The permanence of colours available to the artist today is beyond the imagination of previous generations. Modern organic pigments derived from petroleum have yielded colours of great brilliance and permanence. The complex chemical nature of these colours results in the similarly complex names of the colours.
Until recently we had used the terms ‘Winsor’ or ‘Permanent’ to prefix the names of synthetic organic pigments, today the chemical names are increasingly used.
The best organic pigments provide clean colours for good mixing, high tinting strength, unrivalled transparency and lightfastness.