Techniques of Impressionism - Palettes and Paintings

In the late 1860's evidence of Monet's colours shows that he experimented with a wide range of pigments, gradually refining his selection as he clarified his aesthetic preferences. Paintings from the pre-Impressionist years that depict palettes do suggest that the artists employed only a limited number of colours at any one time, perhaps determined by the subject matter. A palette is displayed on the table in Monet's Corner of a studio (1862). It is suggested that the palette is arranged for landscape painting: rectangular, it rests on a portable commercial painting box into which it is designed to fit with a small fixed joint strainer. the few colours on the palette are laid out on the outer edge in a single line with no pre-mixed tints. The layout seems essentially tonal, but with a deep red-brown pigment placed between a pale yellow and yellow ochre. Renoir's portrait of Bazille shows a similar palette - limited and essentially tonal. Overall, palettes of tints pre-mixed for flesh painting were generally the most complex. Although rarely explicit in treatise on landscape paintings, palettes for sketching outdoors needed to be more restricted -- not just in terms of pre-mixing, but in the total number of colours recommended. Plein air painting demanded moment to moment alterations in the colour mixtures on the palette.

A coloured ebauche or block-in - the painting under the broad compositional design for an oil painting or etude - was common practice among Impressionists, although their precise methods varied. In paintings begun or completed outdoors, the ebauche layer was basically the sketch of the painting itself. 'No more than an ebauche,' was a derogatory term among critics for sketchy execution. Sometimes the painter abandoned the painting at the ebauche stage either because he considered it complete, or deemed it unsatisfactory because the particular effect never appeared. At other times, the ebauche was layered with additional paints and saturated in more colour. This work when finished was called an etude or study after nature. Ebauche's could either be coloured or tones of brown. A coloured ebauche had practical advantages, most importantly permanence. With age, the colours remained bright instead of darkening, and hence less overpainting was needed in reprise stage. Also a thicker paste was required to obliterate tonal under-painting.