arsenic

Truly, I promise to stop posting self-portraits very shortly: it's positively Weiner-esque.   Though I promise that I'm fully clothed, and even if I weren't, any revealing parts would probably be covered in aqueous green paint - my clothes certainly are.   This is the result of painting my new office with Farrow and Ball's "Arsenic" paint.   One might, indeed, wonder if the choice is inspired by a sudden rush of Victorianicity, or whether close exposure to certain aspects of administration at Rutgers have formed my paint choice by association: no, I saw an article - probably in the NYT - in which a room was painted this color and decided that I had to have it (that being said, I wish I'd found this UK site for heritage/vintage/traditional/expensive paint colors before today: /    - though I think I'd stick with arsenic, even if Farrow and Ball's Babouche is tempting ... 

Arsenic, of course, was a lethal and common ingredient in Victorian internal decoration.   What I hadn't known is that it was also a common ingredient in the emerald green used by artists - wikipedia, at least, hypothesises that Monet's blindness and Cezanne's diabetes may have been caused by this, at least in part.   I do, though, remember pretty certainly that someone in Tennyson's family suffered from - died from? - arsenic in the wallpaper.   And most shocking of all is that William Morris ignored arsenic-anxieties, and the greens in his wallpapers were arsenic (indeed, as I was painting this it seemed to be exactly the same green as his willow-leaf pattern).   He dismissed, indeed, the idea that workers might suffer from arsenic poisoning - he even sat on the board of an arsenic mining company.   So I hope that F&B's assertion that this paint is ecologically sound in every way is true ...