Well, I took the leap and decided to go to New York to visit the Salmagundi Club. I couldn’t attend the opening because it coincided with the start of the Red Wing Plein Air Festival, of which I was a featured artist. I wasn’t going to go at all until I discovered this one thing: the Salmagundi has the largest artists palette collection in the country! The Salmagundi Club, the oldest artist club in the United States, has had some pretty big name members in it’s 154 year history including George Inness, William Merritt Chase, Childe Hasaam, NC Wyeth, Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. Throughout it’s history members have donated their palettes. An artist’s palette is a great forensic tool in understanding the painting process of an artist. The layers of paint indicate what colors were first and what colors were last, marks indicate the size and shape of a brush, colors and layout can indicate whether the artist leans towards color or value, etc.
I wasn’t disappointed. Below is the palette of George Inness, the great Hudson River painter. The bonus was finding his brushes included with the palette! Notice how the brushes were constructed. Two are premodern, meaning that the hairs are attached by cord winding rather than metal (second photo below). Remember that all European artists (and by extension American artists) used this kind of a brush until the second half of the 19th century. Why is this noteworthy? Cord wound brushes were only round. Flat brushes came later with the invention of the metal furrule as shown in the last photo. That means every brush stroke made before the second half of the 19th century, basically the majority of all painting, was made with a round brush. Remarkable!
Here are a few more palettes…
