Art in Exile: The Tin Tube

Art in Exile: a blog series focused on introducing beauty into the social media stream during a season of self-quarantine, social distancing, and a global pandemic.

Today’s Art in Exile is about ingenuity. What do zippers, pulleys, and bolts have in common? They’re simple inventions that changed how we live. Meet John Goffe Rand, an artist who, in 1841, came up with a simple invention that changed art forever—the collapsible tube.

John Goffe Rand patented his invention, describing it as an “improvement in the construction of vessels or apparatus for preserving paint.” He worked “on” art, not just “in” it. This is the drawing he submitted to the Patent Office in 1841. 

Before the invention of the compressible tin tube, many artists kept their paint in pig bladders which were filled by syringe and closed with a tack, or a piece of bone or ivory. They were fragile and subject to rupturing when carried in a paint box. 

Before the tin tube, much of the world’s art was created indoors, in artists’ studios, close to their equipment. Artists mixed their own paints with linseed oil, varnish, and pigment. Colors were limited to what artists could mix themselves or buy locally. 

The tin tube allowed for more color choices, color consistency, portability, more time to work (less time spent mixing paint), more time before paint dried out, freedom to make spontaneous color choices, thicker application, and less waste. 

Rand’s tin tube was crucial in the rise of “plein air” (outdoor) painting, which required portability. Renoir said, “Without colors in tubes there would be no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.” We certainly wouldn’t have Monet’s “Waves at Manneporte,”

Plein air painters who owe their career to the portability of the tin tube include Mary Cassatt, Vincent van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and John Singer Sargent, to name a few. 

Right now I have within my reach a pair of glasses, a clock, a water bottle, books, a house key, a pen, and some coins—all simple inventions that shape how I live. We’re surrounded by the work of others whose patience and ingenuity fill our lives with common grace. 

So much of the beauty we behold in this world comes to us not just through the work of artists, but also through the work of people who developed tools and materials necessary for its creation. No one creates in a vacuum.