The Artist's Palette: The Palettes behind the paintings of 50 Great Artists, A Book Review
I have struggled with what to say about this book.
If you want a beautiful coffee table book that all of your guests will love to flip through, and that will inspire casual discussions about various artists mixed with the likes and dislikes of a particular style, then this is the book for you. (No shade thrown, it is a beautiful book and I love me a good easy-going art discussion.)
However, if you're like me and want a beautiful coffee table book full of accurate research detailing the color palettes used by 50 great artists with anecdotes about pigment history as one color came into vogue and then out of the collective artistic conscience, this book is not for you.
But! Is the book beautiful? 100% yes! Is it what I assumed the subtitle meant? No. Let's get into it.
Worth a Thousand Words: Pros and Cons
Pros:
Holy this book is Beautiful! The images of the palettes, the photographs of the artists, and pictures of the art works are all so great.
The layout is easy to read and to flip through.
It is beautifully bound.
Cons:
There is no clear thesis. I have read through the introduction a couple of times, but I have no idea why she picked the 50 artists that she did.
Its not always accurate with its terminology, like when she fumbles the definition of oil paints on page 16 (you can read more about that here), and sometimes makes terms up.
At times there are inaccurate dates and information about some of the artists, such as when Georgia O'Keeffe started oil painting or how much Rembrandt used blue (more on both of those to come).
There is no clear listing of the paints used by any of the artists. You have to fish through the artist's bio to find the paint colors, which might have been by design, but some of them are incomplete lists.
And so, I thought I would do a bit of a rewrite.
Critique
I am going to further break down my critique by highlighting three of the fifty artists covered: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Georgia O'Keffee, in three separate posts.
With each artist I will be covering where I feel the book goes astray by clarifying some of the ambiguous elements written in each artist's bio, providing a more accessible listing of each artist's palette along with a list of their modern equivalents, and explaining why each artist chosen is an important historical figure when considering pigment history. Such as how blue made Rembrandt's paintings brown, red made Van Gogh's paintings both muddy and vibrant, and how O'Keeffe's palette choices were influenced by war.
Rembrandt: How Blue made his Paintings Brown
Rembrandt is not only known as one of the greatest artists of all time, he is also one of history's most prolific self-portrait painters. You can not only track the evolution of Rembrandt's artistic style solely by looking at his almost one hundred plus self portraits, but you can also see how and when his color palette choices began to change (around 1656), and why his palette manipulates the way his paintings look today.
This is where, I think the book, The Artist's Palette, misses the mark.
Every artist's palette changes over time, but there is always a reason as to why this happens. New innovations in color technology, a maturing of the artist's preferences, or, as in the case of Rembrandt, a change in fortune. Throughout his life Rembrandt seems to have kept primarily to the same selection of colors, however, how he used those colors changed throughout the decades. Specifically his use of blue.
To understand a Rembrandt painting we must understand the blue pigments he used, and why he used them the way he did. The Artist's Palette uses the above Self Portrait at Easel, 1660, as its primary example of Rembrandt's palette, and says this about the painting and Rembrandt's use of blue:
"It is a typically dark Rembrandt picture, featuring carefully placed areas of illumination, with the main one being the painter's head. Light also falls only on his hands and his small palette, which is tilted in such a way that allows us to see some of the paint on it (p 35)...Blues...do not feature greatly in his work... the few blues found in his work are usually either azurite or smalt, both of which he also used to create green tones and glazes. Bright blue skies were not for Rembrandt, he preferred to keep his palette in chocolate-coloured, liquid shadows (p36)."
The author is correct, bright blue skies were not for Rembrandt (he was too cheap); however, blue did factor immensely into his paintings especially early in his career (as you can see below), and his use of blue, specifically Smalt, is actually the reason why his paintings are doused in "chocolate - colored, liquid shadows."
But before we look at why blue is the reason Rembrandt's paintings are so brown, first let's cover what colors Rembrandt used and their modern equivalents.
Rembrandt's Most Common Color Palette
Blue:
Azurite
Brown
Raw Sienna
Burnt Sienna
Raw umber
Burnt umber
Yellow ocher
Red
Red ocher
Vermilion
Madder lake
Carmine lake
Yellow
Lead-tin yellow
Black
Ivory Black
A Modern Rembrandt Color Palette
Blue
Cobalt Blue
Caution, Cobalt is toxic, Phthalo blue is a good alternative.
