
Restless Violet Shadows: The official color of the impressionists - prismatic
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/restless-violet-shadows
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catbird
Makes me wonder if there was some innovation in the production of violet
pigments around that time. I recall an art historian friend telling me once
that a certain school of landscape painting was directly enabled by the
introduction of pre-mixed paints in tubes that could be easily carried by the
artists to remote locations.

~~~
vilhelm_s
My first suspicious would be a new set of dyes. The first synthetic dye
(mauveline, which is even a bit violet!) was discovered in 1856, and sparked a
revolution in colors.

I found this paper, which analyses a Monet sea painting
([https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/8356/](https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/8356/))
and says

> Nine different pigments were found on the painting. Many of the identified
> colors were modern pigments that became available only late in the 19th
> century as a result of scientific advances in pigment chemistry. Although
> similar colors were available in a natural mineral form, they lacked the
> vivid color of their manufactured counterparts. The use of these new
> synthetic metallic oxide colors by Monet accounts for the brilliance of his
> paintings. ([https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/microscopy-and-
> micro...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/microscopy-and-
> microanalysis/article/monets-painting-under-the-
> microscope/F66592EA744E3B6DB1F94DCAE52742E9))

The nine pigments are lead white, vermilion, cadmium yellow, chrome yellow,
lead chromate, viridian, emerald green [copper acetoarsenite], cobalt blue,
and French ultramarine.

I guess of these, lead white, vermilion, and french ultramarine have been used
historically, but the other six were first synthesized in the 19th century.
One could imagine that having access to cheap bright colors influenced art...

~~~
catbird
Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

------
vilhelm_s
Maybe one can draw a comparison between the critics of the 1880s complaining
about “harsh blue and garish lilac”, and the current complaints about movies
being color-graded to teal and orange (“Seriously, I weep for cinema of this
dark age. I think twenty years from now people will look at films of this era
and say "My God - what were they smoking??!?”
---[http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-
ho...](http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-
please-stop.html)).

In both cases, the colors are striking and beautiful, or depending on your
tastes, cheap and garish.

~~~
zumu
Somewhat interesting that HN's color palette is orange, and Reddit's is teal
and orange. Maybe evidence of these color trends extending beyond cinema.

