The paint tube: How a forgotten invention set light free
Imagine an April morning in 1874, in Nadar’s photography studio on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The walls are covered with a hundred canvases that seem to have been painted in haste, as if their creators had tried to capture the fleeting moment before it slipped away. Among them, a small Mo
By Artedusa
••7 min read
The paint tube: how a forgotten invention set light free
Imagine an April morning in 1874, in Nadar’s photography studio on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris. The walls are covered with a hundred canvases that seem to have been painted in haste, as if their creators had tried to capture the fleeting moment before it slipped away. Among them, a small Monet painting, Impression, Sunrise, draws mockery: pure, barely mixed dabs of colour that give the impression of a coloured fog rather than a landscape. A critic, Louis Leroy, bursts out laughing: “Impression! I thought so. I said to myself, since I’m impressed, there must be some impression in it…” The word stuck. Impressionism was born.
Yet behind this artistic revolution lies an invention as modest as it was ingenious: the metal paint tube. Without it, Monet could never have painted his Water Lilies outdoors, Renoir would not have captured the dancing light of Bal du moulin de la Galette, and Pissarro would not have roamed the fields of Pontoise with his box of colours under his arm. The paint tube did not merely change technique—it transformed the way the world was seen.
The curse of pig bladders
Before 1841, painting outdoors was a feat. Artists carried their pigments in pig bladders—animal pouches swollen like balloons—which they pierced with a pin to extract the paint. Once opened, the colours dried within hours, hardening like leather. Painters had to work quickly or resign themselves to grinding pigments on the spot, a tedious task that took hours. “We spent more time preparing colours than painting,” Monet later admitted.
The pigments themselves were temperamental. Some, like emerald green, contained arsenic and darkened over time. Others, like Prussian blue, gave off a pungent odour that caused headaches. Artists depended on colour merchants, who sold pigments of uneven quality, often cut with chalk or sand. “A painter was first and foremost a chemist,” Renoir summed up.
It was in this context that an obscure American, John Goffe Rand, filed a patent in 1841 for a “metallic container for holding and preserving paints.” His invention? A small tin tube with a screw cap, which kept colours sealed from the air. The first tubes were rudimentary—they leaked, rusted, and cost a fortune. But the idea was there: for the first time, a painter could carry their entire palette in a box, like a writer with their pencils.
The day Monet saw the light
In 1859, the Lefranc company in Paris began selling ready-to-use paint tubes. For artists, it was a revelation. “Before, I had to prepare everything the night before, like a cook,” Monet recalled. “Now, I can go out with my tubes and paint from life, like a photographer with his camera.”
This freedom changed everything. In 1869, Monet and Renoir painted side by side at La Grenouillère, a riverside dance hall on the Seine. The two friends, perched on folding stools, captured the same scene: bathers, boats, and that golden light shimmering on the water. Renoir, with his vibrant strokes, seized the energy of moving bodies. Monet dissolved contours into liquid reflections. “It was as if they were painting with pure light,” a critic later wrote.
The paint tube also allowed an explosion of colour. The Impressionists abandoned the dark tones of academic painting for vivid pigments: cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, viridian green. “Nature isn’t in black and white,” Monet said. “Why paint shadows grey when they’re blue, violet, or even pink?” This new palette shocked critics, who saw it as an “orgy of garish colours.”
Pissarro’s magic box
Camille Pissarro, the elder statesman of the group, was one of the first to fully embrace paint tubes. In 1872, he settled in Pontoise with his family and turned the countryside into his open-air studio. “I paint like a peasant ploughs his field,” he said. Every morning, he packed his wooden box—a flat case lined with twenty tubes—and set off in search of light.
One day, a villager caught him painting a wheat field. “You’re wasting your time, Monsieur Pissarro,” he said. “This wheat will be cut tomorrow.” The artist smiled. “Exactly. That’s why I’m painting it today.” This obsession with the fleeting, with the passing moment, was made possible by the tubes. Without them, Pissarro would have had to work in the studio, reconstructing landscapes from memory.
The tubes also enabled bold experiments. Influenced by Chevreul’s theories on simultaneous contrast, Pissarro began juxtaposing pure colour strokes, letting the viewer’s eye mix them. “Painting isn’t in the tube—it’s in the retina,” he explained. This technique, a precursor to Pointillism, would have been impossible with pig bladders.
Renoir and the dance of colours
For Renoir, paint tubes were both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because they allowed him to capture the joy of life in paintings like Luncheon of the Boating Party or Bal du moulin de la Galette. “Without tubes, I could never have painted those rosy faces, those dresses dancing in the light,” he admitted.
But they were also a curse, for Renoir became dependent on ready-made colours. “I no longer know how to grind my pigments,” he confessed late in life, as arthritis twisted his hands. “I’ve become a tube painter.” Some critics reproached him for this ease, accusing his canvases of being “too pretty, too sugary.”
Yet Renoir knew how to play with the limits of his palette. In The Swing, he used touches of green and red to create an optical vibration, as if light itself danced between the leaves. “Painting should be joyful,” he said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?” The tubes had given him the means for that joy.
The scandal of pure colours
When the Impressionists first exhibited in 1874, the public was scandalised. “It looks like unfinished sketches!” exclaimed a visitor before Impression, Sunrise. “Where are the details? Where is the finish?”
What shocked them was precisely what the tubes had made possible: the abandonment of preparatory drawings, layered glazes, and invisible brushstrokes. The Impressionists painted alla prima, in a single session, laying colour directly onto the canvas. “Painting must breathe,” Monet said. “If you see my brushstrokes, it means I haven’t cheated.”
The tubes had also democratised art. For the first time, amateurs could buy ready-made colours and paint outdoors. “Everyone started painting,” Degas sneered. “Even bourgeois who had never held a brush.” This vulgarisation horrified the academicians, for whom painting was a sacred art reserved for an elite.
The invisible legacy of the tube
Today, the paint tube seems obvious. Yet its invention changed the course of art. Without it, Van Gogh could not have painted his Sunflowers with such intense yellows. Without it, the Fauves would not have dared their bold colour fields. Without it, Pollock could not have flung paint with such freedom.
But the tube’s deepest legacy may lie elsewhere: in the idea that art is not a copy of reality, but an interpretation. “Painting isn’t photography,” Monet said. “It’s an emotion.” The tubes had given him the means for that emotion.
One day, a visitor asked Monet why he always painted the same subjects—the haystacks, the cathedrals, the water lilies. “Because the light is always changing,” he replied. “And because I haven’t yet managed to capture it.” Thanks to the paint tube, he could keep trying, again and again, until light became his signature.
Epilogue: Monet’s paint box
In 1926, shortly before his death, Monet donated his paint box to the museum in Giverny. Today, it sits in a display case like a relic. The tubes, half-empty, still bear the marks of his fingers. Some are crushed, others twisted, as if he had squeezed them in frustration to extract the last drop of colour.
This box tells a story: that of a man who spent his life chasing light, armed with a simple tool. “I have no genius,” he said. “I only have patience.” But without the paint tube, even patience would not have been enough. First, colour had to be set free. And that is what he did.
The paint tube: How a forgotten invention set light free | Art History
