Egyptian Painting

Egyptian Painting
The centre of the Egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. They arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life, and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify monarchy or deity. The massive buildings, still standing to-day in ruins, were built as the dwelling-places of kings or the sanctuaries of gods.

The towers symbolized deity, the sculptures and paintings recited the functional duties of presiding spirits, or the Pharaoh's looks and acts. Almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustration, picture-written history—written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read.

In one form or another it was all record of Egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting. The temples and palaces, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated. Carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior.

The battles, the judgment scenes, the Pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of green, yellow, and blue. Color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling. Even the explanatory hieroglyphic texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone. The lotus capitals, the frieze and architrave, all glowed with bright hues, and often the roof ceiling was painted in blue and studded with golden stars.

All this shows a decorative motive in Egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seen at times in the arrangement of the different scenes, the large ones being placed in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado. There were, then, two leading motives for Egyptian painting; (1) History, monarchical, religious, or domestic; and (2) Decoration.
Egyptian Painting

Symbolisms of colors in ancient Egypt

The symbolism and use of color in ancient Egypt provided a template for later connotations concerning nature and design. Color itself bestowed individuality to symbol and image.

Artisans began to observe the natural occurrence of colors in their surroundings and pulverized various oxides and other materials to develop the hues they desired.

Egyptians were clothed in white, contrasting starkly with the colorful garments of foreigners. White is also the color of joy and celebration.

The crown of Upper Egypt was white. Red was the symbol of chaos, called "typhonic" after the Greek god Typhoon, whom Greek identified with Seth.

Black used to represented ebony, emmer wheat, cattle, hair, eyes, Nubians. In tombs black color was used to represent mascara. The color also symbolized the underworld, the dead, Osiris, fertility, the heart, Anubis and the Ibis.

The coloring always related to characteristics of the persons represented. In classical Egyptian art male bodies were painted in strong brown colors, while women received a lighter, yellowish shade of color.

Men received an orange color only when age and frailty were to be represented.
Symbolisms of colors in ancient Egypt

History of Greek Art

More than a century before the call of Abraham, a colony had been planted at Sicyon, by an Egyptian leader Aegialeus who brought with him the knowledge of sculpture and painting, and founded the earliest and purest school of Greek art.

Another civilized colony, from Egypt soon set up in Greece. Inachus founded the city of Argos, whole Abraham was still an idolater, in Ur.

The art of painting was in as high esteem in Greece as the art of sculpture. The Greeks must have thought painters more interesting as individuals, perhaps because they were not looked on as banausics as were the sculptors. Later on, drawing became a regular subject in the education of the freeborn.

Sometimes before the end of the sixth century, perhaps as early as 540, a new method of decorating pottery was invented in Attica.

The principal coloring matter used continued to the lustrous black varnish; but instead of filling in the outlines, of the figures with black, the decorator, after outlining the figures by means of a broad stroke of the brush covered with black the spaces between the figures, leaving the figures themselves in the color of Italy.

The first Grecian painter of any great renown was Polygnotus, who was contemporary with Phidias, though probably somewhat older.

His chief works in Athens were executed in adorning those building which were erected in the time of Cimon; as the temple of Theseus, and the Poecile Stoa or Painted Colonnade. The subjects of these great murals paintings were chiefly mythological.
History of Greek Art

History of the First Paints

History of the First Paints
These were made from clays and plants ground into powder, then mixed with water. Some were exceptionally good: they’re still around today. Pottery and cave-wall paintings exist which date back to prehistoric times some 50,000 years ago.

The Egyptians probably invented the paint brush. They were also the first to manufacture what to be called paint, some 8,000 years ago. Around 1500 B.C both Crete and Greece produced paints. Somewhere between 400 B.C and 400 A.D the first metallic pigment was develop; The Romans used white lead. But when the Roman Emperor decline, so did the paint technology.

In the Middle Ages, English priest and monks began to use paints on their churches. In the late middle Ages, around 1500 A.D, the artists of Italy developed excellent paints. Some formulations were closely guarded secret – and remain mysteries to this day.

American Indians used paints for both decorative and religious purposes centuries before Europeans began to settle the New World. The Indians, too, found that rocks could be ground into pigment and that the leaves and bark of some trees produced stains. Many paints made in the United States in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s were based on formulas that came from American Indian. As late as the 1860’s many painters carried bags of powder which they mixed into paint as needed. The first liquid, premixed paints were manufactured and sold in this country in 1867.
History of the First Paints