Rose Gallery’s glossary explains some of the terms most often used about ‘fine art’: it is not a complete list, and to stop it becoming huge, each entry is only a brief starting point (though if it’s hyperlinked, there’s a longer article or FAQ on our website – just click to go there). Whenever a word is in bold like this, it means that the word has its own entry in this glossary; again, to try to keep things short, rather than repeating explanations over and over again, we invite you to look at that other entry for clarification.

Anyway, we hope it all helps!

Contents hide

A

Academic art

The art of the Academy: specifically, the French Academy of Fine Arts, which set the standard for what was ‘official’ or ‘approved’. It is idealised rather than realistic; classical (this is especially true of the clothes worn: lots of togas, not many trousers) rather than contemporary; and moral rather than louche. Academic art is difficult to summarise in a short paragraph, but you know it when you see it: it is ‘serious art’, very formal in style, uplifting in tone, and meticulously detailed. It stood in opposition to the developments begun with Impressionism in the late 19th century – and lost.

Academy board

Popular in the late 19th century, this is a cheap board used for oil painting, made from several sheets of paper bonded together. Its face is primed with a ground of white lead, chalk and oil. Its back is often painted grey. Compare Bristol board and canvas board.

Acrylic

A medium: a pigment dispersed with acrylic resin, first introduced in the early 1960s. Acrylics are very flexible: almost any support (card, paper, board, etc.) can be used; only a single coat of acrylic primer is required; and they dry quickly. The finished result can resemble a watercolour, gouache or oil painting. Because of the snobbery that so often attaches to convenience, acrylics tend not to have the prestige of oil paintings, and the prices realised are generally lower than a comparable work in oil; like most snobberies, though, it is steadily declining towards acceptance.

After

To say that a painting is ‘after’ someone (e.g. ‘After Sir Thomas Lawrence…’) means that it is based on a particular work by a famous artist, but painted by someone else. This is particularly common with portraits of sitters in great demand (for example, lots of people wanted a picture of the king on their wall, and very obviously the king could not sit for every portrait painted of him: he would get cramp).

Airbrush

A device that applies fixative, varnish or colour by means of air pressure. The effect produced can be anything between a fine line and a diffuse blob. Digital airbrushing works on similar lines, but its purpose is usually to correct or enhance an image (especially modelling photographs) rather than create an effect.

Alkyd

A resin which, when applied to oil paints, speeds up the rate at which they dry. See drier.

Alla prima

Italian for ‘first attempt’ (the French have the same phrase: ‘au premier coup’) this describes a work where the pigments are laid on in a single application, so that the picture is completed in one sitting. This approach goes hand-in-hand with the impasto technique.

Allegorical painting

An allegory describes a subject in the guise of another subject (think of Orwell’s Animal Farm, a novel which used animals to represent humans, and a farm to represent society). In allegorical paintings, human figures represent a state of mind, virtue, or vice. Until around 1800 they were quite popular as discussion pieces: even if you puzzled out the symbolism in the picture, its meaning was not always clear. Famous examples of allegorical paintings include Holbein the Younger’s An Allegory of the Old and New Testaments and Bloemaert’s Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.

Altarpiece

Literally, a piece of Christian art that sits on or behind an altar. It takes the form of a screen or series of panels: if it is made up of two panels it is known as a diptych; if three, a triptych; if several, a polyptych.

Aquatint

A forerunner of the lithograph: this method of producing prints is similar to that of etching, except that acid-resistant resin is used instead of a needle. Thus, instead of having the clean lines of an etching, the resin facilitates a range of tones.

Archival paper

Acid-free paper. It is called ‘archival’ because it is intended to last, and being acid-free helps it to last. It can be made of wood or cotton pulp.

Armenian Bole

A rich, fine, red clay used as a ground on a gesso panel for gold leaf.

Attributed to

This means that a painting is somewhere between being possibly and very likely to be the work of a named artist. Caution should be adopted with works that are ‘attributed’ in this way: if an expert were certain who painted it, they would say so. That said, works which are merely ‘attributed’ are typically very much cheaper than a fully verified work by the same artist.

Attribution

The process of assessing who painted the picture. See: after; attributed to; circle of; follower of; in the manner of; imitator, replica; studio. If expert opinion decides that it is indeed the work of a named artist, it has been positively authenticated.

Authenticated

The real thing. Whether relying on the provenance of the painting, or examining it forensically with such tools as multi-spectral imaging, expert opinion has decreed that the artist presumed to have produced the painting really did so. Naturally, the respect given to expert opinion will depend on the level of their expertise is: for something very valuable, valuers and buyers will want to know who the expert is (and indeed, who paid the expert to perform the authentication).

B

Back glass painting

Or reverse glass painting: a work painted on the back of a sheet of glass. Back glass painting is remarkable not least as the artist literally has to work backwards, starting with what would be the finishing strokes and highlights, and then working in the main colour (otherwise the highlights will be on the wrong side, and invisible to the viewer!). Very much out of fashion since the Great War, there are modern acrylic back glass paintings, but the most interesting are the Byzantine icon examples, especially those from Romania.

Bears signature

This description admits that a signature and/or date was added later, by someone not the artist. In other words, the painting is not what it appears to be, and has only the value of decorative art.

Binder

The substance holding the pigment particles together. For acrylics this will be synthetic; traditionally, oil paint uses linseed oil.

Bleeding

This is where a colour runs or ‘bleeds’ into another colour. While it can be used in oil painting, it is primarily a watercolour technique: such that a second or third colour is applied to a wash while the wash is still wet. Bleeding is never a precise technique, but experienced artists can plan and execute the effect very accurately.

Blending

To soften the hard edges of colours. Just as the watercolorist bleeds his colours into each other, so oils, acrylics and alkyds are blended into each other.

Bloom

Dull, cloudy areas that occur on or underneath a varnished surface. They are caused by excessive moisture: whether because of damp conditions during varnishing, or because the picture has subsequently been hanged in a chilly and draughty (or excessively humid) position. If it appears on the surface of the varnish, it can normally be removed by gentle wiping with cotton wool; if, unusually, it is underneath, the varnish must be removed.

Blotwork

Nothing to do with, as it may sound, ‘blotting up’ too much colour or making a correction: it is an idea propounded by Alexander Cozens (1717-86) that an accidental blot or brush mark on the paper can be an inspiration for a composition. This is not an original thought: centuries earlier in his Notebooks, Leonardo considered whether marks on walls could be incorporated into a mural. More recently, surrealists have experimented with folding paper over a blot of colour, to produce a random shape which could be developed into a work of art.

Body colour

Opaque colours, as opposed to transparent ones.

Bristol board

A stiff, durable, ply-produced cardboard suitable for pen and ink work, watercolour or gouache. Compare academy board and canvas board.

Brushwork

As it sounds, this is the way in which paint is applied. Different media call for different techniques, but when paintings are said to have ‘lively’ or ‘flowing’ brushstrokes, this generally means that the artist has used a small number of varied strokes to achieve his aim (this is hard to describe, but look up a later Frans Hals the Elder painting to see what we mean). Essentially, good brushwork are strokes whose very shape suggests the thing being painted (e.g. gentle, curling strokes for a cloud); mediocre brushwork is repetitive (e.g. lots of little horizontal lines where shape would have been more appropriate) and fails to make each stroke matter.

