Cadmium Yellow Light | Matisse acrylic paint

Cadmium Yellow became popular among artists in the mid-19th century; when it did, it was only natural to ask if the pigment could be tweaked, adjusted and re-formulated to give lighter and deeper shades. At the time, a popular colour was Zinc Yellow which had an ideal colour tone. But suffered from reliability problems. Chemists realized that the chemical similarities of the compounds meant they could be combined as a co-precipitate. In doing so, the zinc sulphide gained the reliability of the cadmium sulphide while the cadmium gained the pale yellow hue of the zinc sulphide. 

It is a beautiful primrose-yellow colour that combines permanence with opacity. The zinc component makes this pale yellow slightly less lightfast than pure cadmium yellow, but it is still more permanent than most pigments dream of striving to be. The colour is very similar to Lead-Tin Yellow, used in the late Renaissance and Mannerist periods and was the only reliably permanent bright yellow available to the old masters.

Colour Mixing with Cadmium Yellow Light

Cadmium Yellow Light has a colour close to that of primary yellow and helps mix a wide range of colours. The natural world is full of ochre and brown colours, and greens are everywhere, from dull dark olive greens to light yellowy greens where the sun brushes across foliage. Cadmium Yellow Light is the ideal yellow for working with this wide whole colour suite ranging from earth tones to the brightest light greens.