The Timeline of Color in Art
By: Fatema Morbiwala
Tags: People, Art, History, Culture, Colors

The Timeline of Color in Art

Artists treated colors like people, which is why blue was revered and emerald green was blacklisted in the 1960s. Fatema Morbiwala Follow Dec 9, 2020 · 5 min read

Photo by Unknown on Unsplash

The first pigments were invented nearly 40000 years ago. I’m guessing here’s what might have happened — Four friends meet for a night of intellectual discussion and casual banter. They bring along their most precious possessions. Sharing a common love for art, they suddenly discover that they can create a basic palette of colors from these four prized possessions- soil, animal fat, burnt charcoal, and chalk.

Voila! A basic color palette made up of five colors was born — red, yellow, brown, black, and white.

From prehistoric times, these basic pigments have undergone massive transformations with the advancement of science. This opened new doors for the artists as they began experimenting with new pigments and colors like never before, which in turn facilitated art movements from Renaissance to Impressionism.

I’ve covered four of my favorite colors and their deep-rooted connection with the art world.

A Red-Carpet Treatment

Easily available in nature, red was extensively used by artists in the Paleolithic age. Red ochre, the color of longevity had its early origins from the clay that contained mineral hematite. The prehistoric cave paintings in Altamira, Spain, which date between 15000 and 16500 BC are early examples of paintings that used the red ochre pigment.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, this pigment was derived from small, cochineal cactus-feeding insects that were native to Mexico.

The allure of this vibrant red hue mesmerized everyone, especially the art fraternity. As explained by Victoria Finlay in A Brilliant History of Color in Art, the obsession with this color was such that it became the third greatest export of the New World, gold and silver being the other two.

Raphael, Rembrandt, and Rubens all used cochineal as a glaze, layering the pigment atop other reds (like red ochre) to increase their intensity.

The Aztecs have also been credited with the discovery of using cochineal bugs as pigments, evident from their elaborate headdresses, sculptures, and sacrificial tables, which date back to as far as the 12th century BC.

Blue Blood

The Virgin in Prayer by Sassoferrato, 1640–1650

The National Gallery, London

It may come as a shocker to many that the bright blue robes that adorn Virgin Mary, were chosen to be blue-colored, only because of the high price it commanded. There is no religious symbolism that motivated the painters to choose this color for this holy personality.

Mary’s iconic hue — called ultramarine blue — comes from Lapiz lazuli, a gemstone that for centuries could only be found in a single mountain range in Afghanistan.

For hundreds of years, Lapiz lazuli commanded a price equivalent to gold. Akin to the superhero of every action movie, this metamorphic rock with its intense color had many takers. Its color adorned Egyptian funerary portraits, Iranian Qur’ans, and later the headdress in Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665).

In the 1950s, Yves Klein, whom the New Yorker’s art critic Peter Schjeldahl described in 2010 as “the last French artist of major international consequence” collaborated with a Parisian paint supplier to invent a radiant shade of ultramarine blue.

His painting style was provocative and sensational, much like the color he invented. For Klein, blue was not simply a color, but rather a promise of endless possibilities like the vast blue sky.

Poison Green

Today green is commonly associated with nature and is a sign of vitality. But once upon a time, this color was associated with sickness and morbidity. A color that delivered the kiss of death.

In 1775, the Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele invented a hue, Scheele’s Green, the first of the “poison greens”, mixed with toxic arsenic.

JMW Turner’s early oil sketch of Guildford from the Banks of the Wey, painted in about 1805, has been found to contain Scheele’s Green.

Unaware of its implications on health, this color became every person’s go-to color in the Victorian era. Artists and patrons seized every opportunity to make this pigment a part of their art.

A couple of years later, emerald green was invented, whose brilliance outshone Scheele’s Green. Presented as a more durable alternative to Scheele’s Green, this pigment was equally toxic. It was adopted by Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir to create vivid, emerald landscapes.

This pigment was held responsible for many symptoms and deaths that were reported. This may have been the cause of Cézanne’s diabetes or Monet’s blindness. In fact, rumors go abound that the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte was poisoned by arsenic, emitted by the green wallpaper in his bedroom. This resulted in an untimely death.

Eventually, this pigment was abandoned when it became known that people who wore their clothes dyed in emerald green, died early.

Fun Fact: To date, the French are superstitious about this pigment and refrain from making green theatre costumes even when safe alternatives are now available.

Purple Love

Springtime by Claude Monet, 1840–1926

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

This pigment was approximately developed in the first millennium BC. Sourced from a tiny shellfish, this pigment came to be known as purpura or Tyrian purple. Hard to find and highly sought-after, more than 2,50,000 of the critters had to be sacrificed to produce just half an ounce of color — just enough to color one gown!

But, this rare color truly came into its own, when it caught the fancy of the revolutionary painters in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Claude Monet, in particular, was enamored by this color, a regular in his Impressionist canvases. His practice was rooted in an in-depth study of the effects of light and shadow on color.

He believed that violet was able to tap into the dimensionality of shadow better than black and used the color extensively. “I have finally discovered the true color of the atmosphere,” he once noted. “It is violet. Fresh air is violet.”

His Impressionist peers did not stay immune to the charms of this hue, making it a favorite amongst artists. Such was devotion to the new hue, that art critics dubbed this craze as “violettomania”.

Georgia O’Keeffe, considered one of the greatest 20th-century artists, chose various shades of violet to depict the deep folds of a flower in her 1926 painting Black Iris.

The advent of pop art in the 1960s saw Andy Warhol’s screen painted canvasses sporting this hue.

The lofty qualities of purple continue to dazzle the world, be it through the delicate lilacs or the shades of purple lipstick that sit pretty in a makeup store.

Last Thoughts

It’s hard to imagine a world void of color. It can be concluded that the colors have immensely influenced artists and painters, inspiring innovative art forms that break every frontier. With its radiant and mystical abilities, colors continue to play a huge role in the way we act and think. History has been colored by pioneers who believed in a colorful tomorrow.