Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1877-07-26
WHOLE NO. 1877.
Colors Used by the Ancients.

The following interesting states
mepts' concerning the colors used
by the ancients, are taken from the
celebrated lecture by Wendell Phil.
lips, on "The Lost Arts"
Color is, we say an ornament.
We dye our dresses and ornament
our furniture. Lit is an ornament to
crafty the eye, but the Egyptians
| impressed it into new service; tor
them it was a method of recording
history.
"Some parts of their history were
written; but when they wanted to
elaborate history, they painted IL.
Their colors We're immortal, else we
| could not know of it. We find upon
the stucco of their walls their kings
| holding court, their armies marching
| out, their craftsmen in the shipyard
with the ships floating in the dock;
in fact we trace all their rites and
customs painted in undying colors.
"The French, who went to Egypt
with Napoleon, said that all the col.
ors were perfect, except the green
ish-white, which is the hardest for
us. They had no difficulty with the
Tyrian purple. The buried city of
Pompei was city of stucco: all the
houses are of stucco outside and it
is stained with Tyrian purpie-the
royal color of antiquity.
9tBut you can never rely on the
name of color after thousand
years, so the Tyrian purple is almost
red; about the color of these cur
tains. This is city of all red. 1t
had been buried LOO years, and il
you take shovel now and clear
away the ashes, up this color flames
upon you, great deal richer than
anything we can produce,
"You can go down into the mar
row vault which Nero built him as
retreat frou, the great heat, and
you will find the walls painted all
over with fanciful designs in arbes-
que, which have been buried beneath
the earth 1900 years; but when the
peasants light it up with their torch
es, the colors flash out before you as
fresh as they were in the days of
st. Paul.
ga painter spends twelve years
in venice, studying Titian's method
of mixing his colors, and he thinks
he has got it. Yet come down from
Titan, whose colors are wonderfully
and perfectly fresh, to Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and, although his colors
are not yet a hundred years old,
they are fading; the color on his lips
is dying out and the checks are los
ing their tints. He did not know
how to mix well.
Gall this mastery of color is, as
yet, unequaled. If you should go
with that most delightful of all lee
turers, Prof. Tyndall. he would
show you in the spectrum the van
ishing rays of violet, and prove to
you that beyond their limit there
are rays more delicate and to you
invisible, but which he, by chemical
paper, will make visible; and he
will tell you tina. probably, though
you see three or four inches more
than 300 years ago your predecess-
ors did, yet 800 years hereafter our
successors will surpas5 our limit.
"The French have theory that
there is certain delicate shade of
blue that Europeans cannot see. To
one Of his lectures to his students,
Ruskin opened his Catholic mass
book and said: Gentlemen, we are
the best chemists in the world. No
Engllshmen could ever doubt that.
But we cannot make such scarlet
as that, and even if we could it
would not last for twenty years.
Yet this is 500 years ago.
"The Frenchman says: Il am the
best dyer in Europe, nobody can
equal me, and nobody can surpass
Lyons Yet in Cashmere, where
girls make shawls worth 100000.
they will show him 300 distinct col
ors which he not only cannot make,
but cannot even distinguish.
"When | was in Rome, if a lady
wished to wear half dozen differ
ent colors at masquerade and have
them all in harmony, she would go
to the Jews, for the Oriental eye is
better than even those of France or
Italy which we think SO highly Of"
-s~-.---.==--..-S-.--~--zx.... u~-~.