Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

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Bought ledgers

The bought ledgers help to complete the picture of Roberson's trading prac­

tices. They date from 1854 to 1931 and indicate the limited extent of Rob­

erson's manufacturing activities and its widespread trade with manufacturers

and wholesale suppliers, both in Britain and abroad. From this, it is possible

to reconstruct the chain of supply from raw material to artist. The ledgers

also show how often Roberson & Co. printed its catalogues and where the

company advertised; the ledgers even give details of the fixtures and fittings

of their shops and workshops.

One of the primary uses of the bought ledgers is to indicate the dating and

extent of use of a variety of pigments or pigment mixtures introduced

throughout the period in which Roberson traded. The popularity of a new

pigment and the decline of its predecessor can be gauged from Roberson's

purchases from the wholesale supplier, providing a fu ndamental record of the

dissemination of new colors and materials.

Letters

The letters preserved in the archive are, by their nature, a disparate group of

materials, but provide detailed and wide-ranging information about the com­

pany. Roberson kept much of its more interesting correspondence, particu­

larly letters expressing approval of its products or restoration treatments. From

1919 to 1940 they also kept handwritten (and later typed) copies of their

answers to correspondence. Some letters were later used in their catalogues

as testimonials; fo r example, the letter from W P. Frith of January 1897 re­

fe rring to his painting in the Tate Gallery, London: " ... you would like to

know that it is just fifty years since I painted the Derby Day with your colours

and medium, and that in so long a time there is no change whatsoever in

the materials used" (26).

The letters also record advice both to and from artists concerning technique

and the fo rmulation and application of materials. This can often be most

informative, such as Thomas Gambier Parry's letter in 1874 from Ely, where

he was working on the cathedral; the letter provides both a recipe and in­

structions fo r making up the "usual common encaustic."

The letters also help to confirm information about developments within the

company, such as a letter to the Factories Inspector announcing the installa­

tion of electric color grinding machinery in 1919 , contradicting its catalogue

note of around 1926 in which the company states that it is convinced that

paints "which are ground by hand under the muller give results superior to

those ground by machinery" and that the company, therefore, continued to

use the fo rmer system (27). They also give some details of the conditions of

the work fo rce Roberson employed, mentioning industrial accidents and the

possibility of redundancy due to ill health.

The accounts books demonstrate how long customers were prepared to delay

payment of their bills and many of the letters refer to attempts to recover

bad debts, using an investigation agency if necessary. This demonstrates why

Roberson asked fo r customers to provide references from reputable London

businesses before opening an account. The bad debts were not always the

result of fr aud. Before the establishment of the welfare state in Britain, medical

treatment could be ruinously expensive; therefore illness or death often left

dependents at the mercy of creditors.

Throughout the nineteenth century, artists and writers expressed unease about

both the quality of artists' materials and the soundness of contemporary tech­

nique. This erupted into a public debate in 1880 when William Holman

Hunt, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and a long-standing

customer of Roberson, gave a paper to the Royal Society of Arts that criti­

cized the quality of artists' materials and accused the color men of either being

deceived by their suppliers or of adulterating the products themselves. Hunt's

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice