“Color is a kind of holy substance for me”: analytical study of the Sam Francis’ palette from the 1940’s to the 1990’s

The Sam Francis’s colors, literally described as vivid, saturated, pure, vibrant intense and rich, largely contribute to the unique character of his work. This idiosyncrasy explains the interest in conducting an extended study on the Francis’ painting materials through analytical techniques. On the other hand, many Francis’ paintings display colored surfaces that exhibit bronzing, fluorescent or opalescent effects. As a consequence, retouching paint losses from Sam Francis works may become a challenging task for the involved conservators, the degree of the color matching required in the imitative technique being particularly difficult to attain, in the presence of such surfaces. Furthermore, the attained degree of the color match has to be conserved in all conditions of illumination and observation. The use of pigments chemically similar to the original ones is often necessary for matching highly chromatic pigments. Though, many modern synthetic organic pigments (SOPs) possess high color strength. That is why the characterization of the Francis palette would provide helpful information to the conservators, which have to deal with this type of issue.
The upcoming Getty publication Sam Francis: The Artist’s Materials, planned for 2016, offered the opportunity for in-depth analyses of hundreds paint samples. Almost three hundreds of paint fragments supplied by the Sam Francis Foundation have been investigated at the GCI laboratory, by using three complementary analytical techniques, Py-GC-MS, Raman and FTIR spectroscopies. The Raman spectroscopy is one of the most efficient techniques for identifying SOPs in paint systems, while the Py-GC-MS and FTIR methods provide essential information concerning the binding media. The analyzed paint fragments were sampled from twenty-nine canvases and works on paper, made between 1946 and 1992.
Although, primary established in Southern California, Sam Francis spent numerous long journeys in different places around the world, including Paris, Bern, Mexico City, New York and Tokyo. However, the material study has outlined the uninterrupted use of` certain classes of SOPs in specific colors. For example, copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) pigments were systematically detected in the blue and green samples, while azo pigments have been identified in most of the yellow areas sampled from post 1940s works. Regardless of the support and the paint technique, the Francis’ blues primary contain Ultramarine and/or CuPc blue pigments. And, it has been shown that the bronzing blue surfaces noticed for some of the investigated artworks correspond to PB15-based paint films.
The present study has also underlined the recurrent use of perinone orange and dioxazine violet in fluorescent orange and purple area. Despite the early introduction of SOPs, on the Francis’ palette, the works dating from the 1940’s remained mainly composed of traditional inorganic pigments, for instance lead white and red, chrome yellow, viridian and iron oxides. Interestingly, various binding media, i.e. Shellac gum, modified and unmodified oils, PVA, alkyd resins and acrylic copolymers have been identified. Actually, the investigated samples have pointed out the frequent combination of more than three types of binders on a same painting. Through the identification of the various SOPs used by Francis over fifty years, this research provide helpful information for selecting the most appropriate retouching pigments.