In addition to having a wide range of high-tinting single-pigment colors, Williamsburg actually does what we feel every paint company should do-- which is test their paints. Williamsburg, which is owned by Golden, has been leading the way for years in oil paint research and most recently brought the painting world some groundbreaking news in terms of lightfastness testing. Golden has been instrumental in the development of a new lightfastness standard (in concert with several other paint companies, such as Natural Pigments). They make their paint in upstate New York, USA.

In this article we'll take a look at the consistencies of these paints, the huge amount of single-pigment colors they offer, the Safflower line, the Neutral Greys-- and what it takes to mix your own!-- as well as their earths. Then we'll take a look at some highlights from each color family. We'll also take a look at their formulation changes as well as their incredibly valuable research on zinc white and also on lightfastness.

This is just quick mention about Golden's recent testing. For context, I serve on the ASTM subcommittee for artist materials (all opinions here are my own), which is currently revising its standards for lightfastness testing. The current understanding of most artists and educators is in fact outdated- what I mean by "current" refers to the older lightfastness understanding from 40 years ago, which is the basis for many manufacturer's ratings. If you look on a tube, for example, you may see some rating for lightfastness which derive from the older testing methods. Since the tables were established, many things have changed- the way the pigments are manufactured has affected the lightfastness of some of them, and also these ratings can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer or (I have even heard) from batch to batch with some particularly problematic pigments. Not all pigments are equally affected.

Also, a new understanding has emerged that has to do with the choice of mixing whites. The particular white blend prescribed by the older test method contained zinc, and the precise blend of ingredients seems to have affected the lightfastness ratings. It turns out each tube of paint is a world unto itself and needs to be tested by the manufacturer, at least in my opinion, as undisclosed fillers and additives may also sometimes affect it's precise lightfastness performance (research on this is preliminary and not yet fully known). So far, at the time of this writing, the only manufacturer to my knowledge who has tested all or of most of their paint line is Williamsburg. (Natural Pigments / Rublev has also published testing on two of their colors).

Golden recently released a cutting-edge study on oil paints and choice of mixing whites. It turns out lightfastness is more complicated than was once thought, and it will give painters and conservationists much to consider. In short, the choice of mixing white matters for some pigments! Testing one's own paints may be especially important if some of your favorite pigments show unexpected behavior based on Golden's research. More on this below.

Some people prefer homogeneity in their paints, and each paintmaker decides how much they want to formulate the paint toward that goal. With Williamsburg we noticed a great variety from pigment to pigment, which we find enjoyable, but that is not everyone's preference. We tend to appreciate the diversity in consistencies that can be found in some of the areas of the Williamsburg line. They also have a huge range of fineness to coarseness and even have a handy chart found here to help artists find the right paint. While many paints tend toward the soft impasto, like the cadmiums, there are some which are quite ropey, such as this French Ultramarine in Safflower Oil.

A consistency we noticed a lot was a soft, workable impasto. Speaking in generalities only we found it to be more workable than a few other impasto brands-- and it was amazing how we could draw the paint into ribbons. Also there was a bit of a tendency for soft points to form, even when moving the paint to and fro with a palette knife.

Some Williamsburg colors have a short, rather compact impasto, in contrast to the colors which are both impasto and ropey. This short impasto is what we'd tend to expect from Dioxazine Violet as well as the Phthalos. It is amazing how much variety can be found within the Williamsburg line. While the soft impasto and a bit of ropeyness is more common, we wanted to prepare you for some stiffer colors, too. PR177 (not shown here) is also a very stiff paint.

A couple of paint brands have fairly consistent treatments of the modern pigments like Quinacridones, Dioxazines, and Phthalos. This is a place where Williamsburg diverges from the pack now and then, and we found a surprising texture to their Quinacridone Magenta. It feels fairly rare to find nay visible texture in a Quinacridone Magenta, and it also had a pleasant way that it almost tore when pulled up by a palette knife. This color also was the coolest-hued/purplest-leaning Quinacridone Magenta we've tested.

