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Originally Posted by Richard Bingham
:....a painting should be thoroughly dry before applying the final varnish, and the state of dryness has less to do with specified time lapse than the nature of the paint films and ambient conditions. As a rule of thumb, usually six months to a year, though.
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I just read an interesting (and logical) passage in Carlson's book about landscape painting. He asserted, writing originally in the 1920s, that one should either varnish an oil painting right away, in the first month after it is complete, or after the requisite year. His logic is that if you varnish the painting within the month, "the varnish is more or less incorporated with the pigment underneath" and if you can't varnish early, you should varnish only in a year. The real danger of getting cracking is in varnishing a half-dry picture. It does make sense that the varnish (probably damar in Carlson's case) diluted with turp might do that kind of thing. According to him, he'd had no cracking following those rules.