In this post, I will be chatting about the invention of the paint tube by John Goffe Rand. In Monday’s video, I will try to make my own oil paint and put it into empty metal paint tubes, just as Rand would have done almost two centuries ago. At the end of this post, I have included lots of lovely hands-on activities to make the most of this inventor study.
The Invention of the Paint Tube
On 11 September 1841, American portrait painter John Goffe Rand was granted U.S. Patent No. 2,252 for an ingenious invention: a collapsible metal tube for storing and dispensing paint.
It sounds like a rather small event. After all, most of us hardly notice a paint tube today. Squeeze it, put some paint on a palette, screw the lid back on, and carry on painting.
But in 1841, this was a remarkable technological breakthrough.
Rand’s invention helped change where artists could paint, what colours they could use, how paint was sold, and eventually the way artists looked at the world. It became one of the small but important pieces of technology that helped make the dramatic changes in nineteenth-century art possible.
And there is a wonderful lesson here for children: sometimes history changes not through enormous machines, famous battles, or powerful kings, but when someone notices an everyday problem and invents a better way to solve it.
A Quick Historical Fact-Check
You may see 11 September 1841 described as the day Rand invented the paint tube. The story is slightly more interesting than that.
Rand lived and worked in London when he developed the idea. He obtained a British patent earlier that year, on 6 March 1841, for improvements relating to preserving paint. He then received U.S. Patent No. 2,252 on 11 September 1841. A further British patent followed in 1842.
So, for an On This Day article, 11 September 1841 is an excellent date to remember because it is the date of Rand’s American patent.
The Smithsonian has preserved the original patent documentation, including Rand’s drawings of his collapsible metal container.
Check out Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and the model we built of it as part of our project-based learning.
Imagine Being an Artist in 1840
Imagine you are an artist living almost 200 years ago.
You want to paint a landscape.
Today, you might put a few tubes of paint, brushes, a palette and a bottle of water or medium into a bag and walk into the countryside.
In 1840, painting outdoors with oil paints was much more difficult.
Oil paint wasn’t simply something you picked up at an art shop in a neat little tube.
Instead, preparing paint was messy and time-consuming.
Artists generally obtained pigments, coloured substances in powder form, and mixed them with drying oils to make usable oil paint. Artists or their assistants might have to grind pigments and carefully mix them with oil. The resulting paint then needed to be stored somehow.
And that created a problem.
Oil paint dries.
If you spent time making a beautiful blue, red or yellow and then didn’t use it quickly enough, it could begin to harden.
So artists needed a container that would:
- keep air away from the paint;
- stop the paint drying;
- survive being carried around;
- allow the artist to get the paint out;
- and ideally allow the container to be closed again.
That was much harder than it sounds.
Sometimes more than one inventor attempts to create the same thing! Click here for our study on Da Vinci’s version of the printing press!
The Rather Strange Story of the Pig’s Bladder
One traditional solution was an animal bladder.
Yes, really!
Before the collapsible metal tube, artists commonly stored prepared paint in animal bladders, including pig bladders. They tied them closed and could pierce them when the artist wanted to get some paint out.
It was an ingenious solution for its time, but not particularly convenient.
A bladder could:
- leak;
- burst;
- dry out;
- be awkward to carry;
- and become difficult to seal once opened.
One account describes artists having to pierce the bladder to access the paint, creating a rather inconvenient system for something that needed to be used repeatedly.
Find out more about another of Da Vinci’s inventions: the ornithopter…one of his flying machines!
A Question for Children
What would happen if you put a balloon full of paint in your school bag?
It might give you a pretty good idea of some of the problems artists faced!
Of course, a paint bladder wasn’t exactly a balloon, and we should avoid making the historical comparison too literal. But the basic problem was the same: artists needed something flexible that could hold paint without letting it escape or dry out.
So What Did John Goffe Rand Invent?
John Goffe Rand was a painter himself.
That is important.
He wasn’t simply an engineer who happened to become interested in art. He was a working artist who understood the practical problems painters faced.
