Ian Fairweather and water-based emulsion house paints in Australia 1950–64

Abstract

A study of 13 paintings dating between 1950 and 1964 by artist Ian Fairweather (1891–1974) is used to explore the painting materials available to the artist in the 1950s and early 1960s in Australia. Research explores the key dates of 1939, when Fairweather acknowledged he had an allergy to oil paint (turpentines) and thus discontinued its use, and the date of 1958, when he is first recorded as using water-based synthetic polymer emulsion house paints. Research into release dates of water-based commercial paints through the 1950s and early 1960s is presented, and discussed in relation to preliminary analysis using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and Pyrolysis Gas Chromatography Mass Spectroscopy (PyGCMS). In Fairweather’s paintings, oil-modified alkyd binders are found throughout the 1950s, despite the artist’s own assertions that he stopped using solvent-based paint in 1939. Discussion includes the possibility that the oil-modified alkyds found in paintings from the 1950s were oil in water emulsions. Poly vinyl acetate binders have been found on Fairweather’s paintings from 1958 and this aligns with release dates of water-based synthetic polymer paints in Australia.