TO

SIR MARTIN ARCHER SHEE,

PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY,

and to

THE ARTISTS OF BRITAIN.

Gentlemen,

The subject of the following Treatise is so essentially your own, that this address would be vain and uncalled-for, were it not due as a mark of respect and grateful attachment to yourselves, and an acknowledgment of the constant approbation and friendly attention with which you have encouraged the author, and identified him with yourselves and your pursuits.

You, Gentlemen, have attained imperishable honour, by achieving for your country

the only requisite to her transcendent reputation—pre-eminence in Art; and it needs not inspiration to foretell, that, by engrafting a refined taste on the prescripts of nature and science, you will consummate a school of colouring which is already celebrated and followed throughout Europe; and as the Greeks of old gave to succeeding ages models of perfect form, so you will bequeath to posterity standards of perfection in colour.

To become humbly instrumental to your progress by the improvement of your palette, is the design of this work, and the constant study of,

Gentlemen,

Your much obliged

and faithful Servant,

THE AUTHOR.

Cottage, Syon Hill Park.

PREFACE.

The progress of the Art of Painting under the happy auspices of this favoured country, the refinement of taste which it has so universally diffused, and the predilection which prevails for its study and practice as a necessary branch of polite education, render acceptable whatever can facilitate the acquisition, or advance the ends, of this useful, elegant, and enlightening accomplishment. Nor are the concerns of this art uninteresting in a still higher view, since whatever refines the taste, enhances the powers and improves the disposition and morals of a people,—and whatever improves the morals, promotes the happiness of man, individual and social. Hence the high moral and political value of this art, to say nothing of its commercial and religious uses, upon which so much stress has been justly laid.

So impressed was the most elevated, free, and intellectual people the world has, upon the whole, hitherto produced, of the dignity and importance of this art, that the states of Greece ordained by

a perpetual edict—not the nobility of the painter, for that nothing but his works could enact,—but that of the art itself, by decreeing instruction therein to all of liberal birth, and forbidding it to the slave. And, although we inhabit a country where, happily for its honour and for humanity, the touch of the soil enfranchises the slave, it is here tacitly a law that an acquaintance with this art is as necessary a qualification of the accomplished gentleman, as the utmost skill and excellence therein is to the like elevation of its professors.

Among the means essential to proficiency in Painting, none is more important than a just knowledge of Colours and Pigments — their qualities, powers, and effects; and there is none to which the press has hitherto afforded fewer helps. There have appeared, it is true, at different times, several works professing this object, and most of our encyclopædias and books of painting treat cursorily on this branch of the art; but not only are these for the most part transcripts of the same obsolete originals, unsuited to the present state of the art, but they are inadequate, irrelevant, and often erroneous or untrue, as every one acquainted with the subject is aware. Hence have arisen