Colour-man or colourman

A seller of colours (colors) ? pigments and paints. Or a colourer ? one who adds color to a black and white print. Although a colorman might sell other supplies as well as paints, use of this title decreases as the sales of artists' colors are increasingly made by sellers of a variety of artists' materials. This term has been used almost entirely in Britain. The Oxford English Dictionary has noted uses of "colour-man" and "colourman" from the late seventeenth century through the nineteenth century.A twentieth century use: "Having found a surface sympathetic to his aims and to the effect it has upon the image, [Francis Bacon] was content to look no further and he has used ready-primed canvases stretched back to front from the same artists' colourman for the last twenty or thirty years." Andrew Durham, "Note on Technique", in the exhibition catalogue Francis Bacon, London, The Tate Gallery/Thames & Hudson, 1985, p.231.