Category Archives: COLOUR SERIES

Peter Lanyon’s turbulent paintings capture the sublime rough and tumble of the English coastline, with free, energised brushstrokes and luminous shades of grey alike to QUARTZ Linen. A leading member of the St Ives School in Cornwall, Lanyon blended the style of Abstract Expressionism with the majestic wonder of the Cornish landscape, painting craggy rock…

Andrew Wyeth’s paintings are an ode to the barren, melancholic wonder of the American outback, celebrating its long, parched grass and creaky buildings stained yellow in the sun. The golden glow of APPLE CINNAMON Linen tinged Wyeth’s paintings with the tart sweetness of homemade apple juice, infusing a comforting warmth into his otherwise lonely, abandoned…

Henri Matisse had an enduring obsession with BRIGHT COBALT’s distinctive shade of blue, observing with fascination how it could ignite his paintings, prints and paper cut-outs with the luminescence of the sea and sky. Throughout his long and prolific career Matisse shifted through an array of adventurous styles and subjects, but a burning passion for…

Askeli Gallen-Kallela painted his native Finland as a magical watery paradise, where icy lakes, bruised skies and mounds of snow are dappled with streaks of enigmatic blue shadow. The blue-tinged shade of GREY MIST Linen was one he would return to over and over to convey these darkening areas of cast shadow, invoking the ancient,…

Swiss Symbolist painter Ferdinand Hodler’s art is a homage to the wonders of the Swiss landscape, conveying jagged, snow-peaked mountains and glossy mirrored lakes with flat panels of vivid, jewel-like colour. The indigo of NIGHTSHADOW BLUE Linen was his favourite colour for conveying depth and shadow, which he brought in to describe shadowy mountain ranges…

French artist Jules Bastien-Lepage was one of the greatest Naturalists of his generation, painting the French countryside with muted, earthy shades of moss green alongside soft tones of beige, brown and peach. OLIVE Linen’s warm, rustic shade of dark green was a favourite in his limited colour palette, lending his canvases a relatable down-earth-quality that…

Deep earthy colours like that of BROWN SUGAR Linen were a defining feature of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Baroque paintings, investing into them a quietly brewing mystery and intrigue. Gentileschi was the most celebrated female painter of 17th century, working throughout Europe for a series of high-profile clients in an era when few artistic opportunities were available…

Nimbus Cloud Linen’s cold blue tone breezes through Joaquin Sorolla’s coastal scenes, filling them with the crisp, invigorating freshness of the Spanish coast. Starched fabric and painted stone buildings flicker in and out of the crisp white air, forming dappled patterns of pastel blue, white and lilac as fresh and cold as the ocean beyond….

GRAY PINSTRIPE Linen’s deep, dark almost-black swept across James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s enigmatic ‘Nocturnes’, capturing the quiet magic of cities descending into night. Made throughout the 1870s, Whistler’s night-time scenes portray urban scenes almost entirely cloaked by darkness, leaving only a smattering of twinkling lights or far-off fireworks in view. Painted from memory in his…

Colour was a vital component for the legendary Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, allowing her to express deeply felt moods, emotions and memories with a rich and evocative language. Ambient greys tinged with lilac, like FALCON GRAY Linen, were a recurring favourite, which she would dilute into watery liquids and pour liberally onto her canvases so…

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a dreamy romanticist, painting idealised historical scenes set amongst the marble pillars and iridescent light of ancient Greece. Cool shades of aqua blue like BLUE BAYOU Linen brought crisp, fresh lightness into his scenes, particularly when combined with the glossy marble architecture of the ancient world. In amongst these tranquil and…

FROST GRAY’s steely metallic shade became cold light in Russian master Valentin Serov’s stirring portraits, illuminating the space around his sitters with the frosty air of Russia. Leader in the Russian Impressionist movement, pale exterior light was a vital component in Serov’s art, breaking through unseen windows to colour the interior walls, furniture and clothes…

19th century painter Alexei Savrasov portrayed stunning, Romanticised visions of the Russian landscape, capturing the sparkling freshness and icy air of winter when everything was obscured by layers and layers of snow. Sensitively attuned to the natural world at this time of year, he carefully observed how subtle shades of bluish grey like that of…

A fresh, cold breeze seems to bristle through Russian painter Natalia Goncharova’s paintings, created through sharp, biting and invigorating colours like that of FEATHER Linen. Leader in the Russian 20th century avant-garde, Goncharova was wildly inventive and prolific, working across a huge range of styles, techniques and mediums to produce some of the most important…

SILVER Linen’s quiet, blue-grey mirrors the softly diffused light of Claude Monet’s snow scenes, where land and sky are muffled by enormous puffs of cloud and snow. Subtle blue shadows fall across heaps of white snow and bristle through freezing tree branches or suggest rising storm clouds in the distant horizon, but they are a…