The Origins of Blue Paper

Drawing on Blue: European Drawings on Blue Paper, 1400s-1700s is an exhibition now showing at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It traces the history of Blue paper and it’s adoption by European artists for its versatility and aesthetic qualities.

Blue paper was first made in Italy in the late fourteenth century. Earliest origins of blue paper were attributed to Venice, whose strong trade with the East included prized dyed white paper in red, orange and blue. Blue paper was originally made from old blue hemp and linen rags that were broken down into fiber pulp and then formed into sheets immersed in sizing in a mold. The sizing gave the paper a protective coating that helped to keep the ink and chalk from spreading once it was applied. They were manufactured in family-owned paper mills, in a process that was passed down through generations.

In the next two centuries, manufacturing plants sprung up all over Europe. This produced various production methods and quality. Some countries banned the import of blue paper from other countries to help establish and protect their own products.

Early fabrics were colored from natural dyes. One of the most dye fast colors was blue made originally from the woad plant, which was cultivated in Italy and later all of Europe. Woad is a yellow-flowered European plant from the cabbage family. The blue dye was extracted from the leaves after they had been dried, powdered and fermented. The blue textile dyes woad, logwood (a species of flowering tree in the legume family), and litmus (A coloring matter from lichens) were commonly used in paper coloring. Indigo was imported from the East and used in Italian paper production and later spread to Europe.

At first, blue paper was used as a commodity wrapping. As the quality improved, artists began to use it for studies. The first known artwork on blue paper has been attributed to Giovanni da Moden, a Bolognese painter. Later, the Italian painter Giovanni Bellini and many of his students drew studies with ink washes over black chalk on blue paper. The blue shade served as a mid-tone, while the wash defined the shadows and while chalk provided the highlights, This effect, known as chiaroscuro, is an artistic technique that creates pronounced contrast between areas of light and dark within a composition.

By the 18th century, drawings on blue paper were much sought after by art dealers. One painter, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, a history painter, produced hundreds of studies of his work on blue paper. He experimented with Prussian Blue and opaque white and gray washes that heightened the contrast. Sadly, with time, much of the blue paper used for artwork has faded to light or greenish blue.

By the 1800s, public demand for white paper forced papermakers to turn to using low-quality white rags. Papermakers started to tint white papers with blue pigments and dyes to visually neutralize their yellowish tonality of the rags.

 

Study of a Woman's Hands, 1646, Cornelis Janson van Ceulen. Black chalk heightened with white chalk on blue paper.

 

A Muse, mid-1720s, Rosalba Carriera. Pastel on blue paper.

Jonah Preaching at Nineveh, after 1733, Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner. Brown ink, gray wash, heightened with white opaque watercolor on blue paper with framing lines in black ink.