Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Pre-Raphaelite painters and never to any great extent. The myth of the Pre­
Raphaelite technique arose from a single paragraph in Hunt's 1,000-page,
two-volume autobiography. Citing as an example the painting Valentine Rescuing
Sylvia from Proteus (Fig. 7), Hunt stated that he would (13):
Figure 7. William Holman Hunt, Valentine
Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus (Two
Gentlemen of Verona), 1851. Courtesy if
the Birmingham Museums and Art Callery,
Birmingham, England. This is the painting
Hunt was working on when he described the
wet-ground technique ill his autobiography (I,
276): "The heads of Valentine alld if Proteus,
the hands if these figures, and the brighter
costumes in the same painting had been
executed in this way . ... In the country we
had used it, so fa r, mainly for blossoms of
flowers, for which it was singularly valuable. "
Paint daubs if van'ous mixtures of red are
visible on the spandrels.
Select a prepared ground, originally Jor its brightness, and renovate it, if
necessary, with Jresh white when first it comes into the studio, white to be
mixed with a very little amber or copal varnish. Let this last coat become
oj a thoroughly stone-like hardness. Upon this suiface complete with exactness
the outline oj the part in hand. On the morning Jo r the painting,
with Jresh white (from which all supeifluous oil has been extracted by means
oj absorbent paper, and to which a small drop oj varnish has been added)
spread a Ju rther coat very evenly with a palette knife over the part Jor the
day's work, oj such consistency that the drawing should Ja intly show
through. In some cases the thickened white may be applied to the Jo rms
needing brilliancy with a brush, by the aid oj rectified spirits. Over this
wet ground, the colour (transparent and semi-transparent) should be laid
with light sable brushes, and the touches must be made so tenderly that
the ground below shall not be worked up, yet so Jar enticed to blend with
the superimposed tints as to correct the qualities oj thinness and staininess
[sic], which over a dry ground transparent colours used would inevitably
exhibit. Painting oj this kind cannot be retouched except with an entire
loss oj luminosity.
In spite of the attention given to this quotation, however, it is rarely pointed
out that Hunt describes this as a technique with which he experimented at
one point in his career, used fo r specific design areas rather than entire canvases
and not as a wholesale working method, as has been interpreted. Indeed,
until the appearance of the autobiography in 1905, Hunt appears to repudiate
his early experimental technique. It remains unmentioned in his first version
of his memoirs, nor does it crop up in the frequent handwritten inscriptions
in which he recorded details of technique on bare sections of canvas or support
(14) (Fig. 8). Hunt dismisses its relevance to his career in an article on
his painting technique that appeared in the magazine Porifolio in 1875, stating
that he used wet grounds only from 1850 to 1854 to capture the effects of
sunlight (15). While these five early years are viewed today as Hunt's period
of greatest productivity and success, to his contemporaries his highest achievements
came later in a career that spanned seven decades (16).
The sudden prominence accorded to the technique in 1905, may be due not
to Hunt himself, but to his wife, Edith, seeking to enhance his reputation
through the implication of technical innovation. Suffering from glaucoma,
Hunt dictated much of his memoir to Edith who, according to their granddaughter,
among others, took liberties with the text, "deleting passages ...
she considered unsuitable for posterity" (author's emphasis) (17). Edith's urge
to improve went so far as taking advantage of her husband's blindness to have
a studio assistant repaint Hunt's portrait of her, secretly slimming her waist
and reddening her lips (18). It may well have been at her suggestion that the
wet-ground technique, after fifty years of oblivion, abruptly became of importance
in her husband's career, serving as one more opportunity to assert
his innovation, skill, and pivotal role in the movement he had helped to shape.
Along with the disproportionate attention given to the Pre-Raphaelite technique
comes a misunderstanding of the technique itself, due to a fu ndamental
misreading of the word "ground." In Hunt's writings, the term often refers
to an imprimatura, or underpaint, layer, rather than the intermediary priming
that prepares a solid or fabric support to receive paint. In his diary, fo r example,
Hunt refers to "lay[ing] a new ground for the left shoulder, which I
do of white, cobalt green, and cadmium" (19). Further investigation confirms
that Hunt's "wet ground" was actually a layer of paint, the "fresh white" of
his writings referring to flake white oil paint, as he indicated in a letter of
1878 (20):
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice