Color: a Natural History of the Palette
“colours. We have various scares here about scarlet-pink—girofleé—and carnation-darnation fevers; and I’ve just given this dozen of mortal sins to a young convalescent of six. Will you kindly analyse the temptations and see if they’re—not worse than apples and currents—if only mildly licked? And if really right—will you please make me another box, like this exactly, for ten pence . . .Letter from JOHN RUSKIN to Messrs. Winsor & Newton, August 9, 1889The painting should have had a streak of color... in a sunset sky, but instead it just shows a gray wash over a dull afternoon. When Joseph Mallord William Turner ran his sable brush swiftly across the canvas of Waves Breaking against the Wind it carried a ruby slick of oil paint where the sun’s last colors were supposed to hit the clouds. But when you see it today the carmine pigment, like the day the artist was imagining, has disappeared into memory. 1They didn’t always listen, the Great Masters. Turner had been warned many times not to use paints that faded,2 but that day in 1835 or so when he was gazing at his workbox thinking of the pink sunset and a violent sea, he chose his brightest red, even though he knew it would not last.MoreLess
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