The Zorn palette

Ochre and vermilion between them cover the warm half of the circle: yellows, oranges, reds and, mixed with white, the whole range of light flesh. Black supplies the rest. Mixed with white it gives greys that read as cool beside the warm earths, so in a portrait it can stand in for a blue.

Because every mixture is built from the same four pigments, the colours in the picture are related to one another by construction. That is the real lesson of a limited palette: harmony comes from what is left out.

Pigment analysis carried out for Emma Jansson's doctoral research at Stockholm University, working with the Zorn Museum in Mora, found the expected lead white, light ochre, vermilion and black, and also cobalt blue, chromium oxide green and cadmium yellow. The museum's director has described the four-colour palette as a myth that Zorn himself helped to spread.

The limited palette is still worth learning, and it is close to what Zorn relied on in many portraits. It is simply not the whole story of how he painted.^{[1, 2, 3, 4]}

Zorn used vermilion, and genuine vermilion is still made; most painters now use cadmium red in its place, which is a modern substitution rather than his practice. Titanium white is the usual replacement for lead white. Any bone or ivory black works for the black, and a natural yellow ochre (PY43) keeps the slightly muted character of the earth.^{[1, 5]}