## 3 Results  
### Art Materials in Shanghai in the 1930s  
Despite the lack of information about the brands of paints preferred by [PERSON] during his artistic activity in Shanghai, the studies of the contemporary colourmen advertisements published in the _Shanghai Art Academy Graduation Yearbook_ and Shanghai pictorials, _The Young Companion_ and _Arts and Life_ gave insight into the local market of art materials. Hence, the archival sources, although limited, turned out to be complementary to the analytical data collected from the paintings and supported the interpretation of certain materials as well as assisted in a determination of the artist-made or commercial pigment mixtures.  
Both local brands, such as Marie's and Eagle, and imported ones like R&S and W&N, were available at stationery shops and bookstores. Although local colourmen catalogues from the 1930s were not available to the authors, combining the textual and pictorial information from the 1930s advertisements revealed the most common painting materials offered to the artists at that time. These included watercolours in tubes and cubes, oil colours in tubes, poster paints, Chinese ink, drying oil, brushes, canvases, pastels and drawing tools.  
Interestingly, Marie's company advertisement from 1934 listed 12 pigments: orpiment, indigo, azurite, yellow ochre, burnt ochre, malachite, organic red (unspecified), vermilion, carmine, white powder (unspecified), gamboge and cinnabar (Figure 4a-m) [19]. The company additionally highlighted rose madder oil paint and watercolour chrome orange in their 1935 and 1937 advertisements (Figure 5a-d) [20,21]. Various advertisements from 1936 by the Eagle company highlighted oil tube paints with ultramarine and olive green as well as watercolour tubes with chrome yellow and carmine tint (Figure 5e-j) [22].  
Regarding the imported brands, R&S was the sole advertiser of art materials in _The Young Companion_ and _Arts & Life_ between 1932 and 1935. During that time, the company actively promoted the introduction of 16 watercolour tubes, 48 oil colour tubes and highlighted watercolours in tubes with Prussian blue and vermillion as well as oil paints in tubes with cobalt blue tint and yellow ochre (Figure 6a-c).  
Growing recognition of the R&S brand in China resulted in fierce competition from local manufacturers, who found a niche market for imitations of R&S products. To protect the brand's reputation, R&S released advertisements warning clients of these poor-quality products (Figure 6a-c) [23-26]. Besides R&S painting materials, W&N was another overseas brand available in Shanghai, and their watercolours, drying oil and painting canvas were reported by [PERSON] [7].  
Figure 4: Advertisement by Marie from 1934 with marked listing of 12 pigments (**a**) and corresponding details of the Chinese characters referring to orpiment (**b**), indigo (**c**), azurite (**d**), yellow ochre (**e**), burnt ochre (**f**), malachite (**g**), organic red (**h**), vermillion (**i**), carmine (**j**), white powder (**k**), gamboge (**l**) and cinnabar (**m**).  
Despite the wide range of local and imported painting materials available in Shanghai, [PERSON] also might have used paints purchased during his time in Paris (1929-1932). Although there is no direct evidence of the specific brand(s) that he used in Paris, it is known that he had some interest in Lefranc colours [27]. Moreover, he might have had access to painting materials from other French and overseas manufacturers whose advertisements were presented in the authors' earlier research [11, 28].