Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

stranded by pack ice that crushed their ship, Marston mixed his paints with
lamp wick to caulk the seams of the open boat in order to successfully fe tch
help. The Egyptologist Howard Carter was also a customer; he bought artists'
materials, using Roberson as an agent, and sent cases of drawings of his finds
to the company fo r distribution.
The effect of both world wars is seen, to some extent, mainly as a series of
problems of supply, raw materials being difficult to obtain and materials such
as paper subject to government restrictions. Some pigments were also in short
supply, vermilion increasing in price by 120 percent in 1940 because of shortages
of mercury, which was used fo r shell and mine detonators, and because
difficulties with chrome colors were being anticipated as they were used fo r
dyes fo r khaki and in the manufacture of poison gas (29). Roberson was
fortunate in sustaining only slight damage from an incendiary bomb in 1940
and avoiding the more extensive damage experienced by other colormen.
Post-war disruption is also evident; letters from Roberson in 1919 showed
the difficulties of supply and delivery facing the colormen. Canvas was in
short supply, materials usually coming from Russia were unobtainable, and
turpentine was scarce and expensive; even tin tubes in which to pack the
colors were difficult to find (30). Similar difficulties were experienced during
World War II. The world wars, the depression of the 1930s, and the rise of
new reproduction methods contributed to Roberson's decline in the twentieth
century.
The archive as a research resource
The Roberson Archive is chiefly relevant to the study of the materials and
techniques of British artists. Its relevance outside the United Kingdom is
confined to the small number of foreign artists who bought from the company
and the larger number of suppliers and retailers who traded with them.
These contacts include firms in all five continents, but the most numerous
contacts were in France, Germany, and the United States.
The archive has been used in the last year to follow up a number of queries
from both the United Kingdom and abroad. Although access will be restricted
until the end of 1996 (when the cataloguing project ends), thereafter it will
be available for study. A database of account holders, regarded as the most
informative part of the archive, is being compiled, along with details of their
purchases, and it is hoped that a checklist of account holders will be published.
The database will make it possible to search for both particular artists and
specific materials and, when used in conjunction with information from recipe
books and catalogues, should provide a clearer picture of what paintings
were made of and what artists really used in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries.
Acknowledgments
The Roberson Archive is published by permission of the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam
Museum, University of Cambridge and is generously funded by the Leverhulme
Trust.
Notes
1. Gallagher, M. 1991. The Roberson Archive: inventory oj written and printed material.
Unpublished typescript. Cambridge: Hamilton Kerr Institute, 2. See also Kent's
Original London Directory. 1817. Hamilton Kerr Institute (HKI) MS 785-1993,
fol. 54v, 223. See also C. Roberson & Co. Ltd. 1969-1970 Catalogue, ii. Charles
Roberson does not appear in trade directories at this address until Pigot's directory
was published (Pigot & Co. 's Metropolitan new alphabetical directory. 1922-
1923, 68). A letter to the National Gallery in London dated 1923 states that
Charles Roberson founded the company in 1819 (HKI MS 862-1993, 293).
2. Kent's Original London Directory. Op. cit. (note 1).
3. HKI MS 204-1993, 638.
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice