Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract
Turner's use of sketches on paper, his
development of successful oil sketches
into finished paintings, his preference
for absorbent primings, and his
modified oil media are described.
His oil painting techniques circa
1800-1850 are illustrated by studies
of several works. His use of megilps
(varnish-modified oil media) is outlined,
along with his use of newly
available manufactured pigments, and
is compared with analyses from other
works painted by British artists
1775-1875, ranging from Reynolds
to Whistler.
Painting Techniques and Materials of Turner and Other
British Artists 1775-1875
Joyce H. Townsend
Senior Conservation Scientist
Tate Gallery, Millbank
London SW 1P 4RG
United Kingdom
Introduction
This paper presents important aspects of J. M. W Turner's technique, discussed
before by the author in greater detail, by examining several paintings not
previously described in this context (1, 2). Turner painted in oil fo r over fifty
years (ca. 1798-1850), and it is interesting to compare his materials to those
used in British paintings of the preceding and fo llowing twenty-five years (in
the Tate Gallery collection, unless otherwise stated). Thus, this paper presents
a comparison of the use of modified paint media and the adoption by various
artists of new pigments produced between 1775 and 1875.
Turner's oil painting techniques, compared to others' techniques
Turner spent at least ten years as a watercolorist before he used oil as a paint
medium, developing a range of techniques that he would utilize ever after in
oil. In the earlier watercolors, transparent washes overlie the white paper
except where Turner reserved highlights. The greens were made by mixing,
overlaying, or physically mixing with his fingers, washes of brown and blue.
There is very little underdrawing, and generally it is free rather than detailed.
The lTlental image was transferred directly to the support. As Farington wrote,
"Turner has no settled process but drives the colour about till he has expressed
the ideas in his mind" (3). Turner produced over 20,000 pencil sketches and
watercolors, now at the Tate Gallery, but few have a direct counterpart in oil.
He hardly ever produced a detailed oil sketch, even for a commission, and
when he sketched in oil he developed the best sketches into completed and
exhibited works, rather than repainting them on a new canvas.
Turner seems to have tried nearly all materials and methods once. The following
descriptions apply to many of his paintings, if not all. Once he began
to work in both media (always independently) , he utilized new application
techniques and pigment in both media at about the same time. His early
work in watercolor gave him an understanding of and liking fo r light-toned,
absorbent surfaces, and honed his skills in the application of optical greens
and blacks. Some eighteenth-century artists such as Wright of Derby (4) used
white grounds to lend luminosity to their oil paintings, but many of Turner's
immediate contemporaries were using thicker paint and warm-toned grounds
up to 1820. Constable produced oil sketches upon mid-toned buff, red, or
blue grounds, though his exhibited works do not show quite such a variety
of grounds (5). After 1820, more British artists tended to use white grounds.
Many commercially primed canvases are white during this time and up to
the 1890s, when Sargent and Whistler used gray ones of varying tones in
England (6) . Turner used white primings for a fair proportion of his oils, both
exhibited and unfinished, in the first decade of the nineteenth century; in
later decades most of his supports had white grounds. In a fair num.ber of the
paintings examined, the primings consist of lead white in whole egg medium
(7), most of the others being lead white in oil, not sized on the surface or
between applications of priming, as had previously been usual. Absorbent
surfaces gave the impetuous Turner a very rapid indication of the final color
of the paint, and allowed him to develop the composition rapidly over fastdrying
paint if it looked promising.
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice