The Art of Encaustic Painting: From Ancient Techniques to Modern Expression

Encaustic painting is celebrated as one of the earliest methods explored by humankind, and it continues today to be embraced by modern makers for its luminous colour and remarkable durability. This is thanks to its unique formula that involves pigment being applied to a molten wax combination that, when fully cured, results in marvelously multicolored compositions that are remarkably durable. Vital to everything from ancient funerary art to contemporary abstraction, encaustic painting has enjoyed a varied and fascinating history.

Join us as we investigate this legacy that spans generations, cultures, and traditions. In addition to mapping the medium’s history, we’ll also break down the materials and tools essential to its production and highlight some of the best examples of encaustic painting of all time.

Encaustic Painting in Antiquity

The ancient Greeks established the technique of encaustic painting around the 5th century BCE. Taking its name from the Greek enkaustikos, which can be roughly translated as “to heat”, the technique was so titled as it relies on heated beeswax mixed with resin to bind pigments.  Once developed, encaustic painting spread in popularity across the Greek world. Even the famed author Pliny the Elder spoke of the medium and its advantages both practically – particularly to make seafaring vessels more water resistant – and aesthetically, as he lauded the medium’s means to enliven works on everything from marble to ivory.  

The best surviving examples of this Greek phase of encaustic production, however, date centuries later to Egypt. The Greek general Ptolemy assumed control of Egypt in the final years of the 4th century BCE and thus exported many aspects of their culture – including their artistic traditions – to this new territory. By the 1st century CE, when Ptolemaic Egypt had been consumed by Rome, this centuries-long infusion of Greek practice resulted in a thriving artistic tradition of encaustic mummy portraits. Often referred to as “Fayum portraits” after the city that served as encaustic painting’s hub, these likenesses still today seem hauntingly lifelike thanks to the medium’s incredible longevity of colour. At the same time, these early portraits illustrate how encaustic painting allows for rich textural detail like hair tendrils. 

The Fall of Encaustic Painting: Decades of Dormancy

While ancient makers celebrated encaustic painting for these characteristics of rich colour, delicate detail, and durability, subsequent generations pushed the medium to the periphery. Multiple reasons contributed to this shift, but perhaps the largest contributor to this decline of encaustic painting was the rise of other, less challenging media in which artists could work. As tempera painting and later oil painting came to the forefront during the early modern era, artists abandoned encaustic as it was a more complicated medium both in preparation and practice. While some small centres, like those making Eastern Orthodox icons, continued to work in encaustic, they were in the minority.

Encaustic Painting’s Revival From the Eighteenth Century Onward

The rediscovery of ancient Roman cities like Pompeii in the 18th century resulted in a widespread revival of interest in all things ancient. This included techniques like encaustic painting, which captivated audiences given their enduring vibrancy and luminescence. Contemporary scholars thus turned to Pliny to unpack the method, while artists turned to the medium directly to explore. 

By the 20th century, artists renewed their fascination with encaustic painting, this time enthralled by the textures that the method could yield. Major innovators like Jasper Johns, for example, employed the encaustic technique for numerous paintings like Flag (1954-1955). One can see in these paintings his appreciation for how the wax medium captured his gestural strokes to create a dynamic surface for an otherwise quotidian image. Martin Kline’s Nest (2000) carries this play of surface even further in the dynamic, rhythmic patterns that oscillate across its surface. At the opposite end of the texture spectrum is the work of Bruce Marden. In works like 4:1(For David Novros) (1966), for example, Kline’s monotone surface of the encaustic painting is articulated only with organic deviations, ranging from deliberate brushstrokes to small drips of wax succumbing to gravity.

The Essential Components of Encaustic Painting

All these artists, from antiquity’s earliest to Johns and his later 20th-century colleagues, used essentially the same techniques and materials to create encaustic paintings. These components include:

Beeswax

Beeswax is crucial to the execution of an encaustic painting as it serves as the vehicle to fix pigment to a painted surface. Moreover, beeswax melts to a creamy smoothness that remains pliable allowing artists to work and rework portions of their compositions.

Resin

Often blended into the beeswax is a tree sap-based resin that helps primarily to give an encaustic painting a glossy finish and enhance that finish’s durability. The most common tree resin used over history has been damar resin, which is sourced from the dipterocarp tree family.  

Pigments

A final mandatory component in encaustic painting is pigment, which gives the work its vibrancy. Though the pigments have shifted over time from being naturally derived to synthetically made, their importance to the medium remains unchanged.

Heat

As the success of encaustic painting relies upon melted wax, artists working in the medium need to have adequate means to keep their wax malleable. This can be accomplished by a heated palette and brush warmer. Heat torches can also be applied for modifications to the composition or to encourage layers of applied colour and wax to fuse more closely together and thus create even more luminous shades. A prime example of this is Lynda Benglis’ Tres Memorias (1969-1970/2010), where her repeated blow torching of the undulating surface of her encaustic work resulted in a glistening finish.

Beyond these basics, encaustic painters might include other elements depending on the effects they hope their works will relay. Some, like Jasper Johns in his work Small False Start (Christie’s link), at times incorporated bits of newspaper into some of his works to enhance the illusions of both textures and text. Others might employ an array of chisels or other carving tools, like those used for modelling clay or ceramic pieces, to further delineate the waxen surface of their works.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Encaustic Painting

As these various examples across history illustrate, encaustic painting comes with some important benefits. These include:

Enhanced Luminosity

The dimensionality of the wax surface of an encaustic painting allows light to penetrate deeper than it would in a traditional tempera, oil, or acrylic painting. This depth and corresponding reflecting meant the colour of encaustic painting can be almost glowing in intensity.

Tantalizing Texture

The ability for artists to manipulate the surface of their work, from gauging into the surface to building it up in fused wax layers, is also an asset of encaustic painting.   

Powerfully Permanent

The overall durability of beeswax means that an encaustic painting can survive arguably much better than other painterly media, a testament to which is the enduring delicacy and vibrancy of Fayum portraits made more than a millennium in the past. Moreover, encaustic paintings don’t fall victim to the craquelure that often mars the surface of oil paintings over time, nor do they exhibit discolorations that can come from oil paint varnishes or aging of works on paper.

The Pitfalls of Encaustic Painting

While these perks are promising, encaustic paintings also come with challenges. While cured wax is resilient, exposing an encaustic painting to high temperatures or humidity can result in a dulling of the surface layer of the work as the wax will begin to melt and erase subtleties of surface texture. It also is an expensive and time-consuming mode of creating artwork since it requires specific tools and the patience to wait for layer upon layer of wax compositional additions to cure.   

The Eternal Beauty of Encaustic Painting

To enjoy an encaustic painting by a contemporary artist is to simultaneously step into the past as it requires the appreciation of a medium borne from the ancient world. Artists have capitalized on the unique materiality that encaustic provides to push the bounds of creativity for everything from public funerary commemorations to individual expressions. This mutability and adaptability points to encaustic painting’s lasting future—not a fate set in stone but in wax, which, if this artistic medium is any proof, might be just as enduring.