In 2014, Williamsburg welcomed a whole new series of colors in Safflower oil.

The Williamsburg Safflower range of colors are a selection of duplicate colors from their regular linseed oil line, which have been made in safflower oil instead of linseed oil, so you can choose which binder you'd like to use. There were a handful of colors where they identified that safflower oil had an advantage, which is why there are not safflower versions of everything. The safflower line gives serious artists the power to select their binding oil for colors that may benefit from being made in safflower. (Safflower oil also has drawbacks, so it's helpful to know where the benefits will outweigh the potential issues that safflower oil can bring). Many other blends will just add safflower oil to their linseed oil paints, and we appreciate that Williamsburg separates the two. Linseed oil is associated with stronger paint films, and may be better to use in lower layers of the painting. Williamsburg also published some best practices for when to use safflower oil-- if at all-- mostly it is recommended to only use safflower-based paints thinly and and in the uppermost layer of the painting.

It's fairly common for a paint line to have a Linseed Oil and a Safflower Oil version of their Titanium White. Williamsburg offers both of these, as well as a handful of other colors. The two colors handle differently, with the Linseed Oil Version having more heft to it, while the Safflower Oil is light and fluffy with less of a crisp impasto. A discussion of the full range of Williamsburg Whites can be found here at Just Paint.

Browse the Williamsburg Safflower Colors on Paint List Please note some of the safflower colors were discontinued due to zinc white's removal from their line, and several others were affected by the 2023 pigment discontinuations that recently rocked the industry (more information on that below).

These greys arose from the needs of realistic painters. Once upon a time, the Rational Painting Forum expressed their wish for truly neutral greys which were calibrated to Munsell. It is surprising how difficult it can be to mix a truly neutral grey (more on this below). If one mixes black with white the result is too cool-- not truly neutral, and one needs warmer pigments to help steer the mix toward neutrality. Williamsburg answered the call to make carefully-balanced color blends that are actually neutral. Please note as an aside that the tubes shown here do not come pre-painted around the top. We do that to our tubes because it helps to find the right grey quickly. These are a colors we use a lot.

Each of these greys vary a bit in consistency due to the differences in their pigment content. N8, which is the lightest, is useful for establishing the value of the sky in landscape as well as for spacious vistas in more abstracted work. It is useful to have N8 on hand for bracketing mixes for value 9, which can be somewhat hard to judge, and Williamsburg published an article on how to mix it quickly, which is appreciated. Value N6 is a helpful way to pin down the midtones, which can be difficult to sort out, and value N4 establishes the low middle of the the scale. N4 is capable of a pretty detailed impasto. Both N4 and N2 dry fairly quickly. N2 is ropey and glossy when wet. Similar to N8 but on the other end of the spectrum, N2 is helpful for establishing value differences in the darks.

It actually takes a handful of pigments to mix true neutrals in oil paint and there are many combinations which would yield satisfactory results. It's incredibly surprising how much work it is to make a series of balanced, color-calibrated neutral greys-- we know because we have done it a few times. The mixing curves for various pigments with white will send the mix spiraling off gracefully toward warm or cool, and so small additions of other pigments are needed at every step of the way in order to balance the mixes. Here are just a few colors I grabbed at random (many different earth tones would do) which can be used for neutral mixes. Just about any burnt umber, yellow ochre, raw umber, and black pigment with white (as well as other pigments, too) can be used in the balancing act to get the neutrals right. Here, for example, the Rublev and Michael Harding Raw Umbers were quite similar when mixed with Williamsburg Titanium White.