Buyer’s premium

The commission paid to the auction house. Note that the hammer price and the buyer’s premium are not necessarily the total price to be paid: there may also be sales taxes (in the UK, VAT at 20% upon the buyer’s premium); and if you bid through a website, that website may charge another, separate levy.

C

Cabinet painting

A small, highly-detailed painting kept in cabinets for the pleasure of a host and their guests. The cabinet of curiosities – literally, cabinets filled with oddities collected by their owners – is an extension of the same idea, such that all sorts of items, not just paintings, are stored in the cabinet. Some items so stored were very odd indeed: the diarist Samuel Pepys kept a bladder stone he had had removed as a young man inside his cabinet, for the presumed joy and delight of his guests. For cabinet painting in the sense of painting the box itself, see cassone.

Calligraphy

The aesthetics of writing (in Greek, it literally means ‘beautiful script’). In Western and Central Europe, calligraphy was based upon Latin script and brought to a high level of craftsmanship in religious manuscripts; though the Gutenberg Press, combined with scholars grumbling that they could not read the older scripts, led to a decline in handwriting for its own sake. The most remarkable calligraphy, however, is found in Asia: the highpoint of Arabic calligraphy generally being held as the Ottoman period; while in South and East Asia calligraphy is still a vibrant and experimental area. Mayan and Ethiopian calligraphy are also fascinating areas to explore.

Camera Lucida

Invented by Richard Hooke around 1674, this device deploys a prism to reflect an image onto a sheet of paper. By positioning the prism and magnifying lenses, the size of the image can be reduced and increased. During the late Regency and Victorian periods silhouette artists were in demand to reflect the profile of a sitter onto paper, trace around its edge, and present the resulting drawing as a silhouette portrait. Amateurs also traced such portraits, as did Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. See also camera obscura.

Camera Obscura

While the camera lucida merges an image of a scene and the artist’s hand on paper for tracing, the camera obscura projects a realtime image through a small pinhole (or lens) into a darkened room. It is much larger than the lucida, and while it is older technology (it was probably first constructed by Leone Battista Alberti, d. 1472), it is still in occasional use today.

Canvas board

A heavy cardboard with a cotton or linen canvas glued to one side, its edges folded over to the back. The face is primed in the same manner as an academy board. See also Bristol board.

Carpenter’s pencil

A flat, graphite pencil, with which the artist may draw both thick and thin lines.

Cartoon

A full-size study produced on paper, in preparation for another work. Cartoons can be very valuable in their own right: e.g. the Raphael Cartoons, a series of works by Raphael depicting seven New Testament scenes.

Casein

A milk protein used as a binder. Casein is only water-soluble in the presence of an alkali, thus casein paints once dry are waterproof. It has a long history: a type of milk curd glue was used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

Cassone

Italian for ‘(marriage) coffer’: a box, usually commissioned by the bride’s father, into which the couple’s future possessions were to be placed. During the Renaissance period the panels were often painted, sometimes at great expense; though towards the end of the 15th century the fashion changed towards oak chests which were carved rather than painted.

Ceramic

A small, clay, heat-hardened object. Artists can paint upon them with practically any medium.

Chalk

Used as a drawing material on a dark-tinted paper, or for heightening a wash or pen and ink drawing.

Charcoal

Used in early cave-paintings, Roman artworks, and indeed every period of art history, charcoal remains a popular medium for preliminary drawings. Charcoal is made from heating wood in an environment without oxygen, and the wood used will determine the qualities of the charcoal stick: willow and beech produce brittle sticks, while vine twigs are the softest and blackest. The charcoal is applied to the paper directly, and can then be manipulated with a tortillon, a hog brush, a piece of rag, a plastic rubber, or just your fingertip. A fixative will prevent charcoal smudging.

Chiaroscuro

The contrasting use of light and shadow: artists famous for their use of chiaroscuro include Leonardo, Caravaggio and Rembrandt. Compare this with tenebrism.

Cinquecento

Italian for the 16th century, and referring to the art produced during that period.

Circle of

A painting described as belonging to ‘the circle of’ an artist was painted in the lifetime of that named artist, by someone who imitated their style. While it is pleasant to think that the named and unnamed artist were associated, the work could have been painted by anyone who happened to be alive at the time.

Claude Glass

A small, blackened convex mirror: convex to reduce the tonal range of the scene, and blackened to reflect only the main masses of the subject. The artist sits facing away from the chosen scene and holds the Glass in front of him so that he can look over his shoulder. It is named after Claude Lorrain (1600-82, who is also said to have devised it); the Glass was popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and is sometimes still used today.

Cleaning

Part of the restoration work that goes into paintings. Cleaning is simply that: removing the dirt that accumulates through years of dust, cigarette smoke, and the like. The method of cleaning will depend on the medium of the painting, and requires some specialist knowledge: theoretically, for example, a dampened cloth could safely clean oil painting as oil and water do not mix; however, an individual artist might have mixed his paints with elements more susceptible to the presence of water. Knowledge the way the artist prepared his materials is invaluable in cleaning paintings safely.

Cleavage

Or, flaking, blistering, scaling: this is where the paint or ground is ‘lifting’ (separating) from the canvas. It can be fixed by lining.

Collage

Named after ‘papier collé’ or ‘pasted paper’, collages are art works put together with any combination of materials such as paper, card, textiles, wood and metal fragments, and fur. Compare mixed media.

Colour theory

A whole area of study (indeed, science) by itself, this is the theory of how colours complement each other, and the effects that can be obtained by mixing them. Goethe’s Theory of Colours (1810) was the first extended treatise on the subject, but Leonardo’s notebooks contain comments which would now be understood to fall under colour theory. Note that while some theorists will argue in terms of what a combination of colours should be able to achieve, the most useful work on the subject is based on what imperfect colour pigments actually produce. A colour wheel depicts a range of colours in a ring, with colours beside each other being analogous (weakly contrasting, such as blue and purple) while complimentary colours are opposite each other on the wheel (strongly contrasting, such as blue and orange). Heraldry may be taken as including a colour theory of sorts, in the limited sense that it provides rules on which colours should be juxtaposed and which should not.

Concrete Art

Or non-objective art: artwork made up of geometric motifs.

Conservation

To take steps to preserve a painting. It is a word often used interchangeably with restoration.

Consolidation

A conservation and restoration technique where loose paint is secured with adhesive.

Conté Crayon

First developed by Nicholas-Jacques Conté, they are grease-free sticks of a compressed compound of binder and pigment; the colours being sanguine, sepia and black.

Copy

Unlike a print (which is simply a facsimile) a copy is an accurate rendering of a particular work, in the same medium as the original. If the copy is by the same artist who painted the original (so that they could sell the same image multiple times) it is instead called a replica. Copies of important works will have considerable value if the original painting is lost.

Coquille Board

Or stipple board: drawing paper with a pebbled texture, so that sweeping a soft crayon (coquille) across it quickly and easily produces an effect that looks like stippling. It is used especially by cartoonists.

Cradling

Where the support for a painting is a piece of panel board, this conservation and restoration technique makes use of wood latticework, which is applied to the back of the panel to prevent warping. Before the latticework is applied, the panel is usually made thinner.

