Abstract
The Bocour Artist Oil Colors Company was the most innovative twentieth century U.S. artists’ paint manufacturer. Although best known for their introduction of Magna Plastic Artist Paint, the company also manufactured several lines of oil paints: Bocour Hand Ground Artist Colors, Bocour Artist Oil Colors and Bellini Artists’ Oil Colors. The popularity of Bocour Company products and the close relationship between the owners and many artists active in New York City in the mid-1900s suggests that Bocour oil paints would be present in artworks, but none have been positively identified to date. We show that a Barnett Newman paint trial in Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies bears six paints with XRF elemental signatures that closely match those of Bocour Artist Oil Colors paints. This product line was available by 1959, and although undated the test swatches on the paint trial seem to relate to 14 works of art dating from 1954 to 1967. This stylistic dating suggests that the paint test not only represents a rare example of Newman planning colors schemes and compositions, but may also document his exploration of the feel and colors of a new paint line.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank many individuals and institutions including: Dr. Narayan Khandekar, Kate Smith, Mary Lister, and Elizabeth Sirrine of Harvard Art Museums, for allowing access to the Annalee and Barnett Newman Foundation materials held in the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art; Ellen Davis, for digital photography of the paint trial; Dr. Barbara Berrie and Michael Skalka of the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), for providing access to Bocour Bellini paints held in the Art Materials Research and Study Center; Robert Murray, artist and colleague of Barnett Newman, for sharing his knowledge and providing samples of Newman’s materials; and the Cecily Horton Professional Development Fund and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for supporting conservation science at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and the Menil Collection.
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Rogge, C.E., Epley, B.A. (2019). A New Vocabulary of Color: Bocour Oil Paints and Barnett Newman. In: van den Berg, K., et al. Conservation of Modern Oil Paintings. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19254-9_10
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