Numret ingår i en serie vid bokförlaget Archetype som presenterar forskning om konsttekniker, material och historiska perspektiv, av forskare och studenter från Hamilton Kerr Institute vid universitetet i Cambridge.
Emma Jansson har tillsammans med Sally Woodcock författat bidraget “The most 'azure blue': the youth and old age of ultramarine”.
Abstract
The uptake of artificial ultramarine in Britain in the years immediately after its invention c.1828 is charted in the purchases artists made from the London colourman Charles Roberson. The archive establishes 1832 as the earliest documented sale of French ultramarine to British artists. This paper explores attitudes to its predecessor, ‘genuine’ ultramarine, and the reception of other new blues introduced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rather gradual acceptance of artificial ultramarine in Britain is contrasted with the sustained popularity of the natural pigment, contradicting later commentators’ assumptions. This paper suggests that concerns about permanence, nostalgia for Old Master materials and prejudice surrounding French ultramarine’s commercial applications influenced artists’ attitudes to this new blue. Despite this, artificial ultramarine is shown to have excited interest from the professional, rather than the amateur, artist from the outset.
Och tillsammans med Camille Polkownik har hon skrivit “David Parr House: a technical study of the materials and techniques of the wall paintings”.
Abstract
David Parr House, situated at 186 Gwydir Street in Cambridge, is the former home of the decorative painter David Parr. The house is extensively decorated and the rooms are embellished with a variety of Victorian and early twentieth-century decorative patterns. This article concentrates on the two main rooms: the Drawing Room and the Dining Room, and focuses on the technical study of the materials and techniques employed by Parr. The findings of the study are placed within the context of artists’ materials and practice at the turn of the century, thereby relating Parr’s own artistic process with the public art sphere of this period.