Cross-hatching

Two sets of parallel lines drawn in pen or pencil: first in one direction and then across them in the other (hence ‘cross-hatch’); the more dense the hatching, the darker the tone. The same tonal effect can be achieved by using a graver to draw the lines when engraving on wood.

D

Decorative art

Art without any special provenance, produced by an unknown artist, or by an artist who does not fetch high prices. A painting described as ‘decorative art’ is something that is attractive enough, but of no great value.

Diluent

A liquid that will dilute paint to the fluidity required by the artist (e.g. turpentine is a diluent for oil paint). Compare wetting agent.

Drawing frame

A rectangular frame which the artist sets up between themselves and their sitter, at such a distance that it frames exactly the part of the scene the artist wishes to paint (imagine doing the same thing with the zoom on a camera). By so doing, the drawing frame isolates the chosen subject from the background, so that the artist may more easily focus on the subject. The drawing frame is also crossed with wires or threads to form squares, and where the drawing paper is squared in corresponding proportion, the artist can easily sketch the main outlines in correct proportion.

Drier

A substance added to oil paints to hasten the drying, so that all the colours dry at as even speed as possible. Quick-drying pigments include umbers, siennas, ochres and flake white; slow-drying include alizarin crimson, ivory black and vermilion: driers are used to balance the different speeds. See alkyd; and contrast siccative.

Droit de suite

A royalty paid to the artist’s estate: in the UK, to a maximum of 70 years after the death of the artist. It is presently levied at 4% on works sold for more than EUR 1,000, to a maximum payment of EUR 12,500.

Drybrushing

A technique where the brush is loaded with a minimum of paint and lightly dragged over the surface of the canvas or paper to create a ‘scratchy’ effect.

Dutch painting

Referring especially to Dutch paintings of the 17th century, known as the ‘Golden Age’. This is secular art: having little to do with grandiose history painting, instead favouring domestic scenes and bourgeois concerns. Leading painters of the place and period included Rembrandt and Vermeer.

E

Ear wax

In medieval times, ear-wax was used to prepare pigments for application in illuminated manuscripts. This was by no means the most revolting practice employed by scribes: they used urine for the same purpose.

Easel

A stand for holding a painting.

Ébauche

A preliminary underpainting in oil; or a quick sketch in oil paint. If the former, the oil content of the underpainting should be low, to enable the layers of colour on top to adhere properly: if the underpainting is too rich and thick paint is put on top, the varying speeds at which the layers dry will likely cause cracking.

Ebony pencil

A pencil with a thick core of black, smooth graphite, used to produce a wide range of tones.

Échoppe

A needle with its point bevelled into an oval facet, used in both etching and engraving: in the former, it can make lines of varying thicknesses, or to broaden lines made with an etching needle; in the latter it acts as a chisel with a flat or rounded side, used by engravers to efface detail.

Encaustic painting

A mixed media technique, now rarely used, where pigments are added to heated beeswax and then applied to (usually) prepared wood. The word derives from the Greek for ‘a burning in’. It is very difficult to execute, but has enjoyed a recent surge in popularity with artists, not least as the encaustic material has depth and a luminous quality.

Engraving

A method of producing prints by carving a design into a metal plate, traditionally by hand, and then allowing ink to gather in the lines carved as with etching. It is one of the oldest methods of mass-producing images. It is also used to create designs on individual pieces, especially high-value items like gold jewellery. For engraving onto wood, see woodcut.

Etching

The process of using a mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design, which can then be replicated.Traditionally the metal used would be copper, zinc or steel, a plate of which was coated with a waxy ground resistant to acid. The artist scratches away the ground with a graver, exposing the bare metal where a line should appear in the finished work. The plate then has acid washed over it, and the acid dissolves into the exposed parts of metal, leaving behind the desired lines. After the remaining ground is then cleaned off, the plate is inked all over, and then the ink wiped off, leaving ink only in the ‘etched’ lines. It only remains to put the plate and a sheet of paper through a high-pressure printing press and the paper will retain the ink from the etched lines, making a print.

F

Face

The front of something.

Facing

A preliminary technique in conservation and restoration, where tissue and adhesive are used to secure the paint layer (basically, holding it in place so that it does not crack or damage) before the structure of the painting is worked on.

Filling

A conservation and restoration technique, where putty is added to areas of paint loss, after which inpainting may begin.

Fine art

Objects to be enjoyed for primarily for their aesthetic merit rather than any practical purpose (although something like, say, a decorative pen may provide a tactile pleasure in its expertly-engineered ink flow, as well as being visually beautiful). The term ‘fine art’ implies excellence, but all too often it is used in the same way that ‘exclusive’ is: to charge a high price for something very ordinary. Fine art, like modern painting, is a term that means very little.

Fixative

A liquid, sprayed as a fine mist on to charcoal, soft pencil, chalk or pastel to prevent smudging. Too heavy an application can flood and float the drawing away. Caution should be exercised in the case of pastel, as the fixative can alter tone.

Foreshortening

A perspective technique, used to create the illusion of an object receding strongly into the distance or background. This illusion is created by making the object appearing shorter than it really is, so as to seem compressed. In so doing, for example, a human arm can seem to be reaching out from the canvas; though foreshortening effects are generally not so extreme, and are more regularly employed to give depth and solidity to the painting. Foreshortening was one of the most important techniques in moving from the flat appearance and posture that humans have in medieval painting towards the appearance of three-dimensionality in the Renaissance.

Frame

A decorative and protective surround for a painting, usually made out of wood (though the elaborate decoration on frames is very often plaster). Whether a frame includes a mount or glass will depend on the medium used: oil and acrylic generally will not have glass, nor will laminated poster art; watercolours will.

Fresco painting

Frescoes are painted with pigments ground in water and then applied directly on to a freshly-plastered wall: if the plaster is still moist, the method is called buon fresco; if the plaster is dried out, it is called fresco secco. The preliminary drawing is executed on the under-plaster (arriccio); it is usually brushed-in with sinopia. The artist then paints into the top layer of plaster (intonaco). While frescoes are particularly associated with Renaissance artists, the earliest examples are Minoan; some very early examples are painted on small plaster panels rather than walls, so that they could travel with their owner.

Follower of

This describes a work painted by an artist who was alive at the same time or later as a more famous artist, and painted in the same style as that more famous artist. To be a ‘follower of’ implies a greater level of skill than being an imitator of.

Frottage

The technique of taking a ‘rubbing’ (i.e. the result of rubbing a pencil, crayon or similar implement across a sheet of paper), where the paper is laid over an uneven (usually brass) surface, in order to capture an impression of the brass object’s surface on the paper.

G

Genre painting

Everyday scenes of human activity, often painted on a small scale. Dutch painting is especially concerned with genre painting.

Gesso

A mixture of a plaster and glue, applied to panels and providing a hard, smooth, ivory-white surface on which to paint. The first, coarse coat of gesso is the gesso rosso; two or three days later the fine coats (gesso sottile) may be applied.

Gesturalism

The use of energetic, expressive brushstrokes that are intended to suggest the sweeping motions of the artist’s arm. It is especially associated with Van Gogh. See brushwork.

Glaze

A thin, transparent or semi-transparent layer on a painting which modifies the appearance of the underlying paint, giving a deeper, shinier look to the underlying colour. When applied to only part of the painting, it helps to create variety of effect.

