Gluck

by Diana Souhami

  It was at the Queen of the Islands cocktail party and he moved away. Why do they have such people as trustees and who is he? At any rate you have become a household word in art circles I gather since this fight! 6

  Gluck mustered support worldwide. In Calcutta, Dr Bhandari, the chief chemist at Shalimar Paints Limited, supplied her with Ivory Black made from Indian ivory flakes, rather than from charred bone used in the machine-made equivalent, mixed with cold-pressed linseed oil from the villages of Madhya Pradesh near his home town. He had already supplied Indian Yellow, for restoration work in Italy, made from the urine of an elephant fed on mango leaves and water.

  In Steyning, though dinner guests, relatives and those with no interest in the technicalities of the matter got glazed with disbelief and boredom at her unceasing preoccupation with the subject and her ‘monopologues’ as her nephews and niece termed her dinner-table discourses, friends helped all they could. Dr Andrew Thomson, an academic chemist, took great interest in her work, undertook experiments on her behalf into the relative viscosity of hotand cold-pressed oil and advised her on her own researches. Raul Casares, who was married to a second cousin of Edith’s, photographed her experiential proof of the ‘suede effect’. Edith told Gluck she was mad and that everyone was painting more than ever.’ “What do you think you are going to get out of this?” she asked and I said, “Paints”.’ Which was what, after a decade or so, she got.

  At her instigation, the colourmen, Winsor & Newton and Rowneys, stepped up their researches into the use of coarse or finely ground pigments in the manufacture of artists’ oil paints, the stability of drying rates between different paints, the relative effect on paint quality of mixing pigments with cold- or hotpressed linseed oil. Methods of priming canvases, the quality and country of origin of flax used in their making, the composition of glue size, the length of time primer was left to mature, and treated canvases were given to dry – all were scrutinized, researched and reassessed by the colourmen in an effort to satisfy Gluck. ‘When (and if!) we make you into a customer thoroughly satisfied with our efforts, we’ll celebrate with champagne. Here’s to then!’ Victor Harley, Director of Winsor & Newton wrote to her (26 November 1951).

  A decade or so later, after no champagne and an unrelenting correspondence that hovered, on his side, between fascination, patience and total exasperation, he won her approbation by marketing cold-pressed linseed oil. ‘When the Queen Mother was Queen,’ Gluck, who was, after all, her mother’s daughter, wrote to tell him (27 September 1965),

  Her Majesty was interested in the efforts I was making with regard to artists’ materials and asked to be kept informed of my progress. I thought you might like to know that in my recent letter to Her Majesty I reported that your Firm was now marketing the cold-pressed linseed oil produced by Messrs Wilson & Sons of Dundee and that you were selling this in this country and the United States. I also mentioned that this was unique in the World today as though all the text books recommend cold-pressed linseed oil there was none until you put it on the market.

  Gluck’s first appeal for national intervention was in 1951 to the Arts Council. She maintained that their charter obliged them to protect the interest of the artist and to improve the standard of execution of the fine arts. She informed them that nearly all artists’ materials currently marketed were unreliable. That it was more or less impossible for artists to find raw materials and prepare their own products. That pictures painted on unmatured primed canvas, which was all that was sold, would not last. That only pressure from authoritative organizations or adverse publicity could influence the colourmen to improve their products. That the Council should demand guaranteed standards of materials – canvases that were properly matured and primed, paints that conformed to established principles tested by time. That these guaranteed materials should be appropriately marked, and could be more expensive if necessary and the colourmen could continue to sell unguaranteed, as at present, to those who did not mind.

  An Art Panel sub-committee, made up of painters, academics, restorers and representatives of the British Artists’ Colour Manufacturers Association, held an inquiry in November 1951. By the time they met, most of them had engaged in lengthy and often reluctant correspondence with Gluck. Sir Kenneth Clark was their Chairman. They were to refer their findings and recommendations to the Executive Committee of the Arts Council. ‘This is the third time in 200 years that the quality of artists’ materials is being specifically questioned,’ Gluck told the Panel (1 November 1951). ‘The other two investigations proved abortive, let us hope this, as the third, will be luckier.’

