Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

with colormen and hired scientists to analyze paint samples from various
suppliers. He badgered the Royal Academy into appointing their first professor
of chemistry to research and teach materials science. He fo rmed an
artists' cooperative to secure hand-ground pigments and pure materials. He
monitored the condition of his own paintings, attentive to the conditions of
their display and handling. He made test panels and stored them in his studio
ten, fifteen, and twenty years to observe the effects of aging. With ever increasing
obsession, he investigated material permanence, compatibility, and
composition. Like a true conservator, he fo rsook the artwork for the artmaking,
producing fewer paintings over longer intervals in a painstakingly slow
technique.
Figure 5. William Holman Hunt, Self-Portrait,
1875. Courtesy of the Ujfi zi Gallery,
Florence, Italy. Note the length of the brushes
on the table. The tunic is the same striped
garment used in The Finding of the Saviour
in the Temple.
Figure 6. Nineteenth-century containers for
oil paints (animal bladder with ivory tacks,
piston tuhe, and collapsible metal tube).
Courtesy of the Forbes Collection, Harvard
University Art Museums.
Hunt's passions flared in the mid-1870s with the realization that Roberson's
orange vermilion, a favorite commercial tube paint, was being adulterated
with red lead, and thus blackening on the canvas. In frustration, Hunt wrote
to his friend and fellow artist, John Lucas Tupper (5):
It seems as tho [sic] I were struggling against Fate. Every day sometimes
including Sundays I have been toiling every hour, and just as I have got
my task nearly completed the whole thing has fallen into disorder again for
at least five or six times and I have had to begin again. At last I have
fo und out what has been the cause oj this: Roberson's tube oj Orange
Vermilion, which I used without suspicion because 25 years ago they sold
this color absolutely pure, is adulterated with 10 percent oj villainy, the
greater part lead, which has blackened so rapidly that when it had got dry
enough fo r the f
inal glazings the flesh had got to such a color [sic] that I
nearly went crazy ... I have had the color analysed and at the same time
have taken the opportunity to have others investigated and find that the
fraudulent habit is exercised in many other cases. What is to me more
discouraging than this is that many artists I have spoken to about [it] are
quite satisfied to go on dealing in these spurious colors saying "Oh, they
will last my time, " and "I never fo und my pictures change" and with
base humility "they, " the colors, "are good enough for my work. " Leighton,
when I proposed a little co-operative society for importing and grinding
pure colors said, "And what's poor Roberson to do?"
The culmination came on Friday, 23 April 1880, when Hunt addressed the
members of the Royal Society of Arts on the subject, "The Present System
of Obtaining Materials in Use by Artist Painters, as Compared with that of
the Old Masters." At a conservative estimate, the talk lasted at least two-anda-half
hours. Concerned as much with the decline in knowledge of artists'
techniques as well as materials, Hunt observed, "In the old days the secrets
were the artist's; now he is the first to be kept in ignorance of what he IS
using" (6). Eloquently he informed his audience (7):
I feel called upon to avow that I regard the artists' colourmen oj London
as gentlemen of intelligence, of character, and great enterprise, to which
qualities we are much indebted for the comparatively safe positions we enjoy;
for indeed, at the worst, it must be recognised that we might have gone
fu rther astray. It is needful, however, that we should be not only in good
hands, but we should give strong prooJ that we can distinguish between
that which is fa ulty and that which is perfect; and it is the want of discriminating
power in the painter which produces all the indiff erence on the
part oj the preparer to the permanent character of the materials he supplies.
The painter has really not the power to trace the causes of difects. The
colourman naturally judges of the character of the materials he vends by the
condition they are in while under his own eye. To him, the evils revealing
themselves in the work which has passed through his shop do not exist if
he never sees them; and if he hears of them only, as evils untraceable in
their cause which have occurred to one of his customers (who may, sometimes,
have obtained materials elsewhere), his sense oj responsibility is quieted,
when he has received the assurance of his men in the workshop that
the usual rules, which have hitherto resulted in work of a kind not eliciting
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice