Demystifying Drawings #10
What’s the big deal with blue paper?
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, A Flying Angel (recto); Studies of Hands Playing Instruments (verso), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, A Young Woman Buying a Pink from a Young Man, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
To the lover of drawings, the term ‘blue paper’ might evoke an array of images. To the Italianist, perhaps the drawings of Tintoretto and Veronese; to the ‘dix-huitièmiste’, the Fables of Oudry; to the devotees of Dutch drawing, the figure studies of Govert Flinck and Jacob Adriaensz Backer; and to the Anglophile, the self-portraits of Jonathan Richardson the Elder.
The past few years have seen a revived interest in the appreciation and understanding of blue paper in all its forms. In 2024 alone, readers of this newsletter will have observed last month’s call for papers for a conference, Drawn to Blue, co-organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the University of Amsterdam, and prior to that, the opening of an exhibition, Drawing on Blue, at the Getty Center in January. January also saw the publication of Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers, the product of a conference held in May of 2021, which, amongst other topics, addressed blue paper in its Venetian context. In September of 2021, the first conference dedicated to the use of blue paper, “Venice in Blue The Use of carta azzurra in the Artist’s Studio and in the Printer’s Workshop, ca. 1500–50,” was held and will result in a forthcoming edited volume. This coming autumn, the Courtauld Gallery will host their own exhibition on the topic, Drawn to Blue: Artists’ use of blue paper.
Dr Alexa McCarthy, one of the contributors to Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers and co-editor of Venice in Blue The Use of carta azzurra in the Artist’s Studio and in the Printer’s Workshop, ca. 1500–50, joins our editor to unpick this phenomenon in a two-part feature.
Why do you think have we seen such an interest in blue paper in recent years?
Blue paper is certainly experiencing a moment in the sun- or spotlight! I believe that an increased focus on materiality and the process of making has prompted art historians, conservators, collectors, and curators to look anew at works on paper. Collaboration with conservators also opens new possibilities for understanding drawing materials, of what they are comprised, and their individual histories. You may pull at one small strand, and a wealth of knowledge begins to unravel. There is simply something about the celestial colour that draws the viewer in immediately.
In the early 2010s, I was working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as Collections Management Assistant in the Department of Drawings & Prints and there was a Robert Wood Johnson, Jr. Gallery rotation that featured drawings on blue paper. This installation prompted me to consider how blue paper figures prominently in works on paper collections around the world, but aside from a passing reference, the material itself had been little explored. My interest in blue paper planted the seed for my doctoral dissertation, ‘Carta azzurra / blauw papier : drawing on blue paper in Italy and the Netherlands, ca. 1450–ca. 1660’ (2022). Iris Brahms’ seminal 2015 article ‘Schnelligkeit als visuelle und taktile Erfahrung: Zum chiaroscuro in der venezianischen Zeichenpraxis,’ was a critical step in considering the efficacy and efficiency of the use of blue paper in Venetian artistic practice. Additional publications by Brahms, as well as those by conservators Thea Burns and Leila Sauvage, as well as projects like the Getty’s exhibition have demonstrated the wealth of discoveries made possible by a close examination of blue paper.
How is blue paper made, what are its origins, and when and where was it most frequently used?
Blue, and more broadly, coloured papers can be created through a variety of means, each producing a different result. These types of fabricated coloured paper include: self-coloured paper, in which raw materials such as blue rags produce the colour in the sheet, coloured by inclusion, or the addition of coloured fibres into the pulp base, paper that has been dyed in the beater as the pulp is being beaten, and paper that has been dyed in the vat. Thea Burns and Leila Sauvage have categorised blue paper as follows: variegated (papier chiné), variegated and dyed, or dyed. Variegated blue paper is made with natural-coloured rags with some whiteness, to which the papermaker adds a proportion of blue rags and pulps. To this variegated blue paper, the papermaker could add dye to the pulp to enhance or homogenise the colour, hence variegated and dyed. Dyed blue paper is that which is produced from neutral and white rags that are dyed blue during the papermaking process. The difference between these types of blue paper can be difficult to discern with the naked eye, but often individual fibres visible in the sheet can aid the viewer. My research focuses on paper that was made blue during the papermaking process, rather than that which was prepared later by colourmen or artists.
Handmade blue paper is particularly interesting in that it was produced throughout Europe for the utilitarian purpose of wrapping goods and was widely adopted for artistic purposes. Though artists’ use of handmade blue paper most likely originated in Italy, its association with Veneto is due to the proliferation of its use there by artists and printers during the first half of the sixteenth century. The earliest extant drawing on blue paper is attributed to Emilian artist Giovanni da Modena (ca. 1379-1454/55) in the Kupferstich-Kabinet Dresden, depicting a procession, dating from ca. 1410-1420. The earliest extant mention of blue paper dates to a Bolognese statute of 1389, which serves to codify standards for price, quality, size, and weight, and reveals that blue paper was less expensive to produce and procure. To create the finest white paper, rags needed to be unused and spotless, and these rags were the most expensive to purchase.
The colour of blue paper sheets could be homogenised by the addition of indigo and woad, both of which were strong enough to withstand the papermaking process. Indeed, a Late Babylonian clay cuneiform tablet (600-500 BCE) in the collection of the British Museum bears instructions for dying wool blue and purple (inv. no. 62788), most likely through the use of indigo. Though the plant originates in Asia, it was already imported to Europe during the twelfth century, where Venetians were purportedly the first Europeans to employ indigo as a dye. Indigo and woad were both readily available during the early modern period, with woad being cultivated throughout western Europe. Neither colourant requires a mordant, or substance to fix the dye. Blue was one of the darkest colours available to cover stains so that clothing, which was expensive, could continue to be worn. Black fabric required a succession of dye baths to achieve, making it more costly to produce, especially until the mid-sixteenth century. These are all contributing factors to the prevalence of blue paper.
