Sennelier Deals — Compare Sale Prices & Find the Best Discount UK

Some brand histories are interesting. Sennelier's is genuinly one of the great stories in art materials, and it begins with a young chemist who simply loved painters more than profit. Gustave Sennelier opened his shop at 3 Quai Voltaire in 1887, a stone's throw from the École des Beaux-Arts and facing the Louvre across the Seine, originally selling paints made by other manufacturers. When a customer wanted a colour he didn't stock, rather than turning them away he started mixing it himself using pigments and binders sourced from his travels across Europe. That habit of simply making whatever an artist needed, however obscure, became the entire foundation of the business — and it explains why Cézanne, Gauguin and Camille Pissarro all became regulars at a shop that hadn't set out to manufacture anything at all.

I've spent sixteen years in the UK art supplies industry and run Discount Art Supplies — a price comparison and deals platform used by over 36,000 artists every week. Few brands carry the weight Sennelier does in our community, and unlike a lot of heritage marketing, the story genuinly holds up under scrutiny. Edgar Degas walked in one day asking for soft pastels in a specific range of browns; Gustave eventually developed seventy distinct shades for him, several of which remain in the range today simply because nobody has found a reason to improve on them. Cézanne is said to have painted in Gustave's own garden. The relationship between this shop and the artists who shaped modern painting wasn't a marketing department's invention — it happened, repeatedly, over decades.

The oil pastel story is the one most artists know, and it's worth telling properly because the usual short version undersells how specific the original request actually was. In 1948, Picasso — living nearby with Dora Maar — approached Henri Sennelier, Gustave's grandson, wanting a coloured medium with the immediacy of a child's crayon but capable of proper, lightfast, professional results on literally any surface: wood, metal, paper, canvas, without priming. It took Henri a year of development to land on a waxy, oil-bound stick rather than the chalky pastels that already existed. Picasso bought forty sticks of each of the original 48 colours on the spot. Henri, not entirely sure the rest would sell, put them on the shelf anyway. They became one of the defining art materials of the twentieth century, and the range — now 120 colours including iridescent and metallic shades — remains the reference point every other oil pastel brand is still compared against.

The pastel paper deserves its own mention, because La Carte — Sennelier's pastel board — uses a distinctive surface texture that's become genuinly beloved among pastel artists specifically for the way it grips pigment without the heavier tooth of sandpaper-style supports. It's the kind of product that exists because someone who actually used pastels every day decided the available papers weren't good enough, which is a theme that runs through almost everything Sennelier has ever made.

The watercolour range carries similar attention to detail — relaunched in 2012 as L'Aquarelle Sennelier after blind testing among working artists for flow, strength and handling, the reformulated range uses honey as a binder, which improves rewettability and gloss while acting as a natural preservative. Production remains genuinly labour-intensive: pans are extruded, cut, dried and foil-wrapped individually, tubes are batch-weighed by hand, and staff check colour density and consistency at every stage rather than relying purely on automated quality control. For a company manufacturing at international scale, that level of manual oversight is increasingly rare.

Sennelier's pigment sourcing is the thread connecting every product in the range back to Gustave's original obsession — the company still seeks out classic pigments like cobalt, cadmium and Italian earths from across the world, alongside rarer historic colorants including genuine cinnabar, lapis lazuli and madder, the kind of esoteric materials most modern manufacturers simply don't bother stocking anymore. The original Quai Voltaire shop still operates today, and Dominique Sennelier — the fourth generation to run the maison — still keeps store hours and personally advises artists who walk in with questions, exactly as his great-grandfather did in 1887.

Getting the best Sennelier deals in the UK means comparing carefully across retailers, since pricing on oil pastel sets and watercolour ranges in particular varies meaningfully between stockists. Jacksons Art and Cass Art both carry comprehensive ranges and run periodic promotions, and Amazon is often competative on individual tubes and smaller sets. Our price comparison below pulls live pricing across UK stockists so you always see the best current deal before you order.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Sennelier founded? Sennelier was founded in 1887 when Gustave Sennelier opened an art supply shop on the Quai Voltaire in Paris, opposite the École des Beaux-Arts. The business remains family-run today, led by the fourth generation of the Sennelier family.

Did Picasso really invent oil pastels with Sennelier? Picasso didn't invent them himself, but he directly requested the medium. In 1948 he asked Henri Sennelier for a vibrant, lightfast colour stick usable on any surface without priming. It took Henri a year to develop, and the result became the first professional-quality oil pastel, launched in 1949.

What is Sennelier's La Carte paper? La Carte is Sennelier's pastel board, made with a distinctive surface texture that grips pigment particularly well, making it one of the most popular supports among pastel artists specifically.

Is Sennelier watercolour different from other brands? Sennelier's L'Aquarelle range uses honey as part of the binder, which improves rewettability and gloss while acting as a natural preservative. The range was reformulated in 2012 following blind testing with working artists.

Does Sennelier have a discount code? Sennelier's pricing is set through its UK stockists rather than a single central discount code. Check our price comparison below for the best current sale price across all major UK retailers.