Art Glossary
Impasto /im-PAS-toh/
Impasto is paint applied so thickly that it stands up from the surface in visible ridges, holding the marks of the brush or palette knife.
From the Italian for 'dough' or 'paste', impasto names paint laid on thickly enough to retain three-dimensional texture. Where a thin, smooth application hides the painter's hand, impasto displays it: the ridges and furrows of loaded brushwork catch real light and cast tiny shadows, so the painted surface becomes a low relief that changes with the viewer's position and the light in the room.
The technique is bound up with oil paint, whose buttery body holds a worked texture as watercolour or tempera cannot. Rembrandt used impasto selectively, building up the lit passages of a face or a gold chain in thick crusts while keeping the shadows thin, so that the light seems physically embedded in the surface. The Impressionists used it more freely to suggest the broken sparkle of light, and Vincent van Gogh made it central to his style, his swirling ridges of pure colour turning the very substance of the paint into an expressive force.
Impasto can be applied with a brush, but the palette knife is its natural tool, scraping and spreading paint in flat slabs. It is one of the clearest signs that a painting is meant to be experienced as a physical object and not merely as an image — which is why reproductions, flattening the surface, lose so much of an impasto picture's life.
To see impasto, look at the painting in raking light, or from the side: the texture that vanishes in a flat photograph springs into relief, and the painter's gesture becomes visible as a record of the hand at work.
In the collection
Frequently asked
What is impasto?
Impasto is paint applied thickly so that it stands up from the surface in visible, textured ridges that hold the marks of the brush or palette knife.
Which artists are known for impasto?
Rembrandt used impasto in his highlights, and Vincent van Gogh made thick, textured brushwork central to his expressive style.