Merrifield, Mary Philadelphia: Practical Directions For Portrait Painting In Water-Colours (London, 1854)

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METHOD OF PAIXTLXG.

colour painting the colours (except White, which is com-
paratively little used) all possess more or less transparency;
but as they are not attached to the ground with the same
firmness as oil-colours, transparency and depth cannot
always be attained by washing one colour over another, for
the gum which bound the first layer of colours would be
dissolved, and the colours would mix together. If, for
instance, in oil painting, Blue, Red and Yellow, be laid
one over the other, and the under colours suffered to dry,
a compound tint will be produced which partakes of all
three colours. If the order of the colours be changed,
and either blue or Eed be the upper layer of colour, the
effect of the compound tint will be different from the first,
in which the upper colour was Yellow; if, on the con-
trary, in water-colours, the same three colours, Blue, Red
and Yellow, be loashed one over the other, the colours
unite instead of remaining distinct, and blackness, or at
least darkness will be the result. In order, therefore,
to attain the depth and transparency of oil-colours, the
painter in water-colours is obliged to have recourse to the
somewhat tedious expedient of hatching or stippling the
three colours separately, and so producing the desired
compound tint. The primitive colours so applied will
always be more brilliant than the same colours previously
mixed together into tints.

Eubens, our own Hogarth and Sir Joshua Eeynolds,