Ok, in terms of benefits and drawbacks there are a couple each way. I have done the work to mix and tube Munsell greys before purchasing the set from Williamsburg and have since gone through several sets of the large tubes. The project is a valuable exercise that I would wholeheartedly recommend. After doing this exercise several times though, I prefer to buy the Williamsburg greys because the work is already done, and even if I tube them myself, I have to buy the ingredient paints. I may as well buy the paint already blended up as it is a huge timesaver. The only drawback to buying them premixed that I can think of is that some painters may prefer lead over titanium or alternatively may not like the choice of the black pigment (PBk6), and may prefer to use Mars instead. In that case tubing one's own does give more control over the mix. It is also worth mentioning that if one is doing one's own mixes, the Williamsburg Italian Black Roman Earth is an earth tone that gets a person closer to neutrality than most other black pigments.

The Williamsburg Earth series contains some rare specialty earths that are very difficult to find in other brands. Williamsburg carries the solid old-standby colors which form the core earth lineup of the palette. We've long favored their Yellow Ochre Domestic as a daily driver, which has only a very faint bit of grit. However when we tried their Lemon Ochres we had visions of Renaissance Manuscripts- if you don't mind grit, try the similar but related Italian Lemon Ochre and Italian Yellow Ochre. The French and Italian earths are gorgeous but gritty natural earth colors. You can find a brief description of many of their earth tones on Just Paint.

The French and Italian series of Williamsburg paints are what we'd identify as specialty colors. Not everyone likes gritty earths, however, it's worth mentioning that this is perhaps actually one of the secrets of the Old Masters. The Old Masters would have been well acquainted with every kind of pigment particle size and how and where to use them to their greatest effect.

We may do a deep dive on the Williamsburg earths, because there is more to say than we can cover in one article. In general, as long-time painters know well, there is a ton of variety within each pigment group (e.g. PY43 and PY42, the codes for yellow iron oxides).

Three Colors that Typify some Patterns Within Earths

As with most things in life, there are too many exceptions to make generalizations so one would do well to avoid hard and fast rules. Rather they are cloudy amorphous rules that still might be helpful. So instead of making a rule let's look at three paints. All are hydrated ferric oxide (iron oxide), one is synthetic and two are naturally derived (which can still have a little synthetic in them it turns out).

These three paints have totally different properties. The Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide is what is shown on the palette knife tip, and comes out of the tube at a very low lightness. However, when spread thinly, as it is on the paint tube, it is vibrant and has high chroma. The Yellow Ochre Domestic is a bit more opaque and mid-valued, with a totally different masstone appearance than the synthetic Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide. Yellow Ochre Domestic has a good tinting strength for a yellow ochre and a slightly different hue than Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide when mixed with white, as well as the faintest touch of grit. The Italian Lemon Ochre is a stunning natural earth with noticeable grit, a soft feel when worked with the palette knife, and a large particle size. It is a gentle tinter but has quite high chroma in masstone. It is also in the middle zone for lightness.

The safe answer to the question "Are the Williamsburg Earths gritty?" would probably be a yes, but that is a subjective matter. Williamsburg has a handy chart of their textures here, however we think of their line with another column inserted between Medium and Coarse. Having painted with a few of the other medium colors like Alizarin Crimson or Sap Green, we see why they would be in the medium category, however a bit of grit can be heard under a palette knife with the French and Italian earths. We absolutely love these colors, and would classify them as grittier than the Alizarin. The sap green contains some PY43.

A trio of red-brown earths show the range of grit you might find within the Williamsburg earth tones. There is actually one category more gritty than this-- which only encompasses a handful of colors with large particle sizes. The top picture in the trio shows the grit that is typical for the French and Italian earth colors. The middle is the regular Burnt Sienna. The bottom picture is a super smooth red earth, which is actually the same pigment as one of their coarse colors (not shown here). The fine grained Transparent Red Oxide is almost glossy it's so smooth. The Transparent Red Oxide is actually the same pigment as their Brown Pink, which is the coarse/extra-gritty version of the same pigment (not shown here). More about Williamsburg Transparent Red Oxide can be found here.

