dead color

When I saw Degas again, he happened to have a box of pastels in his hand, and was spreading them out on a board in front of the window. Seeing me watching him:
—I take all the color out of them that I can, by putting them in the sun.
—But what do you use, then to get colors of such brightness?
—Dead color, Monsieur.

—Ambroise Vollard (1886-1939, an important French art dealer) recounting Paul Cézanne's conversation with Edgar Degas.

[n.b.: quote was encountered yesterday as the epigraph to a limited edition of Charles Wright's poetry called Dead Color (Meadow Press for Charles Seluzicki, Fine Books, Salem OR, 1980)]