Gold ground

A ground either covered or partially covered in gold leaf. The underlying ground is gesso, on top of which is brushed a thin coating of Armenian Bole. Next, an adhesive is applied (normally egg-white with a little water), and then thin gold-leaf is picked up on a wide, soft, hair brush (called a tip) and laid in position. Before it fully hardens, decorative work can be inscribed with patterned iron or steel dies; and when fully hardened a burnisher produces the final sheen. Tempera is best for working on gold, as oil often has adhesion problems. Gold ground is especially associated with icons.

Gouache

Similar in composition to watercolour paint, but with a higher pigment content that renders it opaque.

Grading

Deploying a watercolour wash to achieve a lightening or darkening effect as the colour flows down the paper, achieved by adding more water (for lightening) or less (for darkening) to the brush.

Granulation

An effect that can be achieved with washes when using colours with heavy pigment particles, so that the pigment clings to the texture of the paper and produces a ‘granular’ or grainy effect, rather than a smooth one.

Graver

Or burin: a hard steel instrument used to cut into a metal or wood surface. See etching and woodcut.

Grisaille

A monochrome painting executed in shades of grey, its name being derived from the French word ‘gris’, meaning ‘grey’.

Ground

The surface coating on which the paint is applied: e.g. gesso is the ‘ground’ for a panel.

Gum

A binder: for watercolour, the binder is Gum Arabic; for chalks and pastels it is gum tragacanth.

Gutenberg Press

The first movable type printing system to be developed in Europe, named after its inventor, Johannes Gutenberg. Using cast-metal type-pieces instead of woodblocks, his press was faster and more durable than his competitors, as well as producing superior results. The most famous work produced, The Gutenberg Bible (1455) was a huge success, and surviving copies are among the most valuable books in the world today. For our purposes, the relevance of the Gutenberg Press is the effect it had on illuminated manuscripts: ruinously-expensive manuscripts became far less fashionable, and the art-form of manuscript became marginal. The same fate befell calligraphy in Europe generally, though it has remained more popular elsewhere.

H

Hammer price

The winning bid at auction. It is not the total price to be paid: this will be the hammer price plus the buyer’s premium. Incidentally, when researching prices paid at auction, the sums recorded tend to be the hammer price only.

Hardboard

Or: beaverboard, masonite, Upson board; hardboards are made from wood-pulp and/or waste paper. The front has a smooth, hard surface; the back has a texture much like the back of a canvas. They are suitable supports for oils (if sized and primed) and for acrylics if grounded with acrylic primer. Sizes over 20” x 24” need battening for support.

Heightening

To brighten and intensify an image, usually with white (e.g. white chalk). This technique adds the illusion of light and depth.

Heraldry

An enormous topic, but for present purposes we are talking about armorial bearings: an individual’s ‘identifying badge’ (think of the shield in a painting of a knight). Heraldry has a long history, but the most familiar period will be that of the High Middle Ages through to the Early Modern period. The range of colours (tinctures) used in heraldry is limited: the main tinctures are the metals gold (represented as yellow) and silver (represented as white); together with the colours (blue, green, red, purple and black). There is considerable freedom in the shades used, but the rule of arranging the tinctures is that a metal (i.e. yellow or white) should not be painted on top of a metal, nor one of colours (the other tinctures) painted on top of another colour. So, painting a gold (i.e. yellow) lion on top of a red background is fine; painting a black lion on top of a red background is not. The reason for this rule is that it made the design easier to see from a distance: in the daylight, white and yellow stood out well from the other tinctures. This was important if you wanted to know which side a fully-armed knight was on.

History Painting

Paintings that are primarily about events, rather than people: these may be religious events, military events, or sometimes allegorical subjects. History paintings were seen until the last century (largely because the French Academy of Fine Arts said so: see academic art) as the highest form of art, and accordingly would have an uplifting moral message. Some artists (Goya, for example) were noted for emphasising the suffering of ordinary people in achieving some glorious purpose, and martyrdom is heavily represented in history paintings: an uplifting moral message is not necessarily a cheerful one.

Humanism

A philosophy that centres on humanity, rather than the divine. It was the driving force behind the Renaissance, where it manifested as a move away from the medieval towards Greek and Roman learning. In art, humanism is expressed as an overriding interest in the human form and human activity, most obviously seen in sculpture

I

Icon

The oldest tradition in religious painting, icons are especially associated with the Orthodox Church. Orthodox icons are stylised, intentionally un-lifelike portraits of religious figures, which follow standardised rules of symbolism (for example, the plain gold background that icons usually have represents the radiance of heaven). Gold ground is traditionally used, but icons can be produced in any medium. The two main designs encountered are the Pantokrator (literally, ‘Lord of All’, showing the single figure of Christ) and the Theotokos (‘Mother of God’, showing Mary and Christ as mother and baby); though there are many other designs. The earliest surviving icons date back to the 6th century; today, there is a thriving industry in generic, mass-produced icons, though traditional icon-artists can still be found.

Illuminated manuscript

Christian texts supplemented with decoration, which may be decoration to the letters themselves (the first letter of the first word of a passage, for example, might be especially embellished) or by pictures illustrating the contents of the text. ‘Manuscript’ literally means ‘handwritten’: illuminated manuscripts began circulating around 400 AD, but became far less prevalent after the success of the Gutenberg Press. The word ‘illuminated’ refers the attractiveness of the decoration (indeed, ‘illuminated manuscripts’ are technically only those brightened with gold or silver, though this is a distinction very rarely upheld), and also the uplifting effect of religious art on the human mind. Such manuscripts are generally produced on parchment, though there are a small number of early papyrus examples. Many of the techniques used to illuminate Christian texts were also used to embellish Islamic ones, but Islamic works are generally described as ‘painted’, not ‘illuminated’.

Imitator

Describing an artist who slavishly follows the style of another, more famous artist; sometimes many years after the death of the latter.

Impasto

The use of thick layers of paint or pastel.

Impressionism

A movement named after a single work of art (Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, 1872) and driven by a loose confederation of artists concerned with colour and the way that things actually look (as opposed to how we think they should look), Impressionism became the dominant artistic force until the Great War. Impressionism is, after the Renaissance, probably the most influential approach of all, and its artists had such different individual approaches that it is near impossible to summarise. However, the use of short brushstrokes, unmixed colours, and outdoor painting are all common features. Impressionist works tend to look less ‘finished’ or detailed than those belonging to previous movements, and many were finished in a single sitting (see alla prima). The quintessential Impressionists are Monet, Morisot, Pisarro and Sisley.

Imprimatura

The initial coat of colour applied over the priming layer. Where the artist does not wish to work directly on white (it gives a brightness that might not suit the subject) they may use a tint such as red ochre, burnt umber or cool green.

In the manner of

Describing a work painted in the style of an artist, some time after their death.

Ink Wash painting

An East Asian method that uses black ink in different concentrations to create lights and darks. Some of the techniques used are very similar to those employed in watercolour, but the philosophy is very different: the artist tries to capture the spirit of the subject through a balance of tones, rather than through a full colour range. Such works are often accompanied by writing (see calligraphy). Compare monochrome.

