Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Reynolds was known to experiment with paint media, and he might be
supposed to have tried out new pigments too. Five of his works have been
examined, including three at the Tate. Not surprisingly, all five include traditional
pigments such as lead white, ivory black, asphaltum, vermilion, and
Naples yellow, while one or more included red lead, orpiment, blue verditer,
smalt, ultramarine, and green earth (14). Prussian blue, invented early in the
eighteenth century, was used frequently by Reynolds. Some of this Prussian
blue has a different microscopical appearance from the modern variety; similar
material, previously illustrated in color by Welsh (15), was identified in Turner's
paintings up to about 1840, when Turner began using the "modern"
variety as well. George Jones used the modern variety in 1832. Reynolds also
used Mars red from 1755-1760, and Mars orange, red, and brown in 1781.
He used Indian yellow in a work dated to 1788, and wrote about a material
that may have been Indian yellow in 1784, two years before it has been noted
in the literature (16). Patent yellow has also been tentatively identified in a
painting of 1781. Table 1 shows that all these instances demonstrate early uses
of these pigments. Reynolds' organic pigments (red, blue, and a green made
from yellow and blue dyes) are still being investigated.
Turner's early use (1800-1850) of new pigments in oil, summarized in Table
1, has been described elsewhere (17). While it is true that more paintings by
Turner than other individual artists have been analyzed, the inference that he
was more innovative than his contemporaries is inescapable. Turner used Mars
colors frequently, as did many of his fellow British artists, including Constable
from circa 1810 (18). In contrast, Arnald, Farington, Hilton, and Callcott used
only well-established pigments such as ultramarine, Prussian blue, Naples yellow,
and vermilion. Artists who used new pigments quite soon after their
introduction include the following: Constable-cobalt blue in 1817-1818,
chrome yellow in 1816, and opaque oxide of chromium in 1837 or earlier;
Briggs-chrome yellow and orange in 1826; and Mulready-emerald green
in 1842 (19). Barium chromate and a pigment tentatively identified as strontium
yellow were found in a Mulready of 1835. Cadmium yellow has been
fo und in a Millais of 1855, and strontium yellow in a Campbell of 1857 (20).
The latter included synthetic ultramarine, rarely used before 1850 except by
Turner, because it had a poor reputation (21). Whistler used two shades of
cadmium yellow regularly from 1864 (the earliest of his works at the Tate),
and strontium yellow in two works circa 1864-1871 and in 1872, respectively
(22) . The earliest tentative identification of cobalt yellow (mixed with barium
chromate) is in one of Whistler's oils from the fo llowing year. No examples
have yet been found of the cobalt violet shades that were available by the
end of this period or by 1900.
White pigments and their fillers are also interesting. Artists from the time of
Reynolds and Romney tended to use lead white with pipe clay or china clay
extenders, both for priming and paint. Gypsum has been found in many paint
samples from Reynolds and Wright of Derby in the later eighteenth century
(23). Zinc white was very rarely found in Turner's oils, and not yet in his
fellow Royal Academicians works painted before 1847. But Hunt used it in
1852, with lead white for a local imprimatura under the sky of Strayed Sheep
(Our English Coasts) and with Prussian blue, presumably supplied as a tube of
paler "Antwerp blue." Barium, attributable to barium sulfate, has been fo und
as an extender in Turner's paintings of the 1840s, in the Hunt piece, and very
frequently in Whistler's white paint from 1864-1 875, and beyond.
A discussion of pigments that fell out of use during this period would be out
of place here, but work is continuing in this area (24). Analyses of the paint
media used by the artists mentioned here also continue, but as yet there are
insufficient results for comparisons between Turner and many of his contemporanes.
Acknowledgments
The Turner research was fu nded by the Leverhulme Trust and supported by the Tate
Gallery, through Stephen Hackney. My thanks to the following people: Brian
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice