New Rembrandt Watercolours

In my recent piece on the new expanded Van Gogh range I speculated as to whether Rembrandt would receive similar treatment.  I  received a comment saying this was so and on looking at the Royal Talens site sure enough the following colour chart was there together with a brochure giving full details. Make no mistake the changes to van Gogh and Rembrandt are major moves and raises the profile of the company to a level comparable to Winsor & Newton, Schmincke and puts them ahead of some others. Rembrandt have always had a good name, despite Handprint labelling them a 'second tier' brand, but no longer does that apply. Even so the old range has been used by such artists as Gerard Hendriks so 'second tier' is a misnomer.

There are now 120 colours up from 80. That in itself is a big leap. 67 are single pigment paints out of the 104 'standard' colours. The remaining 16 colours are either Coated Mica (8) or Coated Glass (8). Not being a techno I don't know what that means although I've no doubt a little exploration would find the answers.

Only two colours - both PR83 - are given a single star for lightfastness with five two and all the rest three. For an explanation see above. The range of pigments now  mirrors the majors whereas the old range had a limited number and had quite a few mixed paints. PY129 now features called Azomethine Green usually known as Green-Gold. Green Umber is Pbr8. Spinal Grey is PBk26.  There are three Dusk colours, `Yellow, Pink and Green. Aureoline is PY150. And so on. If you are interested there is something called 'Color Spotlight' on Youtube that analyses individual pigments with much interesting information.

As far as I can tell - and this is provisional - there will be three price bands as now with halfpans, 5 ml tubes and a limited number of colours in 20ml tubes. I'm not certain of this and will now explain why.

I e mailed Royal Talens (twice) asking them about availability and prices.  This was two weeks ago and I've not had a reply. I then contacted Jacksons sales who knew nothing about this new range. Jacksons have never majored on Rembrandt (and don't sell van Gogh) but do stock them. Further enquiries to Jacksons brought the response that the buying department had said it might be a considerable time before they had them and to watch out for new product announcements! We await developments.
See comments below that give more information.