Vermilion Test

[gunzorro]

Taking up Jim T (Termini) on his suggestion to do a test with various vermilions and amber.

Here's the first stage, the layout. Each paint is pulled down in a line using a palette knife, with a drop of 25% amber varnish at the bottom (before mixing into this bottom area of the paint line).



The paints used are Blockx and Harding genuine vermilion on the left, which look virtually identical, although the Harding is using linseed and the Blockx is using poppy (as far as I know).

The middle is the Studio Products, followed to the right by Doak and Blue Ridge. These three look vitually identical -- we know the Blue Ridge pigment comes from Doak, and we know Doak is now supplied by Studio Products for mixing paints. The question then begs: are these three samples all the same pigment, and if so, is it genuine vermilion? We won't have an answer to that question unless someone can furnish chemical analysis. (any offers?)

The top section of these lines will remain the paint as it came from the tube with the uppermost section covered from light, and the next section exposed. The middle area will have a thinned coating of amber varnish, and possibly a second (or third) of different varnish like Soluvar.

I'll present lightfastness results in 3 to 6 months.

As of now, the test is set up to dry for a few weeks before the varnish coats.

[Termini.]

Wow Jim,

Thanks for this undertaking! This is very interesting!

[Brian Firth]

Looks good Jim. I can say that I tested Natural Pigments genuine vermilion with a coat of Soluvar and it didn't protect it from darkening at all.

Also, Blue Ridge does not get their vermilion pigment from Doak, they used too, but no longer get anything from Doak. So, unless your Blue Ridge vermilion is an old batch, then it is definitely a cadmium mix which they admit to using now.

My money is on all three on the right being cadmium. One easy test is to smell the wet paints for the tell-tell metallic smell of selenium that is characteristic of cadmium red paints. Genuine vermilion doesn't have that smell, but all my cadmium reds do and so does the RGH, Blue Ridge (old version with Doak pigment) and Doak vermilion, leading me to a pretty confident assessment of them all being cadmium. Of course if they darken, then we know they're real! :P

Look forward to the results.

[Einion]

Thanks for going to the trouble of doing this Jim

Will look forward to the results, but I'll make a small wager now that the varnish won't prevent the problem.

Einion

[ly]

Hi Jim
Why not to add Vasari's Cadmium-Vermilion to your test.
ly

[gunzorro]

ly -- What a great idea!! I think there might just be enough room on an edge to add the Vasari. I'll try to get to that.

[Oriane]

I'd love to see the Holbein vermilion added as well.

[rltromble]

Jim, I just have to say the cost of this test makes me cringe a little. But I will be interested to see how the test plays out. But do you really see an advantage of using vermilion over cad red light?

[wetbob]

SP looks very chromatic, may be handy

[Termini.]

Co

Originally Posted by wetbob

SP looks very chromatic, may be handy

Yes, it does look very chromatic. I have been eyeing the Studio Products Vermilion for quite some time. Actual vermilion is not interchangeable with cadmium red light, or any cadmium red. Most people who try both paints, will quickly understand the difference. That is not to say that cadmium red is a bad color. Not at all, and in fact cadmium red is a marvelous color, but it is not the same tool in the tool box. Cadmium reds are great in mixes, but better when white is not mixed with it, as it tends to go pink. Actual vermilion doesn't lose as much chroma as its value increases. To see the difference in its use, simply go to the museum, and look at any number of old master produced portraits. Look in the cheeks, and then look at some modern portraits employing the use of cadmium red. The color is much different. Vermilion although high in chroma appears to have a more earth color appearance, at least in my opinion. I would add that it is well documented that vermilion was successfully used centuries ago. The trip to the museum as I mentioned above, is all the proof that is necessary. If all applications of this paint resulted in blackening, we would see thousands of portraits, in museums all over the world, that looked like someone rubbed coal on the cheeks of the sitters, as that sat having their portraits painted, centuries ago. This simply isn't the case.

I hope that the lightfast tests show that this product can be used successfully. Considering that every tool in the painters tool box helps, I don't understand how I could think otherwise.

[Einion]

Originally Posted by Termini.

Most people who try both paints, will quickly understand the difference.

There is indeed a difference, as there is between nearly any two different pigments of similar masstone colour - this can even be appreciated quite well in digital photos. But even individual examples of Cad Red can vary a surprising amount and some are a great deal closer in mixing character to Vermilion than others (e.g. being more chromatic in tint as well as having a similar change in hue from the masstone). Comparisons have been posted here on WC that show this quite well.

Originally Posted by Termini.

Cadmium reds are great in mixes, but better when white is not mixed with it, as it tends to go pink.

Tints of Cad Red do vary but more commonly than not they don't go pink in tint if I understand what you mean by pink here. And besides, isn't this one of the very characteristics that the tints of Vermilion are prized for?

Originally Posted by georgeoh

Light cadmium red is said to replace the hue of vermilion or cinnabar, but tints of vermilion or cinnabar are pink, and hence highly prized by the Old Masters, then are tints of cadmium red, which are orange-red.

...

