ore uniting with the coal, forming carbonic-acid gas, the zinc rising as a metallic yapor. The yapor and gases are sucked from the furnace, and conyeyed through iron pipes to a large room into which they are driyen, and out of which the gas escapes. This room is filled with large, stout bags, suspended open-mouthed to catch the zinc, which, in its passage from the furnace to the bags, goes through chambers into which air is admitted. In its yaporous form it unites wath the oxygen of the atmosphere, forming the light, flaky substance known as flowers of zinc. The oxide at this stage is extremely light, thirty or forty pounds being sufficient to fill a barrel. It is then compressed to about one fourth of its former bulk, and packed in barrels of two hundred pounds or casks of four hundred pounds, and sold to manufacturers whose business it is to i)repare the same, by mixing and grinding in oil, for the use of the painter.