Getty Museum Explores the Historical and Technical Evolution of White Pigments in Art
The Getty Museum has published an article examining the use of white across art history, from Paleolithic cave drawings made with calcite and chalk to lead white pigment in European painting and modern photographic prints. Works highlighted include Gerrit Battem’s Figures on a Frozen Canal, Claude Monet’s Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning, Dieric Bouts’s Annunciation, a Greek white-ground lekythos circa 460 BCE, and photographs by Osamu Shiihara and Bohnchang Koo. Curators Anne Woollett, Julian Brooks, Michelle Sullivan and Beth Morrison discuss materials such as marble, travertine, parchment and paper, as well as the toxic production of lead white and its later conservation challenges.
The Signal
The piece underscores how white functions both as a technical base and a symbolic element, informing curatorial interpretation of luminosity, purity and celestial imagery in the Getty’s collections. For collectors and conservators it highlights material stability issues with lead white and the value of understanding historical supports when assessing condition and provenance of works on paper or panel.
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- Artists: Gerrit Battem, Claude Monet, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Jacopo Ligozzi, Dieric Bouts, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Osamu Shiihara, Bohnchang Koo, Filippino Lippi, Albert Lebourg, Francesco Zuccarelli
- People: Anne Woollett, Julian Brooks, Michelle Sullivan, Beth Morrison, Victoria Finlay
- Museums: Getty Museum, Getty Center
- Locations: Los Angeles
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