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.”
Auguste Renoir

Auguste Renoir
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.
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.

Although there are a number of prescribed ways in which to lay out oil paint – light to dark; as per the colour wheel; basic palettes of three colours and white – all artists begin by lining up pigments at the top of the palette and use the remainder of its space for mixing.

Some artists follow Whistler, who believed the management of the palette to be the basis of good painting; others stick to Isaac Newton’s theory of colour. This beautifully ornate ink drawing from 1845 shows one method, including the instruction to “use oxford ochre for draperies”.

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

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”. Gustave Moreau

Gustave Moreau

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.

Whilst instructing Paul Sérusier in 1888, he insisted the young student forget the conventional colour theory he was being taught in art academy. Instead, he said, paint the colours you see in front of you: “How do you see that tree? It’s green? Well then, make it green, the best green on your palette. How do you see those trees? They are yellow. Well then, put down yellow. And that shade is rather blue. So render it with pure ultramarine. Those red leaves? Use vermillion.”

Monet aimed to be as familiar with the colours on his palette as a pianist with the keys of piano, so he didn’t have to remove his eyes from his work as he painted. His palette changed over time. Rembrandt created his portraits with a small palette of colours dominated by dark earth tones and golden highlights. Remember the number of pigments available to the 17th century artist were miniscule when compared to those available to the modern artist. Rembrandt was unusual in that he used around hundred, but less than 20 pigments have been detected in Vermeer’s oeuvre. In the 1676 death inventory of Vermeer’s house in the front room of the first floor of the Oude Langendijk, there were listed “twee schilders eesels, drye paletten”, two painters easels, three palettes”.

In a letter to his brother Theo in 1882, Van Gogh wrote: “There are but three fundamental colours – red, yellow, and blue; ‘composites’ are orange, green, and purple. By adding black and some white one gets the endless varieties of greys – red grey, yellow-grey, blue-grey, green-grey, orange-grey, violet-grey. It is impossible to say, for instance, how many green-greys there are; there is an endless variety. But the whole chemistry of colours is not more complicated than those few simple rules. And having a clear notion of this is worth more than 70 different colours of paint — because with those three principal colours and black and white, one can make more than 70 tones and varieties. The colourist is the person who knows at once how to analyze a colour, when it sees it in nature, and can say, for instance: that green-grey is yellow with black and blue, etc. In other words, someone who knows how to find the grays of nature on their palette”. Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

There’s a thriving market in ready-stocked Old-Master palettes – for around $200 you can be the proud owner of Titian’s, Goya’s costs less, coming in at about $70.