On June 9, 2021, this first lecture of a two-part series (view Part 2) explored the nature of color in Japanese painting and prints. Renowned scientist and head of the Scientific Laboratory of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Marco Leona, shared the studies of his department and collaborations with art historians and curators. With the Met’s outstanding collection of screens, paintings and woodblock prints, he has had a wonderful chance to delve deeply into the science and materials of pigments for these works.
Japanese painters of the Edo and Meiji period achieved a rich visual language within the constraints of a simple, almost minimalist technique. A relatively narrow range of pigments thinly bound in hide glue afforded painters such as Jakuchu, Kōrin, and Hokusai surprisingly evocative possibilities. At the same time, countless, now anonymous, master printers translated into multiple copies the designs created by individual artists, simultaneously developing the most advanced color reproduction technique available at that time anywhere in the world.
Japanese artists of the Edo and Meiji period made a concerted effort toward technical advancement, quickly adopting new pigments and adapting their technique to attain new visual effects. From Kōrin’s technical choices in Irises at Yatsuhashi, to Hokusai’s experiments with Prussian blue in his paintings, from the sophisticated use of indigo and Prussian blue mixtures in the Nishimuraya-printed Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, to the selective introduction of synthetic dyes in Meiji prints, Japanese art shows that materials and meanings are tightly interconnected.
This talk series highlights the connection between aesthetic effects and technical choices by discussing the results of scientific examinations of Japanese paintings and woodblock prints in private and public collections in the United States carried out over the last 15 years. These results were obtained by using a combination of nondestructive and microanalytical techniques, including FORS, XRF, SEM, Raman and SERS.