Oil painting was a development of the late Middle Ages and flourished over later centuries. The first known oil painting has been dated to the 11th century, but oil paintings were relatively rare until the 15th century.
In that period, pure eggs yolks were used to provide the medium to carry color pigments, in a method known as tempera painting.
With the livelier art of the Renaissance improvements in the quality of linseed oil and the availability of solvents such as turpentine allowed for the use of oil, first as a varnish.
Tempera paintings were fixed with an oil varnish glaze, with Flemish painter Jan van Eyck using his technique in the mid 15th century.
By the mid 16th century, painters in Venice had adopted oil as the main medium, using layers of oil glazes on linen canvas rather than on wood panels.
Oil on canvas became the preferred method in the late Renaissance and Baroque periods. In the 17th century the “great masters,” including the Flemish Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the Spaniard Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) and the Dutch Harmens van Rijn Rembrandt (1606-1669) all worked in oil on canvas.
Rembrandt developed methods of showing light and dark shadows through layering and glazing that gave extraordinary, excitement and depth to his work .
In the 18th and 19th centuries, painters would often coat the canvas with a dark gray or black undercoat of oil paint before starting the image.
Another development on the 19th century was the production of pre-pigmented oil marketed in small tin tubes. With a supply colors, a portable easel, and a prepared canvas, the artist could move out of the studio and paint in the outdoors.
This technical development contributed to the bright external landscapes of the impressionist school of the late 1870s and early 1880s, with varied techniques of brushwork and vivid colors reflecting the outdoor setting.
The school of Impressionists was so called after the 1872 work by Claude Monet (1840-1926) called Impressions, Sunrise.
History of Oil Painting