Rand was born in Bedford, New Hampshire, in 1801. As a young man, he apprenticed as a cabinetmaker before turning to painting. He painted houses and signs, then became a portrait painter. He established a studio in Boston and later travelled to London with his wife, Lavinia.
While living in London, he developed his collapsible paint container.
The basic idea was wonderfully simple:
Put the paint inside a thin metal container that could be squeezed.
The metal vessel could collapse as paint was squeezed out, rather than leaving a large pocket of air inside.
The patent describes metal containers that could collapse under pressure, forcing the paint through an opening. The opening could then be closed so that air could not easily reach the remaining paint.
In other words:
squeeze → paint comes out → close the opening → remaining paint stays protected.
That is remarkably close to the principle behind the paint tubes many of us still use today.
The Invention of Paint Tube: From Bladder to Tube
It helps to imagine the difference.
Before Rand
Pigment + oil → artist mixes paint → paint stored in bladder → bladder pierced → paint removed.
Other storage methods existed too, including glass containers and syringes, so the story isn’t as simple as saying every artist used a pig’s bladder. But animal bladders were an important traditional solution.
After Rand
Paint → metal tube → squeeze → paint comes out → close tube
Suddenly, carrying paint became much easier.
And that seemingly small change had enormous consequences.
The Industrial Revolution Comes into the Story
To understand why Rand’s invention mattered, we need to zoom out.
The early 1800s were a period of enormous technological change known as the Industrial Revolution.
Machines, factories and new manufacturing techniques were transforming Britain, Europe and the United States.
Steam engines were becoming increasingly important.
Railways were spreading.
Factories could manufacture goods in greater quantities.
New chemical discoveries were producing new pigments and other materials.
Manufacturing thin sheets of metal was becoming increasingly practical.
All of these developments created an environment in which an invention such as Rand’s could become useful on a much larger scale.
The paint tube wasn’t an isolated invention. It was part of a much bigger historical story:
Technology was making things smaller, more portable, more affordable and easier to manufacture.
This is an important concept for older homeschool students.
Historical Thinking Question
Ask:
Did John Rand change art by himself?
A good answer is no.
Rand’s invention was important, but it became useful because it fitted into a much larger network of developments:
metalworking + chemistry + manufacturing + transport + artists’ changing interests + commercial art suppliers = a new way of painting.
That is how technological change often works.
What was Happening in the World in 1841?
It is easy to study history as a collection of disconnected facts.
But imagine the world on 11 September 1841.
John Goffe Rand was working in London.
Queen Victoria had been on the British throne for only four years.
Britain was rapidly industrialising.
Railways were spreading across Britain and other countries.
The United States was still a relatively young nation.
In America, William Henry Harrison became president in March 1841 but died only a month later. His vice president, John Tyler, became president.
The United States was also deeply divided over slavery and expansion, while the Second Seminole War was still taking place.
Earlier that year, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in the famous Amistad case, deciding that Africans who had resisted their illegal enslavement had been unlawfully captured.
Across the Atlantic, artists were beginning to experience a world changing rapidly around them.
Art Was Changing Too
In 1841, the great art movement we call Impressionism didn’t exist yet.
Claude Monet hadn’t even been born.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in 1841.
Édouard Manet was still a child.
The famous Impressionist exhibitions of the 1870s were decades away.
Yet the tools that would help make their later style possible were beginning to appear.
That makes Rand’s invention especially interesting.
He didn’t set out to invent Impressionism.
He didn’t say:
“I shall now invent a container that will allow Monet to paint water lilies.”
Instead, he solved a practical problem.
How can I keep my paint usable?
The consequences were much bigger than he could have predicted.
Taking the Studio Outdoors
One of the most important effects of portable paint was that artists could more easily take their materials outside.
This practice is known as plein air painting, from the French expression meaning open air.
Before portable oil paints, artists certainly could and did make outdoor studies. Painting outdoors was not suddenly invented in 1841.
But transporting and preserving oil paints was much more difficult.
The new tubes, combined with other portable equipment such as easels, made working outdoors increasingly practical. The Getty notes that collapsible tube paints were a major change in the 1840s because traditional storage methods made outdoor oil painting difficult.
