HISTORY NO. 30. Snuff Used in Art.

UK Newspaper  1914.

The death has  occurred at Berwick  of Mrs Margaret Smith, aged 91, niece of Thomas Sword Good, the “genre” painter.  Turner frequently visited Good, who accompanied him on his Border tours, and Mrs Smith remembered seeing Turner mix snuff with his paints to get the proper tone.  When Good went with Turner to Norham Turner lifted his hat and bowed to the building, explaining that his picture of it made his name.

That’s not the first time when snuff was mixed with paint. Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) took his snuff so causally that it often landed in his paint.

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Those cows on the river Tweed looks quite snuffy.

Some snuffs used to be coloured with pigments back then. Jaap had re-created “Son de Tonca”, which had English red in its composition.

Are there any modern artists among us, who use nose-brush technique for their masterpieces?

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@volunge: It was a pleasure to recreate that snuff. Sorry we could not continue the production!

Jaap Bes.

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@volunge not sure if you’d call it a masterpiece but I’ve certainly had snuff end up in a few paintings before.

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@snuffmiller, very sad, indeed.
@Filek, what happened to Polish snuff forum top25snuff? I hope it’s just a temporal shutdown.

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@volunge, our administrator hasn’t been active in the snufftaking world for quite some time, so he’s not focused anymore on running this website. Maybe it will come back someday, but I’m not sure it will ever happen.