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| Sir George Clausen The Barn Door oil on canvas 30 X 25 in. |
Another object of underpainting is the determining of the design of light and dark. All paint changes a little, lowers a little, with time ; and if a picture has no strong arrangement of light and dark, but depends for its beauty on subtle delicacies and differences of value, these are often lost in a few years through the flattening down of the paint ; while if there is a strong backbone, as it were, of light and shade beneath the colour, the picture will always be effective, and the main features remain, in spite of any little changes.
Clausen, George, Six Lectures on Painting, (E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1906), p. 59.