G.F. Watts: Materials

"Hope" by G.F. Watts

"G.F. Watts went to Windsor & Newton for his colours, and from the first had given them strict instructions never to send him any colour, even if he had ordered it, which was not known to be absolutely safe. He gave me the book which Windsor & Newton had published giving the analyses of the colours and how to use them with safety, 'Field's Chromatography; or, Treatise on Colours and Pigments as used by Artists' by Thomas W. Salter. 

Watts committed one wholesale piece of extravagance. He had bought a large bottle of pure ultramarine (ground lapis lazuli) in the powder. He used no blue but this, thinking every other inferior and less precious in quality. Not only were the colors but the grounds subjects of endless experiments by Watts. The quality he disliked most was that of an oily 'painty' surface. He was long seeking for a ground which would at the same time be absorbent and safe. He tried canvasses rubbed over with gesso, but found the gesso was apt to work up into the paint. He also tried painting on an absolutely raw canvass without any preparation whatever; but this entailed too lengthy a process for ordinary work, the mere getting the colour on involving so much labour.

Often he would paint over his canvasses with some colour which would be opposed to the tone he intended a picture to have, on the same principle followed by the artists who painted the famous old Venetian and Cordovan leather. They spread a silver ground for designs which were to be carried out in gold, and a gold ground for designs which were to be carried out in silver. 

Watts dried the oil out of his colours by putting them on blotting paper, reducing them to a texture like putty by keeping them under water. His colours, when he used them, were nearly as dry as pastel, but without, of course, the crumbling quality.

Quite new brushes were, he said, almost useless to him. He would wear the outside bristles down on a background, or by merely rubbing them on a hard surface till they became a stiff little pyramid the shape of a stump used for chalk drawings, and then they became great treasures. He said he believed the worst thing to paint with was a paint brush, 'except the wrong end'! He would use a paper or leather stump or the handle of an old toothbrush filed down to a point, but the best of all, he thought, was the finger.

When the putty-like pigment which he put on the canvass in distinct touches was nearly dry, he would sometimes take a paper-knife, and, using the flat part, would rub it over the touches, smearing them together. He would not touch the painting again till the smeared surface was quite dry. Then he would work partially over it. In this way he contrived to get a bloom of atmosphere into his painting, a quality which he invariably aimed at.

Watts possessed an extraordinary amount of ingenuity, and thoroughly enjoyed using it, the actual playing with the paint being a source of great interest and pleasure to him."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "G.F. Watts: Reminiscences," 1906, by Mrs. Russell Barrington.)