Alizarin Crimson

What color is alizarin crimson?

The story of alizarin crimson

Alizarin crimson is the color that emptied the madder fields of Europe, and it came out of a flask.

Madder root is where it started. The red in the root is alizarin, and people have dyed cloth with it since at least 1500 BC; madder-dyed fabric was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun and in the ruins of Pompeii, and it was the red of the British redcoat from the late 1600s to 1870. Around 1804 an English color maker, George Field, learned to precipitate the dye onto alum to make a solid pigment, a lake, which is how a dye becomes a paint. In 1826 the French chemist Pierre-Jean Robiquet found that the root held two reds, alizarin and a faster-fading one called purpurin. Alizarin is about one percent of the root.

Then two German chemists working with the dye firm BASF, Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann, found in 1868 that alizarin could be made from anthracene, a chemical in coal tar. It was the first natural dye anyone had made in a laboratory. In England William Perkin, the man who had invented mauve, hit on the same trick, and the German patent went in one day before his, in June 1869. They split the world: Perkin took England, the Germans took the rest. Synthetic alizarin cost a fraction of the root, and the market for madder collapsed almost overnight. France had put its infantry in red trousers in 1829 partly to keep its madder farmers in business; by 1914 the red came from German factories, and when war cut the supply the trousers went horizon blue.

Trouble came with the paint itself. The synthetic lake, PR83 in the Colour Index, became the crimson of the twentieth-century paint box, and it fades. Thin washes and tints go first, then the full-strength color drifts toward maroon; in one set of tests the tints had vanished after 300 hours of sunlight. On cloth, fixed to the fiber with a mordant, madder red lasts for centuries. In a watercolor wash there is almost nothing holding it, and light takes it apart. Hang a painting with alizarin in its purples on a sunny wall and the purples will not stay.

Which is why nearly every tube of alizarin crimson you can buy now is a hue. In 1958 DuPont brought out the quinacridones, reds and violets that are far more light-resistant, and paint makers rebuilt alizarin crimson on them. Turn the tube over. If the pigment line says PR83, it is the genuine lake and it will fade. If it says PV19, PR264 or PR177, sometimes two of them together, you are holding a permanent version: a quinacridone, a pyrrole rubine, or an anthraquinone red that is a chemical cousin of the original. The word permanent on the front is the clue; the codes on the back are the proof.

I own the permanent kind and I do not feel I am missing anything. Bob Ross painted with alizarin crimson on television, which tells you how ordinary a color it is. The name still points at something real: a cool, transparent red that makes clean purples and, with a green, one of the best blacks in watercolor. The chemistry under the label has changed twice. The job has not.

Pigment facts

These describe the pigment in general. Every brand's tube behaves a little differently, so test yours on scrap paper.

How to mix alizarin crimson

You cannot mix your way to alizarin crimson; it is already about as cool and clean as a red gets, and mixing only dulls. Any cool, transparent red will stand in for it, and a quinacridone rose pushed toward crimson with a touch of a warmer red is closer than most people expect.

Its best partner is a blue-green. Alizarin with viridian or phthalo green, roughly equal, gives a deep black that is still a color: tip it red for a warm dark, green for a cool one, add water for a gray with life in it. Painters call it a chromatic black. Once you have mixed it you will stop buying black.

Using alizarin crimson in watercolor

Use alizarin crimson where a red needs to sit back: the shadow side of a red flower, the dark half of a red door, wine in a glass. Scarlet is the lit side of things; alizarin is the shaded side.

Glazing is what it was born for. A thin wash laid over a dry passage changes the color underneath without hiding it: alizarin over a yellow wash makes a glowing orange no mixed orange can match, and over a pale blue it makes a violet with air in it. Let each layer dry completely or you will lift the one below.

It pairs with the greens. Against Green Gold or Forest Green from the kit it looks deeper, and mixed with them it makes the dark I use instead of black.

One thing I learned the hard way: check the tube before you trust it. My first alizarin was the genuine PR83, and a small painting with alizarin purples in the sky spent two summers in a sunny hallway. The purples went. Now I only buy the permanent version.

Alizarin crimson vs rose madder (and quinacridone rose)

Rose madder is the same molecule from the plant instead of the flask, plus purpurin, the second red in the root, which gives it a warmer, softer, pinker cast. It is paler and weaker than alizarin crimson, and it fades even faster. Alizarin is the concentrated, cooler, industrial version; rose madder is the pressed flower.

Quinacridone rose is the pigment most permanent alizarin hues are built on. On its own it is brighter, cleaner and pinker, without alizarin's brown undertone, and it is among the most lightfast reds there are. Makers add a touch of something warmer and duller to turn it into alizarin, which is exactly what you can do on the palette.

If alizarin crimson is red wine held up to a lamp, rose madder is the last sip with water in it, and quinacridone rose is cranberry juice.

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Mel, founder of Tobio'sI make portable watercolor kits and I named the company after my cat. I write these pages for the beginner I used to be, one pigment at a time.