This is a bit of a different topic for me, but with the Blue Order and their signature color Order blue featuring so many times in Jane Austen’s Dragons, it seemed time to dive into the rabbit hole to discover what I could about the color blue.
Blue stands out from other colors in human experiences. The color rarely occurs in nature with few animals or plants naturally bearing the color.
The first color words to appear in most languages were words for black/dark and white/light and then red, followed by yellow, then green. Blue, when it appears, seems to be the last color word to develop. Ancient Greek texts like the Odyssey has no mentions of the color blue. Homer describes the sea as ‘wine-dark’.
Researchers generally agree that blue came into its own as a color when humans began making blue pigments about 6,000 years ago. The Egyptian word for blue emerged as artisans developed pigments from lapis lazuli, a rare blue mineral.
Making Blue (and other colors)
Two basic categories of colorants are recognized, pigments and dyes. The two generally differ by the size of the color-bearing particles, dyes being much finer than pigments. Pigments are usually insoluble in water. Dyes are typically soluble. Most often, pigments are inorganic compounds whereas dyes tend to be organic.
Paints are formed when pigments are mixed with egg, glues, gums or oils allowing them to coat a surface. Dyes are usually dissolved by a solvent which is then absorbed by fibers. Usually, the two types of colorants cannot be used interchangeably. The production of pigments and dyes requires specialized knowledge and techniques.
Enter the Colourmen
As interest in art grew through the 17th century, the number of artists increased. Consequently, the demand increased for high quality paints that the artists might have neither the time nor the inclination to produce set the stage for the trade of artists’ colourman.
By the 18th century, the trade was well established in most European cities. By the mid-18th century the trade divided into two groups, the color-makers who procured and ground the pigments and the colourmen who blended those pigments into artists’ paints.
Robert Campbell (1747) described the trade:
The Colour -Man buys Colour. all manner of Colours uncompounded. He is … the Apothecary to the Painter as he buys the simple Colours and compounds some of them. He grinds such as require grinding, and adds that Expense to the prime Cost. … the Colour Man properly confines himself to what relates to Painting …
No Man is fit to keep a Colour-Shop who has not served an Apprenticeship. The Articles they deal in are so many, and require such a nice Eye, and so great Practice to be a Judge of them, that even seven Years are too little to learn this Trade.
But though it is a profitable-enough Branch, there is Business but for few Hand. The Journeyman, … may expect Twenty or Five and Twenty Pounds a Year, Bed and Board.
… I should not chuse to breed my Son to this Branch, unless I had Stock to set him up with, which must not be inconsiderable, and a Prospect of Business when set up.
The London Tradesman, R. Campbell.
Campbell also notes some color-makers who specialize in specific colors, including Prussian blue, carmine red and lead white.
Colourmen made oil paints for artists, using linseed oil, a drying oil which would polymerize as it dried, suspending color particles in a solid film of color on whatever surface to which it had been applied. The more expensive walnut oil was often used for lighter colors where linseed oil’s tendency to yellow would be problematic.
Particular artists could have custom blended paints made to their specifications for thinner or thicker consistencies, or specific binders. Colourmen also made watercolors using gum arabic as a water-soluble binder for the pigments. In 1778, colorman William Reeves began adding honey to his watercolor cakes to retain moisture, which made them far easier for the amateur to use. By the end of the 18th century, British water colors where know as the best in the world.
Rudolph Ackermann, perhaps best know for Ackermann’s Repository, was a colorman who sold watercolors, instruction books, and artists’ supplies throughout Britain. In 1799 he began making and selling a line of watercolors to his students and beyond. Interested in chemistry, he developed new colors for his line and by 1803, he offered a total of sixty-nine colors, more than any of his competitors.
(Water) Color and the Social Hierarchy
As with most aspects of life during the Georgian era, the social hierarchy found its way into the colourman’s realm. At the lowest level were the color-makers who engaged in the hardest, dirtiest work: grinning pigments. They might also make house paints and theatrical paints, both products associated with low prestige work. Colourmen who blended paints we considered higher status. Both color-makers and colourmen might form professional friendships with gentlemen interested in the chemistry and working of colors, however, they would never be considered of the same status as the gentry or aristocracy.
Interestingly, the type of paints a colourman produced also influenced his status. Oil painting was, by and large, the province of male artists, professional painters who might flirt at the edges of high society. Ladies who painted with oil paints were definitely frowned upon. Oils were messy, smelly, used ungainly long brushes and large, heavy canvases.
Watercolors and drawings were considered appropriate art forms for ladies. Those, like Ackermann who specialized in watercolor paints and supplies were often looked down upon. Not simply because their primary patrons were women, but because they sold premixed paint colors, demonstrating that their clientele had no understand of color that would enable them to blend their own colors at will.
Fine artists blended their own colors from a limited palette of fifteen to twenty basic pigment colors. What were these pigments and how were they developed? Stay tuned for next week’s installment of A Brief History of Blue.
References
Campbell, Robert. The London Tradesman: Being a Compendious View of All the Trades, Professions, Arts, Both Liberal and Mechanic, Now Practised in the Cities of London and Westminster. Calculated for the Information of Parents, and Instruction of Youth in Their Choice of Business. T. Gardner. London. 1747.
Gottesman, Sarah. The 6,000-Year History of Blue Pigments in Art. Artsy. November 29, 2016 Accessed April 25, 2021 https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-a-brief-history-of-blue
Kane, Katheryn. Regency Colormen. Regency Redingote. September 30, 2011. Accessed April 23, 2021. https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2011/09/30/regency-colormen/
Michaeli, Dov. A Brief But Powerful History of the Colors Purple and Blue . The Doctor Weighs In. February 9, 2021. Accessed April 26, 2021 https://thedoctorweighsin.com/history-purple-blue/
Taggart, Emma. The History of the Color Blue: From Ancient Egypt to the Latest Scientific Discoveries. My Modern Met. February 12, 2018 Accessed April 21, 2021 https://mymodernmet.com/shades-of-blue-color-history/
The Color Blue: History, Science, Facts. Dunned Wards. May 12 2015. Accessed April 19, 2021 ttps://www.dunnedwards.com/colors/specs/posts/color-blue-history
The History and Meaning Behind the Color Blue in Art. Invaluable. December 7, 2018 Accessed April 15, 2021 https://www.invaluable.com/blog/blue-color/
The History Of The Colour Blue . London Fine Arts. August 28 2018. Accessed April 20, 2021 https://londonfineartstudios.com/the-history-of-the-colour-blue/
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