Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 5. Wi lliam Holman Hunt, Self-Por­
trait, 1875. Courtesy of the Ujfi zi Gallery,
Florence, Italy. Note the length of the brushes
on the table. The tunic is the same striped
garment used in The Finding of the Sav­
iour in the Temple.

Figure 6. Nineteenth-century containers fo r

oil paints (a nimal bladder with ivory tacks,

piston tuhe, and collapsible metal tube).

Courtesy of the Forbes Collection, Harvard

Un iversity Art Museums.

160

with colormen and hired scientists to analyze paint samples from various

suppliers. He badgered the Royal Academy into appointing their first pro­

fe ssor of chemistry to research and teach materials science. He fo rmed an

artists' cooperative to secure hand-ground pigments and pure materials. He

monitored the condition of his own paintings, attentive to the conditions of

their display and handling. He made test panels and stored them in his studio

ten, fifteen, and twenty years to observe the effects of aging. With ever in­

creasing obsession, he investigated material permanence, compatibility, and

composition. Like a true conservator, he fo rsook the artwork fo r the artmak­

ing, producing fewer paintings over longer intervals in a painstakingly slow

technique.

Hunt's passions flared in the mid-1870s with the realization that Roberson's

orange vermilion, a favorite commercial tube paint, was being adulterated

with red lead, and thus blackening on the canvas. In fr ustration, Hunt wrote

to his fr iend and fe llow artist, John Lucas Tupper (5):

It seems as tho [sic] I were struggling against Fate. Every day sometimes

including Sundays I have been toiling every hour, and just as I have got

my task nearly completed the whole thing has fallen into disorder again for

at least five or six times and I have had to begin again. At last I have

found out what has been the cause oj this: Roberson's tube oj Orange

Vermilion, which I used without suspicion because 25 years ago they sold

this color absolutely pure, is adulterated with 10 percent oj villainy, the

greater part lead, which has blackened so rapidly that when it had got dry

enough for the final glazings the flesh had got to such a color [sic] that I

nearly went crazy ... I have had the color analysed and at the same time

have taken the opportunity to have others investigated and find that the

fraudulent habit is exercised in many other cases. What is to me more

discouraging than this is that many artists I have spoken to about [it] are

quite satisfied to go on dealing in these spurious colors saying "Oh, they

will last my time," and "I never found my pictures change " and with

base humility "they," the colors, "are good enough for my work." Leigh­

ton, when I proposed a little co-operative society for importing and grinding

pure colors said, "And what's poor Roberson to do?"

The culmination came on Friday, 23 April 1880, when Hunt addressed the

members of the Royal Society of Arts on the subject, "The Present System

of Obtaining Materials in Use by Artist Painters, as Compared with that of

the Old Masters." At a conservative estimate, the talk lasted at least two-and­

a-half hours. Concerned as much with the decline in knowledge of artists'

techniques as well as materials, Hunt observed, "In the old days the secrets

were the artist's; now he is the first to be kept in ignorance of what he IS

using" (6). Eloquently he informed his audience (7):

I feel called upon to avow that I regard the artists' colourmen oj London

as gentlemen of intelligence, of character, and great enterprise, to which

qualities we are much indebted for the comparatively safe positions we enjoy;

for indeed, at the worst, it must be recognised that we might have gone

further astray. It is needful, however, that we should be not only in good

hands, but we should give strong prooJ that we can distinguish between

that which is faulty and that which is perfect; and it is the want of dis­

criminating power in the painter which produces all the indifference on the

part oj the preparer to the permanent character of the materials he supplies.

The painter has really not the power to trace the causes of difects. The

colourman naturally judges of the character of the materials he vends by the

condition they are in while under his own eye. To him, the evils revealing

themselves in the work which has passed through his shop do not exist if

he never sees them; and if he hears of them only, as evils untraceable in

their cause which have occurred to one of his customers (who may, some­

times, have obtained materials elsewhere), his sense oj responsibility is qui­

eted, when he has received the assurance of his men in the workshop that

the usual rules, which have hitherto resulted in work of a kind not eliciting

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice