Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 244) 3031349555, 9783031349553

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International Archives of the History of Ideas 244 Archives internationales d'histoire des idées

Tanja C. Kleinwächter Sarah Lowengard Friedrich Steinle   Editors

Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe

International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées Founding Editors Paul Dibon Jeremy Popkin

Volume 244

Honorary Editor Sarah Hutton, Department of Philosophy, University of York, York, UK Editor-in-Chief Guido Giglioni, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy Associate Editor John Christian Laursen, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA Editorial Board Members Jean-Robert Armogathe, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France Stephen Clucas, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK Peter Harrison, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia John Henry, Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK Jose R. Maia Neto, University of Belo Horizonte, Belo Horizonte,  Minas Gerais, Brazil Martin Mulsow, Universität Erfurt, Gotha, Germany Gianni Paganini, University of Eastern Piedmont, Vercelli, Italy John Robertson, Clare College, Cambridge, UK Javier Fernández Sebastian, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Vizcaya, Spain Ann Thomson, European University Institute (EUI), Florence, Italy Theo Verbeek, Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands Koen Vermeir, Paris Diderot University, Paris, France

International Archives of the History of Ideas/Archives internationales d’histoire des idées is a series which publishes scholarly works on the history of ideas in the widest sense of the word. It covers history of philosophy, science, political and religious thought and other areas in the domain of intellectual history. The chronological scope of the series extends from the Renaissance to the Post-Enlightenment. Founded in 1963 by R.H.  Popkin and Paul Dibon, the International Archives of the History of Ideas/ Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, edited by Guido Giglioni and John Christian Laursen, with assistance of Former Director Sarah Hutton, publishes, edits and translates sources that have been either unknown hitherto, or unavailable, and publishes new research in intellectual history, and new approaches within the field. The range of recent volumes in the series includes studies on skepticism, astrobiology in the early modern period, as well as translations and editions of original texts, such as the Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730) by Bernard Mandeville. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance.

Tanja C. Kleinwächter  •  Sarah Lowengard  Friedrich Steinle Editors

Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe

Editors Tanja C. Kleinwächter Technical University of Berlin Berlin, Germany

Sarah Lowengard New York, NY, USA

Friedrich Steinle Inst. for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Literature Technical University of Berlin Berlin, Germany

ISSN 0066-6610     ISSN 2215-0307 (electronic) International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées ISBN 978-3-031-34955-3    ISBN 978-3-031-34956-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Contents

1 Introduction:  Ordering Colours in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe��������������������������������������������������������������������   1 Tanja C. Kleinwächter, Sarah Lowengard, and Friedrich Steinle Part I Evolution of Colour Systems and Standards 2 The  Shape of Colour Order Systems and the Evolution of Colour Theory����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  15 José Luis Caivano 3 Materialisation  of Vision: Colour Standards in the Early Sciences, Handicrafts, and Arts ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  39 André Karliczek Part II Colour Theory and Colour Order 4 A  Tale of Five Cities: Jacob Christoff Le Blon and His Development of Trichromatic Printing����������������������������������������������  57 Ad Stijnman 5 Colour  Theory by Mikhail Lomonosov: From Dyes and Mosaics to a Trichromatic Idea����������������������������������������������  85 Nadezhda Stanulevich  and Newton United in Sinter – Franz Uibelaker’s 6 Schiffermüller Two-Colour-­Theory (1781)������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 103 Tanja C. Kleinwächter Part III Arts, Crafts, Commerce and Colour Order 7 C  alau’s Punic Wax, Lambert’s Farbenpyramide (1772), and Prefabricated Watercolour Cakes�������������������������������������������������������������� 119 Giulia Simonini 8 Testing  Ground: Colour Samples in European Porcelain Manufactories���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 151 Gabriella Szalay

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Contents

9 Fighting  for the Best Pigment! Academic Colour Discourses in Kassel During the Nineteenth Century�������������������������������������������������������� 167 Sophie-Luise Mävers-Persch Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 197

About the Editors

Tanja C. Kleinwächter studied history of science and technology and gender studies in Berlin. Her research focuses on the systematisation of colours in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is a PhD candidate and organised the workshop Ordering Colours.  

Sarah  Lowengard  studies colour and colour production techniques to understand social life and cultural change in the early modern West. An artisan colour-maker and practising art conservator for more than 40 years, she teaches history of technology and history of science in New York City.  

Friedrich Steinle is Professor of History of Science at Technische Universität Berlin. His research focuses on the history of experiment, of colour knowledge, and of electricity. Among his many publications on colour history, he co-edited (with M.  Bushart) Colour Histories: Science, Art, and Technology in the 17th and 18th Centuries (2015).  

Chapter 1 Introduction: Ordering Colours in Eighteenthand Early Nineteenth-Century Europe Tanja C. Kleinwächter1 (*), Sarah Lowengard2, and Friedrich Steinle1 1 

Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany [email protected] 2  New York, NY, USA

Abstract Ordering Colours in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Europe introduces the diverse collection of essays that comprise this volume, a wide-ranging collection of essays generated from a 2020 conference. By contextualizing and unifying the contributions, it points to the lacunae its contributors fill. In providing a cohesive overview of the contents, this introductory essay also shows new avenues for exploration in the discipline of colour studies. Keywords  Colour studies · Multidisciplinarity · Colour order · Philosophy of colour · Colour production · Colour display systems · Colour systematization

Ordering Colours in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Europe originated as a workshop-conference to be held in Berlin early in 2020. One of several public-facing programmes connected to the research group “The Order of Colours. Colour Systems and Colour Reference Systems in Eighteenth-Century Europe” at the Technische Universität Berlin, the initial call was very broad. The organisers hoped that a diverse group of participants would find common ground within the many possible interpretations of the term “colour order”, and that discussions would open new avenues of study and approach for participants and the broader discipline of colour studies. Response to the call was as wide-ranging as we had hoped. Proposed topics included philosophies of colour, the use of natural history to establish colour order systems, case studies of colour manufactories and of hitherto-unknown investigations, the value of colour order in creating standards and the value of standards in creating colour order, and the interplay of artisanal techniques with both colour order and colour theories. An immediately-obvious shared interest was the location of much research within the German states, regions that are often downplayed in studies of the artistic and scientific endeavours of the epoch. We chose to accept papers from scholars in all academic stages, with the hope that younger scholars might profit from close work with established senior researchers, and that they, in turn, could experience the fresh approaches of the rising generation.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_1

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The declaration of an international pandemic two days before the workshop was to begin led to a postponement and a rearrangement. The revised workshop was presented not as a two-day meeting but as a series of shorter video gatherings scheduled over several weeks. The new format rendered presentations both more and less intimate but, participants agreed, as intellectually potent as the original workshop would have been. Workshop participants brought to the meetings a representative diversity of scholarly bases: colour science, art history, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) as well as more classical orientations in the history of sciences, history of technology, and social history. Presentations highlighted such typically eighteenth-century efforts as explications of the relationship between Newton’s colours and artist’s colours, and the influence of practitioners on theory and on academic discourse. A highlight was the combination of familiar names–Newton, Jacob Christoff Le Blon, Ignaz Schiffermüller— with previously unknown actors, such as Franz Uibelaker and Ernst Alexander Wetzler. It was a fruitful meeting for all, providing new confluences as well as new approaches for individuals whose research programmes share ideas of colour order in Europe’s long eighteenth century.

1.1 The Challenges of Colour Order A simple way to consider colour order is to look at the rainbow. Children often learn to name colours through mnemonic rhymes that call on the order of spectral colours, linking basic names and the observable sequence of the rainbow. A similar colour mnemonic, ROY G BIV, coined by colour scientists, is an acronym for the red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet sequence of the visible spectrum, and so of the rainbow too. Like a child’s rhyme, it creates a simple connection between colour order, memory, and the visual. This interplay is one common foundation for all the essays here. Colour order quickly loses its simplicity on the recognition that most people can differentiate more colours than the seven in the spectrum, and that their simple terms can incorporate a considerable range of shades or hues. Several pathways might be taken to re-establish order at this point: A physicist might connect colours to wavelengths; a practical person might connect colours to the materials used to make them; still others might create order by assigning names to differentiate between hues. The components of a naming system might register value (e.g., light, medium, or dark blue), or refer to the colour of something in the natural world (coal black, parrot green). Such binomial designations for colours resemble Linnean and other descriptions familiar from early-modern natural history. Colours might also be named, and given an order, using indirect visual references, for example by designating each colour as a number and colour mixtures connected to combinations of those numbers. However a name is assigned, and however an ordering system is established, the aggregate of all systems posited in the long eighteenth-century point to the widespread interest in creating classifications, especially a unified classification, for all the natural world. Ordering Colours in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe explores those approaches, often as developed by practical people whose work deserves to be better known.

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The urge to acknowledge colours as a coherent group, as something that can be understood, and so improved, through order or systematisation, has directed and reflected cultural milieux in the West throughout recorded time. Whether one tries to identify, name, and order every colour or only some representative samples such as the “basic colours of the rainbow”, or “all colours that could be classified as red, or as blue” a constant issue is how best to identify each colour, and how best to organise those descriptions into larger schemes (Burnham et al. 1963; Billmeyer 1968; Guerlac 1986; Jameson 1983; Birren 1976; Gage 1990, 1995; Burton 1992; Shapiro 1994; Maund 1995; Finlay 2007; Jackson 2008; Rigier et  al. 2009; Dijksterhuis 2015; Seymour 2018). You can confirm the complexities of the task if you and a colleague try to order the same set of coloured things, perhaps pencils or papers. As that exercise—and this volume—show, there is no single correct answer to the question, “what is the order of colours?” The best response to this question, as it is to questions concerning ways to deploy that order, is always, “it depends”. The dependencies embedded in the issues of naming, describing, and ordering colours—altogether, creating a system of colours—may be physiological, cultural, optical, ontological, aesthetical, or practical. Variations within each of those broad categories incorporate aspects of the others. Physiological differences may contract (through colour blindness) or expand (in tetrachromacy) the number of colours one person is capable of experiencing (Jameson 1983; Gordon 1998; Jameson et al. 2014). Culture may guide whether we recognize colour names at all, as evidenced by the ancient Greek practice of privileging intensity, value, and movement over hue (Gage 1993, esp. Chaps. 1–4), or rely solely on cultural determinants to rank colours, as found in Eastern-rite icon painting (Kenna 1985). Optical experiments and analogies to music might suggest a colour order, but again history—from Newton onwards—makes clear how deeply metaphysical and cultural beliefs affect perceptions of the connection and thus the resulting system. More philosophical approaches to ordering colour may be explanatory, as when they engage with cultural ideas of the moment to address colour as a subject of broad universalism, transferring or corresponding to other items, other cultures, or other epochs (Byrne and Hilbert 1997; Unwin 2011; Chirimuuta 2015). When speaking of material colours, the category that includes those substances which can give colour to tangible objects, such matters as cost, availability, stability, and use further affect the numbers of colours chosen, and the order in which they are arranged. Concern for what a colour might be made from and how colours are used together takes on particular significance when ordering colours of the material world. Substrates and production techniques become critical to the broader understanding of colour order and thus to the understanding and presentation of any system (cf. Muntwyler et al. 2022). In this volume, Ad Stijnman, Gabriella Szalay, and Sophie-Luise Mävers-Persch each consider the challenges of ordering colour for practical results, describing the use of colouring materials, manufactured pigments, and the binders that hold colour to substrate within three different artisanal or artistic specialities. The disparate materialities of colour also come into play when discussing imitation or replication; it is difficult to speak of a precise colour without access to visual samples. How those samples are made enters, directly and indirectly, into discussions and decisions about any plan to employ them. When an artist or artisan chooses to copy an object or to appropriate a colour found on an object, replication is, again, mediated by

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the practical choices of representation. The existence of an established colour order can assist in such choices (and itself be motivated by those challenges), but these efforts raise questions—critical to this volume—regarding the universality or commonality of any ordering system. Determining the best source(s) for colour models becomes a prologue to the creation of an order system. André Karliczek points to this in his emphasis on colour as something both material and visual, even when it is not tangible. His example of the geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner’s samples enhances the discussion of samples collected and ordered by the religious Franz Uibelaker, discussed here by Tanja C. Kleinwächter. Useful sets of colour samples found in nature have historically offered a guide to order and systematisation: In the early-modern period, they were often considered an appropriate and easily-obtainable source. Those who based order on natural history specimens—including Harris (1766), Werner (1774), and Uibelaker (1781) who  are discussed in this book—called on the universality of nature, expressing confidence in the consistency and availability of rocks, birds, or butterflies that may have demanded too much of its samples. Yet colours from nature aren’t always the best or most obvious choice to depict colours in nature. Certain natural colours or colouring sources such as ochres and metals require physical manipulation, perhaps only extraction, grinding, and columnar separation, or perhaps such specialist efforts as heating to alter or stabilise the hue. Other substances, such as plant-based sources, may require even more intensive processing to draw out their colour or colours. Typical chemical manipulations will combine colouring sources with agents that alter their hue, increase their stability, or extend their use, singly or in combination. These manipulations blur the line, within the broader colourspace, between what is natural and what is artificial. Questions of manipulations to materials, of the natural and artificial, are of limited concern to the authors in this volume, however. For the most part, the practical and the theoretical aspects of ordering systems accept what is, or what is available. Even setting aside issues of the natural versus manufactured, the choices embedded in efforts to order colour are myriad. Such basic concerns as establishing the minimum number of colours needed to make all others, or describing the basic or base colours as those which need no modification in their description, are cultural events as well as philosophical and practical ones. Determining the base number of colours for an artistic or manufacturing practice, expressing connections or relationships between the identified colours to guide their use, and creating a form to display the resulting system, are at the heart of this volume. There are many ways to describe and organise or classify colours, and just as many reasons to do so. The interplay of these efforts, the way initial models are chosen, how they become viable as an ordering effort, and how those efforts at order can be systematised and standardised, are under-examined aspects of colour studies. This volume attempts to address some of those absences, as we recognize that there is no best approach or best result. As has often been noted, the seventeenth century marked the beginning of new engagements with colour, and so with ordering colour. Interest reached into all corners of the West, into learned and non-learned spheres; attention continued beyond the decades of the eighteenth century. Knowledge about colours spread throughout scientific fields such as physics, chemistry, and natural history. It continued to extend into medicine as well as manufacturing technologies, as it had for millennia, using colour as

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a visual means of differentiation. In those cases, establishing the order for colours led to diagnosis and remedy. In addition, colour order and systematisation affected and were affected by the steep increase in colour-related commerce and expanding recognition of the economic importance of colour in trade of the early-modern epoch (Engel 2009). By the eighteenth century, one important outcome was the growth in the number of publications—treatises, academic essays, and handbooks of practice—that presented information about colour. A critical starting point for many was organisational: how many colours were needed, what they were called, how to order them. Individual opportunities to experience colours meant rising interest in painting practices among the leisure classes, and a similar growing interest among amateurs and natural philosophers alike to investigate scientific phenomena of colour. Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authors of such works often combined arts, sciences, and economy to resolve the issues deemed critical to the understanding and use of colours. Many author-inventors began with the creation of an ordering system for colour; in an eighteenth-century Europe concerned with the classification of the natural and manufactured world, this is hardly surprising. It is obvious from the variety of proposed systems that the search for a universal colour order system could have a foundation in the sciences, or the arts, or crafts, or trade, but that a combination of approaches was critical and often challenging to inventors of all new systems. An outcome of these efforts was a lively and diverse manifestation of research into colour order during the long eighteenth century. We can recognise this value of order for porcelain manufacturers, as Szalay discusses here; it also underlies an eighteenth-century search for the common harmony of art and music which, as Mävers-Persch describes, continued beyond that century. This variety of efforts to combine information, often highly local but equally often intended for a wide techno-scientific and artistic audience is the point of departure for the present volume.

