Arnold Schönberg’s Paintbox

It can be assumed that the contents of a paintbox found in Arnold Schönberg’s study date from the main phase of his painterly activity around 1910. The paintbox contains twelve tubes of paint and fourteen brushes. The tube paints, produced by Behrendt company (Munich, Germany), were used by the artist himself. To identify the composition of their binding media, these paints were investigated by means of gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (GC / MS) at the Conservation Science Department of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The investigations showed that the principal binding medium of most of the paints is linseed oil. In the dried up paint samples only small amounts of unsaturated oleic acid were still present, because of the dried and aged state of the oil. Traces of oxo-derivatives of monosaturated acids further confirmed that degradation processes of the oil had already taken place. In contrast, the analyses of the soft paint samples showed a high content of unsaturated acids, suggesting that, even after more than 100 years, fresh oil is still present. This can be explained by the fact that the paints were kept in closed tubes without exposure to air or light. Thus their drying and ageing was inhibited.