Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract
The shift in the nineteenth century
from a tradition of artist-prepared
materials to an industry of mass-produced
commercial products greatly
endangered the artistic community
through the widespread distribution
of products of inferior quality and
unstable properties. For over fifty
years, the British Pre-Raphaelite
painter William Holman Hunt
waged a campaign fo r the reform of
the manufacture of artists' materials
and the rights of the artist as a consumer
to expect materials of consistent
quality and uniformity. The reevaluation
of the Pre-Raphaelite
technique, in conjunction with an
exploration of Hunt's advocacy on
behalf of artist-consumers, places in
perspective his focus on artistic
traditions at a crucial transition time
in the history of materials and tech­
TUques.
William Holman Hunt and the
"Pre-Raphaelite Technique"
Melissa R. Katz
Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Wellesley ColJege
Wellesley, Massachusetts 02181
USA
Introduction
The late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in British painting constitute
a period noted for the rise of a major school of national painting,
dominated by masters such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,
and J. M. W. Turner, who engaged in technical experiments of dubious value.
Their reliance on gelled mediums, bituminous paints, and fugitive pigments,
respectively, has left a body of work disfigured by sunken patches, wide craquelure,
and faded color. In search of shortcuts to achieve the luminous glow
of the old masters, they produced, instead, paintings whose technical inadequacies
were known and seen by the generation that followed.
This next generation of painters included the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
formed in 1848 in radical opposition to the training and taste imposed on
British art by the Royal Academy. Hunt was a fo unding brother, and the only
one of the group to maintain a lifelong adherence to their principles of
fidelity to nature minutely observed, boldness in color and lighting, emulation
of early Italian painting, and depiction of contemporary or literary subject
matter. Yet the rebellion was short-lived, and the Pre-Raphaelites rapidly
became the leading painters of their day, with Hunt as one of the most
popular.
By the 1870s Hunt's position was assured as the celebrated painter of such
Victorian icons as The Light oj the World, The Awakening Conscience, and The
Finding if the Saviour in the Temple (Figs. 1,2, 3). Periods spent in the Middle
East seeking Biblical authenticity alternated with spells in pleasant, wellequipped
London studios where, liberated from hand-to-mouth struggle, he
was free to contemplate other aspects of art as a career (Figs. 4, 5). The stability
and longevity of his paintings were of primary concern to Hunt, who observed
not only the technical inadequacies of the preceding generation, but
also the poor aging qualities of the artworks of his contemporaries.
Nineteenth-century commercial artists' materials
Hunt was among the first artists to note the increasingly poor quality of the
artists' materials fo r sale in the mid-nineteenth century, and the most vociferous
in calling attention to their faults and advocating their improvement.
From the platform of leading painter of his day, he set out on a crusade to
reform the manufacture of artists' materials, to impose standards of quality
and workmanship, and to ensure access to consistently reliable products from
colormen informed of and interested in the durability of the goods they were
selling.
Figure 1. William Holman Hunt in his studio,
painting the St. Paul's versioll q{The
Light of the World, ca. 1900.
The market fo r artists' materials in the early and mid-nineteenth century had
changed overwhelmingly with the advent of industrial production and mass
marketing, and the rapid introduction and adaptation of newly developed
materials whose aging properties were unknown. Prior to the nineteenth
century, artists had used materials prepared fo r them in their own studios or
by local artisans who followed the exacting standards of their clients, allowing
the artist to determine the materials used and methods of preparation. With
the rise of the commercial colorman in an age of burgeoning capitalism, a
middleman was introduced between the manufacturer and the consumer of
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice