We have adopted the term marrone, or maroon as it is sometimes called, for our second and middle semi-neutral, as applicable to a class of impure colours composed of black and red, black and purple, or black and russet, or of black and any other denomination in which red predominates. It is a mean between the warm, broken, semi-neutral browns, and the cold, semi-neutral grays. Marrone is practically to shade, what red is to light; and its relations to other colours are those of red, &c., when we invert the scale from black to white. It is therefore a following, or shading, colour of red and its derivatives; and hence its accordances, contrasts, and expressions agree with those of red degraded; consequently red added to dark brown converts it into marrone if in sufficient quantity to prevail. In smaller proportions, red gives to lighter browns the names of bay, chestnut, sorrel, &c.

Owing to confused nomenclature, most of the colours and pigments of this class have been assigned to other denominations—puce, murrey, morelle, chocolate, columbine, pavonazzo, &c., being variously ranked among reds, browns, and purples. This vagueness also accounts for pigments having been ranged under heads not suited to the names they bear, and explains why Brown Ochre has been classed among the yellows, Italian Pink among the same, Brown Pink among the citrines, &c.

As adapted to the walls of a picture gallery, marrone, more or less deep and inclined to crimson, is one of the best colours known. For the reason that each colour has its antagonist, and consequently may affect a picture well or ill, according to its tone or general hue, there can be no universally good colour for such a purpose. What suits one picture or style of painting may not suit another: with a blood-red sunset, for instance, or portrait with crimson drapery, marrone would be out of place. But as it is impossible to provide each picture with a separate background, all that can be done in large collections is to study the general effect, sacrificing the interests of the few to the good of the many. If cool-coloured landscapes predominate, with blue skies and green foliage, it will be found that the orange-yellow of the frames agreeably contrasts the former, and the crimson-marrone of walls as agreeably sets off the latter. If portraits and historic paintings prevail, which are in general of a warm advancing nature, then a modest green may prove eligible. And if engravings form the staple, the grey hue of the print is best opposed by a bright fawn colour. Where several rooms are devoted to pictures, a suitable wall colour is most easily secured by classifying the paintings as far as possible according to their general hue, and placing them in different chambers: in each there will be a prevailing character in the colouring of its pictures, and each can be painted or papered accordingly. However, whether this plan is adopted or not—and it may be objected to as involving a certain monotony—care should be taken to have a wall colour of some sort or other, that is, to let it be seen. Pictures crammed together kill each other: without a pin's point between them, a speck of wall space visible, much of the illusion is destroyed. "It is only," says Chevreul, "the intelligent connoisseur and amateur who, on seeing a picture exhibited in a gallery, experience all the effect which the artist has wished to produce; because they alone know the best point of view, and because, while their attention is fixed on the work they are observing, they alone end by no longer seeing the surrounding pictures, or even the frame of that one they contemplate." Amid a moving crowd of people, inseparable from nearly all public exhibitions, it becomes difficult for the visitor, intelligent or otherwise, thus to concentrate his attention on one work. As far, therefore, as space will allow, paintings should be kept separate: larger rooms, or fewer pictures, are what is wanted.[B]

From this digression, pardonable, let us hope, because in the interests of art, we will pass on to a consideration of marrone pigments.

276. BROWN MADDER

is an exceedingly rich marrone or russet-marrone brown, bearing the same relation to the colour marrone that raw umber bears to the colour citrine. One of the most valuable products of the madder root, it has supplied a great desideratum, and in water especially is indispensable, both as a local and auxiliary colour. Of intense depth and transparency, if made with skill, it affords the richest description of shadows, either alone or compounded with blue, and the most delicate pale tints. Being quite permanent, a good drier, and working most kindly, it is a pigment which cannot be too strongly recommended to the landscape painter's notice. Containing a large proportion of red, it is eligible, with yellow or blue, for mixed orange or mixed purple of a subdued tone. It may be used to lower red curtains or draperies, and for the darkest touches in flesh. Mixed with cobalt, it forms a fine shadow colour for distant objects; and with indigo or Prussian blue and black, is serviceable for the shades of those nearer the foreground. It is similarly useful when mixed with black, and will be found advantageous in rusty iron, as anchors, chains, &c. For the deepest and richest parts of foregrounds it may be employed alone, as also for deep dark cracks and fissures, or strong markings in other near objects, as boats and figures. With French blue, or cobalt and white, a set of beautiful warm or cold grays may be obtained, in proportion as the brown or blue predominates. Compounded with blues and bright yellows such as aureolin, it gives fine autumnal russet greens. A good purple for soft aerial clouds is furnished by cobalt and brown madder, or for stormy clouds by the brown, Prussian blue, and black: an equally good slate colour is obtained from cobalt, sepia, and the brown. For glazing over foliage and herbage, a mixture of the madder with aureolin or gamboge is adapted; and for brooks and running streams compounds of this brown with raw Sienna, cobalt and raw Sienna, Vandyke brown, and French blue, will each be found useful. Black sails are well represented by burnt Sienna, French blue, and brown madder; and red sails by light red or burnt Sienna with the brown.

