Paint′ing.
（Fine Arts.) The art of covering surfaces with pigments for decoration and protection; also the representation of objects in their natural colors by similar means. In house-painting, the pigment most extensively used is white-lead. This is white, but it may be tinged with other ingredients to form grays, blues, and yellows of various shades, as well as many other colors. Zinc-white is also largely used, but does not possess the “body” of white-lead, requiring more to cover a given surface. Ochres and other earthy minerals are employed for forming different tints, of yellow, brown, and dull red. Other oxides and salts of lead, mercury, chromium, iron, and copper, form reds, greens, blues, and yellows. The impalpable powders derived from the smoke of some vegetable and animal products constitute different grades of blacks. See paint. Any intermediate tints may be produced by the judicious intermingling of these principal colors. These are mixed with linseed-oil, either raw or boiled, to which, for most purposes, a greater or less proportion of spirits of turpentine is added. Rapid drying is insured by the addition of a small proportion of litharge, sugar of lead, or Japan varnish, according to material or color. Painting as a fine art probably originated at even [1598] an earlier period than its employment for preservative purposes, having been derived from the practice, almost coeval with the introduction of man on the earth, of sketching the outlines of animals and other objects on hard substances; outline drawings of the extinct elephant and rhinoceros having been found engraven on bone in caverus, the condition and contents of which indicate that in some parts of Europe they were contemporaneous with man at a period prior to the glacial era. From outline to monochromatic painting was but a step; shading, to produce the appearance of relief in rounded and projecting parts, and the employment of differently colored substances to imitate their natural hues, gradually followed. The ancient Egyptians appear to have never advanced beyond the last step, shading having been unknown until introduced by the Greeks, whose esthetic minds improved and beautified every art which they borrowed from others. Such of their works as remain do not enable us to judge how far their knowledge of perspective had advanced, but it does not seem to have been reduced to an exact and systematic science among them. The enamel, encaustic, and fresco work of the ancients has come down to us in profusion. Their paintings on paper, canvas, leather, and wood have mostly perished. The even climate of Egypt and the seclusion of the tombs excavated in the rock by its ancient inhabitants have, however, preserved many specimens of their painting on wood and fabric in the mummy cases and wrappings. The bricks of Mesopotamia and the pottery of Etruria are also very ancient and interesting, the latter especially exhibiting a refined taste. The modes in which colors may be applied to produce various effects, and possess more or less endurance, are described under destemper, encaustic, enamel, glass, oil, size, water-colors. See list — under fine Arts.