Inpainting

A conservation and restoration technique, where restoration paints are used to restore a damaged part of the painting.

Ivory

Sheets of ivory about 1/16” thick or less have been the standard support for miniature painting. Treated chicken skin has also been used, though it lacks the romance of ivory. Artists today will use any acid-free base, for example, vellum.

L

Landscape

Scenes where the landscape itself is the main subject. To be a landscape does not imply a complete lack of human or animal figures, but any such figures are likely to be small, and not engaging in significant activity. ‘Landscape’ also refers to the dimensions of a picture: it is ‘landscape’ if it is wider than it is tall, and ‘portrait’ if it is taller than it is wide. A round picture is called a tondo.

Lay figure

A jointed wooden dummy that may substitute for the sitter in a portrait. Popular 18th century portrait-painters dressed these dummies in the sitter’s clothes to save their client and themselves the dubious mutual pleasure of keeping relatively still and looking at each other for hours.

Leather

A poor support for oil paint, as leather is very vulnerable to deterioration and climactic change.

Limited edition

A run of prints limited to a particular number. They are normally signed (or at least initialled) by the artist in pencil, together with the individual number (e.g. number 87 of 500). Historically, the lower the number the more desirable the print, as the processes used for replicating the image (e.g. etching, woodcut) gradually wore out and, since the number denotes the order of production, the lower the number, the brighter and sharper the image. With laser printing or other modern processes that do not wear out, the individual number no longer makes much difference unless it is in some way relevant to the image (‘666’ in a depiction of the Devil, or ‘221’ of Sherlock Holmes, will always create extra interest). Limited edition prints can be very valuable, depending on the quality of the paper and materials used, the provenance of that particular print and, of course, the image it contains.

Lining

A conservation and restoration technique, where a new canvas is attached to the reverse of the original canvas for added support. Lining removal is the remedy for the new canvas becoming detached from the original: it is removed and another new canvas is attached to the original.

Limning

Literally, ‘to illuminate’ (as in an illuminated manuscript); also, an old word for ‘drawing’ or ‘painting’ generally.

Lithograph

A reproduction of an image using a stone or metal surface, oil, water and paper; which largely supplanted aquatint following the lithograph’s invention in 1796. See print.

Lot

An item or group of items (perhaps a pair of paintings by the same artist) sold at auction as a single unit. Each unit is given a number – the lot number – which distinguishes it from the other units available for bidding.

M

Mahlstick

A long wooden rod with a pad at one end, used by the painter to steady his hand while working on fine details.

Martyrdom

Death for one’s faith: a common theme in Christian painting. Saints – the moral exemplars of Christianity – were often painted as they were reportedly killed, or so that the way that they were killed is somehow referenced in the painting (the generic symbol of martyrdom was the palm frond). Interestingly, Saint Sebastian is an exception: he is commonly depicted as being killed by arrows, but in fact survived the arrow-incident only to be clubbed to death later on the orders of Emperor Diocletian. Martyr paintings are everywhere, but The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio is a superlative instance.

Masking fluid

Made from gum, this is, as it sounds, used to mask or cover a surface that needs to be protected from paint: usually to preserve small white areas that would otherwise be too difficult to paint around.

Medieval painting

Broadly, a work painted between 450 and 1450, though it often only refers to 1000 to 1400. Note that as the Renaissance arrived in different European countries at different times (Italy in the vanguard, England rather behind), ‘medieval’ covers a later period for English art than it does for Italian art.

Medium

The method in which an artist works: e.g. oil painting, gouache, pastel, pen and ink, etching, collage etc., are all media. In another sense, media may describe an additive: e.g. linseed to oil-paints, egg yolk to tempera, gum to watercolour.

Megilp

Or McGuilp, magilp: an 18th century oil painting medium which was a mixture of linseed oil, mastic varnish and lead driers. It is a jelly-like substance that is slightly cloudy and yellow. Unfortunately, it is liable to make the paint film brittle and cause heavy cracking.

Memento mori

Latin, meaning ‘remember you must die’. This cheerful sentiment was inexplicably popular, not least in otherwise largely secular Dutch painting, where subtle (clocks, glasses of wine, musical instruments) and less subtle (skulls) objects were used as standard symbols to remind the viewer of their own mortality. The moral message was to warn against spending too much time on frivolous wine and song, when one could be working diligently and studying religious texts; indeed, this sentiment is alive and well today.

Metal

Metal sheets (mostly copper) have been used as a base for oils, alkyds and acrylics, where they are de-greased and given some kind of ground. However, paintings on metal are susceptible to damage by temperature change (and if the sheets are thin, by careless handling); so caution should be given to purchasing them if the buyer does not have access to a climate-controlled space in which to hang them.

Mezzotint

A print made from an engraved copper or steel plate, which has been scraped and polished to allow areas of shade and light to be reproduced in ink on the paper. The technique was developed in the 17th century to capture soft gradations of tone from light to dark, and rich blacks.

Miniature painting

A painting not larger than 6” in diameter. They were collected for their own sake, but were also a way of keeping the image of one’s beloved close to hand (such miniatures were usually kept inside gold lockets, no matter how handsome or otherwise the sitter was). The greatest schools of miniature painting flourished in England during the 16th and 17th centuries, led by Nicholas Hilliard, the Olivers, and John Hoskins. Miniatures can be painted in oil, watercolour, gouache and tempera, and some are small enough to fit inside rings.

Mixed media

Simply, more than one medium used in the same painting. It does not mean that all the media are mixed together in the same pot!

Modern painting

A term which means different things to different people, and accordingly has no real meaning at all. Generally it says nothing about the style of the painting in question (and so is not a synonym for ‘Modern Art’, itself a very vague descriptor), merely implying that it had been produced after 1860. It is much safer to avoid the term altogether, and describe the painting itself.

Monochrome

Literally, ‘one colour’. This is most often taken to describe black-and-white images (in the sense that black is the colour and white its absence), but any painting made up of shading in only one colour, whatever that colour may be, is monochromatic (e.g. grisaille for works in grey tones only).

Mordant

The acid into which an etching plate is dipped.

Mount

A card surround included within some picture frames, especially where glass is also included in the frame. Mounts are often decorative, but their main practical purpose is to separate the picture from the glass.

Multi-spectral imaging

The means for viewing a painting in different wavelengths: ultraviolet, visible and infrared. This has a number of purposes: to identify previous conservation work, to see the underpainting and identify which paint and pigments have been used, to identify retouching, and to see any underdrawings and alterations (pentimenti) that may have been made by the original artist. With this new technology, spotting a forgery is much, much easier.

Multiple-tint tool

Confusingly named, as this is nothing to do with ‘tint’ in the sense of colour; it is in fact a rod made to cut up to six lines at a time, for the purpose of engraving (normally wood). It saves time with cross-hatching and creating certain textures.

Mural

Paintings executed directly on to a wall, in media including oils, tempera, casein and acrylic. If the wall is poorly-chosen, or the surface improperly prepared, the results are disastrous for the painting: see the regrettable condition of Leonardo’s Last Supper. See also fresco painting.

N

Nude

Works including one or more naked figure. In western tradition they tend to be expressions of idealised beauty rather than being overtly sexual (as Michelangelo said: ‘the foot is more beautiful than the shoe’), but where they emphasise the sexual they will be termed erotic if they stay within the bounds of fine art, and pornographic if the sexual element overpowers the artistic.

