Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract

This paper argues for an interdisci­

plinary approach to the study of art­

ists' painting materials and painting

practices. Recent research into Brit­

ish documentary sources on nine­

teenth-century oil painting reveals

information useful in technical ex­

aminations of paintings. Examples

illustrate how important a full un­

derstanding of the artist's physical

environment and contemporary be­

liefs can be in accurately interpreting

evidence from a painting.

Beyond a Collection of Data: What We Can Learn

fr om Documentary Sources on Artists' Materials

and Te chniques

Leslie A. Carlyle

Canadian Conservation Institute

1030 Innes Road

Ottawa, Ontario KiA OC8

Canada

Introduction

In the preface to the catalogue fo r the National Gallery of London's exhi­

bition, Art in the Making: Impressionism, the sponsor remarks, "We see not

just painted surfaces, but are given a multi-disciplined information which

brings the paintings themselves to life" (1). The desire to know more about

the whole object, to go beyond the image, the preface continues, to get

"behind the pictures, and even through them," is very much a feature of our

era, just as the delight in finding the "real" information hiding behind our

conventional views fu els so many contemporary investigative endeavors in all

disciplines. Our enthusiasm fo r complete knowledge is something we have

in common with our predecessors of the late eighteenth century.

Fresh from the age of enlightenment, one author of a late eighteenth-century

technical manual on oil painting writes in his preface (2):

Facts judiciously arranged, and published fr om time to time as they accu­

mulate, are productive of infi nite advantage .... Every branch of science

is much facilitated and advanced by public communication, which distinctly

points out the present, and opens a free channel to future discoveries ....

Records oj this kind act, therefore, as stimulants to general improvement:

what is already known need not be retraced, and what is discovered in

future [sic] may be occasionally added: thus, the needy and diffident will

be taught with oeconomy [sic] and ease, and mystery will be unfolded and

converted into truth.

Few today would argue fo r such a completely linear view of knowledge, but

the desire to "know all" has not left us.

Nineteenth-century technical literature on oil painting materials and practices

shows that the search fo r and collection of the "facts" was underway in earnest

at that time. By the end of the century, however, we find the optimism

somewhat chastened: all the new chemical knowledge, all the new facts, still

could not provide oil painters with any guarantees, once and fo r all, fo r the

durability of their work.

A similar sort of optimism existed fo r those in the twentieth century who

examined the role of science in unraveling the mysteries of oil paintings. The

belief was that with enough instruments and enough analysis, we could know

the secrets of the old masters, we could know of what a painting is made.

However, as one of our discipline's critics Michael Daly points out, "Such

technical analysis can only ever say what a material is, never what its purpose

was" (3).

Although scientific instrumental analysis is a highly sophisticated branch of

inquiry in itself, results from it alone are not sufficient. It is only in partnership

with other fo rms of investigation that we can hope to unravel the meaning

behind what we find through analysis. Now, nearing the end of the twentieth

century, having penetrated much of the "mystery" and converted it into truth,

we find that the gifts of science are not enough. It is to "multidisciplinary

information" that we turn in order to understand the purpose of the materials

we find.

Carlyle^1