And this mattered because light changes.
A landscape painted at 8 a.m. doesn’t look the same at noon.
Clouds move.
Sunlight changes.
Water reflects different colours.
Shadows move.
Trees blow in the wind.
A painter working outdoors can observe these changes directly.
That encouraged artists to become increasingly interested in the experience of seeing, rather than simply producing carefully finished studio pictures.
The Road Towards Impressionism
Several decades later, artists such as Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley became famous for painting scenes of modern life and landscapes in ways that emphasised changing light, colour and atmosphere.
Paint tubes didn’t cause Impressionism.
That would be far too simple.
Art historians have pointed out that Impressionism had many causes, including changes in artistic ideas, urban life, photography, Japanese prints, new theories of colour and artists’ growing interest in modern life.
But portable paint was an important enabling technology.
It was one piece of the puzzle.
Winsor & Newton, one of the major artists’ colour suppliers, played an important role in commercialising metal tubes. Their historical account notes that Rand’s invention made paints more portable and helped artists work outside.
There is also a famous quotation attributed to Impressionist painter Renoir:
Without paints in tubes, Impressionism would not have existed.
It makes a memorable teaching quotation, but it is best presented to older children as Renoir’s opinion, not as proof that the tube alone created Impressionism.
Not a study of any inventions, but we have done a few studies of Impressionist artists, if you are interested: Monet, Renoir, and Degas.
A Fascinating Twist: Rand wasn’t a Hugely Successful Businessman
Another lesson hides in this story.
We sometimes imagine that inventors immediately become rich when they create something useful.
That certainly wasn’t true for John Goffe Rand.
The Smithsonian records that some of Rand’s later inventions were not financially successful. His paint-tube invention became important, but his financial fortunes were not as impressive as his invention’s importance might suggest.
This makes Rand a fascinating figure for children to study.
He was:
- an artist and inventor;
- an immigrant to Britain;
- a problem-solver;
- a patent holder;
- and an example of somebody whose invention became more famous than the inventor himself.
That’s a great reminder that historical importance and personal wealth are not the same thing.
How the Paint Tube Changed the Artist’s Life
Let’s compare two imaginary artists.
Artist A: 1835
Sarah wants to paint a landscape.
She must prepare her colours.
To do this, she needs pigments, oil and containers.
She needs brushes and other equipment.
Her paint is difficult to transport.
She has to be careful not to waste it.
She is much more likely to work in or close to her studio.
Artist B: later in the nineteenth century
Sarah can buy prepared colours in portable metal tubes and packs them alongside her brushes and portable easel.
She walks or travels into the countryside and sets up her easel.
She squeezes a little blue onto her palette.
Then some yellow.
Then white.
She can mix the colours as she works.
If she doesn’t use everything, she can close the tubes and take them home.
The difference isn’t simply convenience.
It changes what is practical to paint.
And when technology changes what artists can practically do, it can change art itself.
The Chemistry of Colour
Another fascinating connection lies in science’s history.
The nineteenth century was an exciting period for chemistry.
New synthetic pigments and improved manufacturing processes expanded the colours available to artists. The Getty notes that commercially produced tube paints required careful formulation for consistency, handling and shelf life, while the wider development of new colours expanded artists’ palettes.
This is a wonderful example of science, technology and art working together.
Think of the chain:
Chemistry discovers or develops new pigments
↓
Industry learns how to manufacture them.
↓
Paint makers prepare usable colours.
↓
Rand’s tube makes those colours portable.
↓
Artists can take them outdoors.
↓
Artists experiment with new ways of seeing and painting.
History is rarely just one subject.
This single little tube connects history, art, chemistry, engineering, business and geography.
What was Actually Inside an Old Paint Tube?
Older children might enjoy thinking about what paint actually means.
Oil paint isn’t simply coloured liquid.
Traditionally, it consists broadly of: pigment + drying oil.
The pigment provides the colour.
The oil acts as the binder, holding the pigment together and allowing it to be spread across a surface.
Different pigments have different properties.
