International studio (60.1916/1917)

Tempera

colours can therefore be used in a much higher
key than in oil without becoming in the least
garish. This method relegates the greys, and to
some extent pale tints, to other media. It is quite
possible to paint a beautiful grey in tempera, of
course, but a picture telling as a grey whole is
better worked out in oil or fresco, the beauty
of tempera being in rich, warm hues, reminiscent
of yellow suns and curious flaming after-glows.
In the case of oil paint the natural surface of
the pigment is generally considered ugly by
painters, and it is only by elaborate manipulation
that the surface can be rendered pleasing in it-
self. On the other hand, in tempera, if the pig-
ment be applied in the legitimate way, it is
almost impossible to produce an ugly surface.
The portraits of Botticelli and Francesca, for
instance, with their severe and rigorous out-
line, would be unspeakably wirey and hard in
oil, but in tempera such a method merely gives
a sense of pleasant firmness and precision.
In his larger wall-paintings such as the Venus
picture in the Uffizi Gallery, Botticelli uses the
alternative method of the medium, namely the
admixture of a considerable quantity of white
with all the colours. This method is more akin
to modern oil painting—although it never should
be so solid—and gives very much the effect of
the flatter oil wall-pictures of Puvis de Chavannes.
This method is no doubt much the best where the
painting is in close proximity to a plastered or a
stone wall whilst the transparent method (which
does not entirely exclude white) is better for in-
teriors where there is panelling or much wood-
work in the architectural setting.
The Ground for Tempera.—The best ground for
tempera is gesso. There is no doubt about this,
and after years of experiment with others I have
personally come back to a kind of gesso ground,
whether laid upon canvas or panel. The pigment
must have a highly reflective ground in order to
bring out its intensity of colour, the light shining
up from the white gesso giving the peculiar
luminous quality to the picture.
It is obvious that if this translucency is de-
stroyed by rendering the pigment opaque, or the
ground a bad reflector, the principal charm of
the medium will be destroyed. The solid method
does not need a reflector to the same extent, but
even here it makes all the difference between a
chalky and a pearly effect.
It is true that very beautiful effects may be

obtained by a solid method of painting used with
glazes and scumbles after the old Venetian fash-
ion and the older oil methods, but as this is
exploited the medium becomes more and more
akin to oil and less and less typical in its individ-
uality. Nor are the results as permanent as those
of the more severe method.
This is because in tempera the diluent is water,
and in the case of frequent glazes over large sur-
faces of roughened canvas, the paint seems to
become so saturated that the drying and harden-
ing is slower than ever and, at any rate in a damp
climate, the picture is very apt to mildew. (This
can be washed off with vinegar, by the way, with-
out any ill-effect to the picture.)
One should be very careful about using can-
vases sold as suitable for tempera by the colour-
men. I have known these cause the paint to peel
off in the most disastrous way. It may do this
after the picture has been painted a year or more.
At one time I thought that the development
of the medium, along the lines of early Venetian
oil painting, promised much, but the experience
of about ten years of experiment has convinced
me that I was wrong. The tempera medium has
not enough body to show to advantage on a very
rough surface; it invariably loses its first super-
ficial richness and becomes thin and meagre in
quality when compared with oil; although it is
in any case very much more permanent. The
result of using a smooth, but not necessarily
mechanical surface, is exactly the reverse, for,
especially when varnished after a year or so, it
seems to increase in beauty with age. The pic-
tures of Angelico, for instance, are almost in-
variably much fresher in colour than anything
painted subsequently with the possible exception
of the early Flemish pictures.
Its Decorative Quality.—It is doubtless a certain
precision of handling that gives tempera the
peculiar quality that has come to be spoken of as
“decorative.” Many painters have experi-
mented with the medium, attempting to adapt
it to the looseness of handling that is almost uni-
versal in the modern use of oil-colour. They
have for the most part abandoned it because they
could not make it respond to their wishes in this
direction. Nothing will make it respond.
The egg-colour dries almost immediately after
it has been applied (though it does not harden
entirely for months), and cannot be manipulated
on the panel. This fact demands that the painter

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