11:44 26 June 2014
Beautiful paintings need beautiful pigments. For centuries, artists have seized upon advances in the theory and technology of colour to improve their creations. Making Colour, a new exhibition running until 7 September 2014 at The National Gallery in London, tells the story of painting in every colour of the rainbow – and a few more besides. Sumit Paul-Choudhury
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People have wondered since ancient times why we see colours. Pythagoras thought they were associated with musical notes; Aristotle, with times of day; and Plato suggested that the basic colours of white, black, red and "radiant" were mixed by tears to create the spectrum we see. The modern theory of colour was born in 1672, when Isaac Newton told the Royal Society that he had split white light into its component colours with a prism.
The colour of an object is determined by the wavelengths of light it absorbs and reflects. In the Natural System of Colours, engraver and entomologist Moses Harris uses the primary pigment colours - red, yellow and blue - to make other colours, and shows how the result of mixing all three primaries is black (rather than white, as with coloured light). The work of Harris and others paved the way for revolutionary technical and stylistic developments in painting.
(Image: Royal Academy of Arts, London)