1.2 Historiographic Contexts Given the rising interest in colour, and the ongoing development of colour studies as a discrete, multidisciplinary field, it is not surprising that investigations of colour in the early modern world have been undertaken by modern researchers with a broad range of motivations. Despite the different approaches, however, we can find order among the methods. One trend of significance to this volume is work that emphasises colour as a phenomenon of life and in life. Authors who take this approach engage with combinations of the history of sciences, technology, or art and art practices, as well as such specialised topics as language, culture, geology, ornithology, and medicine. Philosophies of colour formation, colour mixing, and vision also play a role in such writing, if a less prominent one. (This explains, in part, why our volume includes no essays devoted to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Swedenborg, or William Blake.) When colour studies focus on culturally-based interpretations of colour in the West, they are often grounded in two influential books by the late art historian John Gage (Gage 1993, 2006). Both address a question posed to Gage in the 1970s regarding methodologies for studying colour (Gage 1990, 518). His engaged and engaging response—that a presentation should be broad in scope and detailed in approach—has

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provided a model for much subsequent work, especially in efforts to explain colour to a varied audience. Gage has influenced successive scholars’ treatment of the long eighteenth century, leading them to offer narratives that emphasise the art in science and the science in art and to incorporate a common assumption that, for colour, the two cultures are closely entwined (Ball 2001; Lowengard 2006; Finlay 2014; Baty 2017; Loske 2019). Colour scientists and colour engineers have also made valuable contributions to the history of colour: Colour studies is not a discipline limited to the humanities and social sciences. We can observe exchanges especially well in the modern manipulation of traditional materials as a means to illuminate resource-protective paths for new materials (Nassau 1998; Kuehni and Schwarz 2008; Eastaugh et al. 2004; Ratnapandian 2020; Caivano 2021; Muthu 2017; Muntwyler et al. 2022). And, as Western history and culture abandon the heroic image of the lone scientist-genius, our understanding of colour order within scientific communities and the laboratory supports and expands prior work on that subject in art and manufacture. We see these changes here especially in the essays by Karliczek and Szalay. A second identifiable trend in colour research and publications starts with a narrow or closely-targeted base and seeks to deepen certain themes, even as researchers rely on the grounding provided by a more general model. Publications in this group might focus on the work of one author or on a single phenomenon in which colour plays a dominant role; others attempt to illuminate one component of the art-science connections that colour invokes. We see examples of this trend in Ordering Colours in Eighteenth and Early-Nineteenth Century Europe, in Stijnman’s essay about Jacob Christoff Le Blon, Giulia Simonini’s description of the development of portable watercolour pigments, and the description of colour in the work of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov presented here by Nadezhda Stanulevich. Studies that investigate and clarify the work of specific authors or single phenomena address personal experience within cultural approaches to colour ordering systems; their results are deepened and broadened investigations into colour as both subject and object. The ancestor of such works may be Merrifield’s (1849) collection and analysis of painters’ treatises. Recent authors of studies of this type (Pastoureau 2000; Stijnman 2020; Simonini and Steinle 2022; and others) may illuminate specific archive collections or trace specific colours across time. Their work engages with explanatory traditions of museum or gallery exhibition catalogues, although the starting point is likely to be the history of science rather than the history of art or anthropology. Thus, researchers might call on studies of colour at specific manufactories such as the cotton printing manufacture at Jouy-en-Josas near Paris (Jacqué 1995), or a London firm of artists’ colourmen (Woodcock 1996), or address the history of a specific colouring technique at a specific time or place (Rodari 1996). Other authors whose work falls into this category examine the often-confounding nature of describing colour (Horrocks 2012, Baty 2021; Jones 2013a, b). This category of monographs exposes the implications of art-­ science and art-technology connections with a close connection to the cultural spheres and, in this, facilitates comparisons to other materials, other times, and other places. Colour research that highlights the art-science connection includes studies of efforts to establish the principal, main, or most important colours, and the related advocacy for the best format in which to display them (Spillmann et al. 2009; Karliczek and Schwarz

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2016; Loske 2019). We have learned much from historians of science about early modern considerations and their intersection with natural history and natural philosophy, although this has been an equal concern of manufacturers and of artists. In this, historians’ understanding of changing approaches to comprehending light has also been important. Studies of eighteenth-century European conceptions of light rather than colour, although frequently focused on emerging trends in physics, nevertheless affect interpretations of what colour meant at that time (Shapiro 1994; Jackson 2008). Often combining earlier information about debates over the principles of colour that were essential to the early-modern discourse with object-based studies and even experiment, recent scholarly studies have expanded colour studies in many directions (Bushart and Steinle 2015; Baker et al. 2016; Friant-Kessler 2018). Examinations of early modern philosophies about the origins of colour, and the arguments or tensions thereabout, are acknowledged but less critical to the essays in this volume. The subjects of our authors do not challenge the existence of colours, either material or spectral: It is the interplay of those categories with practical and scientific ideas that joins each contribution into a cohesive whole. Within these cultural, philosophical, practical, and hybrid considerations of colour, one through-line is the effort to give, or explain, or create colour order. Despite a long-­ standing acknowledgement of this concern by nearly every author cited above, the workshop planned for Berlin was the first to address the multi-disciplinary concerns of colour order and systematisation. The essays presented in this volume thus widen the perspective for the field of colour studies and outline perspectives for further research. The authors’ work facilitates the comparison of ideas, recognising similarities and acknowledging differences. Understanding colour order, and the cultural moment of each representation, draws especially on efforts to integrate art and practice into colour sciences. We also show that colour was, and continues to be, an essential reference source for technologically rich if often idiosyncratic responses to the what, how, and why of critical scientific, technological and artistic questions. The reasons for ordering colours were diverse, and our collection of essays illuminates the history of that diversity with discussions of the concepts behind the creation of systems and order for colour, and with presentations about colour as a concept that could order and make other objects or processes more systematic.

1.3 The Contents of this Volume Ordering Colours in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century Europe includes essays based on presentations at the 2020 workshop but, alas, none of the discussion. Topics addressed here include knowledge exchange, nomenclature issues, identification of basic or primary colours and the ramifications of the choices, and experiments to improve the quality of materials or their use. Given its focus on the links between practices and theories, physiological issues and philosophies of colour that draw on them, are backgrounded in favour of interpretations by people with practical needs for names and orders. If colour is an “illusion to be welcomed”, as the philosopher Barry Maund (1995) described, it still has practical roles and materialities that always demand consideration.

