Inside the 200-Year-Old French Color House that Supplied the Impressionists

“The miracle is there: water turned into wine, the world turned into painting. We swim in the truth of painting. For me, it is like a gust of color sweeping me away, music washing over my face.” ― Paul Cézanne

Enamored by the stories of Impressionist artists on the Riviera taking their paints outdoors to capture the light at different times of day, I’ve been on the hunt for years for an heirloom-quality paint box we could add to our shop’s offering.

It needed to be wood and brass, those perfect elements whose patina quietly boasts their years and use. It needed to include everything a plein-aire artist would need for an outing (except maybe the baguette and cheese), and all would need to fit inside the box: the paints, brushes, a water dish, an easel shelf, and a strap for carrying.

And lastly, the design needed to be good—something that felt elegant, concise, and timeless.

In short, I wasn’t looking for a temporary, disposable set, but one that would be our one paint set, both for our Heirloom collection, but also for me personally. A set whose paint pots I could refill, whose quality would last my lifetime, and whose design and utility would feel as comfortable on my craft table as it would on the shores of Nice. A set that would travel with me, would be a sort of creative companion over the years, and then someday be passed down to my daughter and granddaughter.

Portable wooden painting boxes have a long history in France. During the nineteenth century, the development of portable paint tubes and folding "French box easels" or “field easels” made outdoor painting much easier. This gave lift to the rising tide of painting among the Barbizon painters and the Impressionists.

Paris was a vibrant epicenter for these expanding schools of art. Near the bustling 1800s Louvre and École des Beaux-Arts, shops opened up and down the Quai to supply the burgeoning artists with canvas, frames, and paint. A local family with pigment techniques as old as the Renaissance rose to the occasion. Founded in Paris in 1830 and still there today, color house Maison Charvin set themselves apart with handmade pigments, preserving centuries old color-making traditions.

Just steps from where Pont Neuf stretches across the Seine, their shop is like stepping into an artist’s home studio. Landscapes adorn the walls, smocks hang on open cabinet doors, and sketchbooks, brushes, and hundreds of pots of brightly colored paints fill every shelf and table.

Charvin eventually moved paint production to the Cote D’Azur, a popular destination for the rising band of rogue Impressionist painters. There, they supplied Cezanne, Bonnard, and Renoir, along with their contemporaries painting up and down the Riviera.

Today, Maison Charvin is still a family business. In a market increasingly industrialized for speed and scale, Charvin has stayed French-made, on the Riviera, where a small team who knows art intimately chooses colors and oil formulas with great care. Since its early days two hundred years ago, everything Charvin—from pigments to palettes to boxes—has been known for permanence and quality, an identity the company has consciously preserved. Charvin’s paint boxes are luxury artist's tools in the old European tradition: objects meant to be owned, used for decades, and then passed on.

We could talk about the boxes’ hardwood construction, dovetailed corners, and brass hinges and fittings; or how the metal box set has a hidden reservoir for water, a detachable basin, and a retractable brush, all snug in a small linen pouch. We could describe how Charvin uses practices from the 19th century that prioritize color longevity over production speed, how their paint uses non-yellowing virgin poppy oil and linseed oil, and is triple milled. We could tell you how the purity and concentration of their pigments produce colors with unique luminance, clarity, and depth.

But none of that could communicate the sheer joy of standing in the wilds of nature, paint box in palm, trying your hand at the art of plein-aire painting.

The Charvin Artisan Watercolor Set is compact enough to travel and comes in a durable tin tucked inside a linen pouch. The Travel Watercolor Paint Box features twenty-four colors housed in a beautiful wooden case. We also carry Charvin's Plein Air Artisan Paint Boxes, available in both oil and watercolor.

A wooden paint box records its owner's life.

Charvin paint sets allow you to travel and paint en plein air like the masters, using paints from the same house that supplied the Impressionists. Owning one of their boxes feels like buying from an old Parisian color house, a feeling of participating in a lineage of painters who carried their brushes and boards into the landscape, mixed color on wood as they watched the changing light, and treated their tools as trusted companions.

Explore our Charvin art sets, along with other pieces inspired by the Mediterranean, in our Summer on the Riviera Collection.