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AUTHOR OF

BY W. CAVE THOMAS,

THE SCIENCE OF MODERATION," METRONOMY, OR THE
SCIENCE OF PROPORTION," ETC., ETC.

Ars probat artificem.

LONDON:

WINSOR AND NEWTON, 38, RATHBONE PLACE, W.

170. k. 57.

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PREFACE.

In order to save students the trouble and loss of time incidental to searching for and consulting scattered authorities, a body of trustworthy information will be found here collected, and arranged upon those processes which have been more or less used in Mural or Monumental Decoration, viz., Fresco, Encaustic, Water-glass, Mosaic, and Oil-Painting; information too, which it is hoped will prove not altogether uninteresting to the general reader. The author having studied Fresco-painting in Munich under the direction of Professors Cornelius and Hess, was enabled to furnish the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts with information on that special process, which was, together with other materials, carefully supervised by its Hon. Secretary the late Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and printed and published in the Commissioners' Reports. It may be recollected that the Royal Commission on the Fine Arts was instituted for the special purpose of promoting and encouraging a more extended practice of mural painting in this country.

By the moderns Encaustic painting has been less practised than Fresco; it is therefore in a more uncertain experimental condition, no one method being yet recognised and generally adopted. Various opinions and descriptions of experimental processes are consequently brought together, that the study of them may lead to some settled practice.

In explanation of the new method of Water-glass adopted by Director Von Kaulbach in the execution of the noble works in the Museum at Berlin, and more recently by our great painters Herbert and Maclise, in their pictures in the new palace at Westminster, the writer has been graciously permitted to reprint the pamphlet translated from the German of Professor Fuchs, which was issued and privately circulated by command of his Royal Highness the late Prince Consort.

As the final process in Mosaic is the province of the artist-workman rather than the artist, the subject is treated more in reference to its decorative capabilities than technicalities. In the chapter on Oil-painting, the writer has attempted to give the theory of the use of colours, a theory not specially confined to oil, but in some measure to all methods of painting. For the contents of this chapter he is entirely responsible.

In the Appendix will be found a copious List of English and Foreign Works upon Art, published at various dates; Lists of Painters chronologically arranged, their ages and styles; and of the princi

pal mural works now existing, where, by whom painted, and by what process.

A second volume, containing Treatises upon Anatomy, Perspective, Proportion, &c., would complete the writer's original project, which was to bring all the useful subjects in connection with the practice of Painting, conveniently together for immediate reference, and in order to promote a more widely spread and accurate knowledge of them.

One advantage in carrying out the original scheme would be, that the information thus brought together, might from time to time be revised and gradually perfected.

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