What are blue paper’s distinguishing qualities and their associated advantages?
Requiring no preparation on the part of the artist, blue paper proved a quick and efficient means through which to render forms in space, capitalizing on the inherent mid-tone of the support. To the sheet’s mid-tone, a sense of three-dimensionality can be achieved through the addition of light and dark drawing materials. The variegated texture of a sheet of handmade blue paper, often with lentils, or clumps of unprocessed fibres, is a welcome surface for friable materials like chalk and charcoal to be subtly blended and applied with varying degrees of pressure to model figures and create atmospheric effects. Ink and wash can be employed to produce results that reflect those of chiaroscuro woodcuts. If we consider some of the artistic innovations associated with blue paper in the Veneto alone, such as those achieved through explorations aux trois crayons in the Bassano and Caliari family workshops, the chiaroscuro drawings by Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) and Paolo Farinati (1524–1606), or the patterns established in Jacopo Tintoretto’s (1518/19–1594) workshop through copying drawings of sculpture and sculptural casts on blue paper, the employment of the material demonstrates how disegno informed Venetian colorito. This is a topic I look forward to discussing with you in next month’s issue.
What artistic innovations are associated with the use of blue paper?
In addition to the innovations I refer to above, our forthcoming edited volume considers the questions surrounding the early uses of blue paper for printing in the Veneto. Further, I recommend the scholarship of Thea Burns, Leila Sauvage, and Iris Brahms on the relationship between pastels and blue paper in the eighteenth century. I am particularly fascinated by the role of blue paper in contributing to the establishment of stylistic identity or its role in stylistic shifts.
Govert Flinck (1615–1660), a former pupil of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669), who was known for his ability to faithfully convey his master’s style in his own drawings, began to employ blue paper as his style changed from Rembrandt’s to that of what artist biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) referred to in part two of his Groote schouburgh (1718–1721), as a ‘clear’ manner of execution, characterized by the conventional ideals of form and symmetry (helder schilderen). Houbraken referred to this style as ‘Italiaansche penceelkonst’ (Italian brushwork).
Govert Flinck’s extant drawings indicate that he began using blue paper only after he was no longer under Rembrandt’s tutelage, as he transitioned towards this ‘clear’ style. A 2016 exhibition at the Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, curated by Judith Noorman and David de Witt, was the first to centre upon the corpus of figure studies on blue paper produced by Flinck and his Amsterdam colleagues, Jacob Backer (1609–1651), Jacob Van Loo (1614–1670), and Ferdinand Bol (1616–1680) in the mid-1640s and 1650s. This exhibition provided insight into the illegal practice of drawing nude female models from life in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Drawing on blue paper was a fundamental part of artistic training and practice in order to eloquently depict bodies in space, whether drawn from life (dal vivo; naer het leven), the imagination or mind, quite possibly derived from an artist’s innate talent or ingegno (immaginazione; uyt den gheest), or from memory (memoria; van onthout). I argue that Flinck’s stylistic transition can be traced to these group drawing sessions exploring the nude female body on blue paper.
Discolouration is a common concern with old master drawings on blue paper and paper that reads to the naked eye as brown may once have been blue. What is the cause of this, and how might one discover a discoloured sheet’s original colour?
Discolouration is typically caused by exposure to light or liquid. Drawings that have been stored in portfolios and, later, solander boxes are often less discoloured than those that were displayed on walls and regularly exposed to light. For example, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682–1754) utilised the inherent mid-tone of blue paper to create highly refined, large-scale head studies that were intended to be displayed like paintings. Having been hung on walls, Piazzetta’s finished blue paper drawings now often look buff or greyish-green due to light exposure. Two sheets by Piazzetta in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art demonstrate this difference. A blue sheet of preparatory studies with a flying angel and hands playing instruments (inv. 1938.388) was likely stored in a portfolio, an intermediary step in the artist’s process, whereas his drawing of a young woman buying a pink (inv. 1938.387), an independent artwork hung on a wall, now looks buff-grey.
Sometimes, looking at the verso of a work on paper or a border that has been protected by a matboard allows you to begin to ascertain how the sheet would have looked prior to discolouration. Certain colourants age better than others and some are more lightfast than others, so this can begin to give a clue as to the colourant(s) present. Knowledge of how the colourant typically manifests can aid in determining the sheet’s original colour. Woad, for example, typically results in fibres that are less vivid and can be slightly greenish. In addition to the colourants of indigo and woad, logwood began to be employed more often in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Indeed, Dutch papermakers eventually maintained their own mills for processing logwood. Logwood does require a mordant and was typically added to the pulp while in the vat. Litmus, derived from European lichens such as Lacca coerulea and rocella and juices obtained from blueberry, violet, safflower, or cornflower also yielded blue dye. The Blue Paper Research Consortium has created a blue paper sampler (website: www.bluepaperresearch.org), comprised of sheets that have been produced and coloured using preindustrial methods and materials described above and can be used for visual comparison. Using noninvasive methods like spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence, described by conservator Michelle Sullivan in the Getty’s publication, are also critical methods of study in determining the materials present and to ascertain how the sheet may have originally looked.
