A Bouquet of Violets

These gorgeous colors include a discontinued rare violet, a shapeshifting violet, and a violet which is super handy in mixing with greens.

When mixed with white, the hues of many reds and violets shift.

Daniel Smith recently discontinued their oils, which means that this PV55 Quinacridone Violet is no longer available. It's a bit hard to find PV55 in oils. Update: Michael Harding is now offering a PV55.

Rembrandt's Permanent Red Violet #567 is such a knockout color, however we've found it to be a bit of a shapeshifter. When we went to replace an older tube, we found the color was different. It turns out this is sometimes formulated with a different variety which goes by the same pigment number. At Paintlist we keep notes on brand changes, discontinued pigments, and help to sort out what's in our paintboxes.

And that Manganese Violet, PV16, is a superb mixing violet made of a single pigment. It's a helpful and underrated pigment across brands, and here we painted out the Winsor and Newton version. We've heard other painters praise it for mixing flesh tones of all kinds and we'd also recommend using for the desaturation of greens. This color also tends to be a speedy drier.

Some other standouts here are M Graham's Quinacridone Violet and Old Holland's Cobalt Violet.