Manet’s Oil Painting Technique. His use of black as a colour.
Manet’s Oil Painting Technique How to Paint in Oils Manet’s use of juxtaposed areas of dark tone, and his use of black-as a colour, and not as a tone (which are characteristics of much of his work, particularly of the 1860s) was wholly different from that of’ many of’ his contemporaries and demonstrates a very different technical procedure. Many mid -19th century painters favoured the use of bitumen, because of its beautiful, transparent brown colour. They loaded canvases with this unstable pigment and produced works which were superficially dramatic and flashy. The comments of Quentin Bell, although he is talking specifically of mid – l9th century British painters, are equally relevant to many French artists. He uses the term “slosh”…