"Blue & Yellow"
6 x 8
(c) Lesley Powell 2013
(c) Lesley Powell 2013
Ah, the humble paint tube. Seems a very ordinary thing nowadays, but it was a breakthrough in its time, and it revolutionized the course of painting. Renoir is quoted as having said "Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cezanne, no Monet, no Pissaro, and no Impressionism".
As you may may know, oil paint begins to dry out and harden as soon as it is exposed to air. It might stay useable for a day, or two at most. Before the mid-1800's, artists stored their paint in pigs' bladders to avoid exposing it to the air. The bladders were notoriously messy, and tended to burst. They were opened by piercing with a tack. Once opened, they could not be resealed. As you can imagine, the bladders were far too undependable to transport outside the studio.
All of that changed with the advent of the metal paint tube. And we owe it to a fellow Carolinian--John G. Rand, from South Carolina--who patented it in 1841. The metal of the tube was impermeable, and with the screw-on lid it would stay airtight. You could open and close the tube as often as you wished, without the paint spoiling.
The first revolutionary aspect of this invention was that paint would last almost indefinitely. Before the tube, when an artist opened a bladder of paint, he needed to use it all before it spoiled. (Oil paint has always been, and still is, quite expensive, and nobody can afford to waste it). Thus, painters of old would paint all of the blue areas of a painting when they opened the bladder of blue--needing to finish before the paint oxidized. Then they would move on to the next color, and do the same.
With the advent of the tube, painters could open all of their pigments at once. No more worry about wasting paint--the right quantity could be squeezed from the tube, and the tube could be resealed to preserve the rest. As the publication of the NC Museum of Art says: "Now the painter could work anywhere on the painting's surface at any time...This was absolutely crucial with the Impressionists. They needed to work very quickly to capture fleeting effects of light and weather. This required an intuitive immediate response which could not be limited to one small part of a larger composition."
Here are two paintings by Claude Monet, one of the great Impressionists. Can you imagine painting either one of these if you had to paint all of your blues first, then all of your reds, etc? Impossible!
Working all over the canvas simultaneously, as you can see in the above images, is a hallmark of the Impressionists. Camille Pissarro advised "Don't paint bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere." In my own practice, going back and forth between different areas of the canvas is essential to getting the color relationships right. Every color affects the others, especially those close to it, and I cannot imagine how hard it would be to get the relationships right if painting all of each color, one by one.
The second revolutionary aspect of the tube was that paint was now portable. Artists could now paint en plein air, outside on location. More on that in a future post. Stay tuned!
As you may may know, oil paint begins to dry out and harden as soon as it is exposed to air. It might stay useable for a day, or two at most. Before the mid-1800's, artists stored their paint in pigs' bladders to avoid exposing it to the air. The bladders were notoriously messy, and tended to burst. They were opened by piercing with a tack. Once opened, they could not be resealed. As you can imagine, the bladders were far too undependable to transport outside the studio.
All of that changed with the advent of the metal paint tube. And we owe it to a fellow Carolinian--John G. Rand, from South Carolina--who patented it in 1841. The metal of the tube was impermeable, and with the screw-on lid it would stay airtight. You could open and close the tube as often as you wished, without the paint spoiling.
L: Pig's bladder filled with Prussian Blue paint
R: Paint tube
(Photo courtesy V&A Museum)
The first revolutionary aspect of this invention was that paint would last almost indefinitely. Before the tube, when an artist opened a bladder of paint, he needed to use it all before it spoiled. (Oil paint has always been, and still is, quite expensive, and nobody can afford to waste it). Thus, painters of old would paint all of the blue areas of a painting when they opened the bladder of blue--needing to finish before the paint oxidized. Then they would move on to the next color, and do the same.
With the advent of the tube, painters could open all of their pigments at once. No more worry about wasting paint--the right quantity could be squeezed from the tube, and the tube could be resealed to preserve the rest. As the publication of the NC Museum of Art says: "Now the painter could work anywhere on the painting's surface at any time...This was absolutely crucial with the Impressionists. They needed to work very quickly to capture fleeting effects of light and weather. This required an intuitive immediate response which could not be limited to one small part of a larger composition."
Here are two paintings by Claude Monet, one of the great Impressionists. Can you imagine painting either one of these if you had to paint all of your blues first, then all of your reds, etc? Impossible!
Monet: "Les Tilleuls a Poissy"
Monet: "Le Grand Canal"
Working all over the canvas simultaneously, as you can see in the above images, is a hallmark of the Impressionists. Camille Pissarro advised "Don't paint bit by bit, but paint everything at once by placing tones everywhere." In my own practice, going back and forth between different areas of the canvas is essential to getting the color relationships right. Every color affects the others, especially those close to it, and I cannot imagine how hard it would be to get the relationships right if painting all of each color, one by one.
Eugene Boudin
Painting en plein air
19th century
The second revolutionary aspect of the tube was that paint was now portable. Artists could now paint en plein air, outside on location. More on that in a future post. Stay tuned!
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