| Dear Mr. Vauxcelles
If he is not a dishonest man, a painter must think of the material survival of his paintings; he must have a different professional conscience than the shopkeeper who provides him with his canvases and colors.
It is, I believe, this lack of honesty and the ignorance of certain processes of the profession of painter, lost and forgotten for a long time, that we owe the death of paintings of the romantic period.
For us, we thought for too long that brightness is the greatest pleasure of painting, and we have spread the light and the beautiful colors evenly over the surface of our canvases ... This will play us some ugly tricks.
The remedy, I think, would be to crush our colors with old oils faded by sunlight and not by chemical processes. Should not the various painting companies to which we are attached should become our color merchants?
It is better to lead a canvas slowly, by small thin superimposed keys.
Here again the teaching of the masters was precious, and the habit of sketching in very useful shades. In this way, the dark parts are less loaded with dough; on the contrary, lights and half-tones require more work. Bitumen is no longer used since we know the misdeeds of this beautiful and dangerous color. A good custom is to paint half-pasta and glaze on preparations made using very strong soil and drying quickly. It is a danger when one devours a canvas without great precautions. The ancients had particularly to suffer from these works done negligently in the museums. And yet, it is a very good use to varnish the paintings.
An excellent varnish is the varnish dissolved in wax by mineral essence. Used when the paint is dry, that is to say a year and a half or two after completion of the canvas, it revives the tones that bury themselves and protects the color against the bad steam contained in the air.
Accept, dear Sir, my best memories.
P.P. Girieud |