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COLOURS IN FINE
ART
For a guide to the use of pigment
by painters, the impact of chemistry
and paint manufacturing techniques,
famous colourists from Renaissance,
Baroque, Impressionist, Fauvist and
contemporary periods, see:
Colour in Painting.
For information about the concepts
and ideas involved in colour, see:
Colour Theory in Painting.
For advice about combining
hues, see: Colour Mixing Tips.
For an A-Z list of important artist
pigments, from Antiquity through
Medieval times, Renaissance, Baroque,
Impressionism and Modern Art, see:
Colour Pigments: Types, History.
For the definition and meaning of
colour terminology in painting, see:
Colour Glossary For Artists.
HISTORY OF COLOUR
PIGMENTS
For details of pigments, dyes and
colours associated with different
eras in the history of art, see:
Egyptian Colour Palette
Hues used in Ancient Egypt.
Classical Colour Palette
Pigments used by painters in
Ancient Greece and Rome.
Renaissance Colour Palette
Colourts used by oil-painters and
fresco artists in Florence, Rome
and Venice.
Eighteenth Century Colour
Palette
Hues used by Rococo and other
artists.
Nineteenth Century Colour
Palette
Pigments used by Romantics,
Impressionist painters and
other 19th century artists.
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Earliest Paintings of Paleolithic Prehistory
The oldest examples of coloured painting/drawing
known to prehistoric art are the cave
paintings discovered in France and Spain, which date from the period
30,000-12,000 BCE, along with Aboriginal rock art from Australia. The
ten oldest collections of monochrome or polychrome pictures are, in chronological
order:
Chauvet Cave Paintings (France)
(from 30,000 BCE)
Monochrome charcoal images of animals, and ideomorphs.
Ubirr Aboriginal Rock Art (Arnhem
Land, Northern Australia) (c.30,000 BCE)
Abstract imagery in red ochre pigment on rock.
Apollo 11 Cave Paintings (SW Namibia,
Africa) (from 25,500 BCE)
Pictures of animals and figures in charcoal and ochre.
Cosquer Cave Paintings (Marseille,
France) (from 25,000 BCE)
Hand stencils, drawings and ideomorphs.
Dappled Horses of Pech-Merle (Cabrerets,
France) (from 25,000 BCE)
Polychrome pictures of horses in charcoal/ochre on limestone.
Sash Painting (Kimberley, Western
Australia) (from 17,000 BCE)
Pigments applied by feather quill on rock.
Lascaux Cave Paintings (France)
"Hall of the Bulls" (from 17,000 BCE)
Polychrome images of horses, aurochs and cattle Using pigments on rock;
notably the famous "Hall of the Bulls".
Font de Gaume Cave Paintings (Dordogne,
France) (from 17,000 BCE)
Multi-coloured images of bison, horses and mammoths, and ideomorphs.
Cave of La Pasiega Murals (Puente
Viesgo, Spain) (from 16,000 BCE)
Polychrome paintings of horses, deer, cattle and abstract symbols.
Altamira Cave Paintings (Spain)
(from 15,000 BCE)
Multi-coloured Pictures of Bison and Deer, Plus Ideomorphs.
How Did Prehistoric Artists Work?
They worked by candlelight, using sea-shells
as paint containers and employed a number of painting methods. To start
with, they painted with their fingers; before turning to lumpy pigment
crayons, pads of moss, or brushes made from animal hair or vegetable fibres.
Some of these early fine art
muralists even used spray painting techniques using reeds or specially
hollowed bones. They practised a number of different painterly styles,
which included both foreshortening and shadowing techniques.
Are All Prehistoric Cave Pictures Painted
in Multi-Colours?
No. Some images are executed in one colour
only, usually charcoal black or red ochre, but most of the later Magdalenian
painting is polychrome. The most common Stone Age pigments are black and
red.
How Did Prehistoric Painters Obtain
Their Colours?
In Stone
Age art, painters relied on several different types of material to
make coloured paints. Clay ochre was the main pigment and provided three
basic colours: yellow, brown and numerous hues of red. For black pigment,
artists typically employed either manganese dioxide or charcoal. These
colourants were first ground up to powder (using animal shoulder bones
as mortars), then mixed with cave water (high in calcium carbonate) animal
fats, vegetable juice, blood and urine to help it adhere to the cave wall.
In addition, they used extenders like feldspar and biotite, or ground
quartz and calcium phosphate (from crushed animal bone).
Sourcing Colours
Prehistoric painters seem to have discovered
that pigments from earthy iron oxide deposits did not fade as fast as
colours derived from animal and vegetable sources. As a result, they went
to great effort to locate a good supply of these dyes: for instance, the
majority of prehistoric settlements show signs of well-beaten trails leading
to hematite mines or digswhere such pigments were obtained. Indeed, excavations
in the vicinity of the Lascaux Cave complex suggest that Paleolithic artists
may have travelled as far as 25 miles for a reliable source of pigments
Stone Age Colour Palette
Nearly all the colours used by Paleolithic
artists are founded on mineral oxide (either iron or manganese) or carbon
(mostly charcoal). Thus their limited palette was produced from three
primary colours: red, black and yellow. Blacks were derived from manganese
ores and charcoal; the reds, yellows, and browns came from limonites and
hematites (ochres and siennas), in a range from reddish brown to straw
colour. Tones of red-violet were probably a result of natural peroxide
of iron transformed slowly and naturally into violet oxide.
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