The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting: With Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters, Revised Edition (Paperback)

by Max Doerner (Author) "GROUNDS are applied to textile fabrics, woods, and the like to make the surface tighter, less absorbent, and more luminous, and so enable the artist..." (more)
Key Phrases: copaiva balsam, chromium brilliant, optical grays, Van Dyck, Frans Hals, Professor Hauser (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The leading authority on the materials and techniques of painting. Index; illustrations. Translated and revised by Eugen Neuhaus.

Language Notes
Text: English, German (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; Revised edition (July 21, 1949)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 015657716X
• ISBN-13: 978-0156577168
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #270,396 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solid bedrock know-how for the painter, June 5, 2001

By	M. Moran "sunnyside44" (sunnyside, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While most curriculums today in art schools will have the words conception underlined, there is a desparate need for the craft of painting to be taught. If you do not want to wait until craftsmanship comes back in style and are a painter, than you must have this book. If you are learning how to better understand the painters of yesterday; you must have this book. If you are curious as to how painters such as Vermeer etc could accomplish want they did, this book is for you. Though the language is sometimes formal the information is so fascinating and inclusive it makes for great and enjoyable reading; Painter or just admirer.

107 of 120 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most important artist manual ever written., August 26, 1998

By A Customer

Max Doerner lectured art students with the most accurate information ever compiled up to 1932. About 1900 there was a big change in the manufacturing of color, Max was the artist's protector. "Art has abandoned the sound principles of craftsmanship and is therefore lacking in a dependable foundation". Max Doerner 1931

1916, THEORY, The last color-wheel (square) of college record was by Church-Ostwald. It has Yellow, Red, Sea Green and Ult. Blue at the corners. It made way for the new coal-tar colors, all pigments were replaced by there top-tone matching colors. Naples Yellow, Rubins favorite, and artists favorite for two thousand years, was replaced by a mixture of Zinc and Ocher. Pigments were moving from the Iron Age to the Oil Age. Church-Ostwald had no regard for transparency/opacity, or raw pigment content. Only the final dried color. This is the way todays pigment manufactures make colors. Clearly, the artists interests are not at heart.

1886, COLOR,

THE FIRST AND LAST PUBLIC STANDARD OF PIGMENT COLORS FOR ARTISTS As noted by Max Doerner.

A. W, Keim, German. "Deutche Gesellschatf zur Forderung rationeller Malverfahren", The German Society for the Promotion of Rational Methods in Painting. They set up control for the pigments in colors found best by the artists, to guarantee the color's characteristics and ingredients. These are the colors deemed necessary by the artists; 1.White Lead, 2. Zinc White, 3. Cadmium Yellow Light, Medium and Orange. (Cadmium Red wasn't discovered until 1909), 4. Indian Yellow, 5. Naples Yellow Light and Dark, 6. Yellow to Brown, Natural and Burnt Ochers and Sienna, 7. Red Ocher, 8. Iron Oxide colors, 9. Graphite, 10. Alizarin Crimson, Madder Lake, 11. Vermilion, 12. Umbers, 13. Cobalt Blue, Native and Synthetic, 14. Ultramarine Blue, Natural and Synthetic, 15. Paris-Prussian Blue, 16. Oxide of Chromium, Opaque and Transparent Veridian, 17. Green Earth, 18. Ivory Black, 19. Vine Black.

Today we still have no exceptable replacements for the Naples Yellows or Indian Yellow Transparents, Golden or Brown.

Turpentine is the best thinner for oil paints. I don't agree with Mayer's Handbook saying that petroleum distilled paint thinner works for fine artwork. Doerner explained in his 1934 book, The Materials of the Artist, how they are unnatural with paints that absorb oxygen while drying. Being refined from a nondrying petroleum oil, they only evaporate, without absorbing oxygen. Petroleum thinners are good only for cleaning brushes of the trade, not the expensive brushes we use as artists. Petroleum thinner will not dissolve the valuable damar varnish either, as turpentine does so well.

You can see now why this book was suppressed after the wars. It was not in the paint manufactures best interest to let this knowledge get back to the new emerging artists.

If you are a serious artist, I urge you to get this book, The Materials of the Artist by Doerner. Compare it to the Mayer's Artists Handbook and see how just information pertaining to new colors is mentioned and the rest of Max's historical work was usurped. Don Jusko

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book for serious arists, August 20, 2003

By	Andrew (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

The language, as inaccurately mentioned in one of the previous reviews, is not that difficult at all. This is not a book for complete beginners, but definitely a must for anyone who considers himself serious as an artist. It provides a very detailed insight into the preparation of materials, the handling of paints and reveals numerous techniques, which were employed by the great masters (not only Renaissance and Baroque, but 18 and 19th century painters and some of the impressionists). There is a separate chapter dedicated entirely to the technique of the old masters. Though, the only drawback I find in this book is that it doesn't spend more time on any of the old masters in particular (it explains their technique quite superficially at times, and only touches the surface when it comes to some of them, so don't expect this book to be about the old masters' technique - it is about technique in general; "the proper way to paint" if you will, with numerous specific examples throughout on how different painters employed this or that method).
Overall it is a very good, informative and well-written book, I deeply recommend it!