@article{7af853ab345d4425a7e286bf685072f0,
title = "Chrome yellow in nineteenth century art: Historic reconstructions of an artists' pigment",
abstract = "To understand the reported degradation of chrome yellows, popular with artists since their introduction in the 19th century, it is necessary to understand the pigment formulation as produced at that time. Chromium-based pigments such as lead chromate (PbCrO 4, chrome yellow) or zinc chromate (K 2O·4ZnCrO 4·3H 2O, zinc yellow), as used by Van Gogh and Seurat, currently exhibit substantial darkening in paintings such as {"}Sunflowers{"} or {"}A Sunday on La Grande Jatte-1884{"}. Winsor & Newton (W&N), one of the leading artists' colourmen of the time, has made its recipe archive available. Access to their extensive chrome yellow pigment formulations prompted our research on the stability of these pigments by reconstructing their processes of manufacture. The colorants obtained were compared with contemporary tube paints from W&N as well as with samples from paintings by Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918) an influential modernist Portuguese painter. Good correlation between all three sources was found.",
author = "Vanessa Otero and Leslie Carlyle and M{\'a}rcia Vilarigues and Melo, {Maria Jo{\~a}o}",
note = "The authors are grateful to Winsor & Newton, ColArt Fine Art & Graphics Ltd., in particular Emma Pearce and Ian Garrett for making the archive project possible, and most recently for the kind assistance of Paul Robinson. The W&N archive project was funded by the Netherlands Institute for Scientific Research (NWO) as part of the De Mayerne Programme and in the UK, by a Resource Enhancement Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The Portuguese Science Foundation, FCT-MCTES, is acknowledged for funding the project PTDC/EAT-EAT/113612/2009 {"}Crossing borders: History, materials and techniques of Portuguese painters from 1850-1918'' and Vanessa Otero's PhD Grant, SFRH/BD/74574/2010. Special thanks to Ana Carneiro for her valuable help with the 19th century chemical nomenclature and to Joao Pedro Veiga for his help in the pigment analysis by X-ray diffraction.",
year = "2012",
month = mar,
day = "7",
doi = "10.1039/c1ra00614b",
language = "English",
volume = "2",
pages = "1798--1805",
journal = "Rsc Advances",
issn = "2046-2069",
publisher = "Royal Society of Chemistry",
number = "5",
}