Williamsburg classifies the French and Italian earths as medium in terms of their scale from smooth to coarse. However we would describe these as gritty, purely because we get a lot of questions and feedback from painters who are sensitive to having texture in their paints, and these have texture! Personally, we love these specialty earths as they are fantastically varied and represent hard-to-find pigments. There are a few notable high chroma callouts as well as some mysterious greenish ochres and other off-the-beaten-path colors like green earths.

A Williamsburg video on the French and Italian Earths, plus two more videos focusing on each set individually: French Earth Set which shows various tints and their opacity, and the Italian Earth Set.

Earth tones in some ways have it tough when compared to the appeal of high chroma colors. However we'd wager that the Old Masters would have been well acquainted with every earthtone in every particle size possible.

This is a palette of Williamsburg colors we enjoy though we would add to it several more ceruleans, cobalt violet deep, and a few more of those gritty red earths if we were doing a "best of" list. It was tough to choose amongst the earths as there are many interesting colors which don't fit on a standard palette.

Also, Golden just released a virtual paint mixer program to help in creating mixes that is just for Williamsburg.

Nickel Azo Yellow, PY150 is a fascinating color which changes in hue more than would be expected with the addition of titanium white. (As an aside, every color seems to change in hue with Titanium White, so this is a matter of degree- and in regards to Nickel Azo Yellow, that degree happens to be a lot of fun). It's nice to see some rarer colors represented as single pigment in the Williamsburg line. We also adore the pale Nickel Yellow, PY53 for its role in muted, chromatic neutrals, and have found it to be enough of a staple of the palette that we hid a dollop of it on the palette overview above near the cadmium yellows.

One of the paints we look to in judging a paint brand's quality is in the ceruleans. This tends to be an expensive "off the beaten path" color that can sort of be approximated in surface color via a mix with a phthalo, that is, you can mix something like the masstone of this color. However a hue will not emulate cerulean's mixing properties, nor its feel as a paint. We know of painters who avoid phthalo blue in blends because it doesn't work for their mixing process, and we can see why. Instead of phthalo blends, they will seek out genuine cerulean because it mixes with other colors differently than phthalo blue. This is an interesting concept. So genuine cerulean flies under the radar a bit, and whether a brand makes an excellent cerulean can be a bit of a tell for the rest of the colors.

In Williamsburg's case the cerulean is excellent, and highly pigmented. They also go all-out and make a whole range of ceruleans and cobalts.

Way back in 2010, when Golden had acquired Williamsburg after the passing of Carl Plansky, Golden embarked on crucial testing that would change the course of oil painting history. Over the last century, there had been a lot of use of zinc white in painting. However, word was brewing in conservation circles that zinc white was linked to some problems. Painters held out hope that perhaps all the paints they'd been using weren't so bad, while online forums roiled and boiled over zinc white. There is still controversy over zinc white, as some paintings made with it seem to look fine, while others delaminated or cracked terribly.

Back in the day, George O'Hanlon of Natural Pigments was one of the early voices who alerted the painting community about what was being published in conservator circles and raised awareness regarding the hidden perils of using zinc white. Papers like the famous one by Marion Mecklenburg were circulated. As early as 2010, Williamsburg reduced the amount of zinc white in their oil paints while they simultaneously embarked on pivotal research that would help to clarify the issues for painters going forward.

Zinc white has different particle sizes, and these can be seen on this re-tubed version of vintage Bellini. (We unfortunately had to part with the original tube due to smoke damage from a wildfire, but we were able to save the vintage paint).

In 2018, Sarah Sands from Golden Artist Colors (which owns Williamsburg Oils) presented lightfastness information at the Munsell Centennial Convention on some surprises in lightfastness testing. You can still view the notes from the presentation at: Not So Fast, courtesy of the ICC. Tests on PY3 and PY73 were giving unexpected results. This discovery lead to so much more.

In the years leading up to 2023, Golden performed hundreds and hundreds of lightfastness tests sorting out how their paints behaved in various mixing whites. This new information, which was published in 2023 revealed that lightfastness varies with choice of mixing white: a huge revelation that was unknown to the art world. You can find this treasure-trove of research here.

