Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

complaints, have been strictly adhered to. The workmen, too, in these shops
are not permanent, and there is virtually no responsibility fo r any one
preparation. In most cases the complaint is never made, for the evil may
be a very serious one, and yet it may not manifest itself bifore the death
of the artist.
In conclusion, he stated, "The cure that we have to seek is one it is possible
to defme compactly. It is to establish a means of transmitting the practical
wisdom of one generation of painters to another" (8).
With striking prescience, he addressed the need "to fo und a society for looking
after the material interests of painting . .. composed of important members
of the profession of painting ... [joined by] gentlemen of reputation in
chemical science." This society would form "a library ... of all works of
literature which exist on the subject of artistic practices . .. ,establish a workshop
for the preparation of materials . .. ,arrange for the importing of colours
from abroad for collecting specimens of experiments. An important aspect of
the society will be to cultivate the opportunities of obtaining further samples
of every variety of colours existing in the far East, of proving these, and
putting them on record in our museum fo r all generations to see." A technical
school would be established, and artists trained, "that thus we should be the
inheritors, not only of our immediate predecessors, but the heirs of all the
ages, and that, though our pretensions would not be ostentatious in our humble
way, we might be proud that we should be repeating the chosen tasks of
the gods, the directing of inert matter to a spiritual end" (9).
The Pre-Raphaelite technique
Fully aware of the frailty of the materials of painting, Hunt became a master
technician. Most of his paintings have remained well preserved, retaining the
exceptional brilliancy of color which he strove so hard to achieve via successive
layering of minute strokes of transparent and semi-transparent paint.
He chose quality linen canvas stretched on paneled stretcher supports as "protection
against accidental injuries, such as a push from a corner of a picture
frame in the confusion which precedes and follows exhibitions, a kind of
injury which, if not visible at the time, may show years afterwards in starred
cracks in the hard paint" (10).
With some notable exceptions (such as the Liverpool Triumph of the Innocents,
painted on handkerchief linen from an Arab bazaar because the artist was too
impatient to await a delayed shipment of supplies from England), many of
Hunt's paintings remain unlined today and on their original stretchers, in the
same gilt frames he designed for them. On other occasions, he had the paintings
lined as a prophylactic measure, either during execution or shortly after
completion (11).
Hunt chose his medium and surface coating with the same view to permanency
as his pigments and support. Instead of the popular megilp, a gelled
preparation of linseed oil and mastic varnish much used and abused by nineteenth-century
British painters, Hunt used amber colors, smooth-flowing
tube paints with pigments bound in a drying oil and copal resin. For once,
Hunt diverged from sound technique, failing to foresee the embrittling effect
to the paint layer over time from the addition of copal to the medium, along
with the eventual yellowing of his colors due to the oxidation of the varnish
component. With the best of intentions, he defended his choice of medium,
noting that "amber varnish ... protects the colours very perfectly, but has
two slight disadvantages, as it lessens the brilliance of the white by the richness
of the yellow tone in the varnish, and permits each touch to spread, though
very slightly. Both these difficulties, however, occur immediately and may be
calculated for" (12).
In spite of his profound interest in stability of materials and techniques, if
Hunt is remembered at all today as a technical innovator, it is as the author
of the Pre-Raphaelite technique, a technique actually attempted by very few
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