Prussian Blue
Brown
Raw Sienna
Burnt Sienna
Raw umber
Burnt umber
Yellow ocher
Red
Cadmium Red Deep
Caution, Cadmium is toxic, Napthol is a good alternative.
Alizarin Permanent
Quinacridone Red
Yellow
Naples Yellow
Transparent Earth Yellow
Black
Ivory Black
At his peak, Rembrandt commanded high prices for his paintings, which he produced at an astonishing rate. In order to complete as many paintings as possible, he experimented with various paints and combinations in order to create faster drying times.
He found that he could accomplish a faster drying time by using two pigments, Smalt for darker areas and either Lead or Chalk White for lighter areas. All three pigments dry incredibly fast on their own and speed up the drying time of the oil paints they are mixed into. Rembrandt also relied heavily on fast-drying earth pigments.
But why was Rembrandt so interested in drying time when his contemporaries were more interested in color vibrancy? Money.
Rembrandt was forcefully stubborn. He was constantly in legal battles either with clients over payment, neighbors over renovations of his home, or his family over his mistresses. He was a "socially inept shopaholic," who, after he fell out of favor and could no longer afford his lavish life style, continued to purchase art, precious objects both for his home and his studio as props, and expensive clothing. In 1656 he declared bankruptcy, falling from great wealth to a mediocre existence until 1669 when he died at the age of 63, poor and penniless.
But in his haste, Rembrandt made not only social errors, but a chemical one as well. Smalt.
Smalt is a blue pigment made of out of crushed cobalt blue glass. It is a beautiful smokey blue that when used with Azurite could semi-pass as a poor man's substitute for the more expensive Ultra Marine Blue made of lapis lazuli.
However, Smalt, while periodically stable on its own, can in time turn everything brown when mixed into other oil paints. As Rembrandt became poorer, his use of Smalt intensified, not for its color but for its texture and drying capabilities. This use of Smalt made his later paintings and signature style of dark shadows and surprising highlights turn darker and browner than when originally painted.
Below are two rather wonderful videos about Smalt (the first) and Azurite.
We can see the effects of Smalt best in his portrait Frederick Rihel on Horseback, 1663.
Here Rembrandt used Smalt as an additive in almost the entirety of the background, horse, and sky. He would use Smalt not only for its color, but also to help build up his paint as it helped to create his famous impasto texture cheaply and quickly.
Impasto is a layer of dense paint in order to create a raised texture. Think Van Gogh and that is impasto.
Below is an example of Rembrandt's impasto technique that he developed in the later part of his career.
In my opinion The Artist's Palette's use of Self Portrait at Easel, 1660, is a poor example of Rembrandt's true painterly intentions for a couple of reasons. One, the painting has never been cleaned, and years of tarnished varnish and dirt have darkened the painting. Two, the likely use of Smalt throughout the painting would have caused it to be darker now than when originally painted. Which would be fine, if that point had been explained.
In order to give Rembrandt his dues and show how the use of his palette changed over his long career a comparison between his Self-Portrait in a Plumed Hat, 1629 and Self-Portrait, 1660 (painted in the same year as Self Portrait at Easel) would have been the better option for a few reasons. One, they both have been cleaned and restored. Two, they show not only how Rembrandt's style matured, but also how his color palette evolved from using Azurite and Smalt originally as a pigment to be seen, to later using them as a drying additive for ease, speed, and texture.
So yes, while Rembrandt did use earthy reds, yellows, and browns to create a very specific type of look, to say that blues "do not feature greatly in his work" is categorically false. In his early paintings blue plays a prominent visual role, such as in Plumed Hat, and while that visual role lessens as Rembrandt moved from dramatic scenes to interior portraiture, his use of blue pigments has influenced the way we see his paintings even beyond what Rembrandt's true intentions were.
A Note:
It was originally assumed that the darkening of Rembrandt's painting was due to the use of a paint called Bitumen, also known as Van Dyck Brown. Bitumen has never been found in any chemical analysis of Rembrandt's works, and so while you will find it listed in several places as a paint that Rembrandt used, I have left it out of my own list as it has not been verified. I also left out some of his lesser used paints, such as Stil de Grain.
Links to Rembrandt's colors palette are: Natural Pigments, Jackson's, Tate, Heritage Science, Jstor, Two Whites, Heritage Science Yellow Lakes, Impasto, National Gallery.
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