Making Colour

Moses Harris, the natural system of colors wherein is displayed the regular and beautiful order and arrangement, arising from the three premitives, red, blue and yellow, the manner in which each color is formed, and its composition. Book, 1769/1776, Royal Academy of Arts, London.

The National Gallery's Making Colour exhibition traces the craft of color from the early Renaissance to Impressionism. A selection from the Gallery's collection of European painting is accompanied by ceramics, glass, metalwork, and textiles from other UK cultural institutions--complemented with displays of minerals, insects and other coloring materials used to create paints.

Claude Monet, Lavacourt under Snow, about 1878-81, oil on canvas, the National Gallery, London.

It's a comprehensive story of color, exploring the origins and uses of artists' materials, natural and synthetic. Artworks are arranged throughout color-themed rooms based on the sequence that colors are represented on many historical color wheels. The opening blue gallery highlights the range of blues available to artists during the show's timeline: ultramarine made from lapis lazuli, azurite, smalt, and Prussian blue and their varied qualities.

Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, Combing the Hair (La Coiffure), about 1896, oil on canvas, the National Gallery, London.

The red room follows the creation of red from plant-based madder to red dyes made for cloth that could be adapted to make paint. Degas used vermilion, a red made from the mineral cinnabar in La Coiffure (about 1896), as well as red lead, Indian red and red lake dye for other paintings, according to the level of color brightness and intensity he required.

The show is co-curated by Ashok Roy, director of scientific research and Caroline Campbell, curator of Italian paintings before 1500. "By exploring the materials that make up the array of artists' pigments, we can begin to comprehend some of the historic circumstances and difficulties in creating colors that we now take for granted," says Roy. Adds Campbell, "We think of color as such a simple thing, but for artists in most of history, color was not so simple." Artists resolved challenges with color stability, chemical reactions and fading. 

Rachel Ruysch, Flowers in a Vase, about 1685, oil on canvas, the National Gallery, London.

As Venice grew into one of the world's trading hubs during the 16th century Renaissance, an industry of color thrived with artists, glassmakers, dyers, tailors, and decorators of ceramics all utilizing bright colors. From the color sellers in Venice, oil painters could acquire materials intended for other trades, like the pigments made for manuscript illumination or glassware, increasing the range of colors and coloristic effects. Many were both imported and prepared locally--orpiment, indigo, green copper resinate, and realgar. In the orange room the toxic realgar, a mineral-based paint containing arsenic, is later used around 1685 by Dutch painter Rachel Ruysch to create the lilies in her Flowers in a Vase.

Paul Cézanne, Hillside in Provence, about 1890-2, oil on canvas, the National Gallery, London.

Cézanne combined viridian, a chromium-based, dark green pigment with a brighter emerald green for his nature studies in the green room. "Without paint in tubes there would have been no Cézanne, no Monet, no Sisley or Pissarro, nothing of what the journalists were later to call Impressionism," said Renoir, referring to the transportable synthetic paints originating in the 19th century and associated with the tradition of plein air painting. 

This is an exhibition that will appeal to those with an interest in painters' materials and techniques and the history of pigment uses in European painting. On view through Sept 7 at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.