O

Oil

The medium of oil paint: the main oil used in oil paints today is linseed. Other oils have been used with greater or lesser (eventual) injury to a finished work: including clove, hempseed, pine, poppy, rosemary, sunflower, spike, tung and walnut.

Oil painting

Until the 15th century, painters primarily worked in fresco and tempera, but following experimentation by Italian painters, oil painting is now the premier medium. Supports can be canvas, hardboard, panels or prepared paper. Brushes for oils are mostly made of hog bristle, as they have the strength to control the thick colours; palette knives are also used for mixing and application. The artist starts with a thin underpainting and finishes with richer, thicker paint as desired. Heavy impasto and glaze can also be deployed for special effect. When completed and thoroughly dried through (which takes around a year) a resin or wax varnish can be applied to protect and bring out the colours.

Oleograph

A print, textured to look like oil painting. Usually worthless, they are sometimes passed off as ‘real oils’; happily, they are not too difficult to spot.

Outsider painting

A vague term describing works by artists who are ‘outside’ mainstream culture. This can merely mean someone with no formal training, but there is a strong overlap with art brut (‘brutal art’), which is exactly what it sounds like. Homer Simpson once set himself up as an outsider artist, which is why Rose Gallery tends to avoid outsider paintings. Beyond Springfield, ‘art brut’ works include the naive paintings of children, but also prisoners and people certified as insane.

P

Paint loss

A euphemism for damage, referring to paint that should be there, but is not. It can be addressed through filling and inpainting, where the restorer ‘paints in’ what had been there before the paint layer was damaged.

Palette

An artist’s choice of colours. Today, this can be pretty much anything, but in the past the artist was restricted by a much smaller number of available pigments. It is possible therefore to talk about, for example, a Renaissance palette as opposed to a Dutch Painting (Golden Age) palette; and, indeed, to talk about an artist’s palette across their whole body of their work. Renaissance artists used judicious underpainting to make the best of the limited pigments they had access to. More mundanely, the palette is also the board an artist mixes their paints on, and a palette knife is used to clean the palette board, or mix the paints.

Panel

Until canvas became used in the 15th century, this was the main support for a painting. Panels are generally made from wood, and are still used today as they are cheaper and less trouble to prepare than canvas; plus their smoothness (after a ground has been applied) permits finely-detailed work. Traditionally, French painters preferred oak, Italians white poplar, and Germans pine; though all sorts of woods of varying quality have been used.

Pantograph

A set of folding measuring sticks used to scale a drawing up or down, used since the 17th century. When unfolded, a pantograph looks something like a piece of trellis fencing used in gardens.

Paper

Paper only became used in Europe from the 12th century, though it had been developed in China a millennium earlier. Today, artists’ paper falls into two categories: cartridge and rag. The former is made from wood-pulp and is generally used by draughtsman. Rag paper is produced from cotton or linen rags and finished to offer three different three surfaces: hot pressed (a smooth, slightly shiny surface); not (a matt finish) and rough (coarse-grained). Paper tints range from black to white, and commonly also pale creams and greys. There are also heavily-textured papers such as Cox, de Wint, Ingres, and Turner, each assisting the artist to produce different effects.

Papyrus

A form of paper used by the Egyptians. It was made from the reed cyperus papyrus: strips were overlaid each other, soaked with water, pounded, and finally dried.

Parchment

Treated animal skin (for example vellum, the premier parchment, which is made of calf skin): it was the principal support for writing until paper came to Europe in the 12th century.

Pastel

Sticks of dry colour with a minimum of binder, so as to keep their bright, fresh impressions almost indefinitely. They are made from pure pigment mixed with an inert filler and a small amount of gum tragacanth, casein or skimmed milk. The pastel stick’s shape is formed by a pressure mould. Pastels are used much like chalks, and were much beloved by Degas (think of his ballerina pictures). Pastel works are fragile: particles of colour can fall off the paper if it is violently transported, and fixatives generally do not help as they change the tone and tints.

Pen

A drawing and writing implement with a long history: Saint Isidore of Seville described a quill-pen in the 7th century, and the hand-cut quill (the feather taken from birds such as geese, swans and turkeys) was the main ink drawing instrument until the 19th century. Steel nibs started to appear late in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th had replaced quills; the earliest example of a metallic pen, however, was found at Pompeii. Oriental pen and ink art is still produced using traditional pens cut from thin bamboos.

Pen and ink

As it sounds, this is work produced with an ink pen on paper, perhaps incorporating techniques such as washes. Famous pen and ink artists include the children’s illustrator Edward Ardizzone and illustrator Sidney Paget (of Sherlock Holmes fame).

Pencil

Pencils as we now know them (essentially, wooden sticks with a graphite core) were first produced in Britain and date from the end of the 17th century; though it was the French inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté (1755-1805), who developed the process of mixing a clay with the graphite to produce a range of hard and soft pencils. The same man was responsible for the Conté crayon.

Pentimento

From the Italian for ‘repentance’, a ‘pentimento’ is detail in an artwork since painted over by the artist (hence ‘repentance’ in the sense of the artist changing their mind). This could be a repositioning of the main figures (as in Caravaggio’s The Cardsharps), or perhaps a detail that has been painted out in the final version. Today, pentimenti are usually identified by multi-spectral imaging; but if the top layer of the medium (usually oil) acquires a higher refractive index it can become more transparent, and allow the naked eye to see the earlier version underneath.

Perspective

The illusion of making a two-dimensional painting look as though it is three-dimensional. There are two basic techniques: linear perspective uses converging lines and vanishing points (as in the technical drawing children learn in school) so that objects that are supposed to be far away are painted proportionately smaller, and closer objects proportionately bigger. Aerial perspective (also called atmospheric perspective) uses colour and detail: objects that are far away look cooler or bluer, will be less detailed, and painted with softer edges. Perspective as we now think of it is essentially a Quattrocento invention: medieval paintings and earlier look ‘flat’ by comparison.

Pigment

The thing which gives a paint its colour. Now that there are so many artificial pigments, paint exists in any imaginable colour; but earlier artists were much more restricted. Indeed, Renaissance artists were still using chalks with the same mineral pigments used in the Stone Age, and their range of pigments was hardly changed from the Medieval period.

Priming layer

The layer between the ground and the paint, which helps to seal the ground. Not every work with a ground has a priming layer, though without it the finished work may appear too matt.

Print

A facsimile of an original work. A print can be made by a myriad of methods both manual and automatic (see lithograph and mezzotint, for example) but unless otherwise stated the print will be an inexpensive method worked onto inexpensive materials. Also, unless it is a limited edition, the number of prints available will be unlimited (and if unlimited it is properly called an open edition).

Pochade

A quick sketch of a landscape made in the open air; perhaps to be used as a reference for a more detailed work that the artist will paint in their studio. Artists who paint outdoors usually bring a pochade box, which is a suitcase like container that will hold the artist’s materials (easel, etc.) and protect the sketch against the weather while the artist is working.