Lightfastness mixtures on aluminum sheeting. Mixes were made with a lab scale at several ratios. The swatches were made to be big enough for a spectrophotometer.

Someday we will do a deeper dive on this, but for now we wanted to provide a few preliminary notes.

Lightfastness testing for studio-purposes doesn't have to be difficult or even expensive, and this is in part-- thanks to Golden (see below). They provided some simple ratios by weight that can be done with a digital scale. One of the revelations from the emerging testing is that each paint is a system unto itself, and it is unknown how various undisclosed binders and additives might affect the lightfastness from brand to brand (source: preliminary research from Natural Pigments). Unfortunately this means there may be some differences for each brand's paint system, which we will not know until they are tested.

The formal ASTM lightfastness tests are a bit demanding and we want them to be that way, but for artists, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from sampling your paints with white, putting them in a window, and seeing what happens! The window glass is a bit important for measuring exposure due to some details about UVB. Information on how to do your own lightfastness tests can be found in Mark Gottsegen's Painter's Handbook - available at Amazon and available to read online here at archive.org for free with a login. Sometime we'll do an exploration of how to combine what is in Gottsegen's book with the newer methods for making tests with mixing white, but this resource and the ones mentioned below can get a person started.

So in the simplest terms, you can paint a swatch of a color, or a color tinted with your mixing white of choice, and put it up in your window (be sure to keep a separate swatch out of direct sunlight) and put a date on it. You can absoutely compare these by eye later and see how they do. From there you can always add more sophistication to your testing methods. Paint testers use equipment to measure how much light a paint has received, such as a pyranometer, or the less high-tech Blue Wool Scale to measure light exposure. However you might have something already which can be used and it might be in the back of your paintbox.

Bruce MacEvoy describes a method for watercolor lightfastness testing that can be adapted to oils. Basically you can use Alizarin Crimson genuine (PR83) to gauge how much light your paints have received. This color fades a little worse (by some accounts) in watercolor, however when doing lightfastness tests it's nice to see that it's "working" by judging the fade happening with Alizarin. So Bruce's comments would have to be transposed a bit for oil-- for example the dilution ratios, but you can read about his methods here.

For oils we are not usually dealing with dilution exactly, but rather mixing with white. The age-old question of how much white to use and how to keep it consistent from color-to-color is another layer of sophistication discussed below.

There is a piece of the formal testing method that is admittedly difficult to achieve for most studio painters-- but Golden's research has made this much more achievable than it would be otherwise.

For context, the formal procedure is to make a mixture of 40% reflectance at the wavelength of maximum absorbtion. Golden helped out painters everywhere by A) figuring out the weight percentage for tints for each pigment of theirs in order to reach the 40% (see the bottom of the article here Golden's Lightfastness Research) and B) suggesting a series of ratios that can be used to make a whole range of tints to show lightfastness. Some pigments are super highly tinting (like Phthalo) and only a drop will tint the mix, while others require a lot of paint to reach a similar level of tinted paint. The so-called mixing ladder describes a series of ratios that will work for almost all pigments, one of the higher ratios with white will work for the weaker tinters and one of the lower ratios with white will work with the stronger tinters.

The Williamsburg Titanium White Ladder

So by referencing the Golden research, you can consult both their table for the 40% mixes-- which will get you close-ish even without a spectrophotometer, as well as make the series of mixing ratios to give you a broad idea of what a pigment will do at different ratios. The weight ratios will vary a bit by brand but Williamsburg's mixes will help get a person close. If a person desires to achieve true precision in the 40% reflectace measurement, these tables will save immeasurable time if they desire to do so. In Golden's Lightfastness Research they discuss these ratios in a section, see "Williamsburg Titanium White Ladder" for details.

In short, they mention, "Each color was mixed with Williamsburg Titanium White in a ratio of 1.00g color to 10.00g white (9.1% color by weight)....As often as possible, a fixed set of concentrations were used to compose the remaining rungs in the tint ladder: concentrations of 0.1, 0.4, 4.8, and 28.6% were the most common." For most of us in studio that handful of ratios and that level of precision is ample, and will reveal what is happening at varying levels of tinting.

Some classes of pigments are expected to do very well in lightfastness tests, and so a person can check for problematic pigments in Golden's work or other sources and prioritize the testing for pigments which are known to vary from brand to brand.

Many years ago, we began compiling sources on pigments and color, and amassed these into the Great Book of Color. Some of the sources are now lost. We won't focus on the Great Book of Color here but we are going to share a Paint List secret. We stumbled upon this while making the hundreds of color comparisons we make over here while working on every corner of the spectrum. One day we mixed some Williamsburg white with a bit of Oleogel and it reminded us of something.

Well, the answer is Vasari, it seems. It's not perfect-- Vasari is a bit more stringy than the Williamsburg white, and there's a slight hue difference. In terms of texture though, we'd be quite hard pressed to tell the difference.

We have not tested this in every color. The Williamsburg Titanium White in Linseed has a roundness to it that not all Williamsburg colors share, so we expect it will vary according to the starting consistency of the Williamsburg color. Also please note this will not apply to grittier colors (like the French or Italian Earths) because Vasari colors tend to be very smooth with small particle sizes, and no amount of Oleogel will change the particle size. Also take it easy with the Oleogel-- too much of it can cause problems with drying.

Here are a few colors that were reformulated due to zinc white. One of many reasons we formed the Paint List is to create a resource for artists when one of their go-to colors has changed due to a reformulation or discontinuation. So in the interest of history, here is what we have ascertained from the Williamsburg materials:

Blends that contained Zinc Oxide, 2010-11: Brilliant Yellow Pale, Canton Rose, Jaune Brilliant, King's Blue, Montserrat Orange, Naples Yellow, Naples Yellow Reddish, Persian Rose, Provence Violet Bluish, Provence Violet Reddish, Sevres Blue, Turquoise, Zinc Buff (replaced by Titan Buff around 2018), and Zinc-Buff Yellow. The white colors were Silver-White, Titanium-Zinc, and Zinc White.

Colors that were reformulated around 2018: Persian Rose, Naples Yellow, Titan Buff (formerly Zinc Buff), Brilliant Yellow Pale, Naples Yellow Reddish, Jaune Brilliant, Canton Rose, Montserrat Orange, Provence Violet Reddish, Provence Violet Bluish, King's Blue, Severs Blue, and Turquoise.

Colors that were discontinued around 2018 include Zinc Buff Yellow, Silver White, SF Titanium Zinc White (safflower), and SF Silver White (safflower).

Sources: Zinc Oxide Reviewing the Research and Zinc Oxide: Warnings, Cautions, and Best Practices.

Some changes came to the Williamsburg line due to lightfastness. Colors that were reformulated include: Permanent Orange, Persian Rose and Montserrat Orange (which also underwent some zinc-related changes also), Olive Green, and Sap Green. We will be curious to see if any further lightfastness-related changes are in store as some of these colors in the newer forms contain pigments which are a bit reactive in certain mixing whites, such as PR112.

Find out about the older formulations and their 2015 changes, along with pictures at Just Paint.

One thing to watch out for in a paint line which is so closely connected to lightfastness are the two historical blends, which only have a lightfastness rating of Fair (or not good). By "historical," I mean the pre-Golden times, and these colors in their non-lightfast forms had their own dedicated following. A full discussion of this fascinating tale can be found in Beauty and the Best: Wrestling with Changes at Williamsburg. We can appreciate why they opted to keep these colors intact and include the lightfastness warnings- this is just a heads up for painters who are new to the brand.

