Painting—Now and Then

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 64, 13 September 1940, Page 5

Painting—Now and Then

AVE you ever realised that the materials used by the artist are precisely those used by the house painter-just finely powdered colours mixed with oil. Of course, the artists’ colours receive very careful treatment in the various: processes of manufacturing. This makes them permanent. In the case of water colour paints, these are mixed with a little gum arabic to make the colours adhere to the paper. A distinguished Royal Academian we used to meet in the South of France more than once complained to me about the excessive price of one oil colour in particular-ultra-marine blue. As he said, "It-is- only washing blue, ground in oil." Now~ don't you think it is remarkable that with these commonplace materials the painter of pictures has expressed so much, Beauty, passion, nobility, dignity --in fact

there is little that painters haven’t been able to express. But the evolution of painting -has been a slow process. The kind of picture you have on* your walls and those seen in exhibi‘tions to-day have taken . many centuries to evolve. The first ‘known paintings were done some 12,000 to 30,000 years ago. It is thought that they were a kind

of oil painting, for they were executed with earth colours ground in marrow fat, and thinned down with a liquid which cannot be mentioned in polite society. The colours used were first red earth and black, and later, red, yellow and brown earths, and black. The black used was made from soot or burnt bones. They were painted on the rock walls of caves in France and Spain, and represent- bison and reindeer for the most part. (Sydney L. Thompson, "Things As Seen by a Bengt 3YA, August 28.)