Literary notes about burnt sienna (AI summary)
Burnt sienna appears repeatedly in artistic and literary discussions as an essential warm, earthy reddish-brown pigment. It is highlighted for its versatility in painting—serving both as a primary color and a key component in mixtures that enhance naturalistic tones. For instance, painters use a wash of burnt sienna to lend depth to middle-distance trees in landscapes [1] or to suggest the darker, rich roots of wheat fields amid golden hues [2]. Its permanence and compatibility with other colors are often noted, as in recipes combining it with light red or raw sienna for durable effects [3, 4]. Moreover, its evocative quality even finds mention in descriptive passages where the warm hue recalls the soft, sunlit tones of a Madonna’s hair in classical paintings [5].
- The middle distance trees have a thin wash of burnt sienna and gamboge.
— from Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale - The wheat fields show ocher, and darker—burnt sienna at the roots—lie the reaped fields of barley.
— from Minstrel Weather by Marian Storm - Light Red and Burnt Sienna are prepared by burning Yellow Ochre and Raw Sienna; they are both quite permanent.
— from Illumination and Its Development in the Present Day by Sidney Farnsworth - Another mixture is as follows: two [23] parts of burnt sienna, three parts of light ultramarine blue, sixty parts of zinc white.
— from Paint & Colour Mixing A practical handbook for painters, decorators and all who have to mix colours, containing 72 samples of paint of various colours, including the principal graining grounds by Arthur Seymour Jennings - In the sunshine it took tones of warm burnt sienna, like the hair of the Madonna in certain of Titian's great pictures.
— from For the Sake of the School by Angela Brazil
