More on Colors...

Notes:

The Nautical Research Guild has Paint and Colors for American Merchant Vessels, 1800-1920: Their Study and Interpretation for Modelmaking by Erik A.R. Ronnberg, Jr. .

Winsor & Newton has a free 96 page book The Oil Colour Book.

You can also get from them sets of color charts by searching for "Colour Charts".

The following information was provided by Linda H.

BLACKS:

ivory black (PBlk9):

This is pigment dates to at least the Roman times. It is produced by charring animal bones or, originally, ivory. Of the blacks, it is the weakest in terms of tinting power. The black has a brownish undertone. AKA bone black, Paris black

lamp black (PBlk6):

This pigment also dates from the earliest times, as it was originally produced by burning oils and collecting the soot. The color can vary from a black with a bluish undertone to one with a brownish undertone, depending on the manufacturer as most paint actually contains a mixture of PBlk6 and PBlk7, with the latter being more brown.

AKA: vegetable black, flame black, vine black, carbon black

intense black (PBlk7):

A very pure and intense pigment with a slight brownish undertone. It is produced from the soot left by the incomplete burning of natural gas in the prescence of metal in a specially designed flues. It was invented in 1864 and came into wide use in the mid 1880s.

AKA: carbon black, gas black, diamond black, acetylene black

Frankfurt black (----):

Similar to ivory black in that it is from carbonized vegatable or animal material, but it varies widely and is no longer accepted as a pigment in it's own right. It is a mixture of the above three blacks in terms of chemistry. It has more of dark grey color than a black. It was sold mainly in Germany in the 19th century and (in my opinion) probably never was a significant commercial pigment.

AKA: charcoal black, vine black, drop black (Note on the above blacks: Carbon black is a name used for all these blacks by someone at sometime. It gets terribly confusing to sort out exactly the pigment used or even manufactured.)

Mars black (PBlk11):

This iron oxide is the most commonly used black for acrylics since the particle size is uniform and relatively large. I can find no mention of it before about 1940 and was only given a color index name in 1952. One interesting property is that it is attracted to magnets. There is a natural variety of iron oxide which is identical in terms of color and magnetic properties, but it has never been used widely.

AKA: black iron oxide

manganese black (???):

A black pigment patented in 1871, but never widely used.

graphite black (PBlk10):

This is ground up graphite and produces more of a grey than a black. It is seldom used commercially and rarely used by artists.

(Note on greys: They are mixtures of black and white plus possibly other colors and are not an actual pigment. For example, Nimbus Grey is actually titanium white, bone black, and burnt umber. Other than graphite, I know of no other 'pure' grey pigment.)

WHITES:

lead white (PW1):

This is the oldest form of white paint and was the standard white paint until modern times when concerns about the toxicity and yellowing tendencies basically lead to it's being replaced by titanium white. (It was used in ancient China, Roman, and Greece.) The pigment, basic lead carbonate, is toxic, but only if swallowed or inhaled (as dust when grinding and mixing the powder with oils) and it's toxicity has only been an issue in this century. It does have a tendency to yellow or brown on contact with sulfur, which is not a big problem for artists but may account for the 'cream' colored whites noted for some ships. (The burning of coal in houses and industry would have supplied plenty of sulphur to effect white paint on a ship in a harbor.) The basic color is a warm white similar to many white ceramic mugs. (Unfortunately, I know of no acrylic paint line with lead white -- only oil paints.)

AKA: flake white, Cremnitz white, Flemish white, London white, Nottingham white, and Roman white.

zinc white(PW4):

This is a zinc oxide first adapted to paints in about 1782, but which didn't become available for artists until 1834 as a watercolor and not until the early 20th century was it produced as a oil paint. The pigment is non-toxic and non-reactive. It is, however, no replacement for lead white. Zinc white is only semiopaque, has poor drying attributes, and produces a brittle paint film (leading to cracking and flacking when exposed to weather). Given all this, I think it would be very unliked for zinc white to be used for painting ships as the covering power is very poor and would have meant that the white parts would have had 5-8 coats.

titanium white(PW6):

This is the modern white. It is titanium dioxide and for most artists, absolutely wonderful. It has strong covering power, almost totally inert, and cheap. Of the whites, it is also the coldest or bluest, with a hue similar to the white on a computer screen. It was not used commercially until about 1920.

lithopone (PW5):

This is zinc sulfide coprecipitated with barium sulfide and was first patented by 1874 in England. It is used in house paints and other commercial paints from the early 20th century until titanium white became more widely used.

