schmincke mussini oil paint natural burnt umber

Mussini Resin-oil colours are unique in the world, following “Old Masters” formulations combining artist’s oils with resins.
The recipes for each individual colour call for the replacement of excess fatty oils with carefully measured proportions of resin (usually dammar).
This has several advantages over standard oilcolour:

- The increase in volume that occurs as the oil absorbs oxygen (up to 15%) is largely balanced by the decrease in volume of the resin content as it evaporates. The evaporation leaves microscopic holes in the paint that in turn allows oxygen to more effectively penetrate the paint layer. The result is tension-free balanced drying, with less danger of wrinkling and cracking.

- The replacement of a proportion of artist’s oil with resin lessens the natural yellowing of the linseed in the paint film.

- The resin refracts light more intensely than oil, producing a more lustrous and brilliant colour layer. This is especially noticeable in transparent colours.

Nearly 100 different pigments are used in the Mussini range, and over 60% of the Mussini colour range is made of single-pigment colours, allowing clean and pure colour mixing.

Schmincke began at the end of the 19th Century, when the colour chemists Josef Horadam and Hermann Schmincke saw an opportunity to provide the artists of the day with a truly superior artists oil, and so set out to Italy where traditional studio painting was still taught, in search of the nearly forgotten resin oil formulations.
In 1881, at the Academy of Fine Art in Florence, they secured the precision formulations of the Professor Cesare Mussini, a guardian of the old masters techniques, and on these formulations, the two founded their manufacturing establishment under the name H.Schmincke and Co.

In subsequent years, artists’ colours to suit all techniques were introduced, such as Josef Horadam’s patent watercolours of 1892. Through the entire 20th century, every generation of owner has lead the company to its current position as one of the worlds leading manufaturers of finest artists’ colour.