Gluck by Diana Souhami (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

Gluck’s first appeal for national intervention was in 1951 to the Arts Council. She maintained that their charter obliged them to protect the interest of the artist and to improve the standard of execution of the fine arts. She informed them that nearly all artists’ materials currently marketed were unreliable. That it was more or less impossible for artists to find raw materials and prepare their own products. That pictures painted on unmatured primed canvas, which was all that was sold, would not last. That only pressure from authoritative organizations or adverse publicity could influence the colourmen to improve their products. That the Council should demand guaranteed standards of materials – canvases that were properly matured and primed, paints that conformed to established principles tested by time. That these guaranteed materials should be appropriately marked, and could be more expensive if necessary and the colourmen could continue to sell unguaranteed, as at present, to those who did not mind.

An Art Panel sub-committee, made up of painters, academics, restorers and representatives of the British Artists’ Colour Manufacturers Association, held an inquiry in November 1951. By the time they met, most of them had engaged in lengthy and often reluctant correspondence with Gluck. Sir Kenneth Clark was their Chairman. They were to refer their findings and recommendations to the Executive Committee of the Arts Council. ‘This is the third time in 200 years that the quality of artists’ materials is being specifically questioned,’ Gluck told the Panel (1 November 1951). ‘The other two investigations proved abortive, let us hope this, as the third, will be luckier.’

But the Panel decided there had been no substantial deterioration in the quality of artists’ materials and that modern artists with sound technical methods need have no fear of their work disintegrating. It was agreed that canvas was not as good as it had been before the war, owing to the shortage of flax, and that linseed oil had deteriorated slightly, owing to the higher rate of extraction and because the best linseed oil came from the Baltic. It was also agreed that at the end of the war poor quality canvas was sold too soon after it had been primed. But Gluck’s complaints of sharp practice by the colourmen and of untrustworthy materials were not upheld. ‘In the face of this evidence we could not possibly recommend that the Arts Council institute a full inquiry …’ Kenneth Clark told her (28 November 1951). ‘I know how much this decision will distress you and I feel great personal sympathy for you; but I am afraid there is nothing more I can do.’

Gluck, too scornful immediately to reply, waited a couple of months, then sent him a six-page letter voicing her disgust and anger and calling the inquiry a charade. She was not, though, easily defeated. She collected, over the years, all the evidence she could of other artists’ struggles with their materials. A good deal of it tallied with her own, but it seemed that most artists wrestled on, or found ways round their problems depending on the effect they wanted to achieve: ‘There is a certain instability of oil pigment existing at the present time in both the yellows and the reds,’ Laura Knight wrote to her (24 October 1960).

I have experienced a difficulty in preventing some of these colours from spreading with disastrous effect over other parts of a picture, even when this work has had at least two years to dry.

In the studio where I am now writing I have gently rubbed a yellow ochre background with a corner of a wetted handkerchief, the result was a slight staining of the white linen. This background was painted a year ago.

Laura Knight also thought it would be helpful to painters if the colourmen listed colours which, when used together, had an unsatisfactory chemical interaction. She found, for example, that French Ultramarine mixed with Alizarin Red turned a nasty brown and that Lead White mixed with any of the Cadmiums turned to dirt.

Graham Sutherland told Gluck that he disliked the mechanically-primed canvas, as bought from the shop. He usually painted on the reverse side of the canvas, after giving this three coats of size. He found that if he built a painting up slowly – forcing the first layers of paint into the grain of the canvas, then ‘dragging’ impasted strokes over this, he managed to obtain a surprising variety of touch and texture.

Lamorna Birch said, in 1953, that no paints were half as good as ten years before. Sir Gerald Kelly, President of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1951, offered Gluck quantitites of his own canvas, which had been kept for ten years by the firm Robersons, in north London. ‘I am doing this because … I have great sympathy for your attitude, rarer than ever in this world of shoddy productions. The pictures shown by the École de Paris are already being restored and repaired. They have but a small expectation of life.’7 He began by being helpful and ended by groaning when he saw another of her letters.

The first meeting of the British Standards Institution Technical Committee on Artists’ Materials was held on 9 March 1954. It was entirely Gluck’s doing that such a committee came into being. She wanted it to compel the colourmen to stipulate exactly what was in the paints they manufactured and to discuss and research into the quality of paints and canvases. It was made up of representatives from various art bodies, individual artists and members of the British Artists’ Colour Manufacturers Association. They met periodically until the 1960s.

One of the first problems discussed was the plethora of colour names used in a muddling way. Traditional names, particularly those referring to organic pigments, had been kept even when the chemical constituents were different. Colours were given more than one name, such as Cobalt Yellow and Aureolin, French Blue and French Ultramarine. And new pigments were given different names by different firms – copper phthalocyanine was called Winsor