Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 1. Tin white pigment, details on a
sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Photograph
by Paul Robins (Photo Studio), courtesy of
the Victoria & Albert Museum (I. S.84-
1963 1 15).

Figure 2. Tin white pigment, details on a

sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Photograph

by Paul Robins (Photo Studio), courtesy of

the Victoria & Albert Museum (I. S. 46-

19591 26).

Tingry, in 18 30, gives a recipe fo r "Another Cremnitz White," which he

describes as a beautiful pearly white, too expensive fo r house painting, but

"it would, no doubt, be attended with great advantage in painting pictures"

(13). This white was a mixture of tin white, one-fourth part zinc white and

one-eighth part white clay separated from Briancon white.

Linton describes tin white (oxide of tin) as, "too fe eble in body ... to be of

any service to the oil painter ... " (14). He does, however, add that it may be

unaffected by "injurious gases." Field also thinks the pigment to be poor,

writing that it "dries badly and has almost no body in oil or in water, it is

the basis of the best white in enamel painting" (15). In 1951, Mayer merely

states that it is not a paint pigment at all (16).

Tin white, therefore, has two main uses: as an opacifier in glass, enamel, and

ceramic glazes from the ninth to twentieth centuries; and as a possible pig­

ment in manuscripts and miniatures from the fifteenth to seventeenth cen­

turies. Even in the short review given here, three quite different recipes fo r

its preparation are given fr om the fo llowing eras: (1) circa 15 00, England, tin

oxide; (2) circa 15 80, Italy, white glass powder opacified with tin oxide; and

(3) circa 18 00, England, a mixture of tin oxide, zinc oxide, and white clay.

During a research program in the laboratory of the Victoria & Albert Mu­

seum, methods fo r nondestructive identification of the pigments on Indian

miniatures were studied (17). Incident light microscopy, energy-dispersive x­

ray fluorescence (EDXRF) spectroscopy, and ultraviolet and infrared color

reversal photography were used.

Several Jain miniatures were examined; these small, jewel-like, utterly distinc­

tive paintings from Western India were of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen­

turies. The areas of white paint were fr equently restricted to details of textiles

and jewelry (Figs. 1 , 2 ). Two of the miniatures had tin present as the major

constituent in areas of white pigment. Because red lake and, in one case, gold

leaf were beneath the white, this was regarded as interesting but not conclusive

of tin white being present.

Tin was then fo und on a third Jain miniature, possibly dating from the fif­

teenth century, with carbon black and verdigris in the same area. Three more

paintings were chosen from the same manuscript as one of those examined

earlier, as it was possible to fo cus on areas with no other pigment or only

gold leaf. In all three, tin was the major constituent (Fig. 3). It is possible,

500

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250

200

150

100

50

Sn

Sn

5

Au Au

10

Au

15 20

KeV

Sn

25

Sn

30 35 40

Figure 3. EDXRF spectrum of tin white pigment on a sixteenth-century Jain miniature. Spectrum

prepared by David Ford, Science Group, Victoria & Albert Museum (1. 5.46-1959149).

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