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

Blue or Green by Winsor & Newton and Goya Blue or Green by Reeves. It was resolved that colour names should be classified and simplified, degrees of permanence marked and compounds from which pigments were made, clearly stipulated. So artists might then know that Ultramarine Genuine was made from the choicest extract of Lapis Lazuli, Aureolin from Potassium cobaltinitrite, Mineral Violet from manganese phosphate, Sepia from colour extracted from the ink bag of the cuttlefish.

In subsequent meetings the committee discussed the system of marking to be used on the labels of dry pigments, the use of additives and the desirability of specifying these, the necessity of giving the date of manufacture and batch type on the tube, the vexed question of the type of oil used in paint manufacture, the question of drying time of paint on the canvas and what could usefully be accepted as a maximum – 504 hours was suggested. The committee’s findings and recommendations were passed to the Board of Trade and to industries and organizations concerned with paint manufacture and use.

The issue of the ‘suede effect’ was never really resolved at the BSI meetings. Gluck maintained of course that it was caused by mixing machine-ground pigments and additives in hot-pressed linseed oil. She hoped to show that other artists too were stymied by their materials. She sent a questionnaire, under the auspices of the British Standards Institution, to 187 artists:

1. (a) When painting in oils, do you experience differences in effect when brushing different ways, rather like rubbing suede in different directions?

        (b) If so, are those effects slightly greasy in character causing the painting to be seen with difficulty in certain lights?

2. Do you find artists’ turpentine sticky?

3. Do you find that your painting does not dry easily and that after an appreciable lapse of time the paint can be rubbed off?

4. Do you find that the paint will ‘sink’ in one part of the canvas and not in another?

5. Have you given up using canvas, and if so, why?

6. Any general comment not included in above.

Only fifty-nine of the artists replied. Fifty-five said yes to the first question, but many either anticipated the effect and did not mind it, or thought it was a result of not sufficiently diluting the paint. And many artists had not experienced her problems over uneven drying rates and unpredictable absorbency of canvas. The answers to her questionnaire showed how problematic the concept of quality of materials was, when applied to artists wishing to achieve a multitude of different effects. None the less Gluck implied to the British Standards Institution that these findings substantiated her case. She did not easily submit to inconclusive evidence on this issue where her own experience told her so forcefully what was true.

The colourmen wanted an independent research laboratory to carry out a study into the effects of using hot- or cold-pressed linseed oil in paint manufacture. The Scientific Department of the National Gallery carried out a practical and technical analysis. A series of samples of pigments were ground in various types of linseed oil and four artists then evaluated their appearance and handling properties. They found

… neither differences in amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, rate of drying, colour, foaming, taste or smell can be used as a basis for a distinguishing test between hot and cold-pressed linseed oil, because these differences may be masked or caused to disappear by 1) choosing different batches of seed, 2) refining, or 3) tanking.8

The colourmen maintained that method of application of paint led to the ‘suede effect’ and that it could be eliminated by adding stand oil, or sun-thickened linseed oil to alter the flow. None the less, to appease Gluck, Winsor & Newton, Rowney and Reeves all agreed to investigate further into mixing pigments of differing particle size, which had either been machine-ground or hand-ground, with different oils. All the paints ground to the consistency of artists’ tube colours showed the ‘suede effect’:

… indeed it must now be clear to everyone that properly ground mixtures … will always exhibit the ‘suede effect ‘… In actual practice the artist can do much to control the flow properties of his colour by making full use of painting media containing polymerized oils. The arguments that the colour manufacturers have been remiss in not producing colours that are free from the ‘suede effect’ fall to the ground completely.9

They did a few more experiments up until 1965, but in an ever more reluctant and desultory way. Gluck wanted the BSI to set a standard for the specification of cold-pressed linseed oil but the Committee saw little point, as its advantages had not been proved and there was only one supplier, Wilson’s of Dundee.

She continued to correspond with Winsor & Newton over absorbency in canvases. They queried her technique. She first ‘blocked out’ her painting in oil colours thinned with turpentine. They suggested that an excessive amount of turpentine might soften the priming and cause the paint to sink in. She also sometimes put a freshly-painted canvas in a glass frame to stop it getting dusty. Winsor and Newton thought this might retard the drying rate and cause some colours to stay tacky. Gluck maintained that her painting technique had not changed and yet problems suddenly appeared.

She insisted that canvas be made from the best quality flax, sized with the best glue in the best conditions of temperature and humidity, and treated with the purest linseed oil. All of which Winsor & Newton tried to do. They conducted tireless experiments on her behalf. They reviewed their production schedules to give canvases a longer drying time and reintroduced an underfloor heating system to provide a more even distribution of heat.

In the early days the firm’s director, Victor Harley, seemed to enjoy both her letters and the challenge she set him to improve materials. He was fond enough of her to tease her: ‘Are you a good patient?’ he wrote to her (23 December 1952) when she had bronchitis.

Somehow I doubt it; and