Portrait

A work where the main subject is a person, or a group of persons. If the person shown is the artist who painted the picture, it is called a self-portrait: Rembrandt famously painted himself throughout his life, and is one of a number of artists whose face we can see age as their career progressed. ‘Portrait’ also refers to a painting’s dimensions: it is ‘portrait’ if it is taller than it is wide, and ‘landscape’ if it is wider than it is tall. It is therefore possible to have a group portrait which is, confusingly, landscape-shaped. Happily, few sitters are fat enough to require landscape-shape on their own account.

Poster art

Art that advertises. The modern form of the poster dates back to the 1840s when colour lithographs reached the point that they could be mass-produced, but the high-point of poster art was in Paris in the 1890s (think of Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge posters). Decorative posters for the home are not poster art in the traditional sense of the term, as they are not trying to sell anything to the public: posters for the home are better thought of as a type of print.

Poster paint

Or poster colour: a cheap distemper paint that uses Gum Arabic or glue size as its binder. Because it is a cheap paint and generally the first that children try, there is a certain amount of snobbery attached to poster paint, but it produces bold, bright effects that catch the eye from a distance.

Provenance

Where a painting has been. A ‘distinguished’ provenance denotes a history of being shown in a respected exhibition, owned by a noteworthy collector, sold by a reputable auction house or gallery (perhaps all of the above); at any rate, where the picture has been is properly documented. Such provenance will add considerably to its value, not least because it reduces the risk of buying a forgery.

Q

Quadratura

A trompe l’oeil technique, which fools the observer into believing that the room extends beyond the physical surface of the painting. It is based on 17th century perspective theory and makes particular use of foreshortening. It is especially associated with ceiling frescos in Italian churches: see for example Andrea Pozzo’s ceiling of the Jesuit Church in Vienna.

Quattrocento

Italian works, dated between 1400 and 1500. Leonardo and Michelangelo both painted in (and after) this period.

R

Realism

A movement originating in France in the 1840s, this was a break with Romanticism and a move towards depicting ordinary scenes (see for example Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet, 1854, which simply shows three men and a dog meeting in a dirt road) populated with people who were not obviously wealthy or privileged. Realists were concerned with producing works that looked objectively real: an aim intensified with the new medium of photography, which for a while seemed a threat to the art of painting.

Recto

The front of a sheet of paper. The back is the verso.

Religious paintings

Generally referring to Christian art rather than the art of other faiths; in particular: icons, murals, altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts.

Renaissance (the)

Literally meaning ‘rebirth’, this is a flourishing of western art, especially that associated with Italy, between the 14th and 17th centuries. It brought a renewed interest in antiquity (stirred by artists migrating from Constantinople before its Fall), new technology (like the Gutenberg Press), new techniques (especially those relating to perspective) and a new philosophy (humanism). It is the bridge between the medieval and the modern, and encompasses what is often considered the high-point of western art. The trinity of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael were the quintessential Renaissance artists.

Replica

A copy of a picture, made by the same artist who painted the original work.

Restoration

Like conservation, the treatment processes used to prevent and, if possible, reverse deterioration of a painting. For the different processes, see: consolidation; cleaning; cradling; facing; filling; inpainting; lining; transferring; varnishing.

Retouching

Much like pentimenti, these are changes made by the original artist when they were finishing a painting. However, the word has become a synonym for inpainting, a conservation and restoration technique. It is ironic that ‘retouching’ used to refer only to brushstrokes made by the original artist; now it refers only to brushstrokes made by someone else.

Rocker

A broad-ended tool with a sharp-toothed curved base, used to ground a mezzotint plate; so called as it is applied to the plate with a ‘rocking’ motion.

Romanticism

A movement at its peak between 1800 and 1850, which ‘idealised’ the world by concentrating on the imaginary, the high-flown and he individual; while ignoring the bleaker realities of the Industrial Revolution. The poignant Fighting Temeraire, 1839, by Turner epitomises the melancholy romanticism of a famous ship on her final journey up the River Thames before being dismantled. But perhaps the most evocative romantic work is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: with its odd mix of spirit and science, its wild landscapes, and above all its tragic anti-hero, it sums up the heightened reality that romantics tried to depict.

Roulette

A small-toothed wheel set in a handle, used to work dotted areas onto a metal plate. A second use is for helping to transfer a large cartoon to a wall, a canvas or a panel. The roulette is run along the main lines on the cartoon, laying a series of tiny holes. When the cartoon is placed in position the artist dabs along the lines with some powdered graphite or charcoal wrapped up in muslin; they can ‘join the dots’ when the outlines are completed.

S

Scorper

A tool used to scoop out wooden fragments when carving or engraving.

Scraperboard

Or scratchboard: a medium reinvented in France and Britain in the 19th century where the artist ‘scrapes’ into its surface, to reveal another colour underneath (e.g. scratching on a white surface reveals black underneath). The results on scraperboard are easily photographed, and it became very popular in newspaper-printing and for illustrations in scientific journals. While not as famous a medium as, for example, watercolour, it is possible to create fine lines and very detailed work. Notable scraper board artists include Peter Blake, Virgil Finlay and Scott McKowen. Compare the older method of sgraffito.

Scumble

A thin coat of opaque or semi-opaque colour painted over an area of an oil painting without completely obscuring the underpainting. It is used to create a dulling or softening effect.

Semi-nude

As it sounds, a nude figure partly-clothed. It usually applies to a female figure with her breast exposed.

Sfumato

Meaning ‘smoked’ in Italian, this is where the artist has painted a gentle gradation of tone to create a soft, hazy effect. Leonardo used the technique in creating the ambiguous facial expression of Mona Lisa: because the corners of her eyes and mouth are so softened and undefined, she seems at one glance to be smiling but, when you look again, not to be.

Sgraffito

The technique of scratching or cutting through the top layer of colour so as to expose the ground or support, or to reveal a layer of colour underneath the uppermost layer. The technique is usually applied to plaster or stucco on walls, or in ceramics. Scraperboard works on the same principle, though in a different medium.

Shade

The opposite of tint: tints are created by mixing a colour with white; shades are created by mixing it with black.

Siccative

Like a drier, a siccative is a substance used to speed up the process of an oil paint drying. Unlike a drier, it is a simple accelerating agent, and is not designed to dry all the different colours the artist has used at an even speed. See also alkyd.

Silhouette

So named after Etienne de Silhouette (1709-67: an unfortunate Minister of Finance whose austere policies made him a by-word for anything that was cheaply done) silhouettes are outlines of objects filled in with a single block colour. They were popular as a method of producing cheap portraits, though the materials used were not always inexpensive: at one end of the scale silhouettes were produced by cutting out a shape from a piece of paper and sticking it onto a second sheet of contrasting colour; at the other they were meticulously painted onto ivory. Because the silhouette’s shape can be produced by tracing, most silhouettes were produced by amateurs, sometimes using camera lucida or candida obscura to assist. There were, however, highly-skilled artists working as silhouettists, including Wilhelm Gross and Arthur Rackham. Though the heyday of the silhouette passed with the Victorians, they have proved a remarkably enduring art form, even making the leap to cinema thorough the silent films of Lotte Reiniger and, more recently, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.

Sinopia

A red-brown chalk used for preparatory drawings in fresco-painting. It has been in use since antiquity, being exported through the port-town of Sinop, in modern-day Turkey.

Sitter

The person or persons appearing in a portrait, so called because they spent most of their time sitting down without being able to do anything.

