Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

century, the royal patronage for the School of Fontainebleau was crucial. Later,
most ambitious French painters traveled to Italy, often spending much of their
professional lives there. The influence of the French Academy, the Academie
Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture founded in 1648, was also of central
importance for any aspect of the history of painting in France. By 1655 it
had become a royal enterprise and was soon the most powerful art institution
in Europe. The purpose of the Academy was to convey the principles of art
to its members by means of lectures and to instruct students through life
classes. In 1673 the Academy also began organizing exhibitions fo r its members.
These exhibitions were not opened to a wider public until 1791 (10).
With the noble aim of nurturing good craftsmanship, the Academy defined
the principles from which painters were not allowed to deviate. The goal was
to train students in one particular style of drawing. The necessity of copying
from the ancients was stressed, and this emphasis continued until the French
Revolution. Nowhere outside the Academy was a life class allowed, even in
an artist's private studio. The Academy did not provide fo r the whole of the
professional education of a young painter, however; the student painter still
learned the basics of his craft in the workshop of his master, in whose house
he often lived, just as in the Middle Ages. Thus, craft "secrets" were still
essential to a painter's success, and only gradually were detailed accounts of
methods and materials forced into print. The publication of Diderot's encyclopedia
in the mid-eighteenth century and the French Revolution a few
years later provide evidence of the culmination of a trend toward the dissemination
of knowledge which had proved impossible to stem.
The personalities of Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), the elected "Protector"
of the Academy, and Charles LeBrun (1619-1690), "Premier Peintre du
Roi," were crucial in the development of the Academy and thus to the history
of French painting. Since it was a royal academy, the king's (i.e., Colbert's)
intentions were imposed, and Colbert's tight dictatorship led to a centralization
from which France has still not fully emerged. The approval of the
Royal Academy was a necessity fo r every endeavor within its sphere of influence.
Colbert was also responsible fo r the creation of many other academies
in addition to the Academie de la Peinture, including the Academie des
Sciences in 1666; the importance of this fact to the subject will be indicated
later.
The lectures of the Royal Academy were the basis fo r many of the published
treatises of the seventeenth and even the eighteenth centuries. Aesthetics,
beauty and proportion, lighting and perspective, and the expressions of the
figures portrayed were discussed at length by seventeenth-century authors.
Charles LeBrun's famous lectures on human expression (1668) influenced
generations of artists. Most of the academic authors, such as Roland Freart
de Chambray, Andre Felibien, Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy, and Roger De
Piles, were not professional painters, however, and were more concerned with
theory than practice. The dispute between the Ancients (Poussinistes) and the
Moderns (Rubenistes) dominated the Academy lectures for more than twenty
years. The study of the lives of ancient Greek and Roman as well as Renaissance
painters was also a popular subject, as was the history of the origin
and "rediscovery" of painting. Although the academic lectures did not usually
discuss techniques, Jean Baptiste Oudry's (1686-1 755) lectures were an important
exception. As president of the Academy, Oudry gave a lecture in 1752
on painting techniques as practiced by the members (1 1).
The spokesman of the Poussinistes, Roger De Piles (1635-1709), an amateur
painter, connoisseur, and member of the Academy, was a prolific writer on
the theory of painting. He did, however, compose one book on technique in
1684, Les premiers Clemens de la peinture practique. As edited and augmented by
Charles Antoine Jombert in 1776, the text became the most important and
informative collection of recipes on French painting technique of the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries (Figs. 1,2). Another important author
fo r the history of technique was Philippe de La Hire of the Academie Royale
22
Histon·cal Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice