Bister
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Description
A yellowish, dark brown, transparent pigment used in pen and wash drawings and watercolor paintings from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Bister, also called bistre, is prepared by boiling the tarry soot of burnt resinous woods in water, then mixing in Gum arabic and drying to form a cake. Beech trees were the preferred wood, but Pine and Willow were also used. Many Old Masters used bister as an ink for their wash paintings. It has fair permanence and will fade in direct sunlight. The appearance of bister ink has been imitated using Raw sienna and/or Burnt umber.
Synonyms and Related Terms
beechwood soot; bistre (Br.); bistro (It.); beech black; fuligo; guligino; caligo; charcoal black; brown lampblack; soot brown; brown lake
Resources and Citations
- R.White "Brown and Black Organic Glazes, Pigments and Paints" National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 10:58-71, 1986.
- R. J. Gettens, G.L. Stout, Painting Materials, A Short Encyclopaedia, Dover Publications, New York, 1966
- G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 610
- Reed Kay, The Painter's Guide To Studio Methods and Materials, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1983
- Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)
- R.D. Harley, Artists' Pigments c. 1600-1835, Butterworth Scientific, London, 1982
- Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
- John S. Mills, Raymond White, The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects, Butterworth Heineman, London, 2nd ed., 1994
- The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998 Comment: bister
- Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com Comment: bistre
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000 Comment: bister
- The Dictionary of Art, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., New York, 1996 Comment: "Pigment"
- Wikipedia: Bistre Accessed March 2025
- Eric Hebborn, ‘The Art Forger’s Handbook’ The Overlook Press,Woodstock, NY 1997.