Gamblin 1980 Oils - PY37-Cadmium Yellow; PG18-Viridian
Gamblin’s approach is different. 1980 colours contain pure
pigments, the finest refined linseed oil, and marble dust (calcium carbonate).
Since oil painting began, these three ingredients have made more affordable
colours.
Painters experience true colours without homogenized texture
or muddy colour mixtures. Gamblin's approach to using traditional raw materials
and processes ensures that artists experience the luscious working
properties they expect from their oil colours.
Cadmium Green: A bright, light green mixture of Viridian and
Cadmium Yellow. It is opaque and helpful to make muted colours of the natural
world. No health labelling is required.
PIGMENT COMPOSITION AND PERMANENCE
- Pigment Name: PY37-Cadmium Yellow (Concentrated cadmium zinc
(II)-sulphide)
- Pigment Type: inorganic, cadmium
PROPERTIES
Cadmium Yellow is brilliant, dense, and opaque, with good
tinting strength and high hiding power. It is the artist’s principal bright
yellow and is available in light, medium, and dark shades. The deeper shades
appear deep orange and have the greatest tinting strength.
It is slow-drying in oil and used in oil and watercolour. It
cannot be mixed with copper-based pigments. A clean Cadmium Orange is created
when Cadmium Yellow is mixed with Cadmium Red. Hues vary by brand.
Cadmium pigments have been partially replaced by azo
pigments, similar in lightfastness to the cadmium colours, cheaper, and
non-toxic. Cadmium Yellow is usually available in a pure grade or a
cadmium-barium mix. This mix has the same permanence with a lower tinting
strength.
PERMANENCE
Cadmium Yellow is lightfast and permanent in most forms, but
like most cadmium colours, it will fade in fresco or mural painting. The deeper
shades are the most permanent, while the pale varieties have been known to fade
with exposure to sunlight.
TOXICITY
Cadmium Yellow is a known human carcinogen. It can be
hazardous if chronically inhaled or ingested.
HISTORY
Cadmiums get their names from the Latin word cadmia, meaning
zinc ore calamine, and the Greek word kadmeia, meaning Cadmean earth, first
found near Thebes, the city founded by the Phoenician prince Cadmus.
Friedrich Strohmeyer discovered metallic cadmium in 1817.
Oil colours were first made from Cadmium Yellow pigments in 1819, replacing
toxic Chrome (lead) Yellows. However, due to the scarcity of cadmium metals,
their production was delayed until 1840.
Landscape painters, such as Claude Monet, preferred Cadmium
Yellow to the less expensive Chrome Yellow because of its higher chroma and
greater purity of colour.
PIGMENT COMPOSITION AND PERMANENCE
- Pigment Name: PG18-Viridian (chromium (III)-oxide hydrate)
- Pigment Type: inorganic
PROPERTIES
Viridian is the standard green. It is stable, robust, and
cold, with an emerald green undertone. It has a transparent hue, good tinting
strength, a dark masstone that can be almost black at full power, and a slow
drying time in oil form.
Viridian is commonly replaced by the darker, more saturated,
and staining Phthalo Greens, but its properties make it a necessary part of the
palette of an experienced landscape painter.
PERMANENCE
Viridian has excellent permanence, except in
high-temperature work, and is highly valued as a glazing colour.
TOXICITY
Viridian is slightly toxic.
HISTORY
Viridian's name comes from the Latin viridis, meaning green.
Guignet patented the process for manufacturing Viridian, or Transparent Oxide
of Chromium, in Paris in 1859. However, Pannetier and Binet discovered it in
1838.
Viridian replaced Verdigris, which was reactive and
unstable, and Emerald Green, which was a poisonous copper aceto-arsenite used
as a rat poison in the sewers of Paris.
