Color, with all its attendant theories, is one of the most basic components of art-making. Humankind has been preoccupied with its development and analysis for millennia, refracting it into a veritable spectrum of charts that articulate its practice. Whether you’re looking for the key to Paul Klee’s evocative interplay of line and color, curious about the ancestors of modern paint swatches at Lowe’s, or even searching for a captivating hue to inject into your next work of art, three new books give new meaning to the phrase “full color” by guiding us through its fascinating history.
Spanning two volumes and more than 800 pages with 1,000 images, The Book of Colour Concepts (Taschen) by science historian Sarah Lowengard and art historian and curator Alexandra Loske aims to be the definitive tome on “the human history of capturing color in words and images.” Volume one addresses the legacy of color collecting and standards between 1686 and 1963, while volume two deals with the impact of color on spiritualism, music, dynamics of cultural exchange, and influential artistic movements, including the 20th-century German Bauhaus School.
Though hardly the first scholar to pursue color as a subject, English naturalist Richard Waller is credited as presenting an influential “color chart” to the Royal Society in 1686, triggering an Enlightenment-era fervor for the categorization and analysis of color. Writing in French, German, and Spanish, in addition to English, Lowengard and Loske break down the ensuing explorations of color through early charts and tables, pyramids and grids, circles, wheels, and globes, continuing into the rise of formal color theory in Europe beginning in the 1700s. Among the trove of historical writing on color theory through the ages is English artist Mary Gartside‘s “An Essay on Light and Shade, on Colours, and on Composition in General” (1805), illustrated by charming watercolor cloud-forms that demonstrate her painterly facility with pigment and light.
This deep dive into color theory is paired with a history lesson on the ways instructors began to teach color to young artists. English botanical illustrator George Brookshaw‘s 1799 “A New Treatise on Flower Painting (Or, Every Lady Her Own Drawing Master),” for one, grants us a window into the motifs of the era and how aspiring women artists were encouraged to tailor their style to gendered societal expectations. These are just a few highlights in a massive compendium that’s much too heavy for beach reading, but indispensable for devotees of color theory seeking a definitive archive.
For those looking for something a bit scaled-down in ambition from, say, the world history of color, anthropologist Anne Varichon’s Color Charts: A History (Princeton University Press) gathers a host of swatching systems for color across media, taking a magnifying glass to the colors populating our daily lives. Her concise text, alongside generous spreads of images, illuminates the function of charting and swatching in the proliferation of particular hues through cultural touchpoints such as textiles and advertisements — demonstrating the commercial influence of color, starting centuries before the Pantone Color of the Year was ever introduced as a concept.
Naturally, Varichon engages deeply with fabrics, ribbons, dyes, tassels, and other elements of fashion as she analyses the visually delightful ways that designers, dyers, and industrialists showcased their wares for the market. One utterly irresistible spread of tufts by French silk dyer Rolland & Cie rolls out the 1902 spring season offerings, clustered together across a range of hues. Though such dyed feathers and silk flowers were tools of the trade in their time, they now stand as refreshingly tactile, delicate anachronisms against today’s towering displays of paint chips. The mercenary applications of color unfolding alongside the aesthetic whimsy with which they are displayed make for a playful, spellbinding read.
Finally, if you find this heady talk of color has distracted you from the art of it all, another book by Loske has you covered. Her forthcoming tome The Artist’s Palette (Princeton University Press) takes a deliciously detailed look at its titular subject by poring over the working surfaces of 50 painters.
Loske mines 500 years’ worth of palettes for clues to better understand the creative process of artists like Kerry James Marshall, Artemisia Gentileschi, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent, and Helen Frankenthaler. Reverse-engineering a view of their studio practice through analysis of pigments, production methods, and application style, The Artist’s Palette returns our focus on color to the source of its power: the hands of the painter.
