A Colour Story
Mummy Brown
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Build a room around Mummy Brown. These masterworks carry Mummy Brown at their heart — recreated museum-grade, framed and numbered to be inherited.
The Deep Dive
Mummy brown was a genuine oil paint pigment manufactured by grinding embalmed human remains, taken from ancient Egyptian and Guanche mummies, mixed with white pitch, myrrh, and drying oils such as walnut oil. Its bituminous quality gave it good transparency, sitting tonally between burnt and raw umber, and it was prized as a rich glazing color. The trade grew directly out of the centuries-old European market in 'mumia,' powdered mummy sold since at least the 12th century as a medicine believed to cure everything from bruising to epilepsy; by the 18th century colormen in London and Paris had repurposed the same material as an artist's pigment, with a Paris shop called 'À la momie' selling mummy paints and powder by 1712. It became genuinely fashionable through the 18th and 19th centuries: Royal Academy president Benjamin West praised it in 1797 as 'the finest brown used as a glaze,' and it was described as 'quite in vogue' as late as 1849. Painters recorded as users include Angelica Kauffman, Eugène Delacroix, William Beechey, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, and the Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones. As genuine Egyptian mummy supplies dwindled through the 19th century, one London colorman claimed in 1915 he could satisfy demand for twenty years from a single mummy, and the pigment fell into disuse. The London firm C. Roberson & Co. kept it in their catalogue until 1933 and produced their final tube in 1964, when a company director acknowledged they had simply run out of mummies.
Symbolism
Mummy brown occupies a uniquely unsettling place in color history: unlike any other pigment on an artist's palette, its very name announced it was made from human remains, and for much of its popularity that origin was treated as a point of exotic fascination rather than concern, tied to Europe's broader 18th and 19th-century craze for Egyptian antiquities. Its use turns any painting containing it into an inadvertent reliquary, blurring the line between depicted and depicting flesh. When the pigment's true origin became widely and uncomfortably known among artists in the later 19th century, it triggered one of art history's most vivid gestures of moral reckoning: Edward Burne-Jones's 1881 ceremonial burial of his tube of mummy brown in his garden, conducted, according to his nephew Rudyard Kipling, 'according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis.' Mummy brown has since become a touchstone case study in art history and museum conservation for the ethics of material sourcing and the colonial-era commodification of Egyptian antiquities.
Pigment history
Mummy brown's manufacture grew directly out of the medieval and early modern European trade in 'mumia,' powdered mummy imported from Egypt and sold in apothecaries as medicine for ailments from bruising to epilepsy from at least the 12th century onward. By the 17th and 18th centuries this same material was repurposed by colormen as a paint pigment, ground from the bituminous, resin-soaked wrappings and flesh of embalmed Egyptian and Guanche mummies and mixed with white pitch and myrrh; colormen believed the 'fleshiest parts' of a mummy gave the finest pigment. Demand for genuine ancient mummies gradually outstripped supply through the 19th century, and by 1898 a chemist writing in Scientific American noted that mummy supplies were 'becoming more and more scarce' as museums and Egyptian authorities restricted excavation and export. Growing awareness of the pigment's grim origin, combined with technical shortcomings, since it was never a chemically stable formulation and was prone to cracking, drove its decline after 1900. The London firm C. Roberson & Co., long the principal supplier, listed it until 1933 and produced a final tube in 1964, when a director acknowledged they had simply run out of mummies; today's pigments sold under the 'mummy brown' name are made from ordinary earth minerals such as kaolin, quartz, goethite, and hematite.
Notable uses
- Liberty Leading the People (1830), Eugène DelacroixDelacroix is documented as a user of mummy brown, recorded among the pigments on his palette; this iconic painting hangs in the Louvre.
- The Beguiling of Merlin (1874-1877), Edward Burne-JonesPainted before Burne-Jones learned the true origin of his mummy brown pigment in 1881, after which he ceremonially buried his remaining tube in his garden, an event his nephew Rudyard Kipling later recalled in detail.
- Interior of a Kitchen (1815), Martin DrollingThis Louvre painting is widely reported, though not definitively confirmed, to contain mummy brown, and has become one of the most frequently cited examples in popular accounts of the pigment's use.
- Portraiture and history painting (1780s), Angelica KauffmanKauffman's use of mummy brown was celebrated by contemporaries; poet George Keate praised her in 1781 for effectively 'preserving' mummies through the medium of her paintings.
- C. Roberson & Co. artists' color catalogue (18th century-1933), C. Roberson & Co., London colormenRoberson supplied mummy brown to Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian painters, including Lawrence Alma-Tadema, an important customer during the period the firm was grinding mummies; the pigment remained listed in their catalogue until 1933, with a final tube produced in 1964.
More colour stories
Every masterwork in Mummy Brown on ArtzFolio ∞ Infinity is recreated on archival, hand-finished canvas, numbered as a strictly limited Heirloom edition and built to be inherited — from ₹50,000, delivered across India with white-glove care.