Authenticity and adulteration: What materials were 19th century artists really using?

Abstract

Documentary sources from the 18th and 19th century indicate that the practice of adulterating consumer goods was widespread. Ample evidence in artists’ manuals, treatises and handbooks as well as contemporary encyclopedias exists to suggest that artists’ materials were not exempt from such fraudulent practices. Pigments, oil, and resins were all reported to have been subject to significant adulteration as well as outright substitution with cheaper materials. This paper discusses the extent of adulteration, specific examples reported, and the adulterants used.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 27 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.