Characterisation of the artist John Opie’s pigments, dated 1806

This paper discusses the contents of an artist’s paint box currently in the possession of St. Agnes Museum, Cornwall, UK, containing a selection of historic pigments. On its lid is a metal plaque that reads ‘John Opie 1806’. Very little is known about this paint box, so this piece of research aims to uncover some of the hidden information stored within it through identification of some of the pigments it contains. The main body of this research shows the first results obtained by the identification of a selection of the pigments from the paint box, using Fourier Transform Infra Red spectroscopy (FTIR) and optical microscopy techniques. These findings will be considered in relation to what this tells us about the artist John Opie, the authenticity of the pigments within the paint box, and the use of pigments in the early nineteenth century.