  But the Panel decided there had been no substantial deterioration in the quality of artists’ materials and that modern artists with sound technical methods need have no fear of their work disintegrating. It was agreed that canvas was not as good as it had been before the war, owing to the shortage of flax, and that linseed oil had deteriorated slightly, owing to the higher rate of extraction and because the best linseed oil came from the Baltic. It was also agreed that at the end of the war poor quality canvas was sold too soon after it had been primed. But Gluck’s complaints of sharp practice by the colourmen and of untrustworthy materials were not upheld. ‘In the face of this evidence we could not possibly recommend that the Arts Council institute a full inquiry …’ Kenneth Clark told her (28 November 1951). ‘I know how much this decision will distress you and I feel great personal sympathy for you; but I am afraid there is nothing more I can do.’

  Gluck, too scornful immediately to reply, waited a couple of months, then sent him a six-page letter voicing her disgust and anger and calling the inquiry a charade. She was not, though, easily defeated. She collected, over the years, all the evidence she could of other artists’ struggles with their materials. A good deal of it tallied with her own, but it seemed that most artists wrestled on, or found ways round their problems depending on the effect they wanted to achieve: ‘There is a certain instability of oil pigment existing at the present time in both the yellows and the reds,’ Laura Knight wrote to her (24 October 1960).

  I have experienced a difficulty in preventing some of these colours from spreading with disastrous effect over other parts of a picture, even when this work has had at least two years to dry.

  In the studio where I am now writing I have gently rubbed a yellow ochre background with a corner of a wetted handkerchief, the result was a slight staining of the white linen. This background was painted a year ago.

  Laura Knight also thought it would be helpful to painters if the colourmen listed colours which, when used together, had an unsatisfactory chemical interaction. She found, for example, that French Ultramarine mixed with Alizarin Red turned a nasty brown and that Lead White mixed with any of the Cadmiums turned to dirt.

  Graham Sutherland told Gluck that he disliked the mechanically-primed canvas, as bought from the shop. He usually painted on the reverse side of the canvas, after giving this three coats of size. He found that if he built a painting up slowly – forcing the first layers of paint into the grain of the canvas, then ‘dragging’ impasted strokes over this, he managed to obtain a surprising variety of touch and texture.

  Lamorna Birch said, in 1953, that no paints were half as good as ten years before. Sir Gerald Kelly, President of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1951, offered Gluck quantitites of his own canvas, which had been kept for ten years by the firm Robersons, in north London. ‘I am doing this because … I have great sympathy for your attitude, rarer than ever in this world of shoddy productions. The pictures shown by the École de Paris are already being restored and repaired. They have but a small expectation of life.’7 He began by being helpful and ended by groaning when he saw another of her letters.

  The first meeting of the British Standards Institution Technical Committee on Artists’ Materials was held on 9 March 1954. It was entirely Gluck’s doing that such a committee came into being. She wanted it to compel the colourmen to stipulate exactly what was in the paints they manufa
ctured and to discuss and research into the quality of paints and canvases. It was made up of representatives from various art bodies, individual artists and members of the British Artists’ Colour Manufacturers Association. They met periodically until the 1960s.

  One of the first problems discussed was the plethora of colour names used in a muddling way. Traditional names, particularly those referring to organic pigments, had been kept even when the chemical constituents were different. Colours were given more than one name, such as Cobalt Yellow and Aureolin, French Blue and French Ultramarine. And new pigments were given different names by different firms – copper phthalocyanine was called Winsor Blue or Green by Winsor & Newton and Goya Blue or Green by Reeves. It was resolved that colour names should be classified and simplified, degrees of permanence marked and compounds from which pigments were made, clearly stipulated. So artists might then know that Ultramarine Genuine was made from the choicest extract of Lapis Lazuli, Aureolin from Potassium cobaltinitrite, Mineral Violet from manganese phosphate, Sepia from colour extracted from the ink bag of the cuttlefish.

