Valuación de resultados con el sistema propuesto de CAPP

In 1866, Burne-Jones began to buy large quantities of ready prepared painting supports for his watercolours from Roberson, often in complex combinations of extra thick paper mounted onto linen and then stretched onto panelled boards. One order for

‘panelled boards 23 7/8 x 20 7/8 [inches] & ex thk Impl [Imperial] mounted on Calico over do [ditto] 10/6,’ corresponds to the dimensions of his 1867 Cupid Delivering Psyche, whilst another panelled board ‘26 ½ x 19 covd w ex thk Impl over linen 8/6’

matches the dimensions of the 1866 Cupid Finding Psyche. Such board supports had been used for centuries in oil painting, but were less commonly used for delicate watercolours (Figure 173), although Bayard notes that, for large exhibition watercolours, ‘paper was laid down on canvas or a wood panel to give it strength.’⁹⁸ In

1869 Burne-Jones purchased no fewer than 27 of these board/linen/paper (or vellum) supports. As his watercolours grew in size over the next ten years, panelled boards and wooden stretchers would be important in both supporting the weight and tension of his watercolours and protecting them against damage in transit and at exhibitions (this protective quality was also noted by Holman Hunt in 1875).⁹⁹ Between 1866 and 1870, different combinations of support materials were tried out, with vellum, seamless Not paper, Antiquarian and, in 1870, brown paper, being strained over linen or canvas onto panelled board for his watercolours (see Appendix IX below). As we have already noted, many of these papers were recent nineteenth-century introductions. More research is needed into these complex nineteenth-century paper and board/canvas supports used in watercolour painting.

By 1869, the paper-covered panel boards were being replaced by strainers (Figure 174) covered with a combination of linen with paper on top. Strainers, too, had been conventionally used as supports for oil paintings. They were probably lighter than the solid panelled boards, and this may explain why, as the dimensions of his work grew (his panels of the four seasons of 1869-70 are 4 ft high, and his six Days of Creation are 40 inches or 102 cm. high), he began to use this alternative form.¹⁰⁰ It is possible that one of the two strainers covered with linen, cartoon and Antiquarian paper, 4 ft by 1ft 6 (122 x 45.7 cm), which he ordered in September 1869, was destined to be used for Night, painted in 1870. Commissioned in 1868 by Frederick Leyland for his house at Queen’s Gate in London, this work has been described as painted ‘on white paper mounted on very fine canvas formerly attached to stretcher.’¹⁰¹ The corresponding description for its pair, Day, describes the same combination of materials, but

‘formerly attached to wooden panel.’

In 1869, Burne-Jones placed his first order for brown paper mounted on canvas and strainer. This would be followed by regular orders for similar brown paper supports up until 1878. Such a dark support material requires the use of strong opaque colours and would encourage his use of Chinese White mixed with other moist or tube pigments, or of chalk drawings. The 36 ½ x 18 ½ inch (91.5 x 45.8 cm) panel ordered in 1869 may have been used for the infamous Phyllis and Demophöon (Figure 167), which he exhibited to such outrage the following year. No analysis has been made to date of the paper support of this watercolour, but close observation suggests that the colour of the paper may be brown.

By 1870, Burne-Jones was taking the process one step further, by requesting Roberson to supply him with supports (usually canvas) already primed with Chinese White. In December he took two ‘Extra fine canvases prepd w WC [watercolour] Chinese White strained over reversed prepd oil canvas on Paneled Stretcher, 40 x 14’ inches, and in June 1871 he ordered another four similarly prepared panels, this time 40 x 14 1/8 inches (101.6 x 35.9 cm) in size. These six panels match the description and dimensions of his six Days of Creation, which he was starting to design at that time.

Here he had radically done away with the paper element of the support altogether and was beginning to experiment with painting in watercolour directly onto a ready primed canvas support, a revolutionary concept which would further blur the boundaries between his work in watercolour and oils, and make it even more difficult for the public to determine the medium in which he was painting. Although this technique appears highly unconventional for watercolour, it was not totally new. In 1852 the Art Journal had published a letter outlining a method of painting in watercolour on canvas, using a priming of starch, as we shall see in the next chapter.¹⁰² During 1870 Burne-Jones also purchased different types of unprepared canvases from Roberson, including

‘coarse Roman Canvases’ and ‘white absorbent canvas’ and ‘semiabsorbent canvas’, which may have been for use in oil painting, but equally may have been for covering with watercolour. Nearly all his watercolours created during 1871 were completed directly onto canvas. Such use of watercolour would simply not have been possible prior to the arrival of tube and moist pigments, which had the body, intensity of colour and covering power to survive being applied onto a canvas surface. It is hardly surprising, then, that most of the colours he bought between 1866 and 1870 were moist colours or tubes. Tough flat-ferruled hog-hair brushes would also have been necessary for applying these colours.

Burne-Jones’s technical experimentation also led him to buy many newly-introduced drawing and painting materials during this period, including Faber’s pencils, Creta Laevis pencils (Figure 175), indelible crayons, conté crayons, chalks, and charcoal.

Faber’s pencils were first made in Germany in 1761, but from 1851 the company’s new London branch was able to supply the British market, competing directly with traditional pencils from Cumberland.¹⁰³ Creta Laevis was an expensive type of colouring pencil, which was known to the Pre-Raphaelites.¹⁰⁴ Burne-Jones combined pastels with watercolour and bodycolour in his Lucretia (1867) and chalks and oil pastels in Cupid Delivering Psyche (1867).

In 1869 Burne-Jones purchased ‘Rouget’s Fixing Machine’ together with several bottles of ‘Fixing Liquid,’ products which had only very recently come on the market, as explained in the Art Journal of 1 April 1870 (Figure 176). Not only would this fixative stop chalk, charcoal and pencil drawings from smudging, but ‘water-colour drawings…may be protected from discoloration – even from damp – by the use of this very elegant process.’ Burne-Jones was, it would seem, one of the earliest British artists known to have applied this new product to his drawings, and possibly also to his watercolours. As we will see, he continued to buy large quantities of this liquid fixative over the next few years, probably to fix his chalk drawings and cartoons.

Several bottles of ‘caoutchouc mucilage’ also appear in the ledgers at this time, together with ‘glass medium’, nut oil and varnish, linseed oil and copal. All were probably destined for use in oil painting, as they are all traditional oil vehicles and varnishes.¹⁰⁵ Three papier mâché palettes were bought for working outdoors, as they were lighter and cheaper than the corresponding porcelain variety. Hunt and Millais had also favoured these new lightweight palettes, although it is likely they were soon superseded by the more durable japanned palettes, as they do not appear in any of the Reeves, Rowney or Winsor and Newton catalogues of the period.¹⁰⁶ A range of brushes was acquired, from straightforward watercolour and oil sables and an extra fine hog, to one of the 1 ½ inch flat sables introduced mid-century thanks to new metal ferrules, and ‘sky brushes,’ (Figure 177) designed for covering large areas with wash.

Such brushes became necessary as the size of his watercolours increased. In 1870 he added a burnisher (for gilding), a ‘lens’, a pair of ‘pocket Albata Compass’ and a

‘proportional compass’ for exact mathematical drawing. In 1866 and 1868, Burne-Jones bought pipe-clay from Roberson, and in 1870 he took 56 lbs of modelling clay, together with modelling tools. Burne-Jones’s purchases of pipe-clay carried on up to 1877, an unusual purchase and my own investigations suggest two possible uses for it rooted in early methods: as a base for making soft coloured crayons or as ground for oil-painting.¹⁰⁷

7.5 1871-1880