This is a bluish-green pigment consisting of hydrated chromium hydroxide or, simply, the color itself. Seems to be one of those words you find just about only in a paint box.
I picked it up in Jim Butcher's Turn Coat.
I love new words.
The painting is Vincent Van Gogh's Café Terrace at Night, 1888, which the stream of time has washed ashore in Ontario.
Pigments Through the Ages tells us:
"Van Gogh used for a painting only some tubes. Never all. For his
masterpiece, Night Terrace he used: Prussian blue and viridian and
some carmine for the blue air and the door in the front. Yellows were
only chrome lemon and for the orange he used the chrome lemon and
geranium lake."
Massively impressive. His painter's pallet carried two colors of blue.
side note: viridian in 1888 contained traces of chromium oxide borate as a byproduct of production. Modern viridium doesn't, so modern fakes don't. Though I suppose art counterfeiters have caught on to that by now
No comments:
Post a Comment