palette

Gilbert Charles Stuart (born Stewart) (December 3, 1755–July 9, 1828) was an American painter from Rhode Island. According to evidence from various sources, his palette mainly consisted of the colors described in this article. All of the pigments on Stuart’s palette have been identified in literature and studies of his paintings. Unfortunately, “Antwerp blue” is an imprecise term, and we cannot determine precisely what it meant in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...

The palette is one of the most essential tools in the history of oil painting, and its effect is one of the most minor studied aspects in art history. Setting the palette has a significant history; its development is relatively easy to trace in pictures of artists at work. The use of a set, limited palette, a portable surface upon which colors are arranged according to their tonal value, and its implications in painting is the subject of a lecture by George O’Hanlon, Technical Director of Natural Pigments. The first part of the lecture is featured in this article...

Besides an artist's notes or treatises on painting of the period, the systematic arrangement of separate colors and mixtures on the palette, which the painter prepared before he began his work, can be used to study the artist's painting procedures. Such palettes can be found in portraits or self-portraits, where the palette is held in hand with the rows of colors and tints visible...

For some years, I have been studying the palettes of medieval and Renaissance painters and, with many of the same pigments available to me, have started to reproduce their palettes, many of which are depicted in portraits and self-portraits described in painting treatises. This work has led me to more clearly see the tonal and color arrangements in the work of the old masters, which I will be publishing at Natural Pigments...