19th Century Winsor & Newton Archive
With over 175 years of experience developing artists' materials, we are pleased to be able to share our rich history with artists, conservators and historians.
You can now apply for access to our unique archive which documents 87 of our 19th century recipe books. The Winsor & Newton database is the result of a significant four year project carried out by the Dutch Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) and the Hamilton Kerr Institute (a part of the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum).
Mark Clarke* who was largely responsible for the development of the database over this period, has provided a summary here of how the database has developed, its unique significance plus information on how to apply for access.
Further information, including examples of recipes and images, an on-line index, and an application form, can be found by clicking here:
"Dramatic innovations in artists' painting materials took place in the nineteenth century. The palette exploded with new and unprecedentedly intense pigments, produced through the marriage of traditional colourman's skills with new advances in chemistry. New media such as copal and moist watercolours became available, and artists could for the first time buy ready-made paint in tubes. But just how these transforming innovations were developed and manufactured has never been properly understood, despite much research by painters, conservators, conservation scientists and art historians.
This secret history can finally begin to be understood. Since its founding in 1832 Winsor & Newton have been at the forefront of development of brighter, more permanent, and less toxic materials, and among their archives dating from the nineteenth century are eighty-seven hand-written recipe books (containing a total of 17,000 pages) filled with formulas and notes for making pigments, oil colours, tube paints, water colours, varnishes, and other materials, together with details of equipment design, costs and wages - plus a few items personal to Mr Winsor and Mr Newton, such as remedies for gout and toothache! No other historical technical archive of nineteenth century colourmen is anywhere near as extensive and detailed.
Winsor & Newton have now allowed this important collection to be digitally imaged and indexed in a four-year Anglo-Dutch project, carried out by the Dutch Institute for Cultural Heritage (ICN) and the Hamilton Kerr Institute (a part of the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum). Incorporating the indexed digital images into a database has provided an innovative solution to making this unique collection of commercial 19th century paint formulations available to researchers for the first time: the manuscripts themselves being too precious and fragile for use - not to mention containing some secret recipes that are still in use!
The database will be invaluable for authenticity studies, scientific analyses and the care and preservation of historic works of art, and should have a lasting impact on the study of art technology worldwide.
The full database and images may be used (on application) at Tate, the Courtauld Institute, the Hamilton Kerr Institute, and the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague. An index is available online, so researchers can discover whether it contains material likely to be of interest to them."
*Mark Clarke trained in conservation and conservation science at Camberwell College of Arts and the University of Cambridge. He has carried out technical research into artists' materials around the world, with painters' technical recipe manuscripts (medieval and modern) being a particular obsession. He is currently working at the University of Amsterdam on the materials and techniques of the Flemish Primitives.