GROUNDS FOR EASEL PAINTING OF 20–21th CENTURIES. RESEARCH, ANALYSIS, DATING CAPABILITIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/uad.2022.4.1Keywords:
expertise, grounds, X-ray fluorescence analysis, infrared spectroscopy, fluorescence.Abstract
The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the 20–21th century’s grounds for easel paintings. The authors summarized literary data from the beginning of industrial production and distribution of various types of fillers and binders, analyzed the grounds of dated paintings by American, European, Soviet and Ukrainian artists. The use of a complex of optical and physico-chemical methods, which included optical microscopy, X-ray fluorescence analysis and infrared spectroscopy, made it possible to identify the main components of grounds and small amounts of tinting pigments in their composition. It was established that lead white as the main filler of grounds has been used since the second quarter of the nineteenth century by the mid-1920s, mixed with zinc white found in the grounds of paintings until the mid-twentieth century, small amounts of lead white were identified by the early 1990s. Commercial grounds based on pure zinc white have been made since the 1880s and dominated during the 1920s and 2000s. Blanc fixe has been common as a ground filler since the 1830s by the late 1940s, found in titanium dioxide composite grounds in paintings from the 1950s to early 1960s. Lithopone was industrially produced and used as a ground filler during the 1880s and 1940s. Composite titanium white has been identified in oil and emulsion grounds of a number of works from the 1940s to the 1960s, since the early 1990s TiO2 becomes the dominant filler in grounds. Our studies of dated paintings showed that in the first or second thirds of the twentieth century, emulsions, oil and animal glue are more often used as binders in grounds. Since the early 1960s grounds based on polyvinyl acetate (PVA) emulsions are distributed in the USSR; commercial PVA and acrylic copolymers grounds have been identified since the early 1960s and have been widely used since 2010. The introduction of acrylic grounds occurs in the mid-1950s, and from the late twentieth century alkyd and acrylic grounds dominate the artistic materials market. The obtained data are important for art critics and restorers and can be used to clarify the dating of paintings by artists of the XX–XXI centuries.
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