News and editorial about Vermilion Gallery — from Exhibo and from the gallery.
Editorial coverage on Exhibo
Safavid kitabkhana practice, Mughal imperial albums and four named folios in New York and London collections you can still study
Persian miniature painting is court book illustration in Iran and Mughal India: opaque colour on sized paper from royal kitabkhanas. The essay maps materials, patronage and masters from Timurid Herat to Safavid Isfahan and Akbar's Delhi, with four museum folios close-read and links to Indian art survey pages on the site.
Opaque watercolour on gum arabic and chalk, from Turner highlights to Matisse cut-outs, plus designer versus artist ranges
Gouache is water-based paint made opaque with extra pigment and white filler, bound in gum arabic like watercolour but drying to a flat matte film you can rewet. This guide covers chemistry, designer versus artist ranges, working method, history, named museum works, conservation risks, and what tubes cost today.
Binders, drying chemistry, glazing and conservation through museum examples, from van Eyck’s oil films to post-war acrylic on canvas
Oil paint dries by oxidation; acrylic dries as water leaves a polymer film. That difference governs layering, glazing, studio safety and how conservators clean ageing surfaces. This comparison walks binders, process, mid-century adoption, named museum works, and typical material costs without turning into a shopping list.
Linseed oil, aged varnish, dirt and unstable pigments each yellow or darken a picture, and cleaning reverses only some of those changes
Old pictures look brown for mixed reasons: soot, oxidised varnish, yellowed linseed oil, and pigments that have changed in the film. Conservators can lift dirt and later varnish in many cases. They cannot restore copper greens gone brown or lead white turned transparent. The chemistry, the history of noticing it, and the limits of treatment.
How infrared reflectography, IR photography, X-radiography and MA-XRF record underdrawings, paint structure and elemental maps
Carbon drawing absorbs infrared; lead white blocks X-rays; calcium and mercury light up on elemental maps. This guide sets infrared reflectography beside IR photography, X-radiography and MA-XRF: physics, a study protocol, the people who built the kit, and campaigns at the NGA, Rijksmuseum, Getty and Met.
A change of mind in paint: how pentimenti form, why oil films reveal them, and how to tell an artist's revision from later overpaint
Van Eyck shifted a hat brim. Rembrandt painted out helmet feathers. Manet uncrossed a barmaid's arms. Those traces are pentimenti: the painter's own revisions, distinct from later overpaint and from a second picture on a reused canvas. Museum studies in London, Madrid, Amsterdam and New York show how the term is used.
Seventeenth-century Dutch painting from republican trade and Calvinist homes to specialised genres, four close readings, and afterlife.
Haarlem banquets, Delft harbours, and Amsterdam militia halls show how Dutch Golden Age painting sold specialised genres to a merchant republic. Trace the market conditions, hallmarks, key painters, four landmark works read closely, later criticism, and why the “golden” label now draws museum debate.
After Impressionism’s light: structure, symbol and personal colour in Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and their peers.
Post-Impressionism is a cluster, not a single school. This guide shows how painters kept modern subjects and a bright palette while pushing toward structure, symbol and expression — how the term arose, where it differs from Impressionism, and what those experiments fed into twentieth-century painting.
From the end of Rome to the edge of the Renaissance: Early Medieval, Romanesque and Gothic as working tools, not one style.
Medieval art spans more than a thousand years of European making. This guide separates Early Medieval, Romanesque and Gothic habits, follows patronage from monasteries to courts, and anchors the story in works you can still see — without collapsing the Middle Ages into a single cathedral silhouette.
