The works of painter Vincent van Gogh are some of the world's most prized pieces of art, partly for their vibrant tones, but some of those colors have been fading in recent years. Art researchers and scientists have been using X-ray microscopes to examine Vincent van Gogh paintings that have been losing their color and determine why once brilliant yellows have been turning brown in several key works of van Gogh and other artists of the late 19th century.
The results of the study were published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. The problem comes down to the chromium in a yellow pigment called yellow chrome which undergoes a chemical reaction when exposed to ultraviolet lighting (including sunlight), turning the painting brown. The paint, which gave works including van Gogh's Sunflowers paintings, their sun-splashed beauty has been known to darken under sunlight since the early 19th century. What's new is that now scientists have uncovered why this happens and can work to gain potential clues as to how to prevent it.
Pigments were far from standardized in van Gogh's era and paints used varied both from painter to painter and time to time. Researchers had to track down historic tubes of chromium yellow in order to conduct their tests. Chromium yellow is toxic and no longer used. Artists switched from using the paint in the 1950s. The researchers were able to find three tubes of the yellow paint and hastened the aging process by exposing it to 500 hours under a UV lamp. They found that only one of the paint samples turned brown, one belonging to Flemish artist Rik Wouters. The color change was similar to that seen in the Van Gogh painting. During the course of the hurried-up aging process the color became darker and darker. Within three weeks, the bright yellow had become chocolate brown.
New Chemical Research Uncovers Why Van Gogh Paintings Turning Brown
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