Raw sienna
Composition and Properties of Raw Sienna
The main colour giving component of raw sienna is iron oxide but they also contain small amounts of manganese oxides. The pigment contains around 50% iron oxide and varying amounts of clay and quartz. Except for the content of manganese oxides, siennas are chemically not distinguishable from yellow ochres, but they differ significantly in colour.The pigment is stable at high temperatures but not resistant against acids, is compatible with all other pigments and is often used in mixtures.
Names
PY 43, CI 77492From the name of the city in central Italy, probably from Senones, the name of a Gaulish people who settled there in ancient times.From Online Etymology Dictionary
Preparation of Raw Sienna
The traditional source of siennas has been the quarries near Siena in Italy.
History of Use
Raw and burnt sienna became known as pigments approximately in the middle of the 18th century when the quarrying of the raw material in the area of Siena in Italy started.
Quote
That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist. Paul Cézanne, in 'What he told me – I. The motif', in Joachim Gasquet's Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations (1897 - 1906) Thames and Hudson, London 1991, p. 164.
Source: Camille Pissarro
That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist. p. 164, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif' Camille Pissarro was Cézanne's 'teacher' in impressionistic landscape painting; they frequently painted together in open air.
Source: Paul Cézanne
Gainsborough's Palette. - This I had from Mr. Briggs, but have lost it; still, as I have copied several Gainsborough's, I think I can furnish you with it. Yellows: yellow ochre, Naples }nllow, yellow lake, and for his high lights (but very seldom) some brighter yellow, probably some preparation of orpiment, raw sienna. Reds: vermilion, light red Venetian, and the lakes. Browns: burnt sienna, cologne earth (this he used very freely, and brown pink the same). He used a great deal of terra verte, which he mixed with his blues, generally with ultramarine. His skies are ultramarine. In his early pictures I could never trace other colours. pp. 63-64
Source: Thomas Gainsborough
