A Colour Story

Alizarin Crimson

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Build a room around Alizarin Crimson. These masterworks carry Alizarin Crimson at their heart — recreated museum-grade, framed and numbered to be inherited.

The Deep Dive

Alizarin Crimson is the pigment form of alizarin (1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone), the principal red colouring compound of the madder plant, Rubia tinctorum, whose root had been used to dye textiles and, from around the seventh century BC, to make lake pigments across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia - traces of madder dye have been found in textiles from Ancient Egypt, Persia, and Pompeii. As a paint pigment, madder was traditionally 'laked' - precipitated onto an inert alum (aluminum salt) base to fix the fugitive dye into a workable solid - a technique refined by figures such as English colourman George Field, whose 1808 notebooks document experimental madder-lake recipes. The root contains two colourants, the permanent alizarin and the far more fugitive purpurin; French chemists Jean-Jacques Colin and Pierre Jean Robiquet isolated and distinguished the two in 1826. The decisive change came in 1868, when German chemists Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann, working at BASF, synthesized alizarin from anthracene, making it the first natural dye pigment to be reproduced synthetically; English chemist William Henry Perkin filed a rival patent for the same process just one day later, in 1869. Because it eliminated the unstable purpurin found in natural madder, synthetic alizarin crimson (Colour Index PR83) offered improved, though still imperfect, permanence and higher tinting strength than its plant-derived predecessor. Its introduction proved economically devastating for madder cultivation, and the natural dye industry collapsed within a generation.

Symbolism

As the direct synthetic descendant of madder - one of antiquity's most important red dyestuffs - alizarin crimson inherited madder's long association with royal and ecclesiastical status, since madder-dyed cloth and lake pigments had for centuries been markers of luxury and rank across the ancient and medieval world. Its arrival in 1868 also carried a symbolically modern charge: alizarin crimson was among the first wave of coal-tar-derived synthetic colours that announced industrial chemistry's takeover of the artist's palette from agriculture and craft, a shift Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters embraced for its brilliance even as it displaced older, slower, plant-based traditions. At the same time, its notorious tendency to fade under UV light has made it, ironically, an art-world byword for impermanence - conservators use alizarin crimson specifically as a benchmark pigment in lightfastness testing, so that a colour once prized for surpassing its natural predecessor's stability now symbolizes, more than almost any other modern pigment, the fragility of a painting's colour over time.

Pigment history

Natural madder lake was prepared by extracting dye from the dried, ground root of Rubia tinctorum and precipitating it onto an alum substrate - a laking process practiced since antiquity but refined and documented in detail by early nineteenth-century colourmen such as George Field, whose 1808 notes record specific alum-and-madder recipes yielding a pigment he described as 'beautifully purple.' The root's two colouring compounds, alizarin and purpurin, were chemically isolated by French chemists Colin and Robiquet in 1826, revealing that purpurin was chiefly responsible for the pigment's fugitive tendencies. In 1868, Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann at BASF achieved the first synthesis of alizarin from coal-tar-derived anthracene, filing a German patent that year; William Henry Perkin registered a competing English patent for a similar process one day after BASF, in 1869. This synthetic method, further cheapened after 1871 when Broenner and Gutzkow discovered anthracene could be extracted directly from coal tar, collapsed the market for cultivated madder within a generation. Manufacturing of the pigment shifted entirely from agricultural dye-extraction to industrial organic chemistry, and alizarin crimson (PR83) became a standard studio colour by the 1890s. Its known lack of full lightfastness later prompted twentieth-century reformulations marketed as 'Permanent Alizarin Crimson,' typically substituting pigments such as PR177 (anthraquinone) or PR264 (quinacridone) for genuine PR83 while preserving its visual character.

Notable uses

Still Life with Chrysanthemums (1862), Henri Fantin-LatourConservation research suggests this still life likely used newly purified natural alizarin, following its 1826 chemical isolation and a precursor to the fully synthetic pigment introduced six years later, among the earliest documented uses of the improved colourant.
Olympia (c. 1877, watercolour), Paul CezanneTechnical analysis using UV fluorescence testing identified an organic red pigment consistent with alizarin or carmine lake, rather than natural madder, among the materials Cezanne used in this watercolour.
Aix Cathedral, View from the Studio at Les Lauves (1902-1904), Paul CezanneThe same conservation survey of Cezanne's Philadelphia watercolours found organic red pigment consistent with alizarin crimson in this late work, evidence of the pigment's place in his mature palette.
Mass Tone Painting: Alizarin Crimson (April 24, 1974), Marcia HafifIn the Art Institute of Chicago; Hafif hand-ground pure alizarin crimson pigment with linseed oil rather than using commercial tube paint, building a monochrome canvas that explores the pigment's own inherent tonal range.

Sources

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