• Burnt Sienna pigment, a warm, earthy red-brown with excellent lightfastness and semi-transparency. Ideal for oil, watercolor, and acrylic painting, it offers smooth blending, rich depth, and natural warmth. A historically prized pigment used for fine art, glazing, and underpainting techniques. Finely ground for professional-quality applications. Available in various sizes.
  • Burnt Sienna Pigment
  • Burnt Sienna Pigment
  • In his best-known and largest painting, Georges Seurat depicted people from different social classes strolling and relaxing in a park just west of Paris on La Grande Jatte, an island in the Seine River. Although he took his subject from modern life, Seurat sought to evoke the sense of timelessness associated with ancient art, especially Egyptian and Greek sculpture.
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Burnt Sienna Pigment

Burnt Sienna Pigment

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Description

Burnt Sienna is a handmade single earth pigment made through a historical process of calcination of our French Raw Sienna. By heating natural raw sienna, its yellow brown tone transforms into a deeper, reddish brown, intensifying its warmth and saturation. This pigment is known for its rich, earthy character and exceptional versatility in fine art.

Burnt Sienna has exceptional lightfastness, making it highly durable for both classical and contemporary artwork. It blends seamlessly with other earth pigments, offering warm and harmonious tones in painting. Its semi-opaque quality allows for beautiful layering and depth in oil, watercolor, and tempera applications. Compared to synthetic reds and browns, it provides a more soft and natural color, ideal for landscape, portrait, and decorative painting.

History

Sienna pigments have been used in painting since prehistoric times, with early cave paintings featuring iron rich earth pigments. Sourced originally from Italy, sienna deposits have also been found in France, Cyprus, and other regions known for their high quality earth pigments.

During antiquity, Burnt Sienna was widely used in Egyptian, Greek, and Roman wall paintings, frescoes, and ceramics. Artists discovered that heating sienna altered its color, creating a richer, more intense pigment suited for shading and warm highlights.

In the Renaissance, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, and Rembrandt extensively used Burnt Sienna in underpainting and glazing techniques. Its warm, reddish tone made it an essential pigment for depicting skin tones, rich drapery, and dynamic lighting effects.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, sienna sourced from France gained popularity as a stable and widely available pigment. Burnt Sienna became a staple in academic painting, used for sketching, glazing, and neutralizing blues in color mixing. In the pictured artwork ' A Sunday on La Grande Jatte' by Georges Seurat, burnt sienna is used subtly to create warmth and depth throughout the skin tones, clothing, and foliage of the background.

Today, Burnt Sienna remains one of the most widely used earth pigments in fine art, conservation, and restoration due to its historical authenticity and warm, natural tone.

Pigment Information

Pigment Type: Natural (Iron Oxide) from minerals (Goethite and Hematite, heat treated) (France)
Source: Iron oxide rich clay, heat treated
Origin: France
Suitable Mediums: Watercolor, Oil, Tempera, Acrylic
Lightfastness: Excellent
Opacity: Semi-opaque
Other Names: Terre de Sienne Brûlée, French Burnt Sienna, Warm Earth Red, Burnt earth, Calcined Sienna
Color Index Code: PBr7
Image: 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte' by Georges Seurat from the Art Institute Chicago

Health and Safety

  • For art use only. Not for cosmetic, food or children's use.
  • Keep out of reach of children and pets. Do not eat, drink or smoke while working.
  • Avoid creating or breathing dust. Work in a ventilated area and wear a NIOSH approved dust respirator (P100 or better) when handling dry pigment.
  • Wear gloves and eye protection. Wash hands and work surfaces after use, and never rinse pigment into drains.
  • Do not spray apply, sand or burn.
  • If swallowed or if you feel unwell, contact a poison control center (U.S. 1-800-222-1222) or a doctor.
  • Safety Data Sheet available on request.

Caution: Natural earths and minerals contain crystalline silica (quartz). Breathing the dust over long periods can cause serious lung disease (silicosis) and lung cancer. Always use a dust respirator with the dry pigment.

WARNING: This product can expose you to crystalline silica (airborne particles of respirable size), which is known to the State of California to cause cancer. For more information go to www.P65Warnings.ca.gov.