Some are transparent.
And some are opaque.
Some are chemically reactive.
Whilst some are extremely durable.
Some historical pigments were made from minerals or other natural materials, while the nineteenth century saw the increasing availability of synthetic colours.
This also helps explain why the container mattered.
The artist didn’t simply need something that could hold any liquid.
The container had to preserve a particular material and protect it from the atmosphere.
Why was Metal such a Clever Material?
Rand’s patent describes a metallic vessel designed to collapse under pressure.
Metal had several useful properties.
Engineers could make it into a thin container.
Or fold and shape it.
It could protect the paint from the outside environment.
And, unlike a rigid bottle, the container could collapse as artists squeezed its contents out.
The original patent drawings are particularly fascinating because they show that Rand wasn’t simply having a vague idea about “a tube”. He had worked out a physical design and submitted drawings and a written description as part of the patent process.
This is an excellent opportunity to teach children what a patent is.
What is a Patent?
A patent is a legal protection granted for an invention.
It gives an inventor certain rights to an invention for a specified period, in exchange for publicly describing how it works.
That creates an interesting bargain:
Inventor: ‘I will explain my invention.’
Government: ‘In return, I will give you legal protection over it for a period of time.’
This means that old patents are wonderful historical documents.
They don’t just tell us who invented something.
They can tell us:
- what the inventor thought was new;
- how the inventor believed it worked;
- what the invention looked like;
- what problem the inventor intended to solve;
- and what technology existed at the time.
The Smithsonian’s surviving Rand patent includes diagrams of his collapsible metal tube.
Look Closely at the Patent
This makes a fantastic homeschool activity.
Show your children the original patent drawing.
Ask them:
For Younger Children
- What shapes can you see?
- Which parts look like the tube?
- Where do you think the paint comes out?
- What might the screw-like part do?
- Why might the tube need to collapse?
For Older Children
- What problem is the patent attempting to solve?
- Which parts of the drawing show the invention most clearly?
- Why does a patent need diagrams?
- What information would be missing if the patent contained only a picture?
- What information would be missing if it contained only words?
Challenge
Ask children to draw their own invention as though they were applying for a patent in 1841.
They must include:
- a labelled drawing;
- a description of the problem;
- an explanation of how their invention works;
- an explanation of why it is better than the existing solution.
The Invention of Paint Tube: Homeschool Activities: Ages 5–7
1. The ‘Squeeze It!’ experiment
You need:
- a clean, empty toothpaste tube or similar safe squeezable container;
- paper;
- crayons or washable paint.
Don’t put actual oil paint into homemade containers.
Ask:
What happens when you squeeze a tube?
Then ask:
What happens when you stop squeezing?
Connect this to Rand’s idea: pressure could force material out of a collapsible container.
History question
Why would an artist want the paint to stay inside the tube when they weren’t using it?
2. Before and after drawing
Fold a sheet of paper in half.
On one side, draw:
An artist before paint tubes
On the other:
An artist with paint tubes
Encourage children to include:
- the artist;
- paints;
- brushes;
- a studio;
- an outdoor landscape;
- the animal-bladder storage method;
- metal tubes.
Then ask:
Which artist would find it easier to paint outside? Why?
3. Inventor’s hat
Ask:
What annoying problem would you like to fix?
It could be:
- socks disappearing in the washing machine;
- pencils rolling off desks;
- shoelaces coming undone;
- toys getting lost.
Draw the invention.
Give it a name.
This introduces the basic idea behind Rand’s invention:
Problem → idea → invention → change.
The Invention of Paint Tube: Homeschool Activities for Ages 8–11
4. Design a better paint container
Give children paper, card, foil and tape.
Challenge them to design a container that keeps something inside while allowing the user to remove small amounts.
They should think about:
- flexibility;
- strength;
- opening and closing;
- portability;
- protecting the contents.
Then have them explain their design.
Extension
Ask:
Would your design have been possible in 1841?
Now they have to think historically.
Could someone in 1841 manufacture it?
What materials were available?
Would they have had plastic?
No.
Would they have had modern adhesives?
No.
