Applying thinner layers of paint, or glazes, developed optical effects that were widely used into the late 19th century, but have now fallen from favour.
Böcklin
They tried to lure Odysseus and his crew to their deaths, and the same with Jason and his Argonauts. With the head of a beautiful woman and the legs of a bird, their singing was alluring to sailors.
Tiny jewels fashioned from blobs of white paint, Rembrandt’s textured paint layers. Turner’s scratchings, and van Gogh’s textured Wheat Field with Cypresses, seen in fine detail.
Some of the most haunting images in European art were painted using a mixture of pigment in molten beeswax for use on their mummies when they were interred at Fayum in Egypt.
Derived from the dull yellow-green of chromium oxide, it was widely used by Impressionists, and well into the 20th century. Less toxic, but an environmental hazard.
Painting captions give information you’d never get from looking at an image, and that in turn tells you even more. This series looks beyond mere images at the media behind them.
Indian Yellow was allegedly made from the urine of cows fed on mango leaves, dried into balls, but was outlawed as it cruel to the cattle. Chrome Yellow was widely used by the Impressionists.
From Botticelli’s Primavera to floral meadows of the Spring, with Millais, Millet, Böcklin, Walter Crane, Dennis Miller Bunker, and an unknown Italian Impressionist.
Plague ravaged cities across Europe and much of the world, cholera came from contaminated water supplies, then there were influenza and tuberculosis.
A survivor from Ulysses’ crew gives a brief account of the encounter between Ulysses and the Cyclops Polyphemus, and its outcome.
The Eclectic Light Company 