  In subsequent meetings the committee discussed the system of marking to be used on the labels of dry pigments, the use of additives and the desirability of specifying these, the necessity of giving the date of manufacture and batch type on the tube, the vexed question of the type of oil used in paint manufacture, the question of drying time of paint on the canvas and what could usefully be accepted as a maximum – 504 hours was suggested. The committee’s findings and recommendations were passed to the Board of Trade and to industries and organizations concerned with paint manufacture and use.

  The issue of the ‘suede effect’ was never really resolved at the BSI meetings. Gluck maintained of course that it was caused by mixing machine-ground pigments and additives in hot-pressed linseed oil. She hoped to show that other artists too were stymied by their materials. She sent a questionnaire, under the auspices of the British Standards Institution, to 187 artists:

  1. (a) When painting in oils, do you experience differences in effect when brushing different ways, rather like rubbing suede in different directions?

  (b) If so, are those effects slightly greasy in character causing the painting to be seen with difficulty in certain lights?

  2. Do you find artists’ turpentine sticky?

  3. Do you find that your painting does not dry easily and that after an appreciable lapse of time the paint can be rubbed off?

  4. Do you find that the paint will ‘sink’ in one part of the canvas and not in another?

  5. Have you given up using canvas, and if so, why?

  6. Any general comment not included in above.

  Only fifty-nine of the artists replied. Fifty-five said yes to the first question, but many either anticipated the effect and did not mind it, or thought it was a result of not sufficiently diluting the paint. And many artists had not experienced her problems over uneven drying rates and unpredictable absorbency of canvas. The answers to her questionnaire showed how problematic the concept of quality of materials was, when applied to artists wishing to achieve a multitude of different effects. None the less Gluck implied to the British Standards Institution that these findings substantiated her case. She did not easily submit to inconclusive evidence on this issue where her own experience told her so forcefully what was true.

  The colourmen wanted an independent research laboratory to carry out a study into the effects of using hot- or cold-pressed linseed oil in paint manufacture. The Scientific Department of the National Gallery carried out a practical and technical analysis. A series of samples of pigments were ground in various types of linseed oil and four artists then evaluated their appearance and handling properties. They found

  … neither differences in amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, rate of drying, colour, foaming, taste or smell can be used as a basis for a distinguishing test between hot and cold-pressed linseed oil, because these differences may be masked or caused to disappear by 1) choosing different batches of seed, 2) refining, or 3) tanking.8

  The colourmen maintained that method of application of paint led to the ‘suede effect’ and that it could be eliminated by adding stand oil, or sun-thickened linseed oil to alter the flow. None the less, to appease Gluck, Winsor & Newton, Rowney and Reeves all agreed to investigate further into mixing pigments of differing particle size, which had either been machine-ground or hand-ground, with different oils. All the paints ground to the consistency of artists’ tube colours showed the ‘suede effect’:

  … indeed it must now be clear to everyone that properly ground mixtures … will always exhibit the ‘suede effect ‘… In actual practice the artist can do much to control the flow properties of his colour by making full use of painting media containing polymerized oils. The arguments that the colour manufacturers have been remiss in not producing colours that are free from the ‘suede effect’ fall to the ground completely.9

  They did a few more experiments up until 1965, but in an ever more reluctant and desultory way. Gluck wanted the BSI to set a standard for the specification of cold-pressed linseed oil but the Committee saw little point, as its advantages had not been proved and there was only one supplier, Wilson’s of Dundee.

  She continued to correspond with Winsor & Newton over absorbency in canvases. They queried her technique. She first ‘blocked out’ her painting in oil colours thinned with turpentine. They suggested that an excessive amount of turpentine might soften the priming and cause the paint to sink in. She also sometimes put a freshly-painted canvas in a glass frame to stop it getting dusty. Winsor and Newton thought this might retard the drying rate and cause some colours to stay tacky. Gluck maintained that her painting technique had not changed and yet problems suddenly appeared.