AKA: oleum white

mixed white (----):

Just what the name says, it's a mixture of some of the above to get a nice white. The most common mixed white is 75% titanium and 25% zinc whites. The formula varies greatly from company to company.

antimony white (----):

A mixture of antinomy oxide and barium sulfide. Introduced in England in 1920, but never displaced titanium dioxide. Trade name is Timonox.

ORANGES

realgar

This is an ancient pigment which is also a nice poison. (It contains arsenic.) The pigment produced a reddish-orange. Sources list it as a pigment that does not fade, but also that it reacts with other pigments. What this latter statement means, I don't know as this pigment hasn't been available for most of the 20th century. I do know that it was not reactive to air as it was used in medieval illuminations and the orange is still bright. The pigment was replaced in the mid-19th century by cadmium orange, in large part due to the dangers associated with handling dry arsenic compounds.

AKA: arsenic orange

cadmium orange (PO20)

This was introduced commercially in England in 1846, but may have had some limited use before. Because initially the cadmium colors cost more than some of the colors they were replacing, they were not widely adopted for some years. However, today, cadmium orange is the most common orange pigment available and pretty much replaces all the oranges on this list.

anitmony orange

This orange pigment was invented in Scotland in 1847. The orange is brilliant as an oil pigment but it blackens when in contact with lead white, or any other lead bearing pigment. As I understand it, lead white and red lead were the primers of the day on ships, so it would be doubtful if this pigment was used. This pigment is also not longer available.

AKA: anitmony vermillion

orange mineral

This pigment is similar to red lead -- both are a lead oxide. Both date from the ancient Greeks. It is more orange colored than the red lead. While not permanent in the strictest sense, it was used commercially as it was much less reactive than red lead was when in oil. I don't think this pigment is available any longer.

chrome orange

This is not a seperate pigment but a version of chrome yellow. It is opaque and a reddish orange, almost identical to cadmium orange. It was first used in commercial paint in 1818. On exposure to sulphur, it browns. On exposure to sunlight, it greens. The changes are not immediate and would take several years to be noticeable. Thus, chrome yellow/orange was a common household paint before cadmiums became ever-present. Chrome yellow is still available, but I have never seen genuine chrome orange. A couple of companies list it, but it is a modern mixture of pigments created to resemble chrome orange.

GREENS

malachite

This pigment was used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks. It remained in use until the end of the 1700's. It is still available, at moderately high prices, as a watercolour from one manufacturer. (There are several other pigments ground from stones, such as chrysocolla, but none were ever commercially used.) An artificial form, Bremen green, is actually a variant of Bremen blue and will be dealt with there, but it was commercially available from the mid-19th century to the early 20th. In the native source, it was probably never widely used because of it's cost.

AKA: Hungarian green, mineral green

verdigris

This is the blue green that copper turns on exposure to air. As one might predict, it will continue to blacken if it is exposed to more air and/or certain other pigments. It also is very susceptible to moisture. It was a popular pigment in the Renaissance and before. (Many of the paintings from that period which appear to have dull and brown trees and grass were actually painted with this blue-green pigment and have dulled thru the centuries.) It had only limited use during the 19th century as it replaced by viridian.

viridian (PG18)

A bluish-green pigment that is transparent and relatively weak in tinting strength. It became available commercially in 1862.

AKA: hydrated chromium oxide, Guignets green, Casali's green, vert emeraude (during the 19th century in the US), French Veronese green

chromium oxide green (PG17)

This is an opaque, rather dull yellowish-green, but very stable and permanent. Discovered in 1809 or 1797, but not commercially available until about 1860.

AKA: Arnaudon's green

chrome green

I included this one because it is listed in the color article by Ronnberg. It is not, however, a pigment, but a combination of chrome yellow and Prussian blue. I suspect he confused chrome green with chromium oxide green since the color sample is basically chromium oxide green, but I'm not sure. Anyway, this mixture tends to be basically permanent as it changes to yellowish green.

AKA: royal green, leak green, plus a large number of other names

cobalt green (PG19)

This pigment is a semi-transparent green that is hard to match by mixing. It became commercially available after about 1856, eventhough it was discovered in 1780 or so. It is permanent but low in tinting strength and fairly expensive to produce.

AKA: green smalt, zinc green

emerald green

This very poisonous pigment is very unstable. It blacks on contact with other pigment, with air, and with metal. On the good side, it is a very bright green that can not be readily mixed from modern pigments. It was discovered in 1788, but became commercially available in in 1814 in Austria.

