Interest in complex oil emulsion techniques and mediums continued without missing a beat among artists and authors of painting manuals in the twentieth century. Max Doerner, professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, was particularly influential in the first half of the century when he argued that Van Eyck used an egg emulsion with an oil varnish that could be thinned with water. His speculations were based on the methods that he and his students used in making copies of the master; when they obtained the effects that they found similar to the originals, they concluded they had stumbled upon the actual material and process used by Van Eyck.
Modern Interpretations of Oil Emulsion Techniques
Helmut Ruhemann, a consultant restorer for the National Gallery of London, commented on Doerner’s methods described in his book, The Materials of the Artist and their Use in Painting. He observed that copying is not a reliable way to understand technique because one is forced to simulate the properties of paint acquired through age.1 He noted that much of Doerner’s students’ work using his method was in poor condition.2
Jacques Maroger had an enormous influence on artists in the twentieth century. Maroger was a painter and conservator at the Louvre before coming to the United States, where he was a professor of the Arts Students League of New York and the Maryland Institute of Art. From its original inception in 1932, his complex formulas of the early masters morphed from an emulsion of bodied linseed oil, calcined bone, litharge, and resin mixed with gum arabic or hide glue to one of dammar and linseed oil whipped with a solution of gum arabic in another emulsion. He also theorized the mediums for later masters, mostly consisting of mastic spirit varnish and ‘black oil’ made with large amounts of litharge.3
One of the most consulted books of the twentieth century is The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques by Ralph Mayer, first published in 1940. Although revised many times since then, the book still propagates the mixed technique by early Netherlandish artists.4 Mayer criticized Maroger for his recipe of black oil and mastic spirit varnish in a review of Maroger’s book in the Magazine of Art.5 He later wrote in The Painter’s Craft, “History teaches us that the wisest course is to adhere to the simple oil-paint technique as much as possible, to use oleoresinous painting mediums with restraint and to avoid complex jelly mediums.”5
In seeming contradiction to his advice, Mayer recommended his own resinous oil painting medium of one-third dammar varnish, one-third turpentine, and one-third bodied linseed oil. This medium became widely used by artists in the latter half of the century and continues to enjoy popularity today.7
Renewed Interpretations of Oil Emulsion Techniques
Although conservation research in the twentieth century continues to inform us that the binding medium of masters before the eighteenth century consisted mostly of linseed and walnut oil used in simple techniques, the number of painting manuals and treatises on historical painting techniques claiming to have discovered the lost secrets of the old masters has not let up.
Responses