Analysis of tempera paints from the period around 1900

Description

The project team reviewed sources describing tempera painting by Cuno Amiet and his Swiss contemporaries. Tempera paintings mentioned in sources and currently accessible to researchers were subjected to structural tests and to microscopic and chemical analysis of binder content in paint layers. (Detailed information on the analytical section can be found under the two subprojects Reconstruction and analysis of two tempera recipes used by Cuno Amiet [completed in 2009] and High-resolution FTIR/FPA-imaging of artists’ tempera paints [completed in 2013].) Analytical findings were consistently matched against descriptions in historical sources.

Order publication

Publications

Karoline Beltinger «‹Hermanjat l’alchimiste›. La technique picturale d’Abraham Hermanjat après 1900», in: Abraham Hermanjat. De l’Orient au Léman – Vom Orient zum Genfersee, Ausst.-Kat. Musée historique et des porcelaines und Musée du Léman, Nyon, 2012, pp. 197–209.

Karoline Beltinger, «Die Tempera um 1900 in der Schweiz», in: Kunsttechnologische Forschungen zur Malerei von Cuno Amiet (1883–1914), Karoline Beltinger (ed.) (KUNSTmaterial 3), Scheidegger und Spiess; Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Zürich, 2015, pp. 36–50.

Karoline Beltinger, Ester S.B. Ferreira and Karin Wyss, «Die Tempera im frühen Schaffen von Cuno Amiet», in: Kunsttechnologische Forschungen zur Malerei von Cuno Amiet (1883–1914), Karoline Beltinger (ed.) (KUNSTmaterial 3), Scheidegger und Spiess; Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Zürich, 2015, pp. 51–71.

Karoline Beltinger, «The Pereira tempera system», in: Painting in Tempera, c. 1900, Karoline Beltinger and Jilleen Nadolny (eds) (KUNSTmaterial 4), Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft, Zürich / Archetype, London, 2016, pp. 85–117.

The project was supported by:

Swiss Re, Zurich