Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 5. J. M. W. Tumer's The Dawn of Christianity, the Flight into Egypt, exhibited 1841. Oil on cal1vas, 787 X 787 111m.
Courtesy of Ulster Museum, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
with megilped paint, and hence has high impasto that did not slump as it
dried. Turner may even have mixed the megilp into the oil paint on the
canvas, rather than on the palette. Beeswax and spermaceti wax, added to oil
and both found in this painting (9), yielded a more flowing medium used to
good effect in the more distant trees, though the prominent tree on the right
has a more strongly textured trunk painted with megilp. The very thin, later
glazes that ran off the edges and soaked into the corners of the absorbent
canvas would have soaked less into medium-rich paint. Turner used emerald
green here (and quite frequently by this date) to provide a stronger contrast
with chrome yellows and orange than that provided by an optical green.
Curiously, green mixtures of opaque blues and yellows are virtually unknown
in his paintings. The original varnish may have survived on this painting in
the hollows of textured paint, where it has entrapped hogs' hairs, as in other
Turner oils in which the varnish may be original. Little can be said conclu-
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