Why I Am Replacing Winsor & Newton Viridian: The Problem with Moving from PG18 to PG26 + PG7

After twenty years of working almost exclusively in charcoal, I have recently started landscape painting again. As part of that return to oil paint, I opened up some old tubes of Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour that I had kept since art school. Among them was a tube of Viridian 692, AA, Series 4, dating from around 2006.

That tube matters because it appears to be the older, genuine Winsor & Newton Viridian: a traditional single-pigment colour made with PG18, hydrated chromium oxide. To my disappointment, when I looked at the current Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour range, I found that the old Viridian has effectively been replaced by Viridian Hue, colour number 696, made with PG26 and PG7 rather than PG18.

That is not a minor change. For a landscape painter, it changes the behaviour of the paint.

I have not been able to find a published date for the change, but Winsor & Newton’s older Artists’ Oil Colour Viridian 692 was a PG18 paint, while the current Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour Viridian Hue 696 is listed as PG26 and PG7. The change appears to have happened sometime after the early-2000s version of the range and before the current product listing.

Viridian: why PG18 matters

Traditional Viridian is PG18, hydrated chromium oxide. It is a cool, transparent to semi-transparent blue-green pigment. It has a distinctive bluish undertone and a restrained, slightly elusive quality.

That subtlety is exactly why it matters in landscape painting.

Viridian is not simply a bright green. It is a mixing green. Used intelligently, it can make natural greens, blue-greens, greys, shadow greens, distant tree colour, sea greens, and cool atmospheric mixtures.

Genuine Viridian is valuable because it is not too strong, it can be mixed into naturalistic colour.

What is the problem with Viridian Hue?

In artists’ paint, the word “hue” usually means that a colour is intended to resemble a traditional pigment, but is made from different pigments rather than the original material.

A hue is not automatically bad. Sometimes a hue is useful: it may be cheaper, safer, more lightfast, or more consistent than an older pigment. But in this case, the problem is that Viridian Hue is not just a cheaper version of the same thing. It is a different pigment mixture.

The current Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour Viridian Hue uses PG26 and PG7. PG7 is phthalo green, a powerful modern synthetic pigment with very high tinting strength. It is useful, but it behaves very differently from PG18.

For landscape painting, this matters because phthalo-based greens can easily dominate mixtures. They can become too vivid, synthetic, staining, and insistent. They can pull a painting towards a more illustrative or decorative green unless handled with great restraint.

Traditional PG18 Viridian is quieter, with a more subdued strength. It can sit back in a mixture. It is particularly useful when painting trees in the distance, cool passages in foliage, shadowed greens, and atmospheric landscape effects where the colour needs to be alive but not artificial.

The issue is not simply that Winsor & Newton changed the name; it is that they changed the material behaviour of the paint.

In painting terms, why PG18 behaves differently

In painting terms, genuine Viridian PG18 is usually a quieter, more subtle green. It is transparent, cool, and slightly bluish. It is very useful for landscape mixing because it can make natural greens without becoming too garish. It also behaves beautifully in glazes and in restrained mixtures with earth colours, ochres, reds, and yellows.

Viridian Hue is an approximation. Because the current Winsor & Newton Artists’ Oil Colour version includes PG7, which is phthalo green, it may have a much stronger tinting strength and can more easily dominate mixtures. It may look similar straight from the tube, but it will not necessarily mix in the same way.

For my purposes — painterly landscape work and avoiding an illustrative green — my old Viridian 692 Series 4 tube is probably the more valuable and useful paint. I will use it sparingly. It now seems much closer in character to expensive genuine Viridian paints from ranges like Old Holland than to the cheaper current Winsor & Newton Viridian Hue.

This is not just a question of nostalgia or brand loyalty. It is a question of how the paint behaves on the palette and in the painting. A pigment with a lower, more restrained tinting strength gives me more control when I am trying to create broken, atmospheric landscape colour. A phthalo-containing hue may be perfectly useful in some circumstances, but it is not a direct replacement for traditional Viridian.

Why this matters for serious landscape painters

In landscape painting, green is one of the hardest colour families to control. It is very easy for a landscape to become crude, acidic, or illustrative. The best greens are often made indirectly: by modifying, greying, cooling, warming, and breaking the colour.

A traditional Viridian helps because it is already somewhat restrained. It is cool and transparent. Mixed with earth colours, ochres, reds, alizarin-type crimsons, or warm yellows, it can produce a wide range of natural greens. It is also useful for distant trees because distance usually reduces chroma and contrast. A heavy-handed phthalo-based green can easily come forward in the picture plane, when what is needed is recession.

For the sort of painting I am now interested in — painterly, atmospheric landscape painting rather than illustration — I want a green that can be pushed into subtlety. I do not want a paint that immediately overpowers the palette.

That is why I was disappointed to find that my old Winsor & Newton Viridian has been replaced by a hue mixture. I am now researching alternatives, and I am going to try Rembrandt Oil Colour Viridian 616 as a close, affordable match.

A short history of Viridian in European painting

Viridian belongs to the history of nineteenth-century colour chemistry. The element chromium was discovered in 1797, and the use of chromium oxide greens goes back to the first half of the nineteenth century. Viridian was first prepared by Pannetier around 1838 in Paris and later patented by the French chemist Guignet in 1859.

This places Viridian in the period when artists’ palettes were being transformed by new industrial pigments. The nineteenth century gave painters access to colours that earlier artists either did not have or could not rely on. Some earlier greens were fugitive, poisonous, chemically unstable, or visually crude. Viridian offered a comparatively stable, transparent, cool green that was especially useful for modern landscape and outdoor painting.

Viridian became more affordable after Guignet’s manufacturing method and became popular with the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. It is sometimes referred to historically as Guignet’s Green.

This is important because Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting depended heavily on new relationships between colour, light, atmosphere, and outdoor observation. Viridian was part of that technical expansion. It gave painters a modern green that could be used for cool landscape notes, mixtures, shadows, and glazes without the instability or toxicity problems associated with some earlier greens.

For me, this matters because Viridian is not just a tube of green. It is part of the technical history of modern landscape painting.

Manufacturers still making artist-quality PG18 Viridian

I have been looking for genuine PG18 Viridian, not Viridian Hue. The following are artist-quality oil paint options, listed broadly in order of value based on the current UK prices I found for the largest available tubes.

1. Rembrandt Oil Colour Viridian 616

Pigment: PG18
Largest tube found: 150ml
Approximate UK price found: £33.45

This appears to be the best-value genuine PG18 Viridian I found. Royal Talens lists Rembrandt Viridian 616 as PG18, semi-transparent, with its highest lightfastness rating. For my own painting, this is the one I am going to try first as a close, affordable replacement for my old Winsor & Newton Viridian.

2. Gamblin Artist Oil Viridian

Pigment: PG18
Largest tube found: 150ml
Approximate UK price found: around £64–£72

Gamblin makes a genuine artist-quality Viridian using PG18. It is more expensive than Rembrandt, but still less expensive than some of the premium European ranges. Gamblin has a strong reputation among professional painters, and this would be a good option for artists who want a high-quality genuine Viridian but do not want to pay Old Holland or Michael Harding prices.

3. Jackson’s Professional Oil Viridian Green

Pigment: PG18
Largest tube found: 225ml
Approximate UK price found: around £88–£97

Jackson’s Professional Oil Viridian Green appears to offer strong value in a larger 225ml tube. It is a useful option for painters who want a large quantity of genuine Viridian at a more manageable price than the premium handmade ranges. As with all pigment substitutions, I would still check the current pigment code on the tube or retailer listing before buying.

4. Michael Harding Viridian

Pigment: PG18
Largest tube found: 225ml
Approximate UK price found: around £132–£138

Michael Harding Viridian is a premium handmade paint with a high pigment load and an excellent reputation. This is likely to be a beautiful paint, especially for artists who are very particular about handling and pigment quality. The drawback is price. It is considerably more expensive than Rembrandt and Gamblin.

5. Old Holland Viridian Green Deep

Pigment: PG18
Largest tube found: 225ml
Approximate UK price found: around £139–£154

Old Holland Viridian Green Deep is a premium traditional option. It is probably close in spirit to the old single-pigment Viridian I was looking to replace, but it is expensive. For painters who want the most traditional, high-end option, it is worth considering. For painters looking for the best value, Rembrandt appears to be the more practical choice.

There are also other artist-quality manufacturers that have produced PG18 Viridian, including Williamsburg, Holbein, M. Graham, Blockx, Lefranc Bourgeois, Maimeri, Cranfield, and Rublev/Natural Pigments. Availability in the UK varies, and for any of these I would always check the pigment code on the actual retailer listing or tube before buying.

My conclusion

The change from Winsor & Newton’s older Viridian 692 to the current Viridian Hue 696 is significant. The old paint was a traditional Viridian based on PG18. The current Artists’ Oil Colour Viridian Hue is a mixture of PG26 and PG7.

That matters because landscape painting depends on subtle control of green. A phthalo-containing hue may be useful in some contexts, but it will not behave like genuine Viridian. It is likely to be stronger, more assertive, and less naturally restrained in mixtures.

For serious painters who care about pigment behaviour, the answer is simple: check the pigment code. If you want traditional Viridian, look for PG18.

For my own work, I am going to try Rembrandt Oil Colour Viridian 616. It appears to be the best-value genuine PG18 option currently available in a large tube, and it should be a close, affordable replacement for the old Winsor & Newton Viridian I used at art school.