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The Bizarre History of “Mummy Brown”, The Paint Made from the Dead - The Atelier Newsletter
Published 28 days ago • 5 min read
This is the story of a funeral: the funeral of a tube of paint!
Warning: We'll talk about corpses and mummies in the context of history of arts (seriously), fainted hearts beware!
In the mid-19th century, the British painter Edward Burne-Jones, a central figure of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was using a popular pigment known as "Mummy Brown". He received the visit of another painter, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema who mentioned what it was actually made of. Burne-Jones jumped in horror when he learned that “mummy” wasn’t just a word on a label : his beautiful, warm brown paint came from the ground remains of Egyptian mummies: yes, literal human corpses.
Edward Burne Jones 1833-1898
As the story goes, he was so disturbed by the realization that he buried his tube of paint in his garden, holding a small funeral for it.
Rudyard Kipling, who was Burne-Jones' nephew, reported: “He [Burne-Jones] descended in broad daylight with a tube of "Mummy Brown" in his hand, saying that he had discovered it was made of dead Pharaohs and we must bury it accordingly. So we all went out and helped – according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis, I hope – and to this day I could drive a spade within a foot of where that tube lies.”
It’s one of those stories that sounds like a dark joke — except it’s true - disturbingly true : Artists really did paint with human corpses.
The Paint Made from Corpses – The Bizarre History of “Mummy Brown”
What was Mummy Brown?
Mummy Brown (also called Egyptian Brown) was a pigment made by grinding up the flesh of ancient mummies. The practice began in the 16th century and started to slowly fade at the turn of the 19th century.
Mummy Brown - source : Winsor & Newton
During the 16th and 17th centuries, mummified humans – and even mummified cats – were excavated and ground into powder. Some mummified corpses contained bitumen, and it was then believed to have many benefits.
At some point, people started to realize that it was a "rich and earthly" powder, one that maybe would make a great painting pigment. And this is how mummy brown was invented : In some cases, it was combined with myrrh and white pitch to produce a more versatile pigment, between burnt umber and raw umber.
Some say it had more of a “rich, bituminous, violet-brown” tone — deep and glowing, ideal for skin tones and shadows, painters prized it for its rich transparency and warmth.
Mummy Brown by Roberson & Co
It appeared in the palettes of several artists of the Romantic and Victorian eras, such as Delacroix, and the Pre-Raphaelites. It’s hard to know exactly what specific work has mummy brown, museums could test for it but it would be tricky and potentially destructive for the artworks. So the mystery is still alive - or maybe I should say “preserved through death” : which one of these paintings in museums has been done with human remains? No one will ever know…
Historians confirm that it was widely sold in color shops through the 1800s.
The Macabre History of the Mummy Trade
How did this even happen? How come human remains ended up in paintings?
There’s always been a fascination for Ancient Egypt in the Western World. And it turns out that mummies were once plentiful in Egypt. Originally reserved for the elite, mummification eventually became wide spread in Ancient Egypt and, if you count all the sacred animals, it is estimated that Egyptians buried millions of mummies. A single burial ground discovered not long ago is thought to contain 10,000.
A sleeping mummy dealer next to mummies, 1875 - Felix Bonfils
The trade started in the Middle Ages, and as commerce grew in the Renaissance, apothecaries and merchants were importing thousands of mummies from Egypt to grind up and sell. During the nineteenth century, with the rise of Orientalism, the 'mummy trade' exploded to feed the demand of European travelers and tourists. This trade was illegal, yet so lucrative that local authorities couldn’t prevent it.
As time went on, real Egyptian mummies became scarce — so things started to get even more disturbing :
With demand surpassing supply, a black market version of Mummy Brown emerged. It originated from a not so ancient source: the bodies of recently deceased criminals and slaves. Scoundrels in the 18th and 19th centuries began faking mummies, wrapping up corpses in bitumen-soaked bandages just to meet demand.
The whole trade was grotesque, morbid and highly unethical.
Examination of a Mummy, Paul Philippoteaux - 1890
From our modern point of view, this is shocking but let's keep in mind that artists back then weren’t responsible for the trade. The pillaging and desecration of ancient Egyptian sepultures was a thing long before the Europeans showed interest in buying mummies. Artists like Burne-Jones weren’t being ghoulish about it. Most of them didn’t realize what they were using, as the story of the funeral of the paint tube illustrates.
For most, “Mummy Brown” was simply the poetic name on a label — no different from “Venetian Red” or “Ivory Black.”
How Mummy Brown finally died
The end came in the early 20th century. By then, the public had become more aware — and more uneasy — about the pigment’s true origins.
Edward Burne-Jones - The Beguiling of Merlin (note: we can't say for sure that Mummy Brown was used in this painting, there is a strong probability)
On the other side of the Mediterranean, Egyptian authorities started to strictly control archeology and the conservation of Antiquities, making the trade illegal and archeology highly regulated.
By the 1920s, almost all suppliers stopped producing Mummy Brown altogether. The final tube was produced in 1964 from leftover stocks in London by Roberson & co.
The once-celebrated color had finally — and quite literally — gone extinct.
Caput Mortuum
Today, painters who want that same warm, transparent brown often turn to Caput Mortuum, a mineral pigment whose name means “Dead Head” in Latin — an ironic echo of its predecessor.
Caput Mortuum is a lot more purple than Mummy Brown, depending on the manufacturer
Now there is a common misconception that Mummy Brown and Caput Mortuum are the same thing, and given the macabre name, one can understand the confusion. Maybe at some point the words were interchangeable but today, they’re definitely different.
Despite the spooky name, modern Caput Mortuum is made from iron oxide, not ancient flesh. Caput mortuum derives its Latin etymology from ancient chemistry, where it means “residue from which nothing can be extracted.” It comes from the final operations performed with iron oxide.
It has a similar reddish-violet undertone and works beautifully for glazing, portraits, and muted earth passages. It's a lot more magenta than original Mummy Brown but I think that we have plenty of browns to fill the space in the red-orange range, like Burnt Umber, Brown Ochre or Van Dyck Brown. If you know a bit about nuance and mixing, you can easily recreate the same effect.
So while the original “Mummy Brown” belongs to a bizarre and uncomfortable chapter of art history, its modern descendants let us keep the beauty — without the bones. And we still have a pigment with a dark macabre name, in a way “Dead Head” Caput Mortuum sounds even cooler and it’s a very interesting brown, definitely worth checking out!
Final Thoughts:
“Mummy Brown” reminds us that even beauty can have dark origins and while we can feel appalled at the absurdity of it now, it’s also a testament to the lengths artists have gone, throughout history, to capture the perfect color.
Free Art Newsletter filled with the best oil painting and drawing tips, directly from the Atelier tradition. Timeless techniques to enjoy weekly to grow and inspire.
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