Argument 01
Materials
What paint was sold in, what it was made of, and what the canvas underneath it was prepared with. The least glamorous part of the story, and the part that explains the most.
Photo: Baraa Obied / Pexels
Entries
One cause, one consequence, each
- 01
The collapsible tube
A screw-capped metal tube held colour that could be closed again and carried, and almost everything about where painting happened followed from that.
- 02
Chrome, cadmium, cobalt
New pigments arriving within a few decades gave painters a palette that had not existed a generation earlier, and the pictures show it.
- 03
Grounds and primings
What the painter puts down first decides the key of everything above it, and a commercially primed canvas is a decision already made.
The kit as it was actually bought — ready-ground colour in closable tubes, laid out in the order the painter works.
Photo: ROMAN ODINTSOV / Pexels