Cadmium yellow
Composition and Properties of Cadmium Yellow
Cadmium yellow is cadmium sulfide CdS. There are many different color variations achieved by an admixture of zinc sulfide (light yellow), and selenium sulfide (orange to red). The variations are solid solutions of either zinc sulfide or selenium sulfide in cadmium sulfide.It is stable as a pure pigment. The occurrences of bleaching or darkening in the beginnings of its use were due to impurities (1). Changes in the pigment with time were investigated by several methods such as x-ray fluorescence and infrared spectroscopy (2,3). The pigment is lightfast and there are no reports to the contrary, but it is not compatible with lead and copper-containing pigments as they form dark sulfides of lead or copper.
Names of Cadmium Yellow
Aurora yellow, jaune brilliantPY 37, CI 77199Word coined in Modern Latin from cadmia, a word used by ancient naturalists for various earths and oxides (especially zinc carbonate), from Greek kadmeia “Cadmean (earth),” from Kadmos “Cadmus,” legendary founder of Boeotian Thebes. So called because the earth was first found in the vicinity of Thebes (Kadmeioi was an alternative name for “Thebans” since the time of Homer).From WordFinder
Preparation of Cadmium Yellow
Attention: Cadmium compounds are highly toxic and should not be handled by people not trained to do so.Cadmium yellow can either be prepared by heating of metallic cadmium with sulfur or by precipitation of the unsoluble cadmium sulfide by a reaction of a solution of a cadmium salt, such as cadmium chloride, with a solution of sodium sulfide. The pigment can also be prepared in the laboratory provided it is equipped with a good functioning fume hood as the gaseous hydrogen sulfide H2S which is produced when sodium sulfide is solved in water is poisonous and has a very unpleasant odor (the same as rotten eggs).Cadmium sulfide occurs naturally as the mineral greenockite but the mineral has never been used as a pigment.
History of Use
Cadmium pigments have been in use since about 1840 until today. They might get banned in the European Union in the next future because of their toxicity.Examples of use
Quote
On Pissarro's advice I'm abandoning the emerald green.. Seurat's note in 1885; as quoted in the exhibition-text 'Georges Seurat, 1859 – 1891' in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1992, ed. Robert Herbert, published: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York (Camille Pissarro wrote his son Lucien c. 1885 and asked him to warn Seurat and Paul Signac, because mixing the cadmium yellow with other pigments would change into dark color, later)
Source: Georges Seurat
This Spring of 1911 Marianne von Werefkin [his former study-mate in Russia and in fact his life-comapnion for many years, but never married] Andrei, Helene and I went to Prerow on the Baltic [coast]. For me that summer meant a great step forward in my art. I painted my finest landscapes there as well as large figure paintings in powerful, glowing colours and not at all naturalistic or objective. I used a great deal of red, blue, orange, cadmium yellow and chromium-oxide green. My forms were very strongly contoured in Prussian blue, and came with tremendous power from an inner ecstasy. 'Der Buckel', 'Violetter Turban', 'Selbstporträt'.. ..were created in this way. It was a turning-point in my art. It was in these years, up to 1914, just before the war [World War 1.], that I painted my most powerful works, referred to as the pré-war works. Quote c. 1911; in 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938; as cited in Alexej von Jawlensky, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen, Rotterdam; exhibition catalog 25/9 – 27/11-1994 (a. o. his life quotes from ['Life Memories'] he dictated late in his life, in 1938)
Source: Alexej von Jawlensky
