Yellow spans some of the oldest and most stable pigments (ochre) alongside some of the most toxic ever used (chrome yellow, lead-tin yellow), and carries very different cultural meanings across regions.
No single HEX value defines this entire colour family — see individual colour profiles below for specific shades.
Yellow ochre, like red ochre, is among the oldest documented pigments, used in prehistoric art for tens of thousands of years.
prehistory
Naples yellow, a lead antimonate in use from antiquity until about the mid-19th century, and chrome yellow, a lead chromate that came into use in the early 19th century, both contain lead; lead-based pigments later fell out of common use as lead's toxicity became well understood.
Europe · antiquity to 20th century
Gold and golden-yellow tones have a long association with wealth, royalty and the divine across many cultures, from Byzantine religious art to Chinese imperial dress.
Byzantium and China, among others
Yellow is one of the most common colours used for caution and warning signage internationally, valued for its high visibility.
General
Yellow earth has always been cheap and permanent, but it is not brilliant, and every brighter yellow came with a defect that sent painters looking for the next one. Orpiment is an arsenic sulfide that is not very stable and slowly decomposes. Lead-tin yellow was so thoroughly forgotten after about 1750 that it had to be rediscovered in 1941. Naples yellow and chrome yellow both contain lead, and chrome yellow can darken at the surface as its chromium is chemically reduced. The history of the family is therefore a relay, each pigment carrying the bright end of the palette for a few centuries before handing over. 1, 2, 3
| Name | Kind | Period | What is known | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orpiment | Pigment | antiquity to about the 19th century | Yellow arsenic sulfide, natural or manufactured. Identified with realgar in the gold embroidery of a sash in a Tintoretto portrait of about 1575–80. | 1 |
| Lead-tin yellow | Pigment | about 1300 to about 1750 | Used most often in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and among the pigments identified in the Wilton Diptych. | 2, 4 |
| Naples yellow | Pigment | antiquity to about 1850 | Lead antimonate. Still on Manet's palette in 1862, for the mustard-coloured chairs in Music in the Tuileries. | 5 |
| Indian yellow | Pigment | from around the 15th century | Salts of euxanthic acid, used mainly in India. Because it dissolves in water it served mostly for watercolour and seldom for oil glazes. | 6 |
| Chrome yellow | Pigment | from the first quarter of the 19th century | Lead chromate. Van Gogh used both a light-stable and a light-sensitive variety in the same painting. | 7, 8 |
| Cadmium yellow | Pigment | about 1840 to the present | The bright impasto yellow of Monet's late Water-Lilies, painted after 1916. | 9 |
| When | Where | What happened | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| About 1637 | — | Van Dyck painted the golden-yellow dress of the Viscountess Andover in lead-tin yellow, in his double portrait of her with her sister, Lady Thimbelby. | 2 |
| 1862–74 | China | A court robe was embroidered in yellow silk over blue to give the bright yellow whose use, in certain shades, was confined to the imperial family. | 10 |
| 1889 | — | Van Gogh painted Wheat Field with Cypresses, one of the works in which chrome yellow has been identified. | 7 |
| 1941 | — | Lead-tin yellow, unused and unremembered for nearly two centuries, was identified again by researchers. | 2 |
| 2011 | — | Synchrotron analysis showed that darkened chrome yellow carries a surface layer a few micrometres thick in which the chromium has been reduced. | 3 |
Claim: In imperial China yellow belonged to the emperor.
Evidence: True only when narrowed. The V&A's wording is that certain shades of yellow were restricted to the emperor and his immediate family, which is a rule of one court about particular shades, not a ban on yellow. Its own example makes the point twice over: the robe is yellow embroidery on blue silk, and the museum doubts it was ever worn by an emperor. 10