« Day to day color » is the theme of the 4th edition of the artistic festival Normandy Impressionist, multidisciplinary event co-organized by around thirty Norman municipalities, in order to celebrate the impressionist heritage of the region and to discover the contemporary artistic scene. Through several sites and exhibitions combining paintings, photographs, documents and light projections, this event invites visitors to discover and celebrate the beginnings of outdoor painting. Leaving his studio, painting landscapes of the countryside or the sea, representing the change of seasons: these are the subjects that animate the XNUMXth century impressionist painters.

As part of the exhibition « The artisans of color » offered at the Museum of Fine Arts of Saint-Lô, the service from the INPI Archives ready thirteen patents representing major technical developments that allowed the painter to leave his studio.

A look back at inventions that have forever changed the practice of painting!

The XNUMXth century was marked by a desire to lighten materials of all kinds to make them more mobile and transportable. For painters, two components are essential to get out of the workshop: suitable painting equipment and a lightweight, folding easel. Thus was born in the XNUMXth century the paint in tube. Until then, each painter had to prepare a paste from pigments for all the colors he wanted to use. Impossible to leave the workshop in these conditions!

Hilaire-Desire-Léon Colcomb filed on April 5, 1862 the patent of invention n°1BB53680 for " a kind of bladder or metal tube suitable for enclosing the colors ". In April 1884, Maurice Chaulin creates " a new campaign easel system » which he files under the number 1BB161306. 

The famous Renoir also participates in the modernization of his discipline by filing on July 10, 1877 a patent for “a decorative paint in white and tinted cement for panels, architraves, friezes and ceilings ". More surprisingly, the Peugeot brothers imagine " a mechanical system that can tilt in all directions the garden, country artist parasols » which they deposited in July 1883.  

The invention of the paint tube, the portable palette and the mobile easel are a revolution and allow painters to take their equipment wherever they want to paint. « on the pattern » that is to say directly on the place of the landscape that they wish to represent.

Initially planned from April, the exhibition opens its doors to visitors from July 14 to November 15, 2020. The opportunity to discover that innovations concern all areas.

Useful information :

Exhibition "The artisans of color"

Fine Arts Museum of Saint-Lô, place du Champs-de-Mars, 50010 Saint-Lô

From July 14 to November 15, 2020