Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Abstract

The shift in the nineteenth century
from a tradition of artist-prepared
materials to an industry of mass-pro­
duced commercial products greatly
endangered the artistic community
through the widespread distribution
of products of inferior quality and
unstable properties. For over fifty
years, the British Pre-Raphaelite
painter William Holman Hunt
waged a campaign for the reform of
the manufacture of artists' materials
and the rights of the artist as a con­
sumer to expect materials of consis­
tent quality and uniformity. The re­
evaluation of the Pre-Raphaelite
technique, in conjunction with an
exploration of Hunt's advocacy on
behalf of artist-consumers, places in
perspective his focus on artistic
traditions at a crucial transition time
in the history of materials and tech­
TUques.

Figure 1. William Holman Hunt in his stu­

dio, painting the St. Paul's versioll q{The

Light of the World, ca. 1900.

158

William Holman Hunt and the

"Pre-Raphaelite Te chnique"

Melissa R. Katz

Davis Museum and Cultural Center

Wellesley ColJege

Wellesley, Massachusetts 02181

USA

Introduction

The late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in British painting con­

stitute a period noted fo r the rise of a major school of national painting,

dominated by masters such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,

and J. M. W. Tu rner, who engaged in technical experiments of dubious value.

Their reliance on gelled mediums, bituminous paints, and fu gitive pigments,

respectively, has left a body of work disfigured by sunken patches, wide cra­

quelure, and fa ded color. In search of shortcuts to achieve the luminous glow

of the old masters, they produced, instead, paintings whose technical inade­

quacies were known and seen by the generation that fo llowed.

This next generation of painters included the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,

fo rmed in 1848 in radical opposition to the training and taste imposed on

British art by the Royal Academy. Hunt was a fo unding brother, and the only

one of the group to maintain a lifelong adherence to their principles of

fidelity to nature minutely observed, boldness in color and lighting, emulation

of early Italian painting, and depiction of contemporary or literary subject

matter. Yet the rebellion was short-lived, and the Pre-Raphaelites rapidly

became the leading painters of their day, with Hunt as one of the most

popular.

By the 1870s Hunt's position was assured as the celebrated painter of such

Victorian icons as The Light oj the World, The Awakening Conscience, and The

Finding if the Saviour in the Temple (Figs. 1,2,3). Periods spent in the Middle

East seeking Biblical authenticity alternated with spells in pleasant, well­

equipped London studios where, liberated from hand-to-mouth struggle, he

was free to contemplate other aspects of art as a career (Figs. 4, 5). The stability

and longevity of his paintings were of primary concern to Hunt, who ob­

served not only the technical inadequacies of the preceding generation, but

also the poor aging qualities of the artworks of his contemporaries.

Nineteenth-century commercial artists' materials

Hunt was among the first artists to note the increasingly poor quality of the

artists' materials fo r sale in the mid-nineteenth century, and the most vocif­

erous in calling attention to their fa ults and advocating their improvement.

From the platform of leading painter of his day, he set out on a crusade to

reform the manufacture of artists' materials, to impose standards of quality

and workmanship, and to ensure access to consistently reliable products from

colormen informed of and interested in the durability of the goods they were

selling.

The market fo r artists' materials in the early and mid-nineteenth century had

changed overwhelmingly with the advent of industrial production and mass

marketing, and the rapid introduction and adaptation of newly developed

materials whose aging properties were unknown. Prior to the nineteenth

century, artists had used materials prepared fo r them in their own studios or

by local artisans who fo llowed the exacting standards of their clients, allowing

the artist to determine the materials used and methods of preparation. With

the rise of the commercial colorman in an age of burgeoning capitalism, a

middleman was introduced between the manufacturer and the consumer of

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice