Oil on Panel

About Oil on Panel

Before canvas became standard, most European easel paintings were made on wood. Panel makers joined seasoned planks, and painters covered them with layers of chalk or gypsum ground sanded smooth. Early Netherlandish artists such as Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden built translucent oil glazes over white grounds on Baltic oak, so the colour seems lit from within. In Italy poplar was usual, as in Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (c. 1503–19).

Panels stayed common in the North through the 17th century, when Rembrandt and Rubens still painted many works on oak, and Grant Wood later painted American Gothic (1930) on Beaver Board. Wood shrinks and swells with humidity, so boards split along joins or bow. Restorers once thinned panels and fixed wooden lattices called cradles to their backs. Look for fine cracks running with the grain and a flat surface free of weave.