dead colourdead colorn.

1658 W. Sanderson Graphice 63 First to speak of dead-colours.

1672 C. Beale Pocket-bk. in H. Walpole Vertue's Anecd. Painting (1763) III. i. 70 5 June, Dr. Tillotson sat..to Mr. Lely for him to lay in a dead colour of his picture.

1788 J. Reynolds Disc. Royal Acad. 10 Dec. 22 Every artist must have remarked, how often that lightness of hand, which was in his dead-colour, or first painting, escaped in the finishing, when he had determined the parts with more precision.

a1806 J. Barry in R. N. Wornum Lect. on Painting (1848) 224 A slight general dead colour of the whole.

c1843 H. Greenough in Flagg Life W. Allston (1893) 182 This dead color I paint solidly, with a good body of color.

1901 Scribner's Monthly Aug. 255/1 There was, indeed, an early method employed by painters of laying in their pictures in what they were pleased to term ‘dead color’, as a kind of foundation or preparation for their succeeding painting.

1977 W. F. Axton in U. C. Knoepflmacher & G. B. Tennyson Nature & Victorian Imagination xvi. 296 This general trend toward direct application of color, renunciation of preliminary dead-color underpainting, and the brilliancy and transparency of color obtained by glazing over a wet white ground..was developing in the work of David Wilkie, W. H. Hunt, William Etty, William Mulready, and William Dyce.

1658 W. Sanderson Graphice 64 Pictures by a good Master, begun, and dead-coloured only.

1668 Excellency of Pen & Pencil 101 For a light-red Garment, first dead-colour it with Vermilion.

?1790 J. Imison Curious & Misc. Articles (new ed.) 58 in School of Arts (ed. 2) After the student has covered over, or as artists term it, has dead-coloured the head.

1668 Excellency of Pen & Pencil 82 In this Dead-colouring you need not be over curious..the colours may be mended at the second Operation.

1859 T. J. Gullick & J. Timbs Painting 230 The Dead-colouring is the first or preparatory painting, and is so termed because the colours are laid cold and pale to admit of the after-paintings.