  She insisted that canvas be made from the best quality flax, sized with the best glue in the best conditions of temperature and humidity, and treated with the purest linseed oil. All of which Winsor & Newton tried to do. They conducted tireless experiments on her behalf. They reviewed their production schedules to give canvases a longer drying time and reintroduced an underfloor heating system to provide a more even distribution of heat.

  In the early days the firm’s director, Victor Harley, seemed to enjoy both her letters and the challenge she set him to improve materials. He was fond enough of her to tease her: ‘Are you a good patient?’ he wrote to her (23 December 1952) when she had bronchitis.

  Somehow I doubt it; and I think I’d rather be your colourman than your doctor. Anyhow even if you don’t do what you’re told, do be sensible and take care of yourself. I can’t say any more than that I hope you are very soon full of health and strength sufficient to make us unbutton the coat of turpentine from each particle of levigated powder colour.

  But after seventeen years of correspondence and experimentation his patience snapped. He felt he could not satisfy her and advised her to get her materials elsewhere.

  The matter might have drifted to a close, leaving Gluck disconsolate and dissatisfied, had not the two colourmen, Tom Rowney of Rowney & Son and Victor Harley of Winsor & Newton, met by chance at the opera in November 1967. A programme note on the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck prompted them to talk of the ‘suede effect’ and their most exigent and uncompromising customer. They agreed that after years of corresponding with her on the morality of mass production, the technical composition and purity of paint, methods of research and the availability and economic considerations of raw materials, they would try to provide her with perfect paints, which were right for her and which she felt to be pure, no matter what experimentation might prove.

  A month later Tom Rowney went down to the Chantry House with his chief chemist, Mr Chalk and talked to her of their plans. ‘… Mr Chalk is very busy indeed in the laboratory’, he wrote to her (14 December 1967) after their visit. ‘From all appearances he has given up everything else and is settling down almost exclusively to your work. You have certainly done something to him, I wonder what it is! I kno
w he enjoyed his visit to you very much indeed.’

  What Mr Chalk was doing was grinding pigments by hand, on a granite slab, and mixing them with Wilson’s cold-pressed linseed oil to make Gluck’s perfect palette. For months he experimented with relative quantities of oil and pigment and varied grinding times of different pigments. Lump yellow ochre, mixed with cold-pressed oil at a relative weight ratio of seventy to thirty, was ground for two hours. Genuine Vermilion, mixed at a ratio of eight-five grams of pigment to fifteen of oil, was left for five hours on the slab with periodical grinding. Crimson Madder was mixed with oil at a fifty to fifty ratio, ground for between one and two hours, then left over-night and a further ten parts of coldpressed linseed oil added the next day. Lump Viridian, at a ratio of sixty to forty, was ground for three hours on the slab, left overnight and ground for a further half hour in the morning. French Ultramine turned out stringy and sticky whatever the proportions, or techniques of grinding, so Mr Chalk scouted around for Lapis Lazuli to make a few tubes for her.

  Tom Rowney provided her with these specialist hand-made paints, free of charge, from 1967 until her death some ten years later. It would have been economically impossible to produce them in a commercial range. The final formulation for each colour involved variations in hand-grinding, modifications with driers, different proportions of either cold-pressed linseed oil or sun-thickened cold-pressed linseed oil, and the juggling with synthetic and traditional pigments. They were paints beyond price and hers alone.

  Tom Rowney also invited her to go into Rowney’s shop in Percy Street, London, and choose, without regard to cost, whatever range she wanted of their best Sable brushes. He supplied her with quantities of Special Belgium Claessens canvas No. 706 primed in the traditional way. The canvas was strained in a vertical position then a coat of glue size applied with large sponges. The next day a first coat of white lead primer was applied by brush, followed a week later by a second coat. ‘… It is difficult to find words in which to thank you and Mr Chalk,’ she told him. ‘… So many lost pictures throughout these terrible wasted years, and at last a chance to make up not only some of the loss of pictures, but of health and happiness.’