  To expand the QUEST database of highly-accurate vertical transition energies,
we consider a series of large organic chromogens ubiquitous in dye chemistry,
such as anthraquinone, azobenzene, BODIPY, and naphthalimide. We compute, at
the CC3 level of theory, the singlet and triplet vertical transition energies
associated with the low-lying excited states. This leads to a collection of
more than 120 new highly-accurate excitation energies. Subsequently, we employ
these reference values to benchmark a series of lower-order wave function
approaches, including the popular ADC(2) and CC2 schemes, as well as
time-dependent density-functional theory (TD-DFT), both with and without
applying the Tamm-Dancoff approximation (TDA). At the TD-DFT level, we evaluate
a large panel of global, range-separated, local, and double hybrid functionals.
Additionally, we assess the performance of the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE)
formalism relying on both $G_0W_0$ and ev$GW$ quasiparticle energies evaluated
from various starting points. It turns out that CC2 and ADC(2.5) are the most
accurate models amongst those with respective $\mathcal{O}(N^5)$ and
$\mathcal{O}(N^6)$ scalings with system size. In contrast, CCSD does not
outperform CC2. The best performing exchange-correlation functionals include
BMK, M06-2X, M06-SX, CAM-B3LYP, $\omega$B97X-D, and LH20t, with average
deviations of approximately 0.20 eV or slightly below. Errors on vertical
excitation energies can be further reduced by considering double hybrids. Both
SOS-$\omega$B88PP86 and SOS-$\omega$PBEPP86 exhibit particularly attractive
performances with overall quality on par with CC2, whereas PBE0-DH and PBE-QIDH
are only slightly less efficient. BSE/ev$GW$ calculations based on Kohn-Sham
starting points have been found to be particularly effective for singlet
transitions, but much less for their triplet counterparts.
