Green pigments are the materials used to create the green colors seen in painting and the other arts. At one time, such pigments came from minerals, particularly those containing compounds of copper. Green pigments reflect the green portions of the spectrum of visible light, and absorb the others. Important green pigments in art history include Malachite and Verdigris, found in tomb paintings in Ancient Egypt, and the Green earth pigments popular in the Middle Ages.[1] More recent greens, such as Cobalt Green, are largely synthetic, made in laboratories and factories. Today, the main green pigment is Phthalocyanine Green G.
The dominant green pigment is Phthalocyanine Green G, which is sold under many commercial names. It is a synthetic green pigment from the group of phthalocyanines, a complex of copper(II) with chlorinated phthalocyanine. It is a soft green powder, which is insoluble in water.[2] It is a bright, high intensity colour used in oil and acrylic based artist's paints, and in other applications.
Chrome oxide and viridian
Chromium(III) oxide (or chromia) is one of the principal oxides of the element chromium. It is the dominant green pigment in industry, with an annual production of 28,000 tons in 1996.[3]Viridian is a blue-green synthetic pigment of medium saturation and relatively dark in value, created in the 19th century. It takes its name from "Viridis", the Latin word for green.[4] It became a particular favourite of the painters Paul Cézanne, Jean Renoir and Claude Monet.
Chomium(III)-oxide sample
La Grenouillére Claude Monet (1869)
Mountains in Provence Paul Cézanne (c. 1890-92)
Minor or former green pigments
Verdigris
Verdigris or Vert-de-Gris, is a blue-green, copper-based pigment. Its name comes from the natural pigments that form a patina on copper, bronze, and brass as it ages.[5] Oneexample is the green patina that formed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. In the Middle Ages, the patina was made by attaching copper strips to a wooden block with acetic acid, then burying the sealed block in dung. It would be dug up a few weeks later, the verdigris scraped off. Another method was to put copper plates in clay pots filled with distilled wine. The verdigris which formed was scraped off each week.[6]
In the 19th century and earlier, the pigment was also made by hanging copper plates over hot vinegar in a sealed pot until a green crust formed on the copper.[6] Today it is usually made by treating Copper(II) hydroxide with acetic acid.[7]
The pigment was used by the Romans, particularly in the murals at Pompeii.[8] The pigment had its weaknesses; it sometimes suffered from humidity and heat, and when mixed with other colors, sometimes altered them. Verdigris was particularly unstable when used to color an oil paint. It was sometimes mixed with lead white, giving it better opacity. Leonardo da Vinci, in his Treatise on Painting, advised artists to avoid it. Nonetheless, it was widely used in miniature painting, in Safavid art and the art of Mongolia. In the late 19th century, it was almost entirely replaced by the synthetic Chrome green.[9]
Paolo Veronese used verdigris with lead white and some yellow in The Adoration of the Magi, at the National Gallery in London. The color has largely retained its particular brilliance.[10]
Large deposits of malachite were mined by the Egyptians in the eastern desert and the west of Sinai. [11]Cleopatra is recorded to have used malachite to color her eyelids. It was mixed with egg or with the sap of the acacia plant, and used to paint papyrus manuscripts and the walls of tombs.[12]
It was also widely used in China from antiquity, first in painting landscapes, and then, from the 5th century BC until the 3rd century AD, to make green inks, when the official palette of colors, under the influence of Confucianism, was reduced to blues made with azurite, and greens made with malachite.[13]
Artists in India imported malachite from Turkestan for murals, and monks in Tibet ground it coarsely to preserve the intensity of the color in manuscripts. In Europe, and particularly in Ireland, it was widely used for intense greens in illumination and miniature painting. They avoided mixing it with other colors, because in a mixture it became unstable.[14]
It was (and is) extremely expensive (more than 100 Euros for 100 grams in 2000),[citation needed] so it was usually only used on limited surfaces. It was largely replaced in the early 19th century by chrome green, though it is still frequently used in China for fine greens. A synthetic form of malachite, verditer, has also been used.
In Latin America, the Teotihuacan civilisation, which ruled in Mexico between 300 and 650, AD, made murals using crushed malachite, which was mixed with chalk for lighter shades, or mixed with blue from azurite or lapis-lazuli to make blue greens, or with yellow ochre to make yellow-greens.[15]
Classical painters made extensive use of the color. The wedding gown in the Arnolfini Portrait, by Jan van Eyck (1434), was painted with malachite.[16]
Manjushri Ming Dynasty, China thangka (c 1500–50), surrounded by malachite green.
