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• Introduction
• Academic Painting
• New Science, New Pigments
• The New Painting: Impressionism
• More Pigments, Fewer Colors
• Revolution in Paint Storage

Early 19th Century Academic Painting Technique & the Traditional Palette

Painting Technique

At the beginning of the 19th-century, many painters made a living producing portraits and landscapes of famous places, but these artists were generally held in low regard. The pinnacle of artistic achievement was large historical, mythological, or narrative scenes containing numerous figures in classical pose. These compositions required great skill and knowledge to create. They sprang from the artist’s imagination, a mixture of the artist’s own genius and his understanding of antique and renaissance traditions.

The painting was meant to make the artist’s imaginary composition as concrete and realistic as possible. Although the original concept might be dashed off in a rapidly painted sketch, this was only the first step in a very long process. Each figure and detail within the composition was drawn, studied, and refined. This might take weeks, months, even years, all before even approaching the final canvas. The painting was the end product, the sum of all the artist’s work. As such it was expected to be as close to perfection as possible.

For paintings this perfection generally necessitated at least three layers of paint to totally cover the canvas and abolish any flaw that would destroy the illusion. The ultimate goal was to create flawless idealized figures that looked as three-dimensional as an antique statue. This was accomplished using sharp outlines and the juxtaposition of light and dark areas, or tonal modeling. Surfaces were kept smooth and colors subdued, avoiding any distraction from subtle modeling and the drawing of the composition.

The painting was carried to a very high degree of finish. Inspired by the idealized forms of ancient classical sculpture, artists and the public came to see perfection in craftsmanship as one of the strongest virtues in art. Every detail was made hard-edged and polished through extraordinary skill and control. Brush marking and impasto were kept to an absolute minimum. This approach was ideally suited to turning the historical and mythological inventions of the artist’s mind into crystal-clear reality. But ultimately it created paintings that were absolutely calculated, the product of a studio and its artificially controlled light.

The Traditional Palette

The 19th-century French painter’s palette was a strong link with the past. It was practically identical to that of the Old Masters. Only two or three significant pigments had been discovered in the 300 hundred years between the Renaissance and the 19th century. As a result, traditional approaches to painting were rarely challenged. By the 19th century, the application of paint became relatively standardized, so much so that the French Academy’s school, the École des Beaux-Arts, excluded any study of materials or painting techniques. The academic painter focused almost entirely on drawing.

“Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting…The material processes of painting are very easy and can be learned in a week or so.”—Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, artist, mid-19th century

At the beginning of the 19th century, the oil painter had only about 30 pigments to work with. Half of these were seldom used because of their expense, toxicity, chemical instability, or other problems. Painters were left with approximately 15 pigments that were relatively reliable and useful. This traditional palette was weak in many areas. The yellows were quite pale and dull. There was no reliable green pigment. Verdigris, a bluish green, was used on occasion but was chemically unstable and frequently turned brown. Most green paint was actually a mixture of blue and yellow pigments, which of course suffered from a lack of a strong yellow pigment.

In practically every depiction of the palette from the 16th to the early 19th centuries, the paint has been laid out by tone, from light to dark. This illustrates the painter’s reliance through the centuries on tonal contrast to create the illusion of three-dimensional form. The same tonal contrast that was established with drawing using chalk or graphite. By the 19th century colors outside of this tonal range were used more as decoration, logically placed in a composition to add visual impact. Strong colors were routinely toned down to avoid any distraction from subtle tonal modeling and the drawing of the composition.