Curing, longevity and centuries of preservation: why oil colour is the medium Matiz trusts for paintings meant to become family heirlooms. A Matiz Journal story.
Most of what we buy for our homes is designed to be replaced. Sofas sag, curtains fade, appliances are upgraded every few years. An oil painting belongs to a different category altogether. Painted well and cared for sensibly, it can hang in your living room, then in your children’s home, and then in your grandchildren’s. At Matiz, this is the single biggest reason we champion oil colour: an oil painting is not a decoration for this decade. It is a gift to the next century.
Every medium has its own charm, and Matiz paints in watercolour too. But when the question is which medium has proven, again and again, that it can survive hundreds of years and still look alive, the answer is oil. Here is why.
A Medium Tested Across Thirteen Centuries
Oil painting is often credited to fifteenth-century Flemish masters, but its story is older and closer to home than most people realise. Researchers working with the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility found that murals in caves behind the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan were painted with oil-based paints in the mid-seventh century, probably using walnut or poppy oil. That makes oil one of the oldest painting mediums still in active use anywhere in the world.
In Europe, oil paint did not become widespread until the early fifteenth century, and the paintings from that period are still with us. Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, completed in 1432, has survived for nearly six hundred years. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, Rembrandt’s portraits and Vermeer’s quiet interiors have lasted three to five centuries, through wars, fires, floods and changing tastes. Closer home, Raja Ravi Varma’s oils on canvas, painted well over a century ago, remain vivid enough to set auction records today.
No other portable painting medium has a track record this long or this well documented. When Matiz recommends oil to a family who wants a painting to last, we are not making a promise based on marketing. We are pointing to five hundred years of evidence hanging in museums around the world.
An oil painting is not a decoration for this decade. It is a gift to the next century.
The Science of Curing: Why Oil Does Not Simply Dry
Oil paint cures, it does not just dry. Watercolour and acrylic dry by evaporation: the water leaves and the pigment stays behind. Oil paint works very differently. Its binder, usually linseed oil, reacts with oxygen in the air and slowly transforms, molecule by molecule, into a solid, flexible film. Chemists call this oxidation and polymerisation. Painters simply call it curing.
Curing takes time, and that time is the secret. An oil painting may be dry to the touch in days or weeks, but the paint layers continue to harden for months, and thick layers for longer. This is why traditional practice is to wait several months before applying a final protective varnish. The slow cure is what gives oil its strength.
The pigment is locked inside. Once cured, every particle of colour is sealed within a tough, oil-based film. The pigment is not sitting loosely on a surface; it is embedded in it. This encapsulation is a large part of why oil colours hold their depth and richness over centuries.
Strong yet flexible. A properly cured oil film is hard enough to resist everyday handling but retains enough flexibility to move with canvas as the seasons change. Painters protect this with the classic ‘fat over lean’ rule, where each upper layer carries a little more oil than the one below, so the layers cure together without cracking. These centuries-old studio rules are the same principles Matiz painters follow.
Built to Be Preserved: Why Oil Paintings Can Be Restored
The varnish is a replaceable shield. A finished oil painting is usually protected by a final varnish layer. Over decades, dust, smoke and grime settle on that varnish rather than on the paint itself. Conservators can carefully remove an old, discoloured varnish and apply a fresh one, revealing colours that look almost as they did on the day they were painted.
Damage can be repaired. Canvas can be relined, tears can be mended, and lost areas can be retouched by trained conservators. This is exactly how paintings from the 1400s are still on public display. An oil painting is not only durable, it is repairable, and that is what makes true preservation possible over hundreds of years.
Better suited to real homes. Paintings on paper are vulnerable to humidity, mould and light, and generally need to be kept behind glass. An oil painting on canvas, protected by varnish, copes far better with everyday home conditions, including the humid monsoon months that so many Indian cities experience every year.
How Oil Compares With Other Mediums
Watercolour. Watercolour has a beauty all its own: light, transparent and calm. Matiz loves it for bedrooms, studies and quieter spaces. But because the pigment rests in paper with very little binder, watercolours are more sensitive to light and moisture. Museums often limit how long they display them for exactly this reason. A watercolour can last for generations, but it asks for more protection than an oil.
Acrylic. Acrylic paint is versatile and fast-drying, but artists’ acrylics only arrived in the middle of the twentieth century. That means we have roughly seventy years of real-world evidence, against more than five centuries for oil. Acrylics may well age gracefully, but oil is the medium whose longevity has already been proven.
Prints and reproductions. Printed canvases use inks that can fade with sunlight, and they carry no brushwork, no artist’s hand and no lasting value. They fill a wall, but they do not become heirlooms.
Watercolour whispers. Oil endures. Matiz offers both, and recommends oil when a painting must outlive us.
Longevity You Can See: The Beauty of Oil
Oil’s durability is matched by its visual richness. Because oil paint stays workable for longer, artists can blend skin tones softly, build glowing layers through glazing, or pile on thick, textured strokes that catch the light. Colours have a depth and saturation that feel almost three-dimensional. When Matiz paints your ancestral home, your family portrait or the landscape of your hometown in oil, that depth is what makes the memory feel present every time you walk past it.
Matiz Oil Paintings: Made to Become Heirlooms
Matiz believes in paintings that are passed down. The core idea behind Matiz is that the true product is the emotion and memory a painting holds. A memory deserves a medium that will last as long as the family that cherishes it. That is why oil colour sits at the heart of the Matiz collection and Matiz commissions.
Matiz commissions in oil. A portrait of your parents, your child’s first birthday, the house where you grew up, the view from the balcony where you got engaged. Matiz paints these memories in oil so that, one day, your children can point to the same canvas and tell the same story to theirs.
Matiz care tips for Indian homes. A little care goes a long way. Hang your Matiz oil painting away from direct sunlight, avoid walls above stoves or directly in the path of air-conditioner airflow, and keep it away from damp walls during the monsoon. Dust it occasionally with a soft, dry brush, never with water or cleaning sprays. Treated this way, an oil painting can comfortably outlast every other object in the room.
A Painting for the Next Hundred Years
The masters of Europe did not know their paintings would be admired five hundred years later. They simply chose a medium that could carry their work across time. Matiz brings that same choice to Indian homes: original, hand-painted oil paintings that hold your family’s memories not for a season, but for generations.
Choose a painting your grandchildren will inherit. Discover Matiz original oil paintings and Matiz commissions at matiz.in.
MATIZ
Matiz original oil & watercolour paintings • Matiz commissions • Matiz art experiences
1st Floor, Shop No. 1, Vijay Orovia Marigold, Waghbil, Ghodbunder Road, Thane (W) 400615
Sources
Oldest oil paintings found at Bamiyan (Reuters, via Dawn) — https://dawn.com/news/299352
World’s oldest use of oil paint found in Afghanistan — https://www.world-archaeology.com/world/asia/afghanistan/worlds-oldest-use-of-oil-paint-found-in-afghanistan/
Taniguchi & Cotte, The Wall Paintings of Bamiyan (Archetype, 2022) — https://archetype.co.uk/our-titles/the-wall-paintings-of-bamiyan-afghanistan/?id=438