Wallace Seymour oil paints: the brand story behind Britain's finest artist oils
There are oil paints, and then there are Wallace Seymour oil paints. Most commercial artist oils — even good ones — are made in factories, by machines, to consistent recipes designed to produce uniform results at scale. Wallace Seymour operates on entirely different principles. These paints are prepared by hand in small batches in Settle, North Yorkshire, using pigments chosen for their purity, historical significance, and resonance rather than their convenience or cost. They are, without any exaggeration, among the finest oil paints made anywhere in the world today.
We stock Wallace Seymour oils at Craft and Canvas because we believe they are exceptional — and because we think the story of how they are made matters as much as the quality of the paint itself.
Where Wallace Seymour comes from
Wallace Seymour was founded in 2011 by Rebecca Wallace and Pip Seymour, two practising artists with over twenty years of combined experience in the art materials industry. The company began under the name Pip Seymour Fine Art Products with a clear founding mission: to make the highest quality painting and drawing materials possible, to supply them exclusively through independent retailers, and never to compromise on ingredients for the sake of commercial efficiency.
That mission has remained unchanged. Wallace Seymour does not sell directly to artists and does not supply large chains. The company deliberately chose to work only with independent retailers — stockists who know their products, can discuss them with customers knowledgeably, and share the same values about craft and quality. When you buy Wallace Seymour at Craft and Canvas, you are buying in exactly the way the company was designed to be sold.
The oils are made in Settle — a market town in the Yorkshire Dales — which is also where the Wallace Seymour studio is based. Some of the pigments used in the range are sourced from quarries and locations within a few miles of where the paint is made, giving certain colours a direct, physical connection to the landscape of the northern English hills that is genuinely unusual in contemporary paint manufacture.
How Wallace Seymour oils are made
This is where Wallace Seymour diverges most dramatically from mainstream production, and it is worth understanding in some detail.
Each colour in the range follows its own individual recipe. Depending on the nature of the pigment, colours are either machine-ground, prepared in a hand-milling machine, or ground entirely by hand using a glass muller on a stone slab — a method that dates back to the preparation of paint in artists' studios in the 17th and 18th centuries. The appropriate method for each pigment is determined by its particle structure, its oil absorption, and the handling characteristics that method produces in the finished paint. This means that the process of making each colour is genuinely considered rather than standardised.
The pigments are worked into English cold-pressed linseed oil sourced from a single estate farm. Cold-pressed linseed oil is a traditional, free-flowing oil that allows brushmarks to settle naturally into the paint film as it dries. Crucially, no drying agents are added to the oil. This is a deliberate choice. Commercial manufacturers routinely add driers — metallic compounds that accelerate drying time — to produce a more convenient, more consistent product. Wallace Seymour takes the view that drying agents can affect the long-term stability of the paint film and the quality of the final surface. Their oils dry according to the natural characteristics of each pigment, which means that drying times vary across the palette but the dried paint film is as pure and stable as it is possible to make it.
The practical consequence for painters is that some colours — earth pigments and cadmiums, for example — will dry relatively quickly, while others such as blacks and certain blues dry more slowly. Adding a small amount of Wallace Seymour Fast Drying Oil Glaze Medium (10 to 20%) brings drying times into balance across the palette for painters who need more predictability.
The pigment range
The Wallace Seymour oil colour range spans cadmiums, cobalts, ultramarines, earth colours, and a remarkable selection of rare and historical pigments not available in any mainstream range. This is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the entire product and the thing that most captivates painters who discover the range for the first time.
The earth colours include native Yorkshire earths — pigments sourced from specific quarries in the Dales and processed in-house — that produce colours with a depth and granular quality that synthetic pigments cannot replicate. Among the most notable are Plumpton Iron Red, a warm, resonant red-brown derived from local iron-bearing earth, and colours made from ancient mineral sources whose geological age is measured in millions of years rather than decades.