AKA: Paris green (this name refers to it's use as an insecticide), English green, imperial green, Schweinfurt green

phthalo green (PG7)

This phthalo pigment wasn't invented until 1935. While it is permanent, it is extremely intense.

CONCLUSION:

Before 1860, I would doubt that any pre-mixed green was used as the available pigments were either too expensive or too unstable. I would bet that greens were a mixed green, i.e., a form of chrome green, especially after Prussian blue was discovered. From the 1860s on, either chromium oxide green or viridian were available, with the latter being more expensive. I would either go with the chromium oxide green or a mixed green as being the common greens.

VIOLETS

cobalt violet

This pigment was first used in the early 19th century, but didn't come into wider use until about 1860. Originally it was produced from a natural ore, but then it synthesized and stabilized to a uniform violet colour. Of the commercially produced violets, this was the main one available from the 1860s to the 1950s, but because it was fairly expensive, it never was widely used for other than accents. The colour is a red to blue violet and it is semi-opaque. Some modern cobalt violets are pathetic in terms of tinting strength, in part due to the expense and in part due to manufacturing safety concerns (soluble cobalt). (Today, genuine cobalt violet is about 6 times the price of titanium white.)

manganese violet

This is a deep, bluish violet, first used in Germany in 1868 but did not become commercially available until the 1930s. It now is a cheap replacement for cobalt violet. It is permanent except at very high temperatures.

AKA: mineral violet, Burgundy violet, permanent violet, Nuernberg violet

Mars violet

This is much duller in comparison to manganese violet and cobalt violet. The earliest mention I can find is around 1900 as a brand-name paint.

ultramarine violet (PV15)

This pigment, which is a pink to light violet in colour, is made from heating ultramarine blue with a chlorine compound. Like ultramarine blue, it is semi-transparent and very permanent. This was another colour that was not developed until the early 20th century.

AKA: ultramarine pink

mauve

This was a coal tar dye discovered in 1856. Unfortunately, it is very fugitive, which is a shame because it had a wonderful blue violet colour. It is no longer produced as such, but many paint companies have applied the name to mixtures of paint -- some which resemble the original mauve and some that don't. It was cheap to produce and was used in many contexts, but was not permanent.

Tyrian purple

This is the famous purple of ancient history. It was derived from several species of shellfish and was limited in use to the aristocracy. Because it took 12,000 welks to produce 1.5 g of dye, it was never used as a commercial pigment. The bottom line is that this was an expensive, not-so-permanent, and not-widely available pigment, despite it's interesting history.

AKA: Byzantium purple

CONCLUSIONS:

I find it unlikely that ships were painting with any of these pigments were used. I would think that any violets were the result of mixing red and blue to get the desired colour.

REDS

Okay, these are the reds. I have included only the main pigments. There are another 30-40 pigments which were used by artists but which never were adopted in commercial use. Most of these were madders and lakes -- both derived from coal tar and generally very impermanent.

Please remember, red oxide and other red earths will be dealt with when I do the earth pigments.

carmine

This pigment was discovered in mid-16th century. It is derived from the cochineal insect from Mexico. It is one of the most beautiful reds and now one of the most expensive. Recipes for it were first published in 1656 in Spain, and it became a common red by the end of the 17th century. It was used in paints and cosmetics, but since it relied on the importation of the insect, it remained fairly expensive. It was basically replaced by madder lake (natural and synthetic) in the late 19th century.

rose madder genuine (PR 9 natural)

This pigment was first extracted from the roots of the madder plant and later synthesized in 1868. It is in either form not permanent.

AKA: madder lake, pink madder

alizarin crimson (PR 83)

This is a synthetic form of rose madder, which is not as permanent as the natural form. In came into wide use in the 1890s.

AKA: madder lake

vermilion (PR 106)

Cinnabar is a native European ore containing mercuric sulphide and was used in Europe from ancient times. The Chinese developed the synthetic version by cooking mercury and sulphur from very early times. By mid eighth century, Europeans also began making vermilion. Vermillion is not considered a stable or permanent pigment by today's standards. Its permanence is difficult to explain. Vermillion when exposed to light, will turn black or it may not, depending on the method of preparation. Sometimes, the entire area will turn black, sometimes just spots of black will appear, and sometimes nothing will happen -- most of the time it will darken. There is no real explanation as to why, but there is evidence that it is related to the medium used and how far the sunlight can penetrate the medium. The darkening can easily be slowed by simply putting a wax varnish or a glaze of another colour over the top. Also, the addition of a slight amount of lead white will prevent the darkening. There is also evidence that the synthetic versions are more susceptible to darkening than the natural form. Now, it is very difficult to find thanks to concerns about the mercury content.

