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--- arts:why_preserve_van_gogh_s_palette_2010 [2010/06/19 20:47] – created tomgee
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 Why preserve an artist’s palette? The daubs of raw pigment or the mixes left in position can be an intriguing index to the working method and the mind of the artist. And most, once the status of art had been elevated above the realms of mere craft, would paint themselves palette in hand.
-Where and how colour is laid can convey emotion, psychology, religious significance. “The whole value of what you are about” wrote John Ruskin in his Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857 “depends on colour. If the colour is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true your words are.”
+Where and how colour is laid can convey emotion, psychology, religious significance. “The whole value of what you are about” wrote John Ruskin in his Elements of Drawing, first published in 1857 “depends on colour. If the colour is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true your words are.”\\
-Auguste Renoir
+Auguste Renoir\\
 {{:arts:renoir_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Auguste Renoir\\
+Georges Seurat\\
 {{:arts:seurat_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Georges Seurat\\
-Georges Seurat
-Seurat stuck rigidly to colour theory for his painting La Grand Jatte. You can see from his palette, above, that he obeyed the theory of Cheuvreul. He believed the basic colours red, yellow and blue reach the eye with different wavelengths and are mixed on the retina of the eye. Consequently Seurat kept his pigments in order on the palette, only adding the complimentary colour (red/green or violet/yellow), which is what creates the impression of fizzing light, on the canvas itself. Black was outlawed, since it was defined by the physicists as non-light.
+Seurat stuck rigidly to colour theory for his painting La Grand Jatte. You can see from his palette, above, that he obeyed the theory of Cheuvreul. He believed the basic colours red, yellow and blue reach the eye with different wavelengths and are mixed on the retina of the eye. Consequently Seurat kept his pigments in order on the palette, only adding the complimentary colour (red/green or violet/yellow), which is what creates the impression of fizzing light, on the canvas itself. Black was outlawed, since it was defined by the physicists as non-light.\\
+Edgar Degas\\
 {{:arts:degas_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Edgar Degas\\
-Edgar Degas
 The Degas palette above is from earlier in his career, when he was still using the earthy tones common to the Dutch tradition. It lightened considerably in later years as his subject matter altered.
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 Some artists mix every gradation of colour they will need for a painting before they start, others as they need them. “My freshly arranged palette, brilliant with contrasting colors, is enough to fire my enthusiasm,” noted Delacroix in his Journal in 1850. The French artist was meticulous in his arrangement of colours, and when unwell, would take his palette to bed and spend the entire day just mixing new shades.
+Eugene Delacroix\\
 {{:arts:delacroix_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Eugene Delacroix\\
-Eugene Delacroix\\
 Of Gustave Moreau, the art critic Charles Blanc, whose writings (still essential reading) and triangle based colour-system are considered the most influential texts on colour theory, wrote in Le Temps, 1881: “One would have to coin a word for the occasion if one wished to characterise the talent of Gustave Moreau, the word colourism for example, which would well convey all that is excessive, superb and prodigious in his love for colour. … It is as if one were in the presence of an illuminator who had been a jeweller before becoming a painter and who, having yielded to the intoxication of colour, had ground rubies, sapphires, emeralds, topazes, opals, pearls and mother of pearl to make up his palette”.
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 {{:arts:moreau_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Gustave Moreau\\
+Paul Gauguin\\
 {{:arts:gaughin_pal.jpg|}}\\
 Paul Gauguin\\
-Paul Gauguin
 Gauguin believed in: “Pure colour! Everything must be sacrificed to it.” Yet, overall, his tones were muted, and quite close together. Marion-Boddy Evans draws our attention to a portable palette found in his painting studio after he died, from which it would appear Gauguin didn’t lay out his colours in any particular order. Nor does he seem to have ever cleaned his palette, instead mixing fresh colours on top of dried-up paint.