Heads up on Lightfastness in PY83s

Also, in the midst of the lightfastness assessments of their convenience mixtures, Golden discovered an important difference from the ASTM tables concerning PY83. Some opaque forms of PY83 are very lightfast, and others-- like the transparent version-- have only fair or poor lightfastness. However, the transparent (not-so-lightfast) form is a rather unique color, which led to a quandry. The Alizarin Yellow and Alizarin Orange both contain the transparent form of PY83. Golden opted to remove it from a group of colors that could be adequately reformulated, such as the Permanent Orange of the old days, however this was not the case for the these two. As an aside, the names are kindof confusing, and we did a double-take. Neither of their current formulations contain Alizarin Crimson PR83-- which one would have assumed to be the cause of only Fair lightfastness as well as the genesis of the name. Rather both contain the yellow pigment PY83. We appreciate that Golden tested their paints, reformulated some, kept others, and also brought the PY83 issue to light.

In the scheme of things, artists' needs are rather niche in the wider pigment industry. Automobiles, mulch, and other manufacturing industries order massive amounts of pigments and dictate much of the demand. Discontinuations of Quinacridones for instance have a lot to do with demand in other industries.

Golden has done a great job of keeping artists in the loop about the changes that have been happening and have also had some videos with their staff who explain the situation- linked below.

Some paints that have been reformulated due to pigment availability include: Quinacridone Gold Brown (now discontinued) and Van Dyke Brown.

Paints that have been Discontinued due to pigment availability include: Cobalt Violet Light, SF Cobalt Violet Light (safflower) Cobalt Yellow, French Cassel Earth - more info here, French Noir Indien, Mars Orange Deep, Naples Reddish, Quinacridone Gold Brown, Permanent Yellow Green, Italian Green Ochre, Cobalt Green Pale (see this for more- also this color may have come back in some form), and a few of the zinc oxide paints- see above.

Some of the pigments that have been retired are the earth used in Van Dyke Brown- a Cassel earth, genuine Cobalt Yellow PY40, the particular Cobalt Violet Light PV49, several specific specific earth tones. Genuine Alizarin Crimson, PR83, which despite its lack of lightfastness has been a historical artist pigment, was lost. A special variety of Ultramarine Pink, PV15, was recently lost as well as a handful of Quinacridones. P048 has been on the way out for a long time but recent discontinuations took out PR206 and PR207. More information on the recent changes can be found in our article on limited-availability pigments. Golden kept artists up to date with their 2023 Product discontinuations update.

Here are a few videos Golden released about discontinued pigments: A 2021 presentation giving background on pigment categories and information about what happens behind the scenes in the pigment industry that causes pigments to be unavailable. This presentation has a few notes on lightfastness testing for example with Hansa yellows, the transparent PY83, and the PG50 change-ups.

2023 Discontinuations due to changes in the pigment industry. This affected quite a few colors from Alizarin Crimson PR83, to a special Ultramarine Pink, PV15, to the beloved Cobalt Violet Light, PV49.

Golden kept the art world informed about the great pigment shakeup of 2020. We are going to miss several unique Williamsburg colors such as Quinacridone Gold Brown, Ultramarine Pink, and Cobalt Violet Light.

As always there are more things to talk about than one article can cover. Williamsburg has a lot to discover. For example, we didn't even cover their Chromatic Darks or which colors are Vegan, both of which you can check out. And, we didn't cover them here but Williamsburg also has a series of interference colors.

Williamsburg paints are highly recommended-- as paintmakers they have shown not just a commitment to research but a love of it. The research from Williamsburg is leading the world of oil paints. We love that Golden acted swiftly in researching zinc and have now reshaped our understanding of lightfastness.

If an artist is sensitive to grit, we recommend checking out Williamsburg's chart on textures, so you can stay in the smoother colors. If you like variety, Williamsburg has it. These colors tend toward a soft impasto and are very highly pigmented.

We love that Williamsburg has a wide range of single-pigment colors and that they disclose their pigments-- they go further and do lightfastness testing on pigments that have not even been included in the ASTM. Their cadmiums are stellar and their range of genuine cobalts and ceruleans it hard to match.

We paint with many Williamsburg colors and many of them are staples of our palettes.