Pigments of the Impressionists
If you are wanting to make an historically accurate copy of in Impressionist painting you will have a hard time finding the exact pigments in a modern art store. The Impressionists were quick to adopt the newest pigments of their time, many without concern as to the stability, or lightfastness, of the new products. Luckily, the majority of the new pigments that came out of the industrial revolution proved to be extremely lightfast, and many are still found on art store shelves today.
While it is possible to analyze the pigments present in a painting by removing a sample, an artist like Van Gogh left us detailed letters which often tell directly which pigments he chose. He wrote to his brother Theo in August of 1882, “Then, for oil painting, I now have everything which is absolutely necessary, and also a stock of paints, large tubes (which are much cheaper than the little ones); but you will understand that I limited myself to the simple colours in watercolour as well as in oil: ochre (red - yellow- brown), cobalt and Prussian blue, Naples yellow, sienna, black and white, completed with some smaller tubes of carmine, sepia, vermilion, ultramarine, gamboge.” Three years later he would write, “Cobalt - is a divine colour and there is nothing as fine for putting an atmosphere round things. Carmine is the red of wine and is warm and lively like wine. The same goes for emerald green too. It’s false economy to dispense with them, with those colours.Cadmium as well.” And contemporary artists will be happy to know that Vincent, too, complained about the high cost of pigments like cobalt blue, although he rightly recognized that, as a pigment, it was indispensible. Vermillion, gamboge, and emerald green are colors that are no longer found on the shelves of modern art stores, like Utrecht. Some of the pigments from the Impressionists era were dropped because of their toxicity, like Van Gogh’s favorite yellow, Chrome Yellow, which is lead chromate. Others, like emerald green, had the characteristics of turning dark when exposed to sulfur - an unavoidable element in modern, urban environments. The fact is that modern artists have a greater selection of pigments and paints to choose from, and that any artist from the past would be thrilled to have such a selection.