Could they work with metal?
Yes.
That transforms a simple craft project into a lesson about historical technology.
5. Make a 1841 timeline
Create a timeline from approximately 1800–1900.
Add:
- 1801: John Goffe Rand is born.
- 1830s: railways and industrialisation accelerate.
- 1831: Rand travels to England.
- 1841: Rand receives his U.S. patent for the collapsible metal paint tube.
- 1840s: commercially produced tube paints become increasingly important.
- 1840: Claude Monet is born.
- 1841: Pierre-Auguste Renoir is born.
- 1870s: Impressionism emerges.
- 1880s–1890s: Impressionist ideas spread internationally.
Then ask:
Why is it useful to put these events on the same timeline?
The children should begin to see that the invention of the tube happened before Impressionism, not during it.
The Invention of Paint Tube: Homeschool Activities for Ages 12–16
6. Was the paint tube responsible for Impressionism?
This makes an excellent mini history debate.
Divide the class into two groups.
Team A
Yes, the paint tube helped make Impressionism possible.
They might argue:
- portable paint made outdoor painting easier;
- artists could carry many colours;
- paint could be stored;
- artists could work away from the studio;
- changing light became easier to study.
Team B
No, Impressionism had many causes.
They might argue:
- artists’ ideas changed;
- photography influenced painting;
- cities were changing;
- railway travel made landscapes more accessible;
- new theories about colour developed;
- artists were deliberately challenging academic traditions.
Then ask the students to conclude:
Was the paint tube a cause of Impressionism, a contributing factor, or merely a useful tool?
A sophisticated answer is:
It was an important enabling technology, but it was not the sole cause of Impressionism.
That’s exactly the sort of nuanced historical thinking we want older students to practise.
7. Primary-Source Detective
Give older students the original Rand patent.
The Smithsonian describes it as ‘Improvement in the Construction of Vessels or Apparatus for Preserving Paint’ and dates it to 11 September 1841.
Ask them to investigate it like historians.
Question 1
Who wrote the document?
Question 2
Where was Rand living?
Question 3
What problem was he trying to solve?
Question 4
What materials did he propose?
Question 5
How does his invention work?
Question 6
What does the drawing tell us that the written description doesn’t?
Question 7
What does the document tell us about nineteenth-century technology?
Question 8
What does it not tell us?
That final question is particularly important.
Historians aren’t simply people who collect facts.
They have to recognise the limits of their evidence.
8. Become a Victorian inventor
Give students this scenario:
It is 1841. You have invented something useful. You want to protect your idea.
They must prepare a Victorian-style patent application.
It needs:
The problem:
What is difficult or inconvenient?
The invention:
What have you created?
The materials:
What is it made from?
How it works:
Explain the process.
The advantages:
Why is it better?
A technical drawing:
Label every important part.
Extra challenge
They must design it using only materials that could realistically have been available in 1841.
No:
- plastic;
- microchips;
- Velcro;
- modern synthetic fabrics;
- lithium batteries.
This encourages students to think about technology in historical context.
9. Art experiment: Studio versus outdoors
This is a particularly nice cross-curricular activity.
Choose a simple object: a tree, flower, cup or toy.
Have the child make a quick drawing of it indoors.
Then take the same object outside and draw it again.
Ask:
- Did the light change?
- Did shadows change?
- Or did the colours appear different?
- Did you notice things outside that you hadn’t noticed inside?
- Would you want to keep changing the painting as the light changed?
Now connect that experience to nineteenth-century painters.
The point isn’t that Rand suddenly invented outdoor painting.
The point is that portable materials made it easier for artists to take their working materials with them.
