Old Masters 2.0 (in Progress)

Mathieu Laca, Studio shot of works in progress,
Center top: El Greco, Below: Rembrandt, Right: Goya

Patrick John Mills and I were talking about my recent portraits of painters when he came up with this idea: “Why don’t you paint old masters, such as Titian, but using the same pigments those painters were using in their time?” What a great challenge! It didn’t take more to spark my imagination.

First, I had to do a lot of research in order to find what particular pigments were used during the Renaissance and the Baroque period. Then, I had to find evidence of what pigments were used by the painters I intended to portray. This was easy enough for some. Goya even has a self-portrait where we can clearly identify each color on his palette. It proved to be quite difficult though for others like the Greco, although we can guess fairly well by just looking at his works closely and by considering the pigments available in his time.

Finding what pigments old masters used was unfortunately not all. I had to get them! How? A lot of them simply vanished. They have been replaced by synthetically manufactured ones and by pigments with a higher performance.

The first traditional color I became acquainted with is Lead white. Wow. Very different from Titanium white! Very toxic too, like all the pigments containing lead. It’s so tacky that when you apply it with a brush, the brush almost sticks to the canvas by itself! Barely exaggerating. At first, I thought that Lead white could not be mixed with sulfur based pigments such as Vermilion because I read about flesh tones in Middle Age illuminations that have turned black for that reason. But I later discovered that this phenomenon does not occur in oil paint where the oil seals each pigment particle, therefore preventing that chemical reaction.

The most beautiful color of all times is certainly the genuine Vermilion. It comes from mercury mines in China and is ground by hand in small batches. It has a very surprisingly high tinting power for a traditional color (almost as much as Phtalo Blue!) and a nice orangey red shade perfect for skin tones. In fact, I realized that, now that I can identify it, it’s everywhere in European painting! Whenever you see a touch of reflective light under a chin, you’re looking at Vermilion. Our recent Cadmium red simply does not stand the comparison. But beware of the price: 150$ for a 60ml tube!

Another wonderful but also very expensive color is Lapis Lazuli. The bright blue skies of Raphaël were painted with that very color. It comes from a costly mineral dug in Afghanistan. Originally, it gave its color to the first blue jeans. We now find synthetic imitations of that pigment under the name Ultramarine blue. I was surprised though of the low tinting power of that very subtle and translucent reddish blue. It proved to be perfectly suited to paint the meandering sky of my El Greco portrait.

I have yet to buy a decent yellow. I’m still painting only with a lemon ocher, which is not a very bright color. I’m very much looking forward to try a Lead-tin yellow (all of Rembrandt’s incredible lighting effects are done with that pigment) that is still backordered at Natural Pigments (http://www.naturalpigments.com/) in California, from which I buy most of my tubes for this project. I think this company’s main market is restorers. That maybe explains why they only sell small 40ml tubes. Orpiment is also an interesting yellow. But it’s sold only in 20ml jars and it’s basically arsenic. So, I decided long ago not to leave my rags everywhere for my dogs to chew!

The earth pigments we have today (yellow ocher, raw and burnt Sienna, raw and burnt Umber, green earth and the blacks such as ivory and carbon black) are basically synthetic versions of older natural pigments that were dug up in specific areas or made from burning bones or wood. Because I found that natural pigments are so expensive and sold only in small tubes, I decided to use the more affordable contemporary versions of these colors, considering that the colors do not differ and that I would need a lot of those colors to paint the backgrounds in my portraits.

I guess that’s enough of the cooking lesson for now! I’ll focus more on the meaning of the portraits and my stylistic approach in a later post.

Before ending, I have to mention the wonderful work my husband is doing right now and that is parallel to mine. You can see below that he brings the same approach to framing than the one I have in painting, incorporating elements of traditional woodcarving to create works that both revere and twist the tradition. It will be quite exciting to see, in the end, the portraits and frames coming together and to see how they influence each other.

See El Greco, one of the first portraits of that series, by clicking here.