Termini makes a point above about Vermilion not being interchangeable with Cad Red Light and much the same could be said about any two pigments of roughly the same colour - their individual characteristics makes each one unique (some more so than others) and therefore one can't be switched in for the other... only in practice the painter can do this, and often with relative ease.

What matters at the end of the day is not what each individual paint can do but what the palette as a whole can achieve. Once we get down to practical usage how a single pigment works in less critical than the finished colours that are needed in the painting - and there are many different routes to many of the same colours, using both direct and indirect means.

This is why Alizarin Crimson for example can be replaced by painters looking for an alternative that's more lightfast. Now some of the alternatives are closeish so an easy swap-out but some are a very different colour, but if done right this switch is accomplished without any change being apparent in their work.

Back to the colour at hand, Vermilion/Cinnabar is often used in master works in major collections that have undergone repair or retouching and this is more proof of the general principle, if it were needed: as these are now generally done using another red (a Cad Red often) and those retouchings can be impossible to detect, even when you know where they are.

With regard to historical use, we need to bear in mind that the paints used historically could be quite different from what's commonly available today. Plus their methods might not be the same, and the other palette constituents are very rarely the same as used in the present day; all of these things could and would affect things. It is undeniably true that Vermilion has held up well overall over the centuries but quite apart from earlier examples being mostly Cinnabar - and not the synthesised Vermilion - there is more than one way of making the pigment and in addition to other differences it is argued that it results in varied ageing characteristics as well.

Personally I think while permanence questions are important (because of the many failures shown in commercial Vermilion paints of current vintage) what's most at issue is whether there's enough of a difference to justify the cost. And since it can be substituted for without anything being lacking I think this makes the decision very easy indeed.

There are a couple of threads from a few years ago on making a "synthetic Vermilion" if anyone wants to more closely match the tints of Vermilion with a Cad Red whose tints are duller than you'd like. It's really very simple.

Einion

[lcg]

Cornell's library has a pdf on Vermilion. >>
http://www.library.cornell.edu/prese...asEastern1.pdf
from that...

Technical Examination Techniques/ Instrumental Analysis Techniques
Particles are anisotropic and appear to turn darker with pleochroism. Particles exhibit birefringence and some crystals exhibit characteristic undulose extinction. With the red compensator in the microscope they appear colours other than red and their polarisation colours are bright orange to red/brown depending upon their manufacture. Semi-transparent under infra-red, yellow-brown in false colour and purple-blue under UV light. When heated it sublimes at about 580oC and at higher temperatures it burns with a bluish flame. Insoluble in alkalis.

...heating then may be a quicker and surer way to test for purity?

I hope this helps.

[Termini.]

Originally Posted by Einion

There is indeed a difference

Yes, and the more that one studies paintings with vermilion in them, the more one will see it, in many cases. The more one works with it, the more apparent the difference is, in many cases.

Cadmiums are excellent colors, but they simply do not permit the same effects. Vermilion is an expensive color, but so are colors such as natural rose madder. Some people just have to have that color as well, some can use other substitutes.

Some folks will look at a cerulean blue hue (made of several blues biased in opposite directions, and a white), and swear that the color is unmistakable from the actual clean cerulean blue. Others can look at the two colors, and immediately tell the difference. Same thing with almost any color and its hue.

[Einion]

Originally Posted by Termini.

Cadmiums are excellent colors, but they simply do not permit the same effects.

Actually they can and it's not difficult - the legions of professional painters who don't use Vermilion have a host of work that indirectly supports this. Direct comparisons can be done by those who own both paints.

But even if they weren't capable of the same things when used in the same way that's really a separate issue; like I said, it's about the entire palette, not one paint.

If a painter used Viridian and another used Phthalo Green BS, the first one could also claim that what Viridian can do is unique and can't be replicated by the second person, but the simple truth is that the entire range of colour possible with Viridian is contained within the mixing gamut of PG7, with appropriate additions, so the claim doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Originally Posted by Termini.

Some folks will look at a cerulean blue hue (made of several blues biased in opposite directions, and a white), and swear that the color is unmistakable from the actual clean cerulean blue.

Apart from the fact that this IS actually true, what matters to most painters is what it can be used to mix. And there is no discernible difference between a tint of Cerulean Blue with a smidge of whatever added to it, used to paint the the sky near the horizon, and the same colour mixed by other means. Because it's the same colour.

Originally Posted by Termini.

Others can look at the two colors, and immediately tell the difference.

That is a claim. But optical measurements don't lie, it is possible to make pigment mixtures that are the same colour as a single-pigment paint*. No ifs ands or buts: the same.

If you'd like to prove otherwise please go ahead.

Einion

*Not every single-pigment paint, in case it's not obvious.

[alhajri]

I tend to like the Blockx version Jim. Thanks for this test. It came at the right time. Because I'm shopping around for Vermillion. I currently have it in Rembrandt. But I'm betting that Blockx will surpass the others.

I'm considering Old Holland. But will wait for your advice.
Is Vermillion doomed to darken no matter what brand or medium used?
And how long does it take for it to show that?

Kal