Hand-illuminated engravings showing the 7-hue (left) and the 12-hue circles in the section on pastel painting in the Dutch edition of 1708 of Traité de la peinture en mignature (note that in some of the segments the pigments have deteriorated).
The first, hand-illuminated, color circle appeared in public in 1708 in a Dutch edition of a popular French small book on miniature painting, Traité de la mignature, first published in 1673 simultaneously in Paris and Rouen [1]. The author of the original edition was speculated about but never identified. Several editions and reprints were issued in France between 1674 and 1697 as well as in 1711. A German translation was printed in 1688 and a French edition published in Holland in 1687.
The single edition containing the hand-illuminated color circle was an enlarged version printed in French, with the title Traité de la peinture en mignature (Treatise on miniature painting) in 1708 in The Hague in Holland by the firm of the brothers Louis and Henri van Dole [2]. In 1744, a reprint of this edition with modified engravings of the figures was published by Lobedanius in Utrecht, Holland.
Among other textual additions, the 1708 edition contains a chapter on pastel painting, a subject not covered in any earlier edition. Its author is also unknown, but clearly different from the author of the original work. In regard to the pastel section, the advertisement in the book states: “One finds here something rather curious, relating to primitive colors and the generation of composed colors. This should be of considerable interest to amateurs [of pastel painting] because up to now one has not seen anything on that subject, except for a small article found written by M. Félibien” [André Félibien, 1619–1695].
Year | Author | Color terms | Descriptive term |
|---|---|---|---|
Ca. 325 | Chalcidius | Pallidus, rubeus, cyaneus | Generic colors |
Ca. 1266 | Roger Bacon | Glaucus, rubeus, viridis | Principal species |
Ca. 1609 | Anselm de Boot | Flavus, ruber, caeruleus | Principal colors |
Ca. 1613 | Franciscus Aguilonius | Flavus, rubeus, caeruleus | Simple colors |
Ca. 1664 | Robert Boyle | Yellow, red, blue | Simple, primary |
Ca. 1680 | André Félibien | Jaune, rouge, bleu | Principal, primitive |
22.1 Traité de la Mignature
Primitive colors: Properly, there are not more than three primitive colors, those that cannot be composed of other colors, but from which all other colors can be mixed. These three colors are yellow, red and blue, because white and black are not properly colors, white being nothing but the representation of light and black the absence of that same light.
Mixed colors: All other colors are mixed from these four primitive colors, such as yellow and fire red forming orange; crimson and blue producing violet. Finally, blue and yellow make green. … All these colors are vivid, but if one mixes them in other pairs, for example, orange with violet, fire red with blue, violet with green, and green with orange or with fire red, the mixtures produce nothing but dirty and disagreeable colors (pp. 152–154).
In the book, there are two hand-colored images showing primitive and mixed colors in hue circles (see figure at the opening page). The first one contains seven colors because at the time there was no pigment of neutral red hue in general use. Primitive red is, therefore, mixed from fire red and crimson. In the 12-hue circle, the three primitive colors are located at 120° angle intervals. Between pairs of them there are always three mixtures. The intermediate ones are orange, purple, and green. Secondary mixtures are golden yellow, fire red, crimson, violet, sea blue, and yellowish green.
It should be noted that these hue circles appeared only four years after the publication of I. Newton’s book Opticks with its spectral hue circle (Book I, Part II, Fig. 11) [3].
The hand painted figures, directly or indirectly, are the precursors of several later color circles such as those by M. Harris (ca. 1770), J. I. Schiffermüller (ca. 1772), F. G. Baumgärtner/E. Müller (ca. 1803), P. O. Runge (ca. 1810), M. Klotz (ca. 1816), G. Grégoire (ca. 1815), and others.