Page 494 - Oriental Series Japan and China, Brinkly

CHINA

stoving of the decoration would produce a further

change. The assortment of colours when made of

preparations succinctly indicated here suffices to pro-
duce the chefs d? ceuvres of oil-painting. All these

colours should be able to melt at the same time, and

to present, after stoving, an uniformly vitrified mass.

This condition is essential. The paintings obtained

with Chinese colours are far from satisfying these

conditions as to equality of thickness and vitrification.

Some are brilliant, perfectly melted, and applied

enough thickly to appear in relief on the surface

of the porcelain. Rose tints obtained from gold,

green, and yellow belong to this category. Others,

such as iron-reds, and blacks, are generally almost

quite without vitrification, or show only a little vitri-

fication at places where they are 1 Their thick-

thin.

ness is always much less than that of vitrified colours.

Chinese pictures, too, have a character quite different

from that of our pictures. Neither the figures nor

the flesh are modelled. Black outlines define all the

colours. The tones are not shaded. The colours

are applied in flat tints which the painter afterwards
damasks with different colours or with metals but

;

the operation of grinding and mixing different col-

ours upon the palette, a method which gives so much

resource to our painters, does not appear to be prac-

tised by the Chinese.

The appearance of their paintings, when closely

examined, recalls that of the stained glass mosaics

manufactured with so much art in the thirteenth

century, and in which the whole design and all the
modelling of figures and accessories were the result

1 M. Salvetat is speaking of colours used in enamelled decoration. His

remarks do not apply to black and iron-red monochromatic glazes.

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