277. MIXED MARRONE.

Marrone is a retiring colour easily compounded in all its hues and shades by the mixture variously of red, and black or brown; or of any other warm colours in which red and black predominate. A reference to the permanent brown, black, and red or reddish pigments will show to what extent the colour marrone may safely be produced by admixture. In compounding marrone, the brown or black may be itself compounded, before the addition of the red, reddish-purple, or russet, requisite for its conversion.

278. Chica Marrone.

Chica, the red colouring principle alluded to in the ninth chapter, is extracted from the Bignonia chica, by boiling its leaves in water, decanting the decoction, and allowing it to cool, when a red matter falls down, which is formed into cakes and dried. Insoluble in cold water, it dissolves in alcohol and alkalies; is precipitated from alkaline solutions by acids without alteration; and is bleached by chlorine. Another variety of the same substance, obtained from Para in Brazil, and known as crajuru, carajuru, or caracuru, behaves in a similar manner. This is said to be superior to the former sort.A chica pigment, brought from South America, and examined by the author, was of a soft powdery texture, and rich marrone colour. Somewhat resembling Rubens' madder in hue, it was equal in body and transparency to the carmine of cochineal, though by no means approaching it in beauty, or even in durability. Simply exposed to the light of a window, without sun, the colour was soon changed and destroyed. Conclusive evidence as this is that the sample submitted to Mr. Field was worthless, it remains to be seen whether all the colours to be derived from chica, by different modes and from different kinds, are equally valueless as pigments.

279. Chocolate Lead,

or Marrone Red, is a pigment prepared by calcining oxide of lead with about a third of copper oxide, and reducing the compound to a uniform tint by levigation. It is of a chocolate hue, strong opaque body, and dries freely. Like all lead and copper colours, it is blackened by impure air.

280. Cobalt Marrone.

There is obtainable from cobalt a very rich marrone brown, which, like many other colours, is more beautiful while moist than when dried. Permanent, if carefully made and most thoroughly washed, it is an expensive compound, and must rank among those colours which are interesting in the laboratory but superfluous in the studio.

281. Madder Marrone,

or Marrone Lake, was a preparation of madder, of great depth, transparency, and stability. Working well in water, glazing and drying in oil, and in every respect a good pigment, it was one of those colours which gradually—and often, as in this case, unfortunately—become obsolete, on account of their hues being easily given by admixture of other pigments. There was likewise a deeper kind, called Purple Black. A good madder marrone may be produced by adding to brown madder either rose madder, madder carmine, or Rubens' madder, with a slight portion of black or blue if required.

282. Mars Marrone.

Under the heading of a New Marrone Pigment there appeared some months back in a chemical journal the following:—"The blood-red compound obtained by adding a soluble sulphocyanide to a salt of iron in solution can be made (apparently at least) to combine with resin thus: To a concentrated solution of sesquichloride of iron and sulphocyanide of potassium in ether, an etherial solution of common resin is added, and the whole well shaken together. There is then mixed with it a sufficiency of water to cause a precipitate, when it will be found, after the mixture has stood a few hours, that the whole or nearly the whole of the red-coloured iron compound has united with the precipitated resin, forming the marrone-coloured pigment in question. When this coloured substance is finely powdered and mixed with water, the liquid is not the least coloured; whence it is inferred that the red iron compound has chemically united itself with the resin."

The foregoing account is rather to be regarded as of scientific interest than of practical utility. The blood-red solution of sulphocyanide of iron is in itself not stable: when the red solution of this salt is so exposed to the sun, that the rays pass through the glass jar containing it, it is rendered colourless, but the colour is retained or restored when the rays pass directly from the air into the fluid; so that when a properly diluted solution is placed in a cylindrical glass vessel in direct sunshine, it loses colour in the morning till about eleven in the forenoon, when the rays beginning to fall upon the surface exposed to the air, gradually restore the colour, which attains its maximum about two o'clock. Moreover, the solution is immediately decolourised by sulphuretted hydrogen and other deoxidizing agents, as well as by alkalies and many acids. It is scarcely probable that the union of the red colouring matter with the resin would suffice to secure it from change; and there is little doubt that the new marrone pigment would be a chameleon colour.

Failures in the process of burning carmines, and preparing the purple of gold, frequently afford good marrones. Compounds more or less of that hue are likewise furnished by copper, mercury, &c. Some ochres incline to marrone when calcined: indeed we have remarked in many instances that the action of fire anticipates the effects of long continued time; and that several of the primary and secondary colours may, by different degrees of burning, be converted into their analogous secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral colours.

The one marrone or brown-marrone pigment at present employed, brown madder, is permanent.