How the paint tube let Impressionists paint outdoors

HostI was looking at some of those famous paintings of haystacks and lily pads the other day, and it hit me how much of a shift that was. For a long time, artists mostly stayed inside their dark work rooms, but then suddenly, they were all out in the fields catching the sunlight. How did a tiny piece of metal change where they could actually stand and work?

GuestIt sounds like a small thing, but before that little metal tube came along, painting outside was almost impossible. If you were an artist in the seventeen hundreds, you couldn't just buy a tube of blue or red at a store. You had to be a bit of a chemist. You would buy these chunks of colored earth or ground-up stones and then spend hours grinding them into a fine powder. Then you’d mix that powder with oil by hand. The real headache, though, was how to keep that wet paint from drying out once you made it. There was no such thing as a cap or a lid for paint.

HostSo if they didn't have jars or lids, what were they putting the paint in?

GuestThis is the part that usually grosses people out. They used pieces of pig bladders. They would take a small bit of the bladder, drop a glob of wet paint inside, and tie it shut with a piece of string. It looked like a tiny, squishy ball. When you wanted to paint, you’d take a sharp tack or a thorn and prick a hole in the skin to squeeze the paint out. But then you had a hole in your bag. You’d try to plug it up with a little bone or a sliver of wood, but it never really worked. The paint would leak, it would dry out, and the bladders would often just pop and make a huge mess in your bag. It made it really hard to go for a long walk and paint what you saw.

HostThat sounds like a nightmare to carry around. I can see why they stayed in their shops. But surely someone could've just used a glass jar?

GuestJars were heavy, they broke easily, and you still had the problem of the paint drying out because of all the air inside the jar. Plus, you couldn't squeeze a jar to get every last bit of that expensive paint out. Then, in the eighteen-forties, an American painter named John Goffe Rand came up with the idea for a tin tube with a screw cap. It changed everything because it was airtight. For the first time, paint could stay wet for weeks or even months. You could throw a dozen different colors into a bag, hike up a hill, and not worry about your paint turning into a crusty mess or exploding on your clothes.

HostSo the tube gave them the freedom to move, but did it actually change the way the paintings looked? I mean, a tube is just a box for the paint. It doesn't tell you how to move the brush.

GuestWell, it actually did change the look. Because these tubes were being made in factories, they started putting new, man-made colors in them that were way brighter than the old ones made from crushed rocks. We got these glowing greens and deep blues that didn't exist before. And because the paint was squeezed out of a tube, it was thicker. It had a different feel to it. The artists who loved the outdoors, the ones we now call the Impressionists, started using that thickness to their advantage. They didn't blend the colors together smoothly like the old masters did. They just dabbed the thick paint straight onto the cloth.

HostI guess if you're outside, you're also racing against the sun. You don't have time to sit there and grind up your own powders while the light is shifting.

GuestThat’s the heart of it. The sun moves fast. If you want to catch the way the light hits a river at four in the afternoon, you only have a few minutes before that light is gone. The tube meant they could just unscrew a cap and start dabbing. They could work fast enough to keep up with the world. One of the most famous painters from that group, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, even said later in his life that without those tubes of paint, there would've been no Impressionism. He felt that the whole style was born out of that one piece of tin.

HostIt feels a bit strange to think that such a huge move in art history came down to a manufacturing trick. It almost makes it feel less like a grand vision and more like they were just using a new gadget.

GuestSome people back then actually looked down on it for that very reason. They thought factory-made paint was cheap or that it took the craft out of the work. They liked the old way where an artist knew exactly what went into their colors. But the trade-off was worth it. The artists got to leave their dark rooms and actually see the world in real time. They weren't just painting a memory of a tree; they were sitting under the tree. The tube gave them the chance to be messy and quick and bright. It turned the whole world into their work room.

HostThe thick globs of blue and yellow on those canvases are really just the leftovers of a race against the setting sun.

GuestThese tin tubes turned the artist from a chemist stuck at a desk into a traveler out in the wind and the grass.

HostThe bright light in those old paintings started with a simple screw cap.