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The essence of the volume, and its particular significance within colour studies, lies in its presentation of case studies. Each study highlights different ways natural history, artistic practice, and manufactured objects were used to model colour order or colour systems. As understanding the connections among the systems is critical to interpreting the volume as a cohesive whole, the first section, “Evolution of systems and standards”, provides long durée views to anchor the different perspectives that follow. The goal of its two presentations at the workshop was to provide thoughtful background and frameworks from which to assess and combine the more detailed case studies; they serve the same purpose here. José Luis Caivano opens the volume, as he did our meeting, with an overview of the development of colour systems, from antiquity to the twentieth century. His approach is personal, as he describes his effort to create a system for colour ordering systems that accommodates connections between colour knowledge and shape. Drawing on a variety of earlier studies, he thoughtfully identifies a dynamic evolutionary relationship (Peterson and Somit 1992; Gould 2002) among colour ordering systems. André Karliczek takes on different features of colour order systems, in an essay that draws on his own extensive research. He distinguishes colour systems from colour reference systems and notes their concrete connections to classificatory natural history. In doing this, Karliczek details the ways the general objective of standardisation guided an increasing number of ordering systems, and why the desire for a comprehensive standardisation of colour (as we understand it today) remained unfulfilled throughout the early modern period. The purpose of these two presentations was to establish the broadest context for the idea of colour order and colour systems. The second section, “Colour Theory and Colour Order”, shows how colour order could be both practical and part of a consolidated colour system. Ad Stijnman discusses the most prominent eighteenth-century attempt to put the prevailing theory of colour mixture—trichromacy—to practical use. Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667–1741) was a founder of the full-colour printing techniques that dominated discussions and efforts during the early eighteenth century; Stijnman illuminates the development of the theories underlying his work, and so creates a strong argument for considering trichromacy as one type of colour order. Nadezhda Stanulevich introduces the colour explorations of Russian polymath Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711–1765), the first Russian-born member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Known for his achievements in the physical and chemical sciences, we learn of his work with ­trichromatic and corpuscular colour theories, and their interplay within his work to develop pigments and to colour glass, and then managing a factory to make coloured glass and related mosaic pictures. Hampered by the volume of missing documentation, Stanulevich nevertheless points out connections between the mosaic work and Lomonosov’s corpuscular colour theory. Tanja C. Kleinwächter presents the largely forgotten researcher and colour theorist Franz Uibelaker (1742-ca, 1808). Uibelaker developed a geologically-oriented colour system that identified two main colours. A feature of his work was the attempt to reconcile his system with both the trichromacy-­ based colour circle of Ignaz Schiffermüller and with Newton’s seven-colour circle of prismatic colours. Kleinwächter’s article introduces Uibelaker’s system and points to its many details that require further research. Nevertheless, it proves to be a striking illustration of how naturalists gained, developed, and exploited personal understanding of colour order in the eighteenth century.

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The final section engages with the interplay among “Arts, Crafts, Commerce, and Colour Order”. Each of its three studies illustrates the intense interest in colour order within practical and commercial realms, as a starting point or an end goal or, at times, both at once. Giulia Simonini shows how the collaboration between the mathematician Johann Heinrich Lambert and the artist Benjamin Calau used trichromatic theory to create a three-dimensional colour chart—the Farbenpyramide—and how this contributed to their invention of a commercial product. Calau and Lambert offered the first prefabricated watercolour cakes, presented in a triangular box, a clear reference to its trichromatic theoretical background. While their collaboration was not a commercial success, British entrepreneurs adopted the invention and made watercolour painting a popular artistic practice. Gabriella Szalay focuses on the challenges of colouring in the early years of the Meißen porcelain manufactory. She describes the efforts to standardise production—to codify and depersonalise what started as individual recipes— and explains the special value assigned to collections of colour samples that followed specific colour orders. The capstone of her discussion is a coloured plate that served not only as a reference tool for porcelain painters but was also a demonstration of the creator’s skill. Among its multiple significances, the plate is similar to the colour tables produced by others to communicate colour and to offer a viable, impersonal standard. Sophie Mävers-Persch, finally, brings us into the early nineteenth century with a study of the colour debates at the Kassel Academy of Fine Arts. She shows that the faculty of the Academy was concerned with standards, expressed as colour effects and durability, as well as colour production, and with issues of colour systematisation and harmony. The debates never strayed far from issues of colour order, although this concern was expressed most forcefully in discussions on colour harmony. Each of these essays illustrates the close-knit relationship between craft, commerce, and academic knowledge when the issue at hand was colour knowledge. Each also asserts the pertinence of questions of colour order in all three fields. The contributors— from junior scholars to recent PhDs to senior experts—provide a rich panorama of different cases, worked out in varying detail and depth. In sum, the articles illustrate the challenges and difficulties outlined in our first paragraphs that arise in attempts to order colours and to make those orders compatible and coherent. Ordering Colours in Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century Europe enriches readers’ understanding of the struggle to coordinate nature with art at a time when approaches to both were undergoing rapid change. It illustrates the European-wide effort to give order to colour and to facilitate communication about it—topics deemed essential that were nevertheless recognizably complex. Our authors show how such common concerns as identifying the basic colours and disseminating appropriate colour diagrams had to meet philosophical, scientific, professional, and economic needs simultaneously. Contributors detail the many schemes for colour systematisation and their real-world applications; questions of concern to both academic- and manufacturing-­ focused investigators throughout the long eighteenth century. As the documentation of a deliberately wide-ranging workshop, Ordering Colours in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-century Europe can offer only equally-broad conclusions. The search to identify and order colour is a longstanding human interest and one that intersects with social and economic concerns at any moment under study. Our argument for colour ordering as a cross-disciplinary and transnational concern in the eighteenth and early

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nineteenth centuries also highlights the way colour, colour order and colour systems continue to concern us all. In concluding this introduction, we want to express our gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) for funding the research that led to the idea and conception of the workshop as well as the workshop itself, and to TU Berlin for administrative, logistic, and financial assistance. We also thank the Springer staff for their uncomplicated and productive cooperation.

References Baker, Tawrin, Sven Dupré, Sachiko Kusukawa, and Karin Leonhard, eds. 2016. Early Modern Color Worlds. Early Science and Medicine 20 (4–6): 289–307. Ball, P. 2001. Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color. Chicago: University Press. Baty, Patrick. 2017. The Anatomy of Colour: The Story of Heritage Paints and Pigments. London: Thames & Hudson. ———, ed. 2021. Natures’ Palette: A Color Reference System from the Natural World. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Billmeyer, Fred W., Jr. 1968. Determining Color. Science & Technology. Birren, Faber. 1976. Color Perception in Art: Beyond the Eye into the Brain. Leonardo 9 (2): 105–110. Burnham, Robert W., Randall M. Hanes, and C. James Bartleson. 1963. Color: A Guide to Basic Facts and Concepts. New York: Wiley. Burton, David. 1992. Red, Yellow and Blue: The Historical Origin of Color Systems. Art Education 45 (6): 39–44. Bushart, Magdalena, and Friedrich Steinle. 2015. Colour Histories: Science, Art, and Technology in the 17th and 18th centuries. Berlin: De Gruyter. Byrne, Alex, and David R Hilbert. 1997. Readings on Colour. Philosophy of Colour. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Caivano, José Luis. 2021. Color Order Systems, Color Mixtures, and the Role of Cesia. Color Research & Application 46 (6): 1169–1179. https://doi.org/10.1002/col.22670. Chirimuuta, M. 2015. Outside Color: Perceptual Science and the Puzzle of Color in Philosophy. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dijksterhuis, Fokko. 2015. Understandings of Colors: Varieties of Theories in the Color Worlds of the early Seventeenth Century. Early Science and Medicine 20 (4–6): 515–535. Eastaugh, Nicholas, Valentine Walsh, Tracy Chaplin, and Ruth Siddall. 2004. The Pigment Compendium: A Dictionary of Historical Pigments. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Engel, Alexander. 2009. Farben der Globalisierung. Die Entstehung moderner Märkte für Farbstoffe 1500–1900. Frankfurt: Campus-Verlag. Finlay, Robert. 2007. Weaving the Rainbow: Visions of Color in World History. Journal of World History 18 (4): 383–431. Finlay, Victoria. 2014. The Brilliant History of Color in Art. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Friant-Kessler, Brigitte. 2018. Prisms, Palettes and Panoramas: Colouring the World in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. XVII-XVIII.  Revue de la Société d’études anglo-­ américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 75 (December). https://doi.org/10.4000/1718.1522. Gage, John. 1990. Color in Western Art: An Issue? The Art Bulletin 72 (4): 518–541. https://doi. org/10.2307/3045760.

