Vincent van Gogh · 1888
Sunflowers
Six yellows and almost nothing else — a painting that dares you to build a palette out of one hue.
National Gallery, London
Tap any swatch to copy. Ground colours are the three largest areas of the canvas; accent colours are chosen for intensity and may cover very little — which is exactly why they carry the painting. Percentages are each colour's share of the whole canvas, so these six will not add up to 100%: they are six of the 26 distinct colour regions measured, not a division of the surface. How these were sampled
Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo about painting "nothing but sunflowers", and the palette shows the ambition literally: this is a near-monochrome built from yellow alone, separated only by value and by how much green or brown each mixture carries. There is no complementary violet to make the yellow sing. The yellow has to do all the work by itself.
That is why the palette is unusually hard to use in design and unusually instructive to study. Take the full ramp and you get a scheme with real warmth but no contrast anchor; add a single dark neutral and the whole thing snaps into focus. It is the clearest argument in this collection for value contrast doing the job people usually assign to hue contrast.
What the artist actually used
- Chrome yellow (lead chromate, PbCrO₄)
- The bright body of the flowers. Van Gogh used several varieties, including a sulfur-rich lemon form.
- Chrome yellow, sulfate-rich variety (PbCr₁₋ₓSₓO₄)
- The pale lemon tones. This is the unstable one.
Has the colour changed?
Measurably. Synchrotron study of the Van Gogh Museum canvas found the sulfate-rich chrome yellows undergoing photo-induced reduction, with roughly 35% of surface chromium converted from Cr(VI) to Cr(III) — the chemistry that turns pale yellow toward olive brown. Researchers note the change is not yet obvious to the naked eye, so the swatches here are close to, but very slightly browner than, what left the studio in 1888.
Sources
Accessibility
WCAG contrast ratios between every color pair. Use the strongest combinations for text; the weakest ones make good decorative backgrounds.
Strongest pair: #F2E986 on #9D7D11 — 3.12:1 (AA Large)
- #F2E986·#E2D876
- #F2E986·#BDA719
- #F2E986·#B19D1B
- #F2E986·#B2921A
- #F2E986·#9D7D11
- #E2D876·#BDA719
- #E2D876·#B19D1B
- #E2D876·#B2921A
- #E2D876·#9D7D11
- #BDA719·#B19D1B
- #BDA719·#B2921A
- #BDA719·#9D7D11
- #B19D1B·#B2921A
- #B19D1B·#9D7D11
- #B2921A·#9D7D11
How to read this
- AAA
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AAA for normal text — the highest accessibility bar.
- AA
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AA for normal text. Standard production requirement.
- AA Large
- Passes WCAG 2.1 AA for large text only (18pt+ or 14pt+ bold). Avoid for body copy.
- Fail
- Below WCAG 2.1 AA. Fine for decorative use — not for text.
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Studio
Paint this palette
These are the materials a colour study actually gets made with.
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Strathmore
300 Series watercolour pad, 140 lb cold press
140 lb cold press is the weight that takes a wet wash without buckling — the paper most colour studies end up on.
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Pentel
Fude Touch brush sign pen
A felt brush tip for the labelling and linework around a swatch study — the annotation half of a colour notebook.
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Pantone
Formula Guide — coated & uncoated
When a palette leaves the screen, this is the shared vocabulary between you and the press. Coated and uncoated because the same ink is not the same colour on both.
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Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 24 — Art Nouveau
Gansai are traditional Japanese watercolour pans — dense, matte and easy to mix, the closest everyday medium to the flat printed colour Wada's plates were made in. This is the Art Nouveau-themed 'II' edition, a different 24 to the standard set.
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Kuretake
Gansai Tambi 36
The larger pan set. More range means mixing toward a specific plate rather than approximating it from six colours.
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Library
Further reading
Torn between the two Wada dictionaries? Vol 1 vs Vol 2, compared plate by plate →
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