AKA: cinnabar, Chinese red

cadmium red (PR 108)

This is a permanent red which was discovered in 1907 in Germany but not used commercially in the US until 1919. It makes a perfect replacement for vermilion.

red lead

This pigment was developed in the Middle Ages. It is opaque and a brilliant scarlet red. It is not totally permanent as it will darken on exposure to light, but this is not terribly noticeable. It is cheap to make. It was a common priming coat for metals. One of its best traits is that is causes oil paint to dry faster.

AKA: minium, saturnine red

chrome red

This pigment is opaque, cheap, but not permanent. It was first used in 1797 and was commercially produced in 1818. This is a variant of chrome yellow.

AKA: Chinese red

CONCLUSIONS:

I would say that most reds were either red lead or vermilion, with the former being much more common. Both have a tendency to darken, but they were by far cheaper than the other reds. Red lead is slightly duller than vermilion. Either one can be replaced by cadmium red medium, with little visible difference.

Several people have asked me for a summary of cheap permanent pigments and my guesses as to what was used when. Well, in my usual "shotgun approach", here's the answers to that question. I will try to remember to include this stuff with the rest of the colours.

By permanent, I am taking this to mean that a normal person wouldn't notice any colour shifts for 20 years or more. If someone has a better definition to use, please tell me. (To an artist, permanent means not in at least a 100 years and then only maybe a trained eye can see any changes. We are a terribly picky lot when it comes to permanence.) "Basically permanent" is some changes noticeable after up to about 20 years, but not significant amounts. "Fugative" is drastic changes in a few years or less. The problem is that some pigments such as antimony orange are perfectly permanent except when around another pigment such as lead white.

The conclusions are my own based on the information I have gathered. Without paint samples from actual vessels, it really comes down to educated guesses.

Oh, and just for Roger, I have added 'u' to colour.

For Black Pigments:

ivory black (PBlk9)
lamp black (PBlk6)
Both are cheap, widely available, and permanent.

intense black (PBlk7)
Not as cheap as the first two blacks, and thus not as commonly found in commercial paints. Very permanent.

Frankfurt black (----)
Probably not widely available since it did not improve upon the ivory or lamp blacks. May have been cheaper to produce than those two blacks, but was not as permanent in some cases.

manganese black (???)
More expensive than ivory or lamp black, permanent, but not widely used.

Mars black (PBlk11)
Cheap, permanent, but found mainly in acrylics (post 1950).

graphite black (PBlk10)
Basically, not used for commercial paints. Very permanent and fairly cheap.

CONCLUSION: Ivory and lamp blacks were the blacks until the mid-20th century. They are the cheapest to produce and are permanent.

For White Pigments:

lead white (PW1)
Cheap, widely available, basically permanent. Will yellow over decades.

zinc white(PW4)
Cheap, basically permanent. Suffers due to brittle nature of paint. Widely used as part of a mixed white. Not as opaque as lead white.

titanium white(PW6)
Cheap, permanent, commercially used after 1920s.

lithopone (PW5)
Fairly cheap, non-toxic, and basically permanent. Commercially used from about 1900 to 1930s.

mixed white (----)
Cheap, widely available, and permanent. A mixture of lead white and zinc white will to some degree slow the yellowing of lead white.

antimony white (----)
Basically permanent, more expensive than the other whites, not commercially used.

CONCLUSION: Lead white, despite it's yellowing tendencies, was the white used until the 20th century.

For Orange Pigments:

realgar
Moderately cheap, does react to some pigments, very toxic as a powder, probably never used commercially.

cadmium orange (PO20)
Permanent, fairly expensive when first discovered (1846), widely used commercially.

antimony orange
Moderately cheap, resists fading but reacts to lead based paints, and not used commercially.

orange mineral
Cheap, basically permanent, and commercially used.

chrome orange
Cheap, commercially used from 1820-1860s, and basically permanent.

CONCLUSION: Most oranges used were mixed from red and yellow pigments. When a pre-mixed orange was needed for large areas, I would bet on orange mineral (ancient times to 1820s), chrome orange (1820-1860), and cadmium orange (1860-present).

{Linda H}

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