Gamblin 1980 Oils - Cadmium Yellow Light (PY37; PY74)

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 Yellow Medium: This is a pure medium yellow with excellent opacity, a naturally muted tint, and high hiding power. This chemically pure cadmium colour replaced toxic chrome yellow for the Impressionists. It is most useful for natural light painting and is slow-drying in oil form.

PIGMENT COMPOSITION AND PERMANENCE

• Pigment Name: PY37-Cadmium Yellow
• 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 is 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. The pale varieties have been known to fade with exposure to sunlight in conditions where moisture can penetrate the binder.

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. Metallic cadmium was discovered in 1817 by Friedrich Strohmeyer. Oil colours were first made from Cadmium Yellow pigments in 1819, replacing toxic Chrome (lead) Yellows. However, their production was delayed until 1840 due to the scarcity of cadmium metals. 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 AND PERMANENCE

• Pigment Name: PY74-Hansa Yellow
• Pigment Type: monoazo

PROPERTIES

Pigment PY74 is one of the most commercially essential pigments of the Hansa Yellow group, considered superior to many others in its class based on both tinting strength and lightfastness. Several PY74 grades with different particle sizes are available. Grades with finer particle sizes are more brilliant and transparent. Pigment PY74 ranges from reddish-yellow to greenish-yellow, with temperature shifts from cool to warm hues. It has high tinting strength and average to slow drying time.

PERMANENCE

This Hansa Yellow has better lightfastness than other yellow monoazo pigments, particularly in darker shades.

TOXICITY

Hansa Yellow has no significant acute hazards, though its chronic hazards have not been well studied.

HISTORY

Hansa Yellows were first made in Germany just before WW1 from a series of synthetic dyestuffs called Pigment Yellow. They were intended to be a synthetic replacement for Cadmium Yellow.