What do some of the most famous painters in the world like Van Gogh, Picasso, Da Vinci, etc have in common? It’s that they used oil paint!
https://www.artblr.com/blog/top-brands-of-oil-paints-for-artists
It’s widely believed that Jan and Hubert van Eyck were inventors of oil paint, but this is actually false. The earliest oil paintings we know to date come from Bamiyan, Afghanistan in the 7th century CE. Walnut or poppy oils were usually used to make cave paintings.
This was hundreds of years before Europe even started using them, and the techniques they used like the application and varnish suggested that Asia had been using them for even longer.
In Europe, the start of the Renaissance, which promoted rediscovery, convinced people to use a technique other than egg tempera (using egg yolk to mix pigment and water). This is when Jan van Eyck introduced oil paint. It’s a versatile medium with high pigment that has enough translucency to allow for multiple layers.
Van Eyck perfected his technique, so his paintings gave oil paint a rise in popularity. They were primarily used for portraits, and by the 16th century, almost all Italian artists were using oil. The most famous oil painting is the Mona Lisa.
Madonna with Canon van der Paele by Jan van Eyck (1434-36)
https://www.worldhistory.org/Jan_van_Eyck/
Oil is a very slow-drying material that allows artists to blend colors extremely smoothly and create texture. On top of that, wooden panels were replaced with linen canvas, which was less costly and less prone to deterioration (cracking or damage).
Color pigments were still being invented, which eventually led to the Impressionist era. Artists stopped blending the paint and made textured strokes instead. Because of this, squeezing oil paint straight from the tube was encouraged so it can be applied in thicker quantities. And as the new pigments were being developed for the expanding textile industry, artists had a wider range of colors they could experiment with.
Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet (1872)
https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2015/04/24/impressionist-painting-techniques/
By the 1990s, water-mixable oil paints were made. It had similar properties to regular oil paint but was easier to use. It has the same pigmentation and consistency but a slightly faster drying time. Most importantly, it doesn’t contain harmful toxins that affect the artists and their paint brushes.
Today, oil painting is still a prime painting medium despite the development of other paints like acrylic watercolor. Even in digital apps, oil-paint features are available, which goes to show how flexible the medium can be.