Art Materials Timeline

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Art Materials Timeline – Antiquity to the 20th Century

	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
Antiquity 30,000 BC - 500 AD	c. 30,000 BC Cave paintings, Chauvet, France and Altamira, Spain c. 15,000 BC Cave paintings, Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain c. 1000 BC Rush brushes and wood palettes, Egypt	c. 30,000 BC Rocks used as tools for engraving and drawing c.15,000 BC Hollow bones used like airbrushes to blow colors onto cave paintings c. 16,000 BC Brushes of animal hair and macerated twigs used c. 2000 BC Egyptians used animal hair brushes	Animal fat Wax Blood 1000-901 BC Brush and ink painting (lacquer painting practiced since early ages in China)	5000 BC Woven cotton and linen, Egypt (The Shroud of Turin is of 8 oz. per sq. yd. linen) 1500 BC Papyrus, Egypt 1253 BC Linen on looms, England c. 105 AD Paper created, China 205-201 AD Parchment produced	c. 1.8 million BC Stone tools c. 3500 BC Writing and the wheel invented c. 6 BC-AD Jesus Christ c. 140 AD Venus de Milo sculpture
Middle Ages AD 500 - 1400	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
Middle Ages AD 500 - 1400	Frescoes, wood paintings, fabrics, illuminated manuscripts 650 Oil painting, Nara, Japan; Mosaics, frescoes, Jerusalem 1266 - 1337 Giotto (the first blended brush work) 1370 - 1426 Hubert van Eyck 1390 - 1441 Jan van Eyck 1406 - 1469 Lippi Chinese and Korean artists settle in Japan	600 Brush making for sumi painting in Nara, Japan 990 Badger hair brushes bound by silk thread; bristle brushes tied to a wooden handle; donkey hair set in eagle quills c. 1410 Pigments stored in pigs’ bladders	Water Wax Egg tempera c. 1410 Oil paint developed by Jan Van Eyck In China, lamp black ink used in wood block printing	500-1400 Natural parchment used for illuminated manuscripts 712 Chinese captives teach Arabs paper making 794 Paper mill, Bagdad 900 Paper mill, Cairo 1247 Montgolfiers builds paper mill, France Wood panels with and without fabric adhered	700-875 Vikings cross the Atlantic to America 868 Chinese print first book using woodblocks 1100 Construction of cathedrals and castles begins 1174-1320 Tower of Pisa constructed 1438 Gutenberg invents the printing press
Renaissance 1400 - 1600	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
Renaissance 1400 - 1600	1433 - 1494 Memling 1450 - 1516 H. Bosch 1452 - 1519 Da Vinci 1471 - 1528 Durer 1475 - 1564 Michelangelo 1477 - 1576 Titian 1483 - 1520 Raphaël 1577 - 1640 Rubens 1599 - 1641 Van Dyck 1599 - 1660 Velazquez	1400’s Brush-making guilds formed in Holland; quills used as ferrules for brushes in England	Casein Pig bladders used for storage of mixed paint c. 1450 Pigments mixed with gum Arabic are formed into pastels, Italy	c. 1500 Canvas stretched on wooden frames 1590 Paper mill, England Da Vinci earns part of his living painting cloth banners for festivals	1492 Columbus in America 1533 Manual for production of paints and inks published in Augsburg, Germany 1543 Polish scientist, Copernicus, observes that the earth revolves around the sun
17th & 18th Centuries	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
17th & 18th Centuries	1600’s Golden Age of Flemish Painting c. 1631 - 1645 Taj Mahal, India 1606 - 1669 Rembrandt 1632 - 1675 Vermeer 1699 - 1799 Chardin 1703 - 1770 Boucher 1704 - 1788 Latour 1725 - 1805 Greuze 1748 - 1825 David	Artists’ brushes with tin ferrules made in England 1747 Brush makers in Manchester, England form first brush makers protective society 1767 Brush making begins in Kumano and Kawajiri using horse, deer and white goat hair	1662 Friedrich Staedtler creates the first wood-cased graphite pencil 1720 Ancestor of the Lefranc & Bourgeois Company opens an art materials shop, Paris 1765 Kaspar Faber’s technique of binding clay/graphite and encasing in wood, Germany 1790-1795 Conté and Hardmuth give us colored pencils	1650 Paper mill, Philadelphia, by William Rittenhouse c. 1700 Wood panels and fabric covered wood panels used as painting supports 1798 Nicholas Robert of Paris invents the first paper making machine, later called the Fourdrinier	1793 Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin 1664 Old Holland Oil Paint Co., Den Hague 1720 Roché Pastel Co. 1790 Koh-I-Noor 1794 Conté 1766 Reeves, England c. 1780 Girault pastels, France
19th Century	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
19th Century	1800’s Age of Watercolors 1860’s Birth of Impressionism	Industrial brush making begins Hog bristle squirrel, polecat fitch, horse hair, goat hair and badger hair are common brush materials	c. 1800 Lithography invented, Germany 1800 “Crayola” is introduced 1837 Zinc oxide white introduced as Chinese White by Winsor & Newton 1822 First metal collapsible tube for artists’ paint	c. 1800 The preference for fine art paint supports shifts from wood panels to fabric alone Commercial pre-stretched canvas available	1800 Crayola, USA 1832 Winsor & Newton, England 1853 F. Weber, USA 1865 Jacques Block, Belgium 1867 Bourgeois, France 1868 Friedrichs Canvas, USA 1870 Roché/Girault pastels 1874 F.W. Devoe, USA 1881 H. Schmincke, Germany 1887 Sennelier, France 1899 Talens, Holland
20th Century	Visual Arts	Tools	Mediums	Surfaces/Supports	History
20th Century	1907 Cubist Exhibition, Paris 1929 Empire State Building, NY 1913 Post-Impressionism and Cubism introduced in NY 1916 Dadaism, Switzerland 1963 Pop-Art featured at the Guggenheim 1965 Op-Art, Minimalism, etc. 1974 Christo’s Running Fence	1969 Synthetic brushes introduced by Robert Simmons 1984 MacPaint, Apple Macintosh computer paint program 1995 Colour Shaper introduced	c. 1900 Water-miscible oils, PVA and Polyurethane paints c. 1950 Felt tip pens introduced 1952 Magic Markers 1956 Liquitex, first commercial acrylic polymer emulsion artists’ paint, produced by H. Levison. 1992 Grumbacher introduces MAX Oil, the first water soluble oil paint	Synthetic canvas introduced 1928 Winsor & Newton offers seventeen canvas types, mostly linen	1974 Lascaux Co., Switzerland c. 1906 Grumbacher, USA 1965 LeFranc & Bourgeois are merged, France