Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889)Diagram of a color wheel, 1855
USING COLOR TO RECREATE THE SENSATION OF LIGHT
In the 1870s, a group of French painters that included Claude Monet (1840–1926) and Pierre Renoir (1841–1919) found a new way to recreate the sensation of light. They were dubbed “Impressionists.” Up until then, almost all painters since the Renaissance had created light by describing tonal changes across forms and by building paintings along largely tonal lines. The Impressionists found that if they used small patches of brilliant color and built them into surfaces in which they alternated the color temperature, they could create a vivid sense of outdoor light. In looking at such paintings, the viewer’s eye reconstitutes the color while retaining the lively action of the individual hues.
In the 1890s, another group of French painters, the Pointillists, built on the discoveries of Impressionism and applied a more systematic approach, creating light by building areas of color with tiny, uniform dots of paint.
While the development of this new approach grew from the interest in plein air (“open air”) painting in the nineteenth century, it was also influenced by new scientific discoveries in optics, color, and perception. The work of physicist Hermann von Helmholz (1821–94) was particularly important and was popularized by the writings of Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889). Chevreul published a color wheel showing opposing colors and intermediaries. He wrote considerably about color relationships and about the effects of juxtaposing brilliant small areas of color to create an impression of more complex color.
• Two colors placed close together will give an impression of a third color when seen from a distance.
• Every color in a visual field affects our perception of every other color in the field. Colors are experienced in relation to each other.
• The alternation of color temperature, warm and cool, contributes to the sensation of light.
• It is possible to exaggerate the saturation of color in a visual field in order to achieve a more powerful experience of light.
Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786–1889)
Diagram of a color wheel, 1855
Claude Monet (1840–1926)
Woman with a Parasol—Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875, Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 × 31 7/8 in (100 × 81 cm)
Monet presents a woman backlit by the sun so that her shadowed figure is vibrant with reflected light. To achieve this effect, he paints blues over soft warm browns throughout the figure’s costume. The blues alternate between warmer violet blues and cooler turquoise blues. Under the forearm the color shifts to a yellow as the costume picks up light reflecting upwards from the grass. There is also a temperature alternation in the parasol, where the right hand side is a warm yellow green that becomes a cooler blue green in the middle before shifting to a warmer brown green on the left. The small broken marks throughout allow the color to remain active and clear.
