I recently bought a set of Paul Rubens Artist Watercolors and, as I was browsing the pigment list, I got a very pleasant surprise. Their Peacock Blue is made with PB17, a pigment reported to have been discontinued years ago.

Here is a screenshot from the Handprint entry on PB17.

I got out my brush and swatched it immediately.

This semi-transparent, non-granulating blue is a perfect cyan reminiscent of single-pigment versions of manganese blue hue but it’s much less saturated than the high-chroma phthalo blues. As noted in the Handprint entry, the tinting strength is rather weak. Paul Rubens assigned it a lightfast rating of 5 on the Blue Wool scale, so it’s significantly less permanent than its phthalo cousins, which are generally rated as 1 on the ASTM scale.

As I was looking through my collection of blues, I found another surprise: the Mijello Mission White Class Cerulean Blue is a mix of PB17:1 and PB15:3. (Note that Mijello does not use an actual cerulean pigment in their “cerulean blue,” but that’s another story for another day.) You can read my review of Mission White Class here if you are interested.

I compared PB17 to some of its green-leaning neighbors to see how it relates to other phthalo blue pigments. I also included a swatch of Holbein’s new formulation of Peacock Blue since it used to be made with PB17. I wanted to see how close their mix is to the original pigment.

My swatch abbreviations are as follows:

• H = Holbein
• DS = Daniel Smith
• W+N = Winsor and Newton
• PR = Paul Rubens
• S = Sennelier
• MG = M. Graham

I swatched Holbein’s Peacock Blue because I wanted to see how the new formulation of PB15 and PG7 compares to the original pigment. It’s a pretty close match, although it doesn’t have as much depth as the single-pigment Paul Rubens paint.

Mijello Cerulean Blue is slightly more saturated than Paul Rubens Peacock Blue, owing to the addition of PB15:3. Since Mission White Class paints are billed as bright paints for illustrators, I’m guessing they didn’t opt for a single-pigment PB17:1 paint since the tinting strength of PB17 alone is a bit weaker than PB15:3.

The other swatches are various of green-leaning phthalos and two examples of PB16. The paints using PB16 aren’t a very close match since they lean more teal than cyan.

Overall, PB17 is closer in color to manganese blue than paints using PB15:3. It is also a pretty good match to Sennelier’s Phthalocyanine Blue.

I’m not sure why this pigment was discontinued so I feel lucky to have found this gem. It’s not as practical as a PB15 or PB16 due to its relatively low lightfast rating but I will use it often because I like the color. It’s weaker than phthalo blue green shade but stronger than manganese blue hue. For that reason, I think it would be a good choice for cyan in a CMY palette.

Perhaps PB17 will start to make a comeback! I would love adding a another cyan to my palette.