tempera
This tag marks work made with tempera paint, pigment mixed with a natural binder rather than oil, producing a smooth, quick drying surface with a soft matte finish that has stayed remarkably bright for centuries. It’s one of the oldest painting mediums still in active use, requiring artists to build up form through many thin layers rather than blending wet paint directly. Use this tag to browse work made with this old but still active technique.
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Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth was an American painter born in 1917 in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, known for quiet, emotionally charged realism in works like Christina’s World. Trained by his father N.C. Wyeth, he mastered watercolor and egg tempera and became one of the most recognized American painters of the twentieth century.
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Antony Williams
Antony Williams is a British painter trained at Farnham College of Art and Portsmouth University, known for working almost entirely in egg tempera, a slow and exacting medium suited to his intensely observed realism. His portrait of Queen Elizabeth II drew controversy for showing her honestly as an aging woman rather than an idealized figure,…
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George Tooker
George Tooker was an American painter born in Brooklyn in 1920, remembered as a leading figure of the Magic Realism movement alongside friends Paul Cadmus and Jared French. He studied English at Harvard before turning to art at the Art Students League, and his egg tempera paintings captured the quiet unease of modern city life.…
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Michael Bergt
Michael Bergt is an American painter who has worked in egg tempera, an ancient medium dating back to the Renaissance, for more than thirty years. His paintings center on the human figure, drawing on Japanese Shunga prints, Persian miniatures and Eastern pattern traditions to explore classical myth and sensuality. He co-founded The Society of Tempera…
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Jamie Wyeth
Jamie Wyeth is an American realist painter, born in 1946, and the son of Andrew Wyeth, carrying forward the family’s Brandywine School tradition. Trained early by his aunt Carolyn Wyeth, he went on to paint portraits of John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter and served as a courtroom artist during the Watergate hearings. Known for…
