The Conservation Department

Conservation Department

Conservation of Cruikshank’s The Worship of Bacchus:

Demon Drink  |  Before Treatment  |  Conservation Treatment  |  Cruikshank's Painting Technique

Cruikshank's Painting Technique

Cruikshank obtained the stretcher and canvas for the painting support ready made from Winsor & Newton, the well known manufacture and supplier of artists' materials and equipment. This fact is known from their colourmen's stamp on the reverse of the canvas. The wooden stretcher comprises three separate sections, joined together with removable wooden battens on the reverse. The stretcher would then have been easy to dismantle each time the canvas had to be removed and rolled for transportation.

Reverse of painting before treatment
Photo: Tate Photography

The canvas is a plain weave linen with closely woven fine threads. Microscopic examination and analysis of samples showed that Winsor & Newton had prepared the canvas with a thick glue-size layer and a single priming layer of lead white and chalk bound in oil. Over this Cruikshank probably applied the second thin priming layer present. It is a very pale pink colour, consisting of lead white, chalk and a small amount of vermilion.

Cruikshank, essentially a graphic artist, did not paint many oil paintings. The technique he used for this painting is very straightforward. Cruikshank had already worked out the composition in a watercolour. The depicted scenes were initially drawn in pencil on the priming. (In many places the graphite drawing remains visible through the thinly applied paint.)

Tiny paint samples taken for analysis showed that over the drawing there is a thin under-painting mainly in brown and yellow-brown washes of oil paint. On top of this the images have been more clearly defined using thicker paint and colours that have brush markings in many places. The pigments that have been identified from analysis are lead white, chrome yellow, vermilion, cobalt blue, Mars brown and reddish Mars brown.

Detail of white highlights

Impastoed highlights of white or tinted white have been generally applied with vigorous squiggles, dabs and blobs. These are a distinctive feature of Cruikshank’s technique, adding liveliness to the paint film and composition.

There is a final thin layer of natural resin varnish over the paint. A layer of dirt in between the two, shows that the varnish was applied sometime after the painting was finished.