This box of oil paints was discovered in the basement of a manor house during a restoration in the late 20th century. The set contains only a small selection of hues, but the level of wear seen in the materials and the dried paint residue implies that it was frequently used by its previous owner. The ochre yellow, in particular, seems to have been severely depleted.
It is impossible to know what works these paints once produced, or if any such survive to the current day. It is possible that even now, some great masterpiece hanging on the wall of a gallery a thousand miles from here still bears a trace of these pigments, brought together by the hand of someone who saw them as more than the sum of their parts. Here, now, the colours lie still and separate, an unrealised promise of all that they could become. Maybe it is sad, to see them end their days thus. Or, perhaps, it is what their owner who cared for them so well would want, to know that they are kept here, safe, unravaged by the time that could well have claimed all the works they once constructed. We cannot say. Someday they may find their way into the hands of a new artist, and will have the chance to sing their violent, vibrant palette to the world again. Someday.