‘En route’: Identifying Thomas Fearnley’s fixatives on early 19th century pencil drawings (Abstract)

Reissland, Birgit, T.G. Poulsson, H.van Keulen, I.Joosten. “Thomas Fearnley En Route: A 19th-Century Artist’s Choice of Drawing and Fixing Materials.” In Studying the European Visual Arts 1800-1850, ed. J. Townsend & A.Vandivere. CATS Proceedings, III, 2016. London: Archetype, p. 82–93., 2016

The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design (National Museum, Oslo, Norway), owns about 750 drawings by Thomas Fearnley, a Norwegian romantic landscape painter. Examination of 190 pencil drawings by Fearnley enabled the identification of the drawing materials he carried on his extensive journeys through Europe. Watermark analysis confirmed that he bought his papers at local supplies and the results can serve as a basis for the attribution of drawings with unknown date to certain periods. The constant travelling on foot or in the coach required fixing of the delicate pencil drawings. Analysis using gas chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) on samples from two case studies identified milk as the fixative used by Fearnley. The different ageing behaviours of papers fixed with milk can be attributed to the presence of minute iron-containing particles. This research shed light on the material choices of itinerant artists in the first half of the 19th century and the ageing of drawings that were fixed with milk.

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Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 2009

The reddish-brown, brown or yellowish stains of circular or irregular shape known as foxing spots have been fully described in conservation literature but still, this phenomenon does not find any scientific agreement since many hypotheses have been raised concerning their origin. In this work a contribution to foxing definition not only focussed on its appearance but also reported on its chemical information. For this purpose foxing stains present in drawings from two Portuguese artists dated from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries were observed under ultra-violet light and optical microscope and analysed by three non-invasive spectroscopy techniques. The observations carried out on the stains provided information on their surface morphology. The use of energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence revealed a variation on the elemental content between foxing and paper region. Although the results from X-ray diffraction analysis showed no signs of cellulose degradation in foxing stains, Fourier-transformed infrared analysis revealed the presence of oxide groups. Both the information on the chemical nature and surface morphology of the stains achieved in this study will contribute to increase foxing formation information and develop future protocols for conservation purposes.

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Heritage Science, 2020

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, owns twenty-five works on paper by the 18th-century English artist Thomas Gainsborough. Scholarly publications over the past 20 years, as well as Gainsborough’s own writings, have highlighted his proclivity toward innovative methods and experimentation. In particular, a letter that the artist wrote in 1773 reveals details of his secret recipe for making oils on paper, such as his recommended use of lead white and the unorthodox practice of dipping his works in skim milk, possibly to prevent the pigments from discoloring. About a dozen of Gainsborough’s creations were included in a 2018 exhibition at The Morgan entitled Thomas Gainsborough: Experiments in Drawing. On this occasion, an in-depth scientific study aimed to explore the artist’s work as a draftsman, with a special focus on his mastery of materials, his technical innovations, and his development of an original approach to drawing. Initially, a selection of artworks was examined using m...

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Scientific Reports, 2021

Among the artists' materials of the nineteenth century, pastel crayons merit scientific interest since their early commercial formulations are mostly unknown and, until now, have been considerably less studied with respect to other contemporary painting materials. In this framework, research herein reports the results of a comprehensive multi-analytical study of 44 pastel crayons of two recognized brands (LeFranc and Dr. F. Schoenfeld) from the Munch museum collection of original materials belonging to Edvard Munch. The integrated use of complementary spectroscopic and hyphenated mass-spectrometry techniques allowed the compositional profiles of the crayons to be traced providing the identification of the inorganic and organic pigments, the fillers/extenders and the binders. All crayons resulted to be oil-based and the binder was identified to be a mixture of a drying oil (safflower or linseed oil), palm oil or Japan wax and beeswax. Among others, pigments such as ultramarine, chrome yellows, Prussian blue, manganese violet, viridian and madder lake have been identified. A significant alignment in formulations of the brands was observed with the only exception of the greens which showed distinctive pigment and filler compositions. The analytical information provided for these commercial artists' materials will be of great interest for academia, museum and other institutions hosting art collections dating from the same period and it will be used by the Munch museum to draw proper conservation strategies of its own artwork collections. Edvard Munch (1863-1944), one of the fathers of modern expressionism in art history, was a polyvalent artist who experimented with a wide variety of materials and techniques throughout his artistic career. Indeed, Munch's art production took place during a renowned period of great innovation in chemical organic synthesis and industrial research. Vast numbers of new appealing painting materials became available between the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, and Munch explored their potentialities in his artworks, without neglecting the use of traditional materials. An important part of the Munch Museum (MUNCH) collection in Oslo comprises the original artists' materials 1 used by Edvard Munch himself, of which around 300 items consist of pastel crayons of different brands. This part of the collection has never received the attention it would deserve as an important source of nineteenth century artist´s materials. For a complete characterization of the materials in this collection, for eventually dating them and understanding degradation mechanisms of paint formulations over time, in-depth analytical studies are needed. MUNCH is therefore developing a large core project aimed at providing new scientific knowledge of the museum collection of Munch's paintings and original materials from his studio (including paint tubes and drawing materials), supported by a robust interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, conservators, restorers and art-historians 1. The terms pastel, crayon or indeed pastel-crayon are seemingly interchangeable although technical and historical literature from the seventeenth centuries provides only the slightest distinction that pastel actually OPEN

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FCA, 2024

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Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

A total of 20 new AMS radiocarbon determinations on human bone have been obtained for the Neolithic chamber tomb of Quanterness, Orkney. The results show poor agreement with the recorded stratigraphy, suggesting extensive mixing of the chamber deposits. A Bayesian model treating all of the determinations as deriving from a single phase of activity provides a start date in the range 3510 – 3220 cal BC (most probably falling after 3450 cal BC), with the main phase of burial activity ending in the range 2850–2790 cal BC (95.4% probability). This presents a tighter range than previously available, but nevertheless appears to confirm the longevity of burial activity at the monument. Osteologically, there is no convincing evidence for excarnation, and the representation of the small bones of the hands and feet, together with the absence of sub-aerial weathering, make it unlikely that the bulk of the human bone assemblage was brought in from elsewhere, as had previously been suggested. Sta...

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Рассматриваются полемические высказывания русских и зарубежных историков, экономистов и правоведов о сущности русского крепостничества. Доказывается тождество понятий "крепостничество" и "рабство" со ссылками на исторические свидетельства. Анализируются причины и последствия этого исторического феномена.

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Geometria Analitica

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