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———. 1993. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1995. Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. London: Thames & Hudson. ———. 2006. Colour and Meaning: Art, Science and Symbolism. London: Thames & Hudson. Gordon, N. 1998. Colour Blindness. Public Health 112 (2): 81–84. https://doi.org/10.1038/ sj.ph.1900446. Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Guerlac, Henry. 1986. Can There Be Colors in the Dark? Physical Color Theory before Newton. Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1): 3–20. Harris, Mosees. 1766. The Natural System of Colours. London. Horrocks, Chris. 2012. Cultures of Colour: Visual, Material, Textual. New York, NY: Berghahn Books, Incorporated. Jackson, Myles. 2008. Putting the Subject Back into Color: Accessibility in Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre. Perspectives on Science 16 (4): 378–391. Jacqué, Jacqueline, ed. 1995. Andrinople, le rouge magnifique. Mulhouse: Musée de l’impression sur étoffes. Jameson, Dorothea. 1983. Some Misunderstandings About Color Perception, Color Mixture and Color Measurement. Leonardo 16 (1): 41–42. Jameson, Kimberly A, Alissa D Winkler, Christian Herrera, and Keith Goldfarb. 2014. The Veridicality of Color: A Case Study of Potential Human Tetrachromacy. IMBS Technical Report. Irvine: University of California, Irvine. Jones, William Jervis. 2013a. German Colour Terms: A Study in their Historical Evolution from Earliest Times to the Present. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ———. 2013b. Historisches Lexikon deutscher Farbbezeichnungen. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. Karliczek, André, and Andreas Schwarz. 2016. Farre: Farbstandards in den frühen Wissenschaften. Jena: Salana. Kenna, Margaret E. 1985. Icons in Theory and Practice: An Orthodox Christian Example. History of Religions 24 (4): 345–368. https://doi.org/10.1086/463013. Kuehni, Rolf G., and Andreas Schwarz. 2008. Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Order Systems from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Loske, Alexandra. 2019. Color: A Visual History from Newton to Modern Color Matching Guides. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Lowengard, Sarah. 2006. The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-century Europe. Gutenberg-e. New York: Columbia University Press. Maund, Barry. 1995. Colours: Their Nature and Representation. Cambridge; New  York: Cambridge University Press. Merrifield, Mary P. (1849) 1970. Original Treatises on the Arts of Painting. 2 in 1 vols. New York: Dover Publications. Muntwyler, Stefan, Juraj Lipscher, und Hanspeter Schneider. 2022. Das Farbenbuch. Winterthur: Alataverlag. Muthu, Subramanian Senthilkannan. 2017. Textiles and Clothing Sustainability: Sustainable Textile Chemical Processes. Textile Science and Clothing Technology. Singapore: Springer Singapore. Nassau, Kurt. 1998. Color for Science, Art and Technology. Amsterdam/New York: Elsevier. Pastoureau, Michel. 2000. Bleu: Histoire d’une couleur. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Peterson, Steven A., and Albert Somit. 1992. The Dynamics of Evolution: The Punctuated Equilibrium Debate in the Natural and Social Sciences. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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Ratnapandian, Saminathan. 2020. Natural Colorants and its Recent Developments. In Sustainable Technologies for Fashion and Textiles, 189–208. Woodhead Publishing Series in Textiles. Woodhead Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-­0-­08-­102867-­4.00009-­8. Rigier, Terry, Paul Kay, and Naveen Khetarpal. 2009. Color Naming and the Shape of Color Space. Language 85 (4): 884–892. Rodari, Florian, ed. 1996. Anatomie de la couleur: L’invention de l’éstampe en couleurs. Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Seymour, John. 2018, June 10. The Color Name Conundrum. Keynote Lecture Presented at the Munsell Centennial Color Symposium. Boston. Shapiro, Alan E. 1994. Artists’ Colors and Newton’s Colors. Isis 85 (4): 600–630. Simonini, Giulia, and Friedrich Steinle. 2022. Pure Red. The Evolution of a Colour Idea in Trichromacy. Kritische Berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften 50, Nr. 1 (2022): 12–21. Spillmann, Werner, Karl Gerstner, and Verena M. Schindler, eds. 2009. Farb-Systeme 1611–2007: Farb-Dokumente in der Sammlung Werner Spillmann. Basel: Schwabe. Stijnman, A.D. 2020. Jacob Christoff Le Blon and Trichromatic Printing. 2 vols. The New Hollstein Dutch et Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts. Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: Sound et Vision Publishers, in co-operation with the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Uibelaker, Franz. 1781. System des Karlsbader Sinters unter Vorstellung schöner und seltener Stücke, samt einem Versuche einer mineralischen Geschichte desselben dahin einschlagenden Lehre über die Farben. Erlangen: Auf Kosten W. Walthers. Unwin, Nicholas. 2011. Why Do Colours Look the Way They Do? Philosophy 86 (337): 405–424. Werner, Abraham Gottlob. 1774. Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien. Leipzig: Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius. Woodcock, Sally. 1996. Leighton and Roberson: An Artist and his Colourman. The Burlington Magazine 138 (1121): 526–528. Tanja C. Kleinwächter studied history of science and technology and gender studies in Berlin. Her research focuses on the systematisation of colours in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is a PhD candidate and organised the workshop Ordering Colours.  

Sarah Lowengard studies colour and colour production techniques to understand social life and cultural change in the early modern West. An artisan colour-maker and practising art conservator for more than 40 years, she teaches history of technology and history of science in New York City.  

Friedrich Steinle is Professor of History of Science at Technische Universität Berlin. His research focuses on the history of experiment, of colour knowledge, and of electricity. Among his many publications on colour history, he co-edited (with M. Bushart) Colour Histories. Science, art, and technology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (2015).  

Part I

Evolution of Colour Systems and Standards

Chapter 2 The Shape of Colour Order Systems and the Evolution of Colour Theory José Luis Caivano1 (*) 1 

Universidad de Buenos Aires, and National Council for Research (Conicet), Buenos Aires, Argentina [email protected]

Abstract  The shape given to colour order systems is related to the colour theory to which they refer and the type of colour mixture they represent. These systems evolved over more than two thousand years, beginning with simple linear scales (one-dimension), progressively changing to two-dimensional schemes (circles, squares, triangles), and ending with three-dimensional models. These three-­ dimensional systems began to appear in the eighteenth century, and take the form of pyramids, cones, spheres, cubes and other more complex shapes over the next two centuries. The evolution of these colour order systems paralleled changes and evolution in the theoretical conceptions of colour, as well as in the practical needs of producing colours through mixtures of pigments, dyes, lights or other types of material means. In this evolutionary path, there are some ambiguous models. They could be regarded as trials in the evolution towards shapes more definitely adapted to a certain type of chromatic mixture, or hybrid models representing intermediate steps between additive and subtractive processes. This paper aims to offer an overview of this evolution, with its advances, hesitations, ramifications and divisions, trying to establish a gradualist sequence in terms of the transformations undergone by colour order systems. Keywords  Colour order systems · Shape of models · Colour mixtures · Gradualistic transformation

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_2

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2.1 Introduction By 2004 I had started thinking about colour order systems1 as an evolutionary sequence,2 a tree whose branches are divided according to developing theories of colour and to practices of colour mixing, and I outlined this general concept in a handmade sketch. My idea, which is of course not new, was that the shape adopted by colour order systems is related to the colour theory to which their author ascribes and the type of colour mixture they represent (Fig. 2.1). The tree I depicted has three main branches. There are systems based on the trichromatic theory of colour vision and devised to predict additive mixtures of colour lights. They are useful for colourimetry, colour reproduction in television and screens, and lighting technology, in general. Other systems are based on the opponent-process theory, taking colour as a visual sensation, no matter how it is produced or what kind of mixtures are needed. They are used in psychological and linguistic studies, design, and some artistic practices. A third and bigger group of systems are intended to explain

