Functional cookies are turned off. Click here to change preferences.
Lead White
This popular pigment is one of the most important and ubiquitous in the history of painting. It has been in use since antiquity and was one of the earliest pigments to be produced synthetically.
Lead white was traditionally obtained by exposing lead metal to vinegar and other ingredients, such as animal manure, causing a reaction in which a white crust of basic lead carbonate forms on the lead that can then be scraped off, dried, and ground into pigment. By Monet’s time, however, the pigment was manufactured by more efficient processes. Because of increasing concerns about its toxicity, lead white had begun to be phased out by the turn of the 20th century in favor of zinc white. However, the lead-based pigment continued to be the preferred white of many painters due to its warm white tone, good covering power, and drying properties.
Monet made extensive use of lead white in his paintings. When the art dealer René Gimpel visited his studio in 1918, he described “mountains of white snowy peaks” in the middle of Monet’s palette. The pigment was fundamental to his painting technique and vital to the luminous, high-key opacity of his colors. He incorporated it into most of his paint mixtures to adjust the tones and also used it for texture, creating thick impasto on the surface of works or building up multiple layers.
French Ultramarine
French ultramarine is the synthetic form of a blue pigment originally extracted from lapis lazuli, a mineral mined from locations in South Asia (hence its European etymology, “from across the sea”). Due to its rarity and laborious preparation, the natural pigment was often used in earlier times to highlight important elements of religious paintings, such as the Virgin Mary’s robe. It also signified the wealth and prestige of the patron who commissioned the work.
By the early 19th century, its chemical makeup had been deciphered, and it was manufactured on a large scale at an affordable price. The democratization of the pigment quickly led to the loss of its associations with value and rarity. In fact, when Monet painted Water Lilies, the price of French ultramarine oil paint was about half that of cobalt blue, which Monet also used in this work.
His application of the two colors exploited their subtle differences in hue: French ultramarine is typically a warmer, reddish-blue, while cobalt blue appears cooler and more delicate. The water’s surface has a strong overall blue tonality, but a close look at the painting shows that Monet mixed these pigments together and with others on his palette to create a seemingly infinite array of subtly varying tones.
Red Lakes
These pigments are made from colored organic compounds traditionally extracted from plants, such as madder, or insects, such as cochineal, producing the colorant carmine. In Monet’s time, oil paints made with lake pigments were available from color merchants in a wide variety of hues, created by adjusting chemical ingredients used in their manufacture, such as metal salts.
Analysis of Monet’s paintings at the Art Institute indicates that he used red lakes extensively. Artists at the time expressed concern regarding the color fastness of such pigments, and indeed many of them—both natural and synthetic versions—have faded in paintings as we see them today. But in certain examples, like Water Lilies, the red lakes appear to have retained their vivid colors.
To create one of the red flowers near the upper-left corner of the composition, Monet combined a deep translucent red lake with vermilion, a warmer, opaque red. Without mixing the two pigments together on the palette, he picked them up on his paintbrush and applied them to the canvas in a swirl of color.