Arnolfini Portrait Jan van Eyck, (1434) (National Gallery, London)
Green earth (Terre Verte)
Green earth was an olive-green natural pigment widely used in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was often used in Italian painting as an under layer beneath flesh colors, particularly in painting by Duccio. In some of Ducco's paintings the upper flesh colors deteriorated, and the green under layer has become visible. Green earth pigments in the Middle Ages supplemented the more expensive malachite pigment. In Europe, they came from Verona, the South of France, and Cyprus. During the Roman Empire they were widely used in frescoes decorating villas. They were used either pure or mixed with other pigments, such as Egyptian Blue. They also were used Egypt in portraits at Fayoum, and in the Buddhist temples at Ajanta in India. In the Middle Ages, since the color by itself was somber, it was sometimes brightened with lead white.
They were also used by Native American artists in North America, particularly the Hopis, who used them to color their ceremonial sand paintings.[17]
Green earth pigment
Mural using green earth pigments of the goddess Flora, in Villa di Arianna, Stabia South Italy. using green earth pigments
Mural of Tawa, the symbol of the Sun, from the Hopi tribe, Painted Desert Inn, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
Emerald Green
Emerald Green, also known as Paris Green, Scheele's Green, Schweinfurt green and Vienna Green, is a synthetic inorganic compound, made by a reaction of sodium arsenite with copper(II) acetate. While it makes a beautiful rich green, the color of the emerald stone, it is highly toxic, due to a main ingredient, arsenic.[18] It was invented as 'emerald green' in 1814 by two chemists, Russ and Sattler, at the Wilhelm Dye and White Lead Company of Schweinfurt, Bavaria, who were trying to improve another similar synthetic pigment, Scheele's green, so that it would not darken around sulfides. Because of its toxic arsenic content, it became a popular rodenticide and insecticide,[19]
Emerald green was particularly popular with the Impressionists, including Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, both of whom in 1888 placed vivid reds next to Emerald green to create jarring contrasts in their paintings Arlésiennes (Mistral) and The Night Cafe. Van Gogh wrote of the Night Cafe: "The café is one of the most horrible I have every painted. But was intentional, because I tried to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of the red and green".[20]
Emerald green pigment
Arlesiennes (Mistral) Paul Gauguin (1888)
The Night Café Vincent van Gogh (1888)
Chemical composition of natural and synthetic non-organic green pigments
1 2 Darnton, Robert. "A Bourgeois Puts His World in Order" in The Great Cat Massacre --and other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Vintage Books, 1985. p. 114.
↑ Solomon, Sally D.; Rutkowsky, Susan A.; Mahon, Megan L.; Halpern, Erica M. (2011). "Synthesis of Copper Pigments, Malachite and Verdigris: Making Tempera Paint". Journal of Chemical Education. 88 (12): 1694–1697. doi:10.1021/ed200096e.
↑ Bomford and Roy, "A Closer Look at Colour" (2009), p. 38-39
↑ Charanay and De Givry, Comment Regarder Les Couleurs Dans la Peinture, (2017), p. 97
↑ Gettens, R.J. and Fitzhugh, E. W. (1993) "Malachite and Green Verditer", pp. 183–202 in Artists’ Pigments. A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Vol. 2: A. Roy (Ed.) Oxford University Press. ISBN0894682601
↑ "Dangers in the Manufacture of Paris Green and Scheele's Green". Monthly Review of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 5 (2): 78–83. 1917. JSTOR41829377.
↑ Ball, Philip, "Histoire Vinvante des Couleurs" (2005), p. 353-353
Bibliography
Pastoureau, Michel (2013). Vert: Histoire d'une couleur (in French). Paris: Éditions du Seuil. ISBN978-2-7578-6731-0.
Varichon, Anne (2005). Couleurs: pigments et teintures dans les mains des peuples (in French). Paris: Editions du Seuil. ISBN978-2-02-084697-4.
Bomford, David; Roy, Ashok (2009). A Closer Look - Colour. London: National Gallery. ISBN978-185709-442-8.
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495–570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combination of yellow and cyan; in the RGB color model, used on television and computer screens, it is one of the additive primary colors, along with red and blue, which are mixed in different combinations to create all other colors. By far the largest contributor to green in nature is chlorophyll, the chemical by which plants photosynthesize and convert sunlight into chemical energy. Many creatures have adapted to their green environments by taking on a green hue themselves as camouflage. Several minerals have a green color, including the emerald, which is colored green by its chromium content.
Violet is the color of light at the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum. It is one of the seven colors that Isaac Newton labeled when dividing the spectrum of visible light in 1672. Violet light has a wavelength between approximately 380 and 435 nanometers. The color's name is derived from the Viola genus of flowers.
Purple is a color similar in appearance to violet light. In the RYB color model historically used in the arts, purple is a secondary color created by combining red and blue pigments. In the CMYK color model used in modern printing, purple is made by combining magenta pigment with either cyan pigment, black pigment, or both. In the RGB color model used in computer and television screens, purple is created by mixing red and blue light in order to create colors that appear similar to violet light.
Brown is a shade. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black.
Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. Its lengthy grinding and washing process makes the natural pigment quite valuable—roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes from and as expensive as gold.