A Timeline of the Paint Tube Revolution
| 1801 | John Goffe Rand is born in Bedford, New Hampshire. |
| 1831 | Rand travels to England and continues his career as a portrait painter. |
| Before 1841 | Artists commonly mixed pigments with oil and used various storage methods, including animal bladders. |
| 6 March 1841 | Rand obtains a British patent relating to preserving paint and other fluids. |
| 11 September 1841 | Rand receives U.S. Patent No. 2,252 for his collapsible metallic paint container. |
| 1842 | Rand obtains another British patent concerning improvements to making and closing collapsible metal vessels. |
| 1840s onward | Collapsible metal tubes become increasingly important for commercially prepared artists’ colours. |
| 1870s | Impressionism emerges in France. |
| Late 19th century | Portable paints become an established part of artists’ materials and outdoor painting. |
A Bigger Lesson: Small Inventions can have Big Consequences
John Goffe Rand’s story is useful because it challenges the way we sometimes imagine history.
We tend to remember:
- presidents;
- kings and queens;
- wars;
- revolutions;
- explorers;
- famous artists.
But tools also shape history.
Think about the things we use every day:
- pencils;
- spectacles;
- zips;
- buttons;
- bicycles;
- cameras;
- printing presses;
- batteries;
- computers;
- paint tubes.
A tiny change to an object can change what people can do.
Rand didn’t invent a new style of painting.
He didn’t create Impressionism.
He found a better answer to a practical question:
How can I keep my paint fresh and take it with me?
But once that problem was solved, artists had new possibilities.
And possibilities are where historical change often begins.
The ‘Butterfly Effect’ of a Paint Tube
Here’s a wonderful thought experiment for older children.
Imagine that John Rand had never invented his tube.
Would Impressionism still have happened?
Probably.
But might it have developed differently?
Possibly.
Would outdoor oil painting have been as convenient?
Probably not.
Would artists have had the same ease of carrying large ranges of prepared colours?
Probably not.
Would the development of commercially manufactured paints have followed the same path?
We can’t know.
This is called counterfactual history: asking ‘what if?’ questions about the past.
It shouldn’t be confused with fact.
We cannot know exactly what would have happened.
But asking the question helps children see how choices, inventions, and circumstances connect historical events.
An Important Myth to Avoid
It’s tempting to tell children:
John Rand invented paint tubes, and therefore Impressionism happened.
That’s a brilliant story, but history is more complicated.
The invention of the collapsible tube was one important technological development.
It helped make oil paint more portable and practical.
But Impressionism had many causes.
The National Gallery, museums and art historians emphasise a much broader transformation in nineteenth-century art, including changing ideas about modern life, colour, perception and painting.
So the most accurate homeschool lesson is:
Rand’s invention did not create Impressionism on its own. It helped create the technological conditions that made new kinds of painting easier.
That distinction teaches children something much more valuable than a simple fact.
It teaches them how historians think.
A Final Challenge for the Whole Family
Place an ordinary modern paint tube on the table.
Ask your children:
Does this look like an important historical object?
Probably not.
It looks ordinary.
Now ask:
What problem does it solve?
Why was that problem difficult to solve in 1840?
What technologies made the solution possible?
How did the solution change artists’ lives?
How might it have affected the history of art?
And finally:
What ordinary object in your home might historians 200 years from now consider revolutionary?
That’s the real lesson of John Goffe Rand.
History isn’t only about the spectacular things people did. It is also about the little problems they solved.
On 11 September 1841, one American painter solved one of those little problems.
He put paint into a tube.
And the consequences reached far beyond his studio.
Quick Quiz: Test your Knowledge
1. Who invented the first collapsible artist’s paint tube?
John Goffe Rand.
2. On what date did Rand receive his U.S. patent?
11 September 1841.
3. What was the U.S. patent number?
No. 2,252.
4. What was commonly used to store prepared paint before collapsible metal tubes?
Among other methods, animal bladders such as pig bladders.
5. Why was the tube better?
It was portable, collapsible and could help protect the remaining paint from air.
6. Where was Rand living when he developed the invention?
London, England.
7. Did Rand invent Impressionism?
No. His invention was a technological development that helped make outdoor painting and portable oil colours more practical.
8. What does “plein air” mean?
Painting outdoors, or in the open air.
9. What huge historical development was happening around Rand?
The Industrial Revolution and rapid technological and manufacturing change.
10. What is the biggest lesson from Rand’s story?
A small technological invention can have consequences far beyond the original problem it was designed to solve.
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