The range also includes a number of pigments that have largely disappeared from mainstream commercial production — finite stocks of colours that were once standard in historical palettes but that modern manufacturers have phased out in favour of cheaper synthetics. For painters interested in traditional methods, historical painting techniques, or simply in working with pigments that have a direct lineage to the great periods of Western painting, this is extraordinarily compelling.
The colours are divided into series based on the cost of the pigment: Series 1 and 2 from £9.95, Series 3 and above from £16.20. The price difference reflects genuine differences in the rarity and cost of the raw materials rather than any difference in production standard.
What Wallace Seymour oils feel like to paint with
There is something immediately different about Wallace Seymour oils on the brush. The hand-milled and small-batch machine-milled colours have a consistency and texture that reflects the particular nature of each pigment — some are soft and buttery, others have a slight body and granularity that comes from the mineral structure of the pigment itself. This variation is not a defect; it is the natural character of the materials showing through, and it is something painters who are used to the uniform consistency of commercial oils find striking and eventually come to value greatly.
The cold-pressed linseed oil vehicle gives the paint a particularly pleasant handling quality — it flows freely from the brush and blends generously while wet, yet settles into the paint film without the over-lubricated, slightly slippery feel that some over-processed commercial oils can have. Glazes applied with Wallace Seymour oils and a little medium have a depth and luminosity that experienced painters tend to notice immediately.
One practical note: because these paints are made without stabilisers or fillers, some colours may separate slightly in the tube over time, with a small amount of oil pooling at the top. This is entirely normal and is simply a characteristic of genuinely high-pigment, unadulterated paint. The colour is unaffected — simply mix the tube contents thoroughly before use.
Why Craft and Canvas stocks Wallace Seymour oils
We stock Wallace Seymour because we believe they are the best oil paints we can offer — not the most convenient or the most widely recognised, but the best in terms of raw quality, integrity of ingredients, and the painting experience they provide.
We are also one of a relatively small number of independent retailers in the north of England stocking the full Wallace Seymour range, which makes us — we think — a particularly good place to come if you want to discuss the paints, understand which colours suit your palette, or simply hold a tube and talk through what you are looking for.
Frequently asked questions about Wallace Seymour oil paints
Are Wallace Seymour oils suitable for beginners? The paints themselves are not difficult to use — they behave like high quality oils and respond well to all standard techniques and mediums. The main consideration is that some colour names and pigments are unfamiliar, and the range is smaller and more focused than mainstream brands. Painters who are completely new to oils might find it easier to establish their technique with a more conventional range first, then introduce Wallace Seymour colours selectively as their knowledge develops.
What sizes do you stock at Craft and Canvas? We stock Wallace Seymour oil paints in 40ml tubes across the full range, with Series 1 and 2 colours from £9.95 and Series 3 and above from £16.20.
Are Wallace Seymour oils compatible with other brands? Yes, fully. They work alongside standard artist oils from any manufacturer and are compatible with all conventional oil painting mediums, varnishes, and grounds.
Why do drying times vary across the range? Because no drying agents are added, each colour dries according to the natural characteristics of its pigment. Earth colours and cadmiums dry faster; blacks and certain blues dry more slowly. This is the natural behaviour of oil paint as painters understood it for centuries, and it can be managed by using Wallace Seymour Fast Drying Oil Glaze Medium across slower-drying colours.
What is cold-pressed linseed oil and why does it matter? Linseed oil is the traditional vehicle for oil paint, derived from flax seed. Cold-pressed linseed oil is extracted without heat, which preserves more of the oil's natural qualities — it is lighter in colour, more free-flowing, and considered by many painters to produce a more stable, more luminous dried paint film than heat-processed or refined alternatives. The single-estate sourcing of the oil Wallace Seymour uses means its quality is consistent and traceable.
Shop Wallace Seymour oils at Craft and Canvas
We stock the full range of Wallace Seymour oil paints in 40ml tubes — Series 1 and 2 from £9.95, Series 3 and above from £16.20 — at our Hebden Bridge shop and online at craftandcanvas.co.uk. If you would like to discuss which colours to start with or how the range fits alongside oils you already use, come in and speak to us.
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