A pigment is a powder used to add color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly insoluble and chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored substances which are soluble or go into solution at some stage in their use. Dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic. Pigments of prehistoric and historic value include ochre, charcoal, and lapis lazuli.
Basic copper carbonate is a chemical compound, more properly called copper(II) carbonate hydroxide. It can be classified as a coordination polymer or a salt. It consists of copper(II) bonded to carbonate and hydroxide with formula Cu2(CO3)(OH)2. It is a green solid that occurs in nature as the mineral malachite. It has been used since antiquity as a pigment, and it is still used as such in artist paints, sometimes called verditer, green bice, or mountain green.
Malachite is a copper carbonate hydroxide mineral, with the formula Cu2CO3(OH)2. This opaque, green-banded mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses, in fractures and deep, underground spaces, where the water table and hydrothermal fluids provide the means for chemical precipitation. Individual crystals are rare, but occur as slender to acicular prisms. Pseudomorphs after more tabular or blocky azurite crystals also occur.
Vermilion is a color family and pigment most often used between antiquity and the 19th century from the powdered mineral cinnabar. It is synonymous with red orange, which often takes a modern form, but is 11% brighter.
Azurite or Azure spar is a soft, deep-blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. During the early 19th century, it was also known as chessylite, after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France. The mineral, a basic carbonate with the chemical formula Cu3(CO3)2(OH)2, has been known since ancient times, and was mentioned in Pliny the Elder's Natural History under the Greek name kuanos (κυανός: "deep blue," root of English cyan) and the Latin name caeruleum. Copper (Cu2+) gives it its blue color.
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. Oil paint also has practical advantages over other paints, mainly because it is waterproof.
Verdigris is a common name for any of a variety of somewhat toxic copper salts of acetic acid, which range in colour from green to a bluish-green depending on their chemical composition. Once used as a medicine and pharmaceutical preparation, verdigris occurs naturally, creating a patina on copper, bronze, and brass, and is the main component of a historic green pigment used for artistic purposes from antiquity until the late 20th century, including in easel painting, polychromatic sculptures, and illumination of maps. However, due to its instability, its popularity declined as other green pigments became readily available. The instability of its appearance stems from its hydration level and basicity, which change as the pigment interacts with other materials over time.
Copper(II) hydroxide is the hydroxide of copper with the chemical formula of Cu(OH)2. It is a pale greenish blue or bluish green solid. Some forms of copper(II) hydroxide are sold as "stabilized" copper(II) hydroxide, although they likely consist of a mixture of copper(II) carbonate and hydroxide. Cupric hydroxide is a strong base, although its low solubility in water makes this hard to observe directly.
Paris green is an arsenic-based organic pigment. As a green pigment it is also known as Mitis green, Schweinfurt green, Sattler green, emerald, Vienna green, Emperor green or Mountain green. It is a highly toxic emerald-green crystalline powder that has been used as a rodenticide and insecticide, and also as a pigment.
Han purple and Han blue are synthetic barium copper silicate pigments developed in China and used in ancient and imperial China from the Western Zhou period until the end of the Han dynasty.
Green earth, also known as terre verte and Verona green, is an inorganic pigment derived from the minerals celadonite and glauconite. Its chemical formula is K[(Al,Fe3+),(Fe2+,Mg)](AlSi3,Si4)O10(OH)2.
Blue pigments are natural or synthetic materials, usually made from minerals and insoluble with water, used to make the blue colors in painting and other arts. The raw material of the earliest blue pigment was lapis lazuli from mines in Afghanistan, that was refined into the pigment ultramarine. Since the late 18th and 19th century, blue pigments are largely synthetic, manufactured in laboratories and factories.
Red pigments are materials, usually made from minerals, used to create the red colors in painting and other arts. The color of red and other pigments is determined by the way it absorbs certain parts of the spectrum of visible light and reflects the others. The brilliant opaque red of vermillion, for example, results because vermillion reflects the major part of red light, but absorbs the blue, green and yellow parts of white light.
Azurite is an inorganic pigment derived from the mineral of the same name. It was likely used by artists as early as the Fourth Dynasty in Egypt, but it was less frequently employed than synthetically produced copper pigments such as Egyptian Blue. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it was the most prevalent blue pigment in European paintings, appearing more commonly than the more expensive ultramarine. Azurite's derivation from copper mines tends to give it a greenish hue, in contrast with the more violet tone of ultramarine. Azurite is also less stable than ultramarine, and notable paintings such as Michelangelo's The Entombment have seen their azure blues turn to olive green in time. Azurite pigment typically includes traces of malachite and cuprite; both minerals are found alongside azurite in nature, and they may account for some of the green discoloration of the pigment. The particle size of azurite pigment has been shown to have a significant effect on its chromatic intensity, and the manner of grinding and preparing the pigment therefore has a major impact on its appearance.
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Chomium(III)-oxide sample
La Grenouillére
Mountains in Provence
