Ultramarine

Synthetic ultramarine is a more vivid blue than natural ultramarine, since the particles in synthetic ultramarine are smaller and more uniform than natural ultramarine and therefore diffuse light more evenly.

French Blue, yet another historic name for ultramarine, was adopted by the textile and apparel industry as a color name in the 1990s, and was applied to a shade of blue that has nothing in common with the historic pigment ultramarine.

In Lady standing at a virginal, the young woman's dress is painted with a mixture of ultramarine and green earth, and ultramarine was also used to add shadows in the flesh tones.

M&S’s take on the one-shoulder dresscomes in black, poppy red and winter lime, the Amazon version is available in black, ultramarine green and hot pink.

The best of the lot, I think, is a hauntingly bright blue called ultramarine: you can’t take your eyes off it.

The blue hour is coming, and only a few sunny brushstrokes blend into the ultramarine horizon; the winter days are short and goat grazing time is already over.

A comparable but even more remarkable, yet effectual, use of natural ultramarine is in The Girl with a Wineglass.

Even after Vermeer’s supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, he continued to employ natural ultramarine generously, such as in Lady Seated at a Virginal.

He also used layers of finely ground or coarsely ground ultramarine, which gave subtle variations to the blue.

He mixed mostly traditional colors to make the pink and crimson; synthetic ultramarine, cerulean blue, and titanium white, but he also used two new organic reds, Naphtol and Lithol.

In 1824 the Societé pour l'Encouragement d'Industrie in France offered a prize for the invention of an artificial ultramarine which could rival the natural colour made from lapis lazuli.

In his La Gare Saint-Lazare, the grey smoke, vapour and dark shadows are actually composed of mixtures of bright pigment, including cobalt blue, cerulean blue, synthetic ultramarine, emerald green, Guillet green, chrome yellow, vermilion and ecarlate red.

In the 17th and 18th Century render Johannes Vermeer made extensive use of ultramarine in his paintings.

It became especially popular in the 17th century, when ultramarine was difficult to obtain.

It is more vivid than natural ultramarine because the particles are smaller and more uniform in size, and thus distribute the light more evenly.

It remained an extremely expensive pigment until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826.

It was crushed and powdered and used as a pigment from ancient times, File:Natural ultramarine pigment.

It was made of ultramarine combined with a resin called Rhodopa, which gave it a particularly brilliant colour.

Lapis lazuli is commercially synthesized or simulated by the Gilson process, which is used to make artificial ultramarine and hydrous zinc phosphates.

Large chimneys were used to disperse sulfur dioxide produced in the process, resulting in ultramarine tinting the surrounding ground surfaces and roof vents with a blue color.