Secret Lives of Great Artists by Elizabeth Lunday

Author:Elizabeth Lunday [Lunday, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59474-745-8
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2014-03-25T04:00:00+00:00

COLORS TO DIE FOR

We can thank the Industrial Revolution for the brilliance of van Gogh’s paintings. In the nineteenth century, chemical research resulted in the development of some twenty new pigments, many of which were much brighter and more stable than those previously available. Van Gogh took advantage of all of these innovations, writing Theo that it was false economy to try to make do with the older, cheaper paints.

Unfortunately, many of these pigments might have contributed to his ill health. The brilliant Emerald Green, with its concentrated copper/arsenic base, is highly toxic and was sold as an insecticide to kill rats as well as a paint. It’s been theorized that van Gogh’s neurological symptoms were caused by arsenic poisoning, although the lead in flake white and the mercury in vermilion could also have played a role—particularly when you consider that, in the extremes of his madness, van Gogh ate paint directly from the tube.

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