United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If the moderns possess any advantages over the ancients, it is that chemistry has invented some beautiful colors unknown to them, the invention of oil painting, and that illusion which results from a perfect acquaintance with the principles of the chiaro-scuro; but even here the mineral colors the most valuable and permanent were well known to them; and if they had not oil colors, they had a method of encaustic painting not positively known to us, which might have answered as good a purpose nor are we sure they did not practice the chiaro-scuro.
A little farther to the west is found the finest pailow in Peking, made of very beautiful encaustic tiles; and behind a neighboring hillock rests the celebrated dragon screen, sixty feet long and twenty feet high; it was built to protect the library, which was unfortunately burned during the occupation of the allied forces in 1900.
Here the long-lost feudal-art of colouring glass re-discovered; there fresco-painting entirely revived, and on the grandest scale; while the ardent researches of another man of genius successfully analyses the encaustic tenting of Herculaneum, and secures the secret process for the triumph of modern Art.
Finally we entered the Hall of the Throne. Here the encaustic decoration, so plentifully employed in the other rooms, is dropped, and an effect even more brilliant obtained by the united use of marble and gold. Picture a long hall with a floor of polished marble, on each side twelve columns of white marble with gilded capitals, between which stand colossal statues of gold.
To nearly all the rest of the eastern arm was given by Sir G. Scott a glittering floor of encaustic tiles; but much of the pavement of the south transept and its aisle is still of plain stone. The tiles have mostly old designs, taken from some mediæval examples still to be seen in the south choir transept and under an arch on the east side of the northern.
We cannot conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture we call "encaustic."
Here there is a richly decorated pailow, with encaustic tiles, chiefly green and yellow; the three archways are lined with white marble. This hall was designed by the Emperor, Chien Lung, to complete the Confucius Temple, in which till then the classics had been expounded.
Carpets, hangings, furniture, stuffs for wear, encaustic tiles, etc. showed a sounder taste; and this in the foreign as well as the British stalls. French porcelain was more fully represented than before, and in finer designs.
There is one class of ancient manufacturing art which has been revived for the use of the modern world with considerable success. We allude to the Roman works in mosaic, which have furnished designs for our encaustic tile-manufacturers and our floor-cloth painters. Quaint and peculiar in its necessary features, it is singularly well adapted for artisans in both materials.
It is an ante-room. One half of it is a bathroom, screened, and paved with encaustic tiles that run up the walls, so you may splash to your heart's content. The rest is a studio, and contains a choice little library of well-bound books in glass cases, a piano-forte, and a harmonium. Severne tried them; they were both in perfect tune. Two clocks, one in each room, were also in perfect time.
Word Of The Day