Fig. 2.1  Evolutionary scheme of colour order systems: original sketch of 2004 (left) and a recent representation (right)

 Karliczek (this volume) explains the difference between colour order systems (conceptual arrangements of colours that may or may not be represented by samples) and colour reference systems (which contain standardised and reproducible colour samples for practical purposes, intended to be used by visual comparison with objects). While I am mainly concerned with the first category, Karliczek develops this latter kind of system. The chapter by Szalay, in turn, deepens the particular case of colour samples produced in the Meißen porcelain factory in Germany. Both kinds of systems received tremendous attention and impetus in the eighteenth century. 2  I present here the concept of evolution as a gradual transformation or change that follows certain driving forces, which appear in given historical contexts. 1

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colourant mixtures. They are mainly based on subtractive mixtures and are useful in painting, the graphic industry, architecture, etc. These systems evolved over more than two thousand years, beginning with simple linear scales (one-dimension), and progressively changing to two-dimensional schemes (circles, squares, triangles) during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The three-dimensional models begin to appear in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as pyramids, cones, spheres, cubes, etc. More complex and sophisticated shapes have been devised in the twentieth century. The evolution of these colour order systems paralleled the changes in the theoretical conceptions of colour, as well as the practical needs of producing colours through mixtures of pigments, dyes, lights or other types of material means. Some years later, I started to work on the hypothesis that various problems of colour and visual appearance could be better studied and understood from a gradualist perspective (Caivano 2018). The history of colour order systems—a process of continuous evolution, with step-by-step changes—can be included in this perspective. This paper presents a summary of this evolution, with its advances, hesitations, ramifications and divisions, trying to establish a gradualist sequence in terms of the transformations undergone by colour order systems. In their comprehensive book, Kuehni and Schwarz (2008) describe around 170 systems from antiquity to 2001, organizing and dividing them according to their number of dimensions, classifying the more recent ones in terms of fields of origin and application, and referring also to the relationship to colour mixtures. Here, I follow similar criteria, representing the systems in general diagrams where the relationships can be seen and understood at a glance, and postulating some simple models that may account for their transformations.

2.2 From a Line to a Closed Circle Ancient systems are linear scales from white to black, that usually follow the Aristotelian conception of colour, 350 years before Christ (Aristotle 1957, par. 442a). The systems evolve by establishing relationships or connections between colours, as in the schemes by Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1168–1253) (ca. 1230), Leonardo da Vinci (1453–1519) (inter 1490–1516 [1943, par. 209, 250, 251, 254]), Franciscus Aguilonius (1567–1617) (1613, 40), and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) (1646 [1671, chap. 2, 49]) (Fig. 2.2). In 1629 Robert Fludd (1574–1637) published a circular diagram. However, rather than a two-dimensional circle, it is a colour ring (colorum annulus), a round sequence that also includes black and white in the steps (Fludd 1629, 154). Fludd has connected the extremes of the Aristotelian linear scale by bending it (Fig. 2.3a). The first known colour schemes directly drawn by the author (i.e., original drawings, not modern graphic interpretations of ancient texts) are two circular arrangements that appear in a manuscript on physics written by Aron Sigfrid Forsius (ca. 1550–1624) in 1611, almost two decades before Fludd’s ring, and two years before the publication of Aguilonius’ diagram. The first diagram that appears in the manuscript is attributed by Forsius to the “ancients”. Almost surely, he refers to the Aristotelian school and its followers that continued from the Middle Ages to his own time (Fig. 2.3b). Again, it is not

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Fig. 2.2 (a) Interpretation of the Aristotelian verbal sequence of colours (Baumann et al. 2011). (b) Our graphical interpretation of Grosseteste’s words. (c) Our graphical interpretation of Leonardo’s words. (d) Franciscus Aguilonius’ diagram (1613, the first published colour diagram). (e) Athanasius Kircher’s diagram (1646)

a colour circle of hues as we understand it today, because it includes black and white in the sequence. It is not very different from the previous examples. The second diagram in Forsius’ manuscript is more controversial because some scholars think of it as a three-dimensional representation of a colour system—a colour sphere—while others are against this interpretation. In my opinion, it is difficult to resolve this controversy. Forsius does not write the word “sphere” anywhere in his text, and the drawing is schematic and not well fitted to the representation of a sphere in vertical projection or perspective (Fig.  2.4a). In addition, the diagram has two misplaced colours, as Spillmann (2001) points out. If we want to understand it as a consistent natural colour system, blue and green should exchange places (Fig. 2.4b). This diagram has led to many contemporary discussions, interpretations and misunderstandings since its rediscovery around 1965.3 This is mere speculation, but had it

 The manuscript was printed for the first time in 1952, in the Year Book of Uppsala University, but it only started to have an impact on the community of colour researchers after 1965, when Anders Hård brought it to light. I had access to a copy of the Forsius manuscript thanks to Hård (2005). 3

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Fig. 2.3 (a) Robert Fludd’s colour ring (1629), the first printed diagram with a circular shape. Translation of the Latin text: Colorum Annulus (colour ring); Albus (white): Nigredinis nihil (nothing blackness); Flavus (yellow): In albedine et rubedinis aequalitas (red and white balance); Croceus (orange): Plus rubedinis, Minus albedinis (more redness, less white); Rubeus (red): Medium inter albedinem & nigredinis (intermediate between white & black); Viridis (green): Lucis et nigredinis aequalitas (balance of light and blackness); Caeruleus (blue): Plus nigredinis, minus lucis (more black, less light); Niger (black): Lux nulla (no light). (b) Colour diagram termed “ancient” by Sigfrid Forsius in his manuscript (1611). The colour names, written in old Swedish, have been translated into English by Anders Hård (2005)

Fig. 2.4 (a) Forsius’ second colour drawing in his manuscript (1611): a colour sphere or a diagram of relations? (b) The way Forsius’ diagram should look in order to be a consistent natural colour system. (Adapted from Spillmann 2001)

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been more widely known in Forsius’ time—by being published instead of remaining in a manuscript in the Stockholm library—its influence could have led other scholars to conceive a true colour sphere in the seventeenth century, even through misinterpretation. We have to wait nearly one hundred years to see the first modern-style colour circle, which was published around the turn of the eighteenth century. In his Opticks, Isaac Newton (1643–1727) (1704 [1952, 154–158]) includes a circle with seven colours (five with a larger span interval and two with a shorter one), owing to his desire to parallel the series of seven musical tones and half-tones of the diatonic scale (Figs. 2.5 and 2.6).4 In Newton’s circle, the mixture of spectral lights blends into white at the centre. In modern terms, this is considered an additive colour mixture. We must keep in mind, however, that the difference between additive and subtractive mixture was not clear at the time of Newton. What is important is that, for the first time, white is removed from the series of colours on the perimeter and placed at the centre of the diagram. Another novelty is that, unlike any previous circular representation, here the idea is that colour mixtures fill out the entire circle progressively, from the outer spectral sequence towards the white centre. In this sense, Newton’s circle is the direct antecedent, with some intermediate steps, of the development of the CIE 1931 chromaticity diagram.

