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Art as an Investment or Heirloom
Whether you are investing in art for you, for future generations, as a family heirloom, or as a legacy gift to a museum/alma mater, the longevity of that art work should be important to you. If you were going to invest in a stock, you would research to find out the history of the painting, who was leading the company, expected growths, etc. You would do your due diligence before purchasing a share of the stock. Art is no different.
While you want to make sure that the art is of high quality, you also want to make sure that the art was created on solid supports and of sound materials. What people seem to have forgotten about art, is that it is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. It's about if the painting will stand the test of time. Will conservators be able to maintain it over time?
Zinc as a Siren
When zinc was introduced on the market, it was shortly after titanium white, an opaque white pigment. It was billed as safer than lead, the traditional but toxic white pigment, and more translucent than the recently developed opaque titanium white. It could make soft, delicate tints of translucent color for lighter passages. Artists began to use it and soon it became used throughout the art world. Manufacturers began to add a bit of zinc to titanium and then to other pigments to make specialty colors such as kings blue. They also sold it as pure zinc white. It was ubiquitous in the art market. Even now, it can be challenging to find an oil primed ground without zinc or titanium white without small amounts of added zinc.
Problems Began
Around the turn of the twenty-first century, art conservators began to notice some issues with oil paintings completed in the early twentieth century. More cracking and some delamination problems were noted. The conservators didn't have an explanation for this, only that some oil paintings of less than one hundred years old (young in terms of an oil painting), were aging faster or developing problems normally seen in paintings three to five hundred years old.
The sentinel article by Mecklenburg and Tumosa demonstrate the potential risk to the longevity of the paint film when zinc is added to the paint mixture. They did not find a safe amount zinc in a paint film. Every paint film with any amount of zinc in it was found to become quite brittle in as little as 3 years. This makes it easier for the paint film to crack. It also showed that paint films with zinc in the mixture separated or delaminated. Delamination is a far more serious problem than cracking. We know that paint films crack over time, but it is uncommon to see paintings peel, separate or delaminate. This is a potentially destructive process.
While I don't want this article to be a technical discussion about ions, pigments, and chemistry, I do want to be transparent about the research and where I'm getting the knowledge. If you want to learn more about the harmful effects zinc has on paintings, please read more here. Please see also the references list at the bottom of this article.
The Choice
I research the panels that I use and use the best materials that I can find. Early on before learning about the harmful effects of zinc, I did use zinc and use oil primed linen panels (which used small to unknown amounts of zinc along with titanium white). Currently, I primarily use Natural Pigments Artefex lead white-oil primed smooth ACM panels. These cost almost twice as much as the next best competitor (zinc free oil primed panels) and five times as much as an oil primed linen panel (which uses both titanium and zinc pigments in the oil ground).
You have chosen to invest in something you hope to have as a family heirloom or to leave as a legacy gift. You cannot do this if the painting will crack, crumble, or fall apart in a hundred years or so. I make this investment in materials for you and whatever you choose to do with your art acquisition.
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References:
Traditional Oil Painting: Advanced Techniques and Concepts from the Renaissance to the Present, 2019. Virgil Elliott.
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