Colours of the Dead: Mummy Brown

Mummy Brown, also known as caput mortuum, was made from ground-up Egyptian mummies with a bit of pitch and myrrh. It sounds gross, but that’s what they did back then. This rich brown pigment, with a hint of purple, was ideal for creating transparent effects in glazing, shadows, and flesh tones, making it a favourite among pre-Raphaelite painters. However, once artists learned about its true origins, the pigment quickly fell out of favour. Edward Burne-Jones, a Pre-Raphaelite artist, is even said to have buried his tube of Mummy Brown in his garden after discovering what it was made from. By that time, though, the supply of mummies had already dwindled.

Mummy Brown was still available to artists well into the 20th century, sold by colour-makers known as "colourmen." As early as 1712, a shop in Paris called "A La Momie" sold not just paints and varnishes but also powdered mummies, incense, and myrrh. According to a London colour-maker in 1915, one mummy could supply enough pigment to satisfy customers for twenty years.

It’s tough to find specific examples of Mummy Brown used in some artworks, probably because its composition varied greatly, making it hard to identify without advanced methods like mass spectrometry. Still, it's generally agreed that Mummy Brown was commonly used from the 16th century onwards, likely in oil painting and possibly as a watercolour, for glazing, shadows, flesh tones, and shading.

The pigment reached its peak popularity between the mid-18th and 19th centuries. In 1849, it was described as "quite in vogue." For example, Delacroix used it on his palette in 1854 when painting the Salone de la Paix at the Hotel de Ville. The British portrait artist Sir William Beechey was also known to have stocks of it. Edward Burne-Jones used it in 1881, with some strange results, and artists like Alma-Tadema probably used it. There’s even a rumour that French artist Martin Drölling used Mummy Brown, made from the remains of French kings exhumed from the royal abbey of St-Denis, particularly in his painting L’interieur d’une cuisine.

References

The Life and Death of Mummy Brown

The life and death of Mummy Brown - Journal of ART in SOCIETY