A TIMELINE OF ART MATERIALS
Technology includes both high and low versions in the development of art materials and processes. Let’s take a look.
20,000 BC
3,000 BC
400 BC
300–980
Cave dwellers paint on stone
walls with pigments. Paints
are made from charcoal,
manganese ore, clay and
lime, animal blood, and iron
compounds. Earliest ceram-
ics may have
been used
in social
activi-
ties or
religious
rituals.
Egyptians paint
on paper-like
material made
from papyrus
plant fibers and
use watercolors
to decorate tomb
walls and ornamental objects.
Encaustic (melted
beeswax and
pigment) painting
is used widely
in Greece and Rome.
Clay artists in Teotihuacan,
Mexico, produce a variety
of pottery using fresco, an
unfired technique, to
decorate ritual vessels.
9,500 BC
4,000 BC
2,700 BC
100 AD
Fired clay
vessels are
created in
Japan.
Potters in the
Middle East
develop the
pottery wheel.
Egyptians
create
the first
ceramic
glaze.
Chinese artists
use paper
made from
mulberry and
bamboo trees.
1700s
1600–1700s
1500
1300s–1500s
1100s
Oil pastels begin
to be used for portraiture, zinc white
is first made and
sold in France,
and watercolor
techniques were
developed in
England,
France, and
Holland.
Oil paints are
universally used
for easel painting.
1500s
Delftware is produced in
Holland. It is a special blue
and white tin-glazed pottery
in which the Dutch added a
second firing to the Italian
single firing technique.
Egg tempera is
used on wooden
panels, primarily
in Italy.
Ultramarine blue,
ground lapis lazuli,
is used as pigment
by the Assyrians
and Babylonians.
1400s
1200s
800
Egg tempera
becomes
obsolete, but
is revived later
and used into
the twentieth
century.
Egg tempera is
highly developed
in Flanders and the
process for purifi-cation on linseed
oil is published.
Paper made
from linen
fiber comes
into use.
European
artists begin
to use paper
made from
cotton or
linen rags.
1700s–1800s
1797
1800s
1828–1830
1870
Artists become
increasingly dependent
on commonly manufactured art materials.
Chrome colors
first used in
red, orange,
and yellow.
Lead pencil in wooden
case comes into use;
zinc white introduced to
American artists although
it is not widely used until
the 1900s.
Cadmium replaces
chrome in yellows
because of its more
permanent qualities.
Cerulean blue
is introduced
in Europe.
1724
Prussian blue
is introduced
in England.
1750–1800s
Rose madder
is introduced.
1820s
Cobalt blue
is introduced
in France.
1834
Chinese white is
prepared for watercolor
by Winsor & Newton of
England.
