The Monet Palette

We are blessed at Supreme Paint to have some of the rarest and most special oil paints available anywhere, however these are truly the most beautifully crafted paints we have ever seen.

Historically accurate, made with some extremely rare pigments, there are only five sets of these in the world and given the pigment scarcity it won't be repeated in this form.

With serious research, the set is based on Claude Monet's palette after 1917 and given the impressionists were mainly focussed on light and colour, the hues in it are stunning. The 18 individual tubes come in a handmade wooden beech box and they are milled in poppyseed oil for maximum colour clarity.

The set comprises of the following colours;

Barium Yellow

Ultramarine Yellow

Chrome Yellow

Chrome Red

Madder Rose, plant colour

Ultramarine Rose

Cerulean Blue

Cobalt Celeste

Cobalt Blue

Cobalt Blue-Violet

Cobalt Violet Deep

Cobalt Violet Extra Deep

Zinc Green Light

Zinc Green Deep

Cobalt Green Light

Viridian

Blanc d’Argent

Lamp Black

It also comes with it's 100ml of it's own unique medium, 'Huilette' a matt drying medium.

This set is really stunning and the potential to create some incredible colour harmonies is unsurpassed.

An overview written by Rebecca Wallace;

"The Monet Set is made with poppy oil which is typically used in French painting in the latter half of the 1800s. Poppy oil based paints were deemed suitable for the new practice of ‘plein air’painting.

 

Poppy oil is paler, slower drying and characteristically makes a looser paint than Cold Pressed Linseed Oil which has a heavier  viscosity and a deep golden colour, which tends to change the appearance of pale colours especially. Oil paint made with poppy oil also dries completely matt.
Paints made with poppy oil are a little deceptive as they handle quite differently to linseed oil based colours - think of it more as a ‘sauce’ than the traditional butter paste typical of linseed oil paints. In spite of its characteristic looseness, as it dries off it will retain structure, repeating the brush marks the artist wishes or Can be diluted with medium to create gentle fine glazes. You will find that each colour has its own individual impact  - the Chrome Red being extremely intense and quite opaque.
Zinc Yellow and Zinc Green Light, Cobalt Green light and Ultramarine Rose are By contrast gentle but radiant.
The Madder Rose is made from the madder plant and makes beautiful mixes with white.

It is especially important to know the value of the painting ground in relation to poppy oil based paints. During the late 19c artists favoured absorbent white lead oil grounds - made matt by reducing the oil content to the minimum in the priming ground. The modern equivalent would be acrylic gesso, which can have a similar absorbency. This absorbency compliments the ‘wet’ feel of the poppy oil colours. Painting onto such an absorbent ground, brush strokes are more visible As the paint gently sinks/bonds into the priming ground.

We always have the cheaper and easier option of bulking the paint but this would always compromise its rheology and the delightful effects you can achieve with mid tones, etc as seen in many impressionist paintings.

The pigments used in the set are authentic to those used by Monet in the period from 1917 onwards. Many of these pigments are either no longer available or are discontinued from modern ranges - viewed as being obsolete when compared to modern pigments. We used some of these very rare pigments in the set, to try give the same feeling of colour and texture As experienced by the impressionists.

We have included the original recipe “Petite Huilette” used at this time which we recommend adding up to 10% to augment the paint. It is a loose oil/resin compound that dries matt and dries slowly too.

The  collection the colours used by Monet In his late period - some of them being very new - for example, Monet was one of the first artists to work with cobalt violets.

The set has a high price due to cost of the pigments used - some are finite and may never be used in artists colours ever again, so in a way, it is an historical set of colours - and offers the artist the chance to work with these special pigments from a hundred years ago."