The papers in this volume discuss the situation of artists during the early age of industrialization in several European countries, the benefits and challenges that the new materials brought to artistic practice and their effect on the ways in which techniques were taught in the art academies. For innovative artists the new materials were significant, but others were skeptical of the new industrial products and there was a struggle towards the standardization and documentation of working processes, paints and even aesthetic concepts.

Contents: Foreword; Acknowledgements; Feeling the techniques of the past: establishing a link between later 19th-century French painting techniques and their historical European predecessors - Isabelle Nové; The golden age of the living painter 1860-1914 - How debt, default and London's declining art market affected painters in the second half of the 19th century - Sally Woodcock; Shilling vade-mecums: watercolour painting manuals and the advancement of watercolour 1850-1880 - Fiona Mann ; Italian artists self-taught compensation strategies for their lack of technical training: a study on Gino Severini - Margherita d Ayala Valva; The disparity between sources and practice in mid-19th century English church wall painting - Elisabeth Woolley; The use of pigments in 19th-century oil paintings in Portugal: a comparative study of documentary sources and artists' practice - Ângela Ferraz, Marta Félix Campos, Diego Sanches and Leslie Carlyle; Die Farben fließen, die Linien ragen empor, im Schatten glühen die Früchte: the working processes of Arnold Böcklin and Hans von Marées - Wibke Neugebauer; Diego Rivera's revival of encaustic painting: the use of wax in Mexican avant-garde painting - Sandra Zetina; An introduction to a questionnaire concerning painting technique from the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, 1899-1938 - Silke Beisiegel; Evaluation of selected written sources on the painting techniques of Heinrich Campendonk and Heinrich Nauen - Stefanie Meyer and Jenny Annika Nieberle; Between chance and choice: Max Ernst's frottages and grattages on canvas from the Menil Collection, Houston - Ellen Hansbach Bernal and Anikó Bezúr; Poisonous and unstable: iodine-based pigments in the source literature and beyond - Jilleen Nadolny; Metallic paints and modernism: artists writings and documentary sources - Maria Kokkori, Ken Sutherland and Francesco Casadio; Presenting the technical development of painting at the Deutsches Museum, Munich - Kathrin Kinseher; The chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (1853-1932) and his wide network of contemporary art technologists - Albrecht Pohlmann; Die Wiedergeburt der Farbe: Bruno Taut's understanding of color - Stephanie Dietz; How to secure the quality of artists paints? Towards the regulation of artists paints in Germany - Andreas Burmester; Shorter papers from poster presentations; Between art and science: painting technique workshops by Kurt Wehlte - Monika Kammer; Harriet Backer: the artist's paint tubes in Uvdal stave church and her corresponding paintings - Hartmut Kutzke and Tine Frøysaker; Fritz Gerhardt's casein paint: a material for mural and easel painting around 1900 - Eva Reinkowski-Häfner.