A Brief Note on Answering Questions

A key aspect of expanding our knowledge is asking questions from those we identify as being more knowledgeable than us in a particular topic. This is a key aspect of information communication as it allows us to directly target gaps in our knowledge. The fact though that people can sometimes decline to answer a question for knowing they do not know the answer implies there is some sort of art to answering them. After all, how do we know when no answer would be better than any answer? I trust you imminently see the utility in asking questions to polymaths – this is the easiest and best way to rapidly expand our knowledge. Yet, I think there is more to asking and answering questions than one might first assume. I want to dig into this a little bit, but first I wish to give a short background to art history.

Picture me, younger than I am now, maybe even 15 years ago. My family were members of the National Trust, and we would go to visit their properties often. Almost every weekend we would visit an old estate, usually built around the 16th to 18th Century in Wales or England. Our home tromping grounds stretched from Pembroke to Gloucestershire, from the Vale of Glamorgan to the Wye Valley and across the Brecon Beacons national park. This vast expanse of space held many of these old country estates, now donated to the National Trust since the original owners could not maintain them. In some instances, only partially donated and the family still living in one small wing. Although this tract of land covering South and West Wales and the Severn Mouth area was not historically the most wealthy area, nor did it contain anywhere near as many Trust properties as the South coast of England where I now live, there was still plenty to keep one occupied. And if we ever exhausted this stock, we could simply go on holiday to another part of the UK and continue visiting the properties there.

Traditionally, wealthy families have been patrons of the arts. The National Trust continues to maintain those collections. Almost all of these estates had oil paintings in every room – some rooms were dedicated only to art. Many of these were portraits of various members of the family through the generations, and they were spectacularly beautiful pieces of art. However, one thing always nagged me. Why did old painters use such a limited, dark colour pallet? Most of these paintings had deep brown colour pallets. Dark, foreboding backgrounds with a tanned face placed almost floating in the centre.

I would often ask this question. Why so dark? Why so brown? Why so few colours? Modern artists seem to use a vast array of colours, a literal explosion of colours into the canvas. Why did seemingly no older artists do this? There were always people working at these National Trust properties willing to answer questions, and they always tried to answer mine. They would talk about what pigments were available to the artists at various times as well as the techniques employed. They would talk about the popularity of various different kinds of brush and colour work through time. They would also assure me that most pigments were available to artists of the time, and that they were fond of using them. These people were incredibly knowledgeable about art history, and could easily talk about this for an hour.

Yet this left a dissatisfaction in young me. I had been assured that the artists had access to and frequently used a variety of bright pigments. I was assured these colours were popular. However, looking at the paintings themselves I just could not accept this to be true. They were brown, dark, and almost every painting across three or four hundred years had the same colour pallet. What was going on here?

Well, without answer to this question I moved away from South Wales to the South of England to peruse and education in physics. I stopped visiting properties with old art collections and eventually forgot about this question.

That was, until I discovered art restoration. I found art restoration very interesting, and it has become quite popular on YouTube. I watched just one of these and had a revelation. The conservator was discussing the steps involved in conserving a painting. The first step is stabilising the paint as after many years the paint can separate from the canvas. So they first place Washi Kozo paper, a very thin paper, on the front and adhere that to the face of the painting with a temporary fish gelatin glue. This fish gelatin glue is hygroscopic, meaning it easily absorbs water and swells, even when dried. In essence this is a temporary glue on the front of the painting. Since it is so gentle and water based, it does not disturb the oils used in the painting itself. Then the painting is flipped over and a different, stronger glue is injected from the back and pressed into the canvas by using a hot, vacuum table. After the heat treatment and days of resting, a water based gel is applied to the Washi Kozo paper and the fish glue releases, the glue and the paper can then be literally wiped off with no damage to the painting whatsoever. Now, the paint is securely stuck to the canvas with no risk of losses.

Now, dear reader, comes the part of interest to us. The next step is removing the dirt and varnish from the surface of the painting. The varnishes can yellow over time and wash out the colours, the conservator said. He took a cotton swab with solvent and gently wiped away a little patch of this dirt and varnish, revealing the true colour of the paint below. I was not prepared for the transformation. Suddenly this dark background was stripped of the yellowing varnish and the colour exploded forward. What was just a moment ago a drab, indistinct, brown background was now radiant. Blues and pinks shone through, brush work was visible. I sat, transfixed, while the conservator for the next 20 minutes of sped up footage slowly removed all this varnish and what was a typical muted painting I was used to seeing in one of these National Trust properties turned into a vibrant, beautiful painting.

It was not the artists, they were not the ones using a limited pallet. It was time and sunlight. When a varnish is applied it is clear, but after time and exposure to sunlight, it becomes yellow or brown. This totally mutes the original colours. This totally eliminates all the delicate brushwork. I watched video after video. I never ceased to be amazed at how what looks like an evening scene becomes a mid day scene. Never cease to be amazed at how a portrait reveals so much more: beautiful red cloaks, delicate brushwork on wallpaper. These old artists loved colour. They worshipped colour.

So, answering questions. I eluded to this in the introduction. What did those workers at the National Trust workers not do? They didn’t answer the real question I had. Sure, their wealth of knowledge was impressive in the history of pigments, but I wasn’t interested in pigments, I was interested in why this painting was so dark. This is the secret to being good at answering questions. It’s not just about answering the question the person is asking, but understanding the real question they are asking. My question was about colours, but the real question was about varnish: I just didn’t realise it. There’s also, then, a skill to asking questions. Sometimes when we ask questions, people ask us why we are asking that. It’s easy to get frustrated: “don’t ask me why, just tell me”. Instead, when we ask questions, we need to be prepared to engage in a dialogue with our answerer. We need to recognise that we might not be very good at asking a question and we need to give them context to fill in our gaps.