Size

In the sense of paint, this is a substance that acts as a filler or a protective glaze (glue, for example, can be a size).

Sketch

Preparatory work for some other work that the artist intends to be the ‘finished product’. They are generally executed in drawing materials (pen, pastel, etc.) on paper, but they can be in any medium (though if not a drawing the medium will normally be specified, e.g. an oil sketch to a watercolour sketch). The sketch might just be a small part of an intended painting, or it may itself be quite a detailed work. Sketches can be hugely valuable: Leonardo’s notebooks are priceless, and galleries will often display sketches of famous works held in other collections.

Stereochromy

Or: water-glass painting and mineral painting: this is a technique for painting murals where the pigment is applied to the plaster or stonework, and the paint sealed with ‘water glass’ to preserve it and enhance the colours used. ‘Water glass’ is sodium silicate, called the former because it is soluble in water.

Still Life painting

Arrangements of domestic objects, such as kitchen utensils, foods, flowers and other plants. Such arrangements allow the artist to demonstrate their technical skill, and also to experiment (the Impressionists used still life as a genre well-suited to exploring new techniques). Of the five traditional genres, still life was considered the least inherently worthy (it came behind history painting; portraits; genre paintings and landscapes, in that order), but nonetheless had moral overtones: lavish and opulent displays were often painted to remind the viewer of their perishability and spiritual irrelevance (see memento mori).

Stippling

To create an image with dots. This can be achieved in a variety of media and applied with a pen or brush, but the idea is always the same: the more densely packed the dots, the darker the apparent tone. The most striking form of stippling is Pointillism, as developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac in the 1880s: because the painting is made up only of painted dots, there is no blending of the paint, and the colours appear very bright.

Stretcher

The wooden frame used to stretch a canvas when preparing it for being painted on; the stretching itself is done with stretching pliers, which grip the canvas while it is being positioned. Small wooden wedges can be driven into the four corners of the canvas to increase the canvas’s tension, making the paint much less likely to crack later.

Studio

The place where the artist works. A very successful artist might have more than one studio, if they undertake significant work in different countries. However, ‘painted in Mr X’s studio’ does not mean that Mr X painted it: perhaps Mr X supervised while his pupil painted, but perhaps Mr X never saw the painting at all. Very famous artists with teams of apprentices and associates would produce a great number of paintings where the famous artist would add the final details (especially the faces) to a work produced by one or more of his team. Rubens is a good example of an artist who ran such a workshop with great success.

Support

The material onto which a painting is painted (canvas, for example).

T

Tempera

A medium where the pigments are mixed with a water-soluble binder. Some say that unless the binder is egg yolk, it is not true tempera; but others will allow that different parts of the egg, casein, glue and gelatine count just as well. It is a durable medium, but has been largely replaced by oil painting.

Tenebrism

Quintessentially used by Caravaggio – but also by artists such as Georges De La Tour and, later, Joseph Wright of Derby – this is a dramatic effect where the majority of the painting will be dark, and only one or two areas painted brightly, to create strong contrast and draw the eye to the highlighted parts. The word derives from ‘tenebroso’ or ‘murky dark’, though the effect is perhaps better summed up through the Latin ‘tenebra’, or ‘shadow’. Tenebrism is strongly associated with chiaroscuro, and while both will result in predominantly dark paintings, there is a significant theoretical difference between the two: chiaroscuro is a shading technique adopted to give an appearance of solidity; tenebrism is not concerned with making the picture appear three-dimensional, but only with dramatic effect.

Textiles

Woven fabrics used for painting: most obviously linen and cotton canvas, but also cambric, silk, hessian, sailcloth, sacking and synthetics. They all call for some form of grounding with an oil, glue or acrylic-bound primer.

Tint

The opposite of shade: tints are created by mixing a colour with white; shades are created by mixing it with black.

Tondo

Referring to a painting which is round in shape, from the Latin ‘rotundus’, meaning ‘round’.

Tone

The lightness or darkness of the colour used.

Tortillon

Rolled-up paper used for blending pastel, chalk or charcoal. It may also be used for mopping small areas when using watercolour paint.

Tragacanth

A gum binder used in watercolour paints and pastels.

Transferring

Probably the most specialist of the available conservation and restoration techniques: this involves removing the original support and transferring the paint and/or ground layer to a new support. It can be furiously expensive to perform.

Trecento

Italian works, dated between 1300 and 1400. Giotto, credited above all with ushering in the Renaissance, painted in this period.

Trompe l’oeil

Literally in French to ‘deceive the eye’, this is illusionistic painting intended to create a three-dimensional image from its two-dimensional support (see for example the delightfully-titled Escaping Criticism by Pere Borrell del Caso, 1874, where a boy appears to be climbing out of the picture frame). The techniques used to create trompe l’oeil effects are many and various, but see for example foreshortening. Also, compare quadratura.

U

Underpainting

Not a painting underneath another, but a ‘first coat’, onto which the richer layers of paint and fine detail are laid.

V

Varnishing

A protective coating used for several major media (pastel is an example of a medium not usually varnished) which has the further advantage of ‘bringing out’ (i.e. enriching) the pigments used. Varnish can be added to oil paintings after completion, and then again about a year later when the paint has thoroughly dried through for extra protection. Varnishing is, however, not always helpful: the Royal Academy deployed ‘gallery varnish’ that created an old, brown, mellow effect at the expense of actually being able to see the painting properly. Indeed, modern synthetic varnishes are generally better than the traditional organic ones.

Venetian painting

Referring to a hugely popular and influential school of the 15th and 16th centuries, headed by such artists as Bellini, Titian and Tintoretto. As the name would suggest, it was centred on Venice, still the most painted city in the world. It is impossible to summarise so briefly its various achievements, but they include the pioneering use of canvas, a new psychological approach to portrait painting, and creating and popularising new genres (mythological paintings and the female nude).

Verso

The back of a sheet of paper. The front is the recto.

W

Wash

To paint a dilute watercolour onto a support: usually, paper. The essential technique is to use a large (mop) brush to apply the colour in horizontal strokes. For the effects that can then be achieved, see for example blending, grading and granulation; alternatively, the colour can simply be mopped with a dry brush or rag.

Watercolour painting

Archetypically, this means applying transparent colours to stretched white paper; watercolour more broadly includes, for example, gouache and poster paints, and watercolour can be painted onto other supports other than paper.

Wetting agent

As odd as it may sound, water is not very good at wetting things. A ‘wetting agent’ is a liquid added to watercolour to reduce surface tension and improve the flow of the colours. Oxgall is the traditional agent, but now synthetic alternatives also exist.

Woodcut

A method of producing prints, invented more than two millennia ago in China. A woodblock is carved such that the parts where ink is to leave an impression remain, while the rest is cut away. The method of reproduction will depend on the materials used: if paper, from around 1480 onwards printing presses were used, or beforehand stamping (which is as it sounds: the paper goes underneath and the block is ‘stamped’ on top of it). Before paper became widespread, fabrics were used as appropriate. With Far Eastern printing, however, the most popular method was rubbing, which reversed the stamping method by putting the woodblock underneath the paper, and rubbing on top of the paper or other material to enable ink to stick to its underside.

Art Glossary

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