This gorgeous orange is a welcome addition to the artist???s palette. For a long time Cadmium Orange was the only permanent opaque orange available and with health concerns surrounding use of cadmium colours the only alternatives were transparent oranges or poisons like Chrome Orange. This lack of choices was also important to automotive manufacturers whose lightfastness requirements are even more stringent than artists needs since light outdoors is around 400 times more intense than indoors. Any colour that can withstand being on a car in direct sunlight for 10 years is the equivalent of the same colour in a painting lasting for more than a thousand years without change. Pigments of that permanence are rare and when the new pyrrole pigments became available in the 1990???s their adoption became inevitable for artists usage. They cover the range of colours from a deep crimson to this beautiful orange.They are either opaque or semi opaque and proved to be even more lightfast than the cadmiums and are generally brighter and stronger colours.
While the use of pyrrole pigments is relatively new as paint pigments for artists knowledge of the pigment group is decades older because they have a natural biological form long known to medicine. Pyrrole pigments occur as natural pigments within bile and red blood cells. The synthetic pyrroles were developed using these biological pyrroles as the starting point.
Matisse Orange DPP has all the best attributes of a pyrrole pigment. It is a deeper, slightly redder orange than Cadmium Orange. It is opaque and a clean bright colour and is highly lightfast even in the lightest tints. It is the most lightfast choice for the artist who wishes to avoid the health concerns of cadmium. The pyrrole pigments can safely be used around children and have no significant environmental concerns.