Colours of Art takes the reader on a journey through history via 80 carefully curated artworks and their palettes. For these pieces, colour is not only a tool (like a paintbrush or a canvas) but the fundamental secret to their success.
Colour allows artists to express their individuality, evoke certain moods and portray positive or negative subliminal messages. And throughout history the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But as something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant colour palettes can be , and how much they can tell us.
When Vermeer painted The Milkmaid , the amount of ultramarine he could use was written in the contract. How did that affect how he used it? When Turner experimented with Indian Yellow , he captured roaring flames that brought his paintings to life. If he had used a more ordinary yellow, would he have created something so extraordinary? And how did Warhol throw away the rulebook to change what colour could achieve?
Structured chronologically, Colours of Art provides a fun, intelligent and visually engaging look at the greatest artistic palettes in art history – from Rafael’s use of perspective and Vermeer’s ultramarine, to Andy Warhol’s hot pinks and Lisa Brice’s blue women.
Colours of Art offers a refreshing take on the subject and acts as a primer for artists, designers and art lovers who want to look at art history from a different perspective.
Table of Content
Introduction
1. First impressions
Stone Age, Egypt, Ancient Greece and Rome
Feature: The nature of colour – how artists created natural colours.
Horses, from the Chauvet cave near the Pont d’Arc
Bison, from Altamira
Nebamun Hunting Birds, from the tomb of Nebamun
Tomb of the Diver
2. Ordering the world
The Renaissance
Feature: A roaring trade – on the colour trade and the cost/availability of colours
Lamentation, Giotto
Saint Ansanus Altarpiece, Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi
The Wilton Diptych
Saints Jerome and John the Baptist, Masaccio
Portrait of a Man with a Turban, Jan van Eyck
The Magdalen Reading, Rogier Van der Weyden
The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli
The Rape of Europa, Titian
Philip II, Sofonisba Anguissola
Portrait of Bianca Degli Utili Maselli surrounded by six of her children, Lavinia Fontana
3. Cutting loose
Baroque to Rococo
Feature: The colour wheel – on Isaac Newton’s discovery of the colour spectrum, and his error – trusting maths over the sensations of the eye
Rest on the Flight into Egypt, Caravaggio
Judith and her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi
The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), Diego Velázquez
Rising and Setting of the Sun, François Boucher
Colour, Angelica Kauffman
Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
4. Keeping it real
Realism
Feature: Risky business – on poisonous colours and artists risking their lives for their work.
Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke and Cherries, Clara Peeters
A Woman Bathing in a Stream, Rembrandt van Rijn
The Goldfinch, Carel Fabritius
The Milkmaid, Johannes Vermeer
Flowers in a Vase, Rachel Ruysch
5. Two sides of a coin
Neoclassicism to Romanticism
Feature: How we see colour – on Goethe’s new symmetrical colour wheel and physiological theories.
Albion Rose, William Blake
Portrait of a Negress, Marie-Guillemine Benoist
Orphan Girl at the Cemetery, Eugène Delacroix
The Burning of the Houses of Parliament , Joseph Mallord William Turner
Comtesse d’Haussonville, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
6. Let there be light
The Impressionist Revolution
Feature: Colour chemistry – on the industrialisation of colour and the making of synthetic pigments.
Two Women Chatting by the Sea, Camille Pissarro
Young Woman with Peonies, Frédéric Bazille
Symphony in Flesh Color and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland, by James Abbott Mc Neill Whistler
Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets, Édouard Manet
In the Country (After Lunch), Berthe Morisot
Combing the Hair, Edgar Degas
The Child’s Bath, Mary Cassatt
Waterloo Bridge, Blurred Sun, Claude Monet
7. On the edge of the spectrum
Post-Impressionists, Pre-Raphaelites, Les Nabis, Surrealists
Feature: Colour decorum – on the relativity of colour and its use and reception in different cultural contexts. (An opportunity to touch on non-Western art.)
Night and Sleep, Evelyn de Morgan
The Suitor, Édouard Vuillard
The Visit, Félix Vallotton
Interior. Strandgade 30, Vilhelm Hammershoi
Barbarian Tales, Paul Gauguin
The Life, Pablo Picasso
The Green Blouse, Pierre Bonnard
The Two Fridas, Frida Kahlo
The Old Maids, Leonora Carrington
8. Express yourself
Expressionism and Fauvism
Feature: The psychology of colour – on colour communicating and sparking emotion.
Two Crabs, Vincent van Gogh
The Scream, Edvard Munch
Self-portrait on Sixth Wedding Anniversary, Paula Modersohn-Becker
Group X, No.1, Altarpiece, Hilma af Klint
The Yellow Scale, František Kupka
The Dessert: Harmony in Red, Henri Matisse
Seated Woman with Legs Drawn Up (Adele Herms), Egon Schiele
Still Life with Blackening Apples, by Helene Schjerfbeck
9. Seeing it feelingly
Abstract Expressionism and Colour Field Painting
Feature: Properties of colour – on hue, intensity and tone, and the changing precedence of each throughout art history
Electric Prisms, Sonia Delaunay
Mountains and Sea, Helen Frankenthaler
Bird Talk, Lee Krasner
No. 11 (Untitled), Mark Rothko
Ocean Park #79, Richard Diebenkorn
10. Show some restraint
Monochrome and Minimalism
Feature: The Pantone palette – on attempts to create a universal colour language. Plus Pantone’s predecessors, eg Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours (1814).
Homage to the Square: Apparition, Joseph Albers
The Marriage of Reason and Squalor, II, Frank Stella
IKB 79, Yves Klein
White Stone, Agnes Martin
11. By popular demand
Pop Art to The Pictures Generation
Feature: Anything is possible – on new materials and colour experimentation outside of the medium of painting.
Colour Her Gone, Pauline Boty
Ice Cream, Evelyne Axell
Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground), Barbara Kruger
A Bigger Splash, David Hockney
Ladies and Gentlemen (Iris), Andy Warhol
12. Here and Now
Contemporary art from the 1970s
Feature: The colour of art history – on artists painting black figures into the mostly white canon.
Self-Portrait, Alice Neel
Self-Portrait, Basquiat
Untitled, Etel Adnan
To Tell Them There It’s Got To, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Spinners (Moths and Spiders Webs), Kiki Smith
Slaughter of the Innocents (They Might be Guilty of Something), Kara Walker
Shantavia Beal II, Kehinde Wiley
Boucher’s Flesh, Flora Yukhnovich
The Ruling Class (Eshu), Toyin Ojih Odutola
Sabine, Alison Watt
Untitled, Lisa Brice
Index
Further reading
Picture credits
Acknowledgements
About the author
Chloë Ashby is a writer and editor. Since graduating from the Courtauld Institute of Art, she has written about art and culture for the
TLS,
Guardian,
FT Life & Arts,
Spectator,
Apollo,
frieze and others. She is the author of
The Colours of Art: The Story of Art in 80 Colour Palettes, a Times best book of 2022, and
Look at This If You Love Great Art. Her short fiction has appeared in
The London Magazine and
The Fairlight Book of Short Stories. Her first novel,
Wet Paint, will be published by Trapeze, also in spring 2022.
www.chloeashby.com
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