Oil paints of unknown composition from the 1960s and 1970s on the conservator's desk

Author: Üüve Vahur

Number: Anno 2022/2024

Category: Conservation

ill 1

August Pulst's (1889–1977) painting "Tori Hell" from his series based on the mythology of Tori (Pärnu County) which was completed in the 1970s.

ill 2

Detail of the painting "Tori Hell" showing several shrunken oil bumps in the paint layer that have risen to the surface.

ill 3

The painting "Siiraku Tõnn In The Oak".

ill 4

Detail of the painting "Money Hole Burns" – the image shows the flow marks caused by the slow drying of the paint and the release of the oil.

ill 5

Detail of the painting "Devil in the Devil's Pine Grove" – the damage is especially clearly visible in a photo taken in side lighting.

ill 6

Examples of Soviet-era oil paints bottled in zinc cans for art, sold as a commodity in chemical stores.

ill 7

In addition to the colors shown in the photos, common hues included white, ochre and a few shades of blue and green. Manufacturer's information is visible on the label of the jar.

A collection of mythology-related paintings by August Pulst was sent to Kanut for restoration from the Estonian Agricultural Museum. (ref 1)⁽¹⁾ Most of them only needed general surface cleaning, but many of the works contained oil lumps, both under the paintwork and partially also on the painting surface, which had not dried completely over the years.

Since such damage has been found before on paintings from the 1960s and 1970s, I, as a student at the time at ERKI (Estonian National Art Institute), developed a version of the reasons for their occurrence. Namely, as there was rather limited access to art supplies in the Estonian SSR, supplies were mostly only guaranteed to the members of the Artists' Association.

Students and amateur artists often had to settle for low-quality oil paints (still suitable for art) that were bottled in larger zinc tin cans and sold as consumer goods in chemical stores. The mixing of oil and pigment in such paints was probably quite uneven. This may have created areas in paintings where the higher concentration of oil began to live its own life during the long drying period and created currents and oil drops both in the lower layers of paint as well as on the surface of the painting.

The results of such a process are a headache for the conservator. Visually, they can break the integrity of a painting, but their removal is a complicated process and the results are questionable. Based on experience, I can recommend that the most effective way is to lightly thin the superficial oil lumps with a scalpel and then retouch the surface damage.

The above theory is only hypothetical and would require more in-depth material-based research that could be of interest to students.

¹

References

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1. August Pulst (1889–1979) was an Estonian painter, theatre set designer and folk culture advocate. He received an art education in 1911–1915 at the Riga City Art School, where he acquired the profession of a drawing teacher. Pulst was a member of the Estonian Society of Visual Artists and later a member of the Artists’ Association as well as an active figure on our museum scene. ↩︎