HUES IN TUBES
everything you have always wanted to know about
PAINT
without daring to ask the shop assistant

This book is about Paint, a most revered material… especially in the hands of artists. Yet without its colouring agent, Pigment, which, on the whole, and despite its omnipresence, is an unacknowledged material, paint would not exist. (As a result, this is very much a book about Pigment, too.) However, worldwide and from the dawn of human time, to make this volatile material adhere to surfaces of all ilk, colour worshippers have had to find binders to mix with their ground pigments. (So, obviously, this book had to cover Binders, too and… Supports.)
From the early days of hues before tubes to the modern era of hues in tubes, this book is a voyage through countries, centuries, and the intricate world of these materials. It is those stories, precisely, that explain how hues on tubes made a name for themselves, and so we will delve into that. But, of course, something of the utmost importance happens to hues after tubes, leaving me no choice but to include some musings about painting and paintings in the book.

In our relentless greed, perhaps even need, for Colour, not only have we tried everything—it is no simple feat to appropriate these elusive sensations our planet so generously offers our eyes and turn them into a substance we can use and play with—, but everything seems to have been fair go, making, along the way, the fortunes of some or bringing famines to entire regions.
From ochres to precious minerals, flowers to barks, insects to mummies, shells to… fossil fuels, the raw or processed primary materials used to create pigments are as diverse as they are fascinating. Despite their sometimes toxic, fugitive, expensive, and impermanent nature, these have brought colour and delight beyond their tricky characteristics. They have been the despair of artists; they have been their joy. They still are.

I hope to entertain with some rich tales in which, together with beliefs, gods, spices, silks, slaves, plagues, porcelain and poetry, these very pigments, resins, waxes, oils, tars and gums climbed mountains, crossed continents and oceans to end up in the library of some wealthy connoisseur in Damascus or Kyoto—resting perhaps between the pages of a Holy book or a treatise on love-making—while others made it to a king’s castle in Aragon or a merchant’s wall in Antwerp blended into the composition of a stern portrait or a table laden with a profusion of flowers and fruits.
If understanding the nature of their art materials is a must for painters, listening to their stories could be a source of renewed wonder for all lovers of Art… I make no promise, however, of having found the ultimate one and only acceptable version of their characteristics or meanderings in time and place. I have tried my best, but the only promise I will be held accountable for is… a colourful journey it will be! If you care to, follow me…

Illustrations
Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man (detail), c.1530. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, U.S.A.
Envoys with Horse and Camels (detail), China, AD 966. The Trustees of the British Museum, London, UK

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If you’ve enjoyed this…
Jump to the beggining of Hues in Tubes by clicking here
or, alternatively, click on the Table of Contents to browse the sections.

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