Did Lead Paint Cause The "Masters" To Go Crazy?

I’ve read a number of art books and basically the claim a large part of the reason so many of the “great masters” of painting were crazy is because they used lead based paint. Or mixed other paints with lead. This lead them to go crazy and have symptoms of lead poisoning. For proof of this they say when the artists were in their “crazy” period they were put in assylums or such and they once again became normal once the lead wore out of their systems. Then they returned to painting and the cycle repeated itself.

Any truth to this or is it speculation?

knows nothing factual

Sounds similar to “mad” hatters. Sounds plausible at least.

Apart from van Gogh, who was likely a schizophrenic, can you cite an example of a crazy painter?

I thought heavy metals accumulated in the body and never “wore out of the system”. So I don’t believe it. I suspect the truth is that the sort of mentality that leads to artistic genius is just a bit unstable.

Salvador Dali was more than a little odd.

I can think of a few painters who went bonky (aside from van Gogh, Hugo van der Goes, perhaps, for example, and Goya got very depressed and there are lots of merely eccentrics but I don’t know about bonky) but I really don’t think this has been claimed by many serious art historians. What books have you read this in?

Except in the case of “mad” hatters it was chronic mercury poisoning, from the chemicals used to make the felt in hats.

Here is a site that includeshistorical information about artists’ paints. And here, from the same site issome historical information about paint ingredients.

It appears to me that artists’ paints were never, and are not now, lead based to any great extent.

In the early days (Medieval, Renaissance until I do not know when) much white paint was based on lead, which is why it show up so “well” in x-rays (sorry, I don’t have a citation-- that book’s in storage).

I didn’t follow my site quite far enough into its depths. White was lead based and it seems that lots of white was used. Whether or not that resulted in a lot of lead poisoning is open to question.

speaking of which, does anyone know what the signs of mercury posioning were?

Don’t you have to ingest the stuff for it to be harmful? I think the turpentine fumes would get to you a lot quicker than any lead in the paint.

Lead poisoning from paint is generally caused by children chewing on old painted woodwork or by inhaling dust from sanding the stuff. Having lead in a mixture on the end of your paintbrush isn’t going to do a lot of harm.

IIRC, Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice discusses this in the section on the Mad Hatter. Your library probably has a copy.

Woo hoo…finally absinthe gets off the hook!!! :smiley:

Meh. I breathe the stuff every day and I’m still somewhat sane.

When lead based house paints were common, painters sometimes got painter’s colic which was a result of lead poisoning.

Never was anything wrong with absinthe. In fact, makes the heart grow fonder.

My husband’s an artist. His favorite white is a lead-based paint and he’s been using it for years. He doesn’t eat it, nor does he inhale it or even get (much) of it on his skin–so no problem.

Although come to think of it he is a bit odd.

we might need a poll here :slight_smile:

I’ve read a few books the one I got now is focusing on Francisco Goya. Though it mentions Van Gough. It tells how the old masters would mix paints of lead, cadmium and mercury and absorb them thru touching, breathing and ingesting them via the tips of their tongues.

It shows Goya had 5 years periods where his work suddently went form sweet and sentimental to weird and eerie and often grotesque. Then he’d be put away and gradually get better.

Of course all this is probably speculation in books, that’s why I wanted to know if it was actual or an urban myth.