Fig. 2.5  Colour circle by Newton (1704), with 7 spectral colours on the perimeter and white at the centre

 This kind of colour-music association is one of the origins of the concept of colour harmony, which is closely related to the systematic ordering of colours. Westland et al. (2007, pp. 3–4) clearly state: “During the Enlightenment in Europe in the eighteenth century there was a fresh search for rational, rather than mystical, explanations of all kinds of natural phenomena. In particular, people sought a perfect colour-order system and associated laws of harmony”. In a section of her chapter, Mävers-Persch (in this volume) exposes a peculiar proposal of colour-­music harmony by Ernst Wetzler, early in the nineteenth century. 4

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Fig. 2.6  Parallelism of Newton’s circle with the seven musical tones and half-tones of the diatonic scale

In 1708, very close to the date of Newton’s Opticks, a book on miniature painting was published, which includes two painted colour circles. The author of the circles is unknown; many scholars attribute them to Claude Boutet. The first circle has seven colours like Newton’s, but they are distributed in equal sectors. The second circle contains 12 hues arranged in triads (Fig. 2.7). This is the oldest known representation of the traditional colour wheel used by painters until today. We will deal again with it in the next section, when referring to the trichromatic theory.5 The idea that a mixture of a small number of colours (called principal, basic, primary, or elementary) could form all others had appeared in glimpses since the fifteenth century, but it was more definitively established during the eighteenth. Since then, this idea began to determine the shape and structure of colour order systems, particularly regarding the circuit of fully saturated colours. Thus, we will find triangles, diagrams and circles divided into triads (with three primaries), squares or circles divided into quadrants (with four elementary hues), pentagons inscribed in circles (with five princi All eighteenth-century colour circles and two-dimensional diagrams followed the concept established by Newton: the achromatic colours, black and white, will never again appear on the edge. However, there are variations regarding the number of colours that they include. The number 7, proposed by Newton, is not very frequent; the most common is to find 6 or 12 colours, and sometimes 18, 24, or 36, i.e. always multiples of 3. A very particular case is Uibelaker’s circle of 1781, which maintains the number 7 (although it modifies the Newtonian diagram in more than one way) and adds intermediate colours up to 28, which is a multiple of 2, 4 and 7. An additional oddity of Uibelaker is that his proposal is organized according to a particular dichromatic theory (Kleinwächter, this volume). 5

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Fig. 2.7  Colour circles attributed to Claude Boutet, included in the 1708 edition of the Traité de la peinture en mignature (triangles added in order to show the two triads in the second circle). The circles are also reproduced in Spillmann (2009)

pal hues, as in the case of Munsell), hexagons or circles divided into six hues, and seven-hue circles or organisations.

2.3 The Rise of Trichromatic Theory and the Jump to the Third Dimension A graphic representation of the general idea of primary colours, one that will lead to trichromacy, can be traced to Aguilonius. As we have seen, in 1613 (p. 40) he published a colour diagram with black and white as the extremes of a sequence that contains yellow, red, and blue in the middle. These colours in turn generate the other colours through their mixture: yellow and red produce golden (orange); red and blue mix into purple; yellow and blue generate green (Fig. 2.2d). As Aguilonius noted (1613, 38), “five are the simple colour species [white, yellow, red, blue, black], and three are the composite ones [orange, purple, green]”.6 The idea behind Aguilonius‘diagram appears verbally, described by Scarmilionius already in 1601 (book 2, chap. 4) when he proposed a sequence of five “simple” colours: white, yellow, blue (called hyacinth), red and black (Gage 1993, 153ff; Kuehni 2005, 6

 Quinque sunt simplicium colorum species, ac tres compositae.

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179, note 12). Osborne (2015, 4) mentions another antecedent to this notion that red, yellow and blue form the best triad for colourant mixtures: a book on the natural history of gems and stones, published in 1609 by Anselm de Boodt. In 1664, Robert Boyle (1627–1691) was already using the denomination “primary colours”: […] there are but few Simple and Primary Colours (if I may so call them) from whose Various Compositions all the rest do as it were Result. For though Painters can imitate the Hues (though not always the Splendor) of those almost Numberless differing Colours that are to be met with in the Works of Nature, and of Art, I have not yet found, that to exhibit this strange Variety they need imploy any more than White, and Black, and Red, and Blew, and Yellow […] Thus (for Instance) Black and White differingly mix’d, make a Vast company of Lighter and Darker Grays. Blew and Yellow make a huge Variety of Greens. Red and Yellow make Orange Tawny. Red with a little White makes a Carnation. Red with an Eye of Blew, makes a Purple; and by these simple Compositions again Compounded among themselves, the Skilfull Painter can produce what kind of Colour he pleases, and a great many more than we have yet Names for. (Boyle 1664, part 3, experiment 12)

In his book Des principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture et des autres arts… (Principles of Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Other Arts), published in 1676, André Félibien (1619–1695) listed and described the three principal colours: yellow, blue, and red. He says: The colours that I have just mentioned are the base or, even more, the material with which all the other colours used for enamel painting are composed; you just have to mix them together to make various tints. […] the same as painters do on their palettes. Blue and Yellow mixed together make Green; Blue and Red make Violet; and so the others. (Félibien 1676 [1690, 435–436], my translation)

In 1685 Johannes Zahn (1641–1707) published what seems to be the first colour diagram in a triangle form (1685 [1702, 111]). However, it is not a triangle of full hues (as we understand this today), nor is it a triangular surface. Instead, it is a scheme of colour relationships and mixtures, similar to Aguilonius‘diagram but using straight lines (instead of arcs) to connect the colours. That is, the colours are placed at the intersections, they do not fill the surface. At the base of the triangle, we find the already-­known scale of three colours (yellow, red, blue) between white and black (Fig. 2.8).7 The mixture of white and black makes grey; yellow and red make orange;

 The diagram depicted in Figure 2.8 appears in the second edition (1702). In the first edition (1685), the triangle was surrounded by many elements of decoration and a table of analogies. The five colours at the base of the triangle are compared to other things: five states of light, five taste sensations, five elements, five human ages, five attitudes in front of the truth, five categories of being (between God and plants, with humans in the middle), and five musical tones. This “decorated” triangle appears also in the second edition (p. 113). 7

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Fig. 2.8  Johannes Zahn triangular colour diagram (1685): original representation reproduced from the 2nd edition of 1702, with the names in Latin (left); and our modern interpretation with colours added and names translated into English (right)

red and blue make purple; yellow and blue make green; the other mixtures are included as well. The first modern-style colour triangle, with three chromatic hues and with colours that fill the surface, was proposed by Tobias Mayer (1723–1762) in a lecture delivered in Göttingen in 1758. It was published in 1775, after Mayer’s death, by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799). The triangle has red, yellow and blue as its primary colours, and Mayer developed a colour notation system and a theory of mixtures by quantifying and combining the amounts of each primary in terms of 12 steps (Fig. 2.9a). At each vertex, the primaries red (Roth), yellow (Gelb) and blue (Blau) hold the number 12 (the maximum amount). While moving from its vertex along the edges of the triangle, each primary is combined with another, and the amount decreases progressively while the other one increases in proportion to make up the number 12. The same happens towards the centre of the triangle, but combining the three primaries in an inverse proportion to the distance from the vertices. At every step, the notation of the mixed colour in question holds 12 as the total amount, which results from the sum of the values of all three primaries. For example, the orange colour placed in the middle of the Roth-Gelb side of the triangle is called r6 g6, the colour in the middle of the Roth-­ Blau side is termed r6 b6, the colour in the middle of the Gelb- Blau side is g6 b6. The greyish colour at the centre of the triangle, which has equal amounts of the three combined primaries, is called r4 g4 b4. By incorporating numbers in the notation, Mayer’s triangle becomes the first colour system in history to have gradual steps of variation in a continuous sequence (instead of discrete steps or fixed intervals), because those numbers can be divided into fractions as small as desired. The method and theoretical formulas look as if Mayer was following additive principles. But, again, we need to take into account that the difference between additive light mixtures and subtractive colourant mixtures was not well understood. Consequently, this led to some confusion. In fact, because the representation of the triangle was produced with pigments it shows the dull grey or brown colour obtained by the mixture of

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Fig. 2.9  Tobias Mayer triangle of colour (1758): (a) Black and white representation with the notation of colours. (b) Hand-coloured representation published by Lichtenberg in 1775. (c) Modern reconstruction by Heinwig Lang (1983) as a double pyramid

these primaries, instead of white, as it would result from an additive mixture of lights (Fig. 2.9b). Both Mayer and Lichtenberg emphasized that the colour mixtures of the triangle are to be made with dry pigments in powder (Lee 2000, 66). This produces a partitive or optical mixture, not subtractive nor additive, as Barry Lee supposes. Lee (2000, 67) has written that: “this approximates an additive mixture, but with a reduction in luminance” (emphasis added). That is, the result of the mixture is grey, not black or white. And this is what is observed in the coloured version of the Mayer triangle. Even though Mayer did not produce a drawing of his three-dimensional model, it could be interpreted from his formulation. Mayer’s unpublished papers were collected after his death in a book edited by Lichtenberg, who included a hand-coloured version of the triangle. In his commentary on the publication, Lichtenberg describes a prism that can be derived from Mayer’s conception, and states that the result “can be reached more elegantly with two identical pyramids having a common base”. This description has been rendered graphically by Heinwig Lang (1983) (Fig. 2.9c). Around 1760, Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) was aware of Mayer’s triangle from reports published in Göttingen and developed a colour pyramid, published in 1772, with a red-yellow-blue triangle at the base, that produced black as a mixture, and a vertical axis towards white, along which successive triangles become lighter and lighter (Fig. 2.10). This is the first published representation of a colour system that is undoubtedly three-dimensional. The historical and technical details behind the collaboration between Lambert and Benjamin Calau (1724–1785) to produce the colours of the pyramid by mixing three primaries are admirably developed by Simonini (this volume). The fact that the centre of the base triangle appears black, as must happen in a true subtractive mixture, is due to the transparency of the colourants employed by Calau. We should now return to the second circle by Boutet (1708), but consider it in the context of trichromatic theory and the tradition that it inaugurated. It is the first published colour circle that represents a trichromatic mixture, with a triad of yellow, red

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Fig. 2.10  Lambert’s colour pyramid (1772)

and blue, that can be inscribed in an equilateral triangle, opposed by another triangle with green, orange and purple, and containing a total of 12 hues. As I have already said, Claude Boutet is usually given credit for this circle. With subtractive mixtures of red, yellow and blue, this circle is a truly modern two-dimensional colour diagram, and the pioneer of a series of colour circles that have been kept practically unchanged until nowadays. We can see the same arrangement adopted again by Moses Harris (ca. 1770), Philip Otto Runge (1810), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1810), Charles Hayter (1826), George Field (1841), Michel Eugène Chevreul (1864), Arthur Pope (1922), Johannes Itten (1961), and others (Fig. 2.11). In 1725, Jacob Christoph Le Blon (1667–1741) developed the technological principle of trichromacy for colour reproduction (Stijnman, in this volume): “Painting can represent all visible objects with three colours, Yellow, Red, and Blue; for all other colours can be composed of these three, which I call primitive” (Le Blon 1725, 6). But we have to wait until 1801 when Thomas Young related this principle to human vision, and for later developments by Hermann von Helmholtz, before trichromacy was fully established. Le Blon also explained that the mixture of his three “primitive” colours gives black, as they are “material” colours, i.e., paints. While with “impalpable” colours (in his terms) the result is white. Here he distinguishes between colourant mixture and light mixture. About two hundred years later, this difference will be characterised as a subtractive or an additive colour mixture. Le Blon was extremely close to this distinction between additive and subtractive mixtures when he wrote: “White, is a concentering […] of lights. Black, is a deep hiding, or privation of lights. But both are the product of

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Fig. 2.11  Boutet’s circle (1708), compared with the similarly arranged colour circles by Harris (ca. 1770), Runge (1810), (von Goethe (1810)), Hayter (1826), Field (1841), Chevreul (1864), Pope (1922), and Itten (1961)

all the primitive colours compounded or mixed together; the one by impalpable colours, and the other by material colours” (1725, 6 and 8). It seems to be a matter of wording: “concentering” can be considered more or less equivalent to addition, while “privation”, more or less equivalent to subtraction. However, it seems that this passage had no influence on, or was not well understood by Le Blon’s contemporaries or later scholars. Had this not been so, the evolution of colour systems might have taken a different path at this point. Contemporary to Mayer, Lambert, and Le Blon was the Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765). His colour theory is developed (in this volume) by Stanulevich, who refers to Lomonosov’s lecture of 1756, in which he explained that the mixture of red, yellow, and blue lights yields white. While other authors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were considering colourant mixtures, Lomonosov was specific about light mixture, and he contributed to the understanding that the three monochromatic lights chosen from specific sectors of the spectrum were sufficient to obtain white, instead of the seven spectral colours of Newton.

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2.4 Distinction Between Additive and Subtractive Colour Mixture To understand the nineteenth- and twentieth-century development of colour systems, it is helpful to have a closer look at the history of ideas on colour mixing. Although the distinction between additive mixing of lights and subtractive mixing of colourants may have arrived, via Le Blon’s words, in 1725, it took until the middle of the nineteenth century for it to be established, after the work of Maxwell, Helmholtz, Grassmann, and others. In 1853, Hermann Grassmann (1809–1877) exposed his laws of colour mixture; in 1855 James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) was able to “calibrate the spectrum”. In 1852, Hermann Ludwig von Helmholtz (1821–1894) described his experiments on mixing colours: using lights or colourants he emphasized the different results in either case. This would be further developed in his Treatise on physiological optics, where Helmholtz already uses the words “addition” and “subtraction” to differentiate the processes (1867, 276). Around 1850, when the distinction between additive and subtractive mixing began to be understood, the systems that represent light mixtures and those that respond to pigment mixtures started to adopt different forms. Among the characteristic three-­dimensional shapes of that time were: conical shapes for light mixtures (typically with one vertex, where black is located), and approximate double-cone, tilted cubes, or spherical shapes (characteristically with two poles, for white and black) for pigmentary mixtures (Fig. 2.12). There are, however, some cases that are difficult to classify as colour spaces representing additive or subtractive mixtures, for instance, the double cone by Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932). He used the method of spinning disks with coloured papers in radial sectors to mix colour stimuli, which was one of the various procedures used previously by both Maxwell and Helmholtz. Ostwald’s disks had three radial sectors: black, white, and a pure hue (or full colour). Following psychophysical scales to establish the proportions of the three sectors in the disks, he obtained the intermediate colours in each monochromatic triangle around the circle of hues (Fig. 2.13). At that time, the use of spinning disks was regarded as a way to produce additive mixtures. The category of partitive mixture was not yet established. Later in the twentieth century, this method was said to produce a partitive mixture, also called an optical mixture, not a truly additive one. Hence, Ostwald’s system could be placed between additive and subtractive models. In his paper of 1852, Helmholtz discussed in detail the results of using different procedures to mix colours. One, of course, is mixing spectral lights by obtaining a full spectrum and then selecting three monochromatic lights by letting only three narrow sectors of the spectrum pass through slits made on a screen. Helmholtz selected red on one extreme, green in the middle, and violet at the other extreme. He showed he could obtain white by mixing all three. Helmholtz then described what happened when he tested material substances: transparent dyes, more translucent paints, and pigments in powder form. He explained the physical aspects involved and focused on the light that is directed towards the observer,

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Fig. 2.12  Some examples of two groups of three-dimensional colour order systems that started to be differentiated (separated in two evolutionary branches) during the second half of the nineteenth century: colour spaces that predict additive mixtures of light (left), and colour solids that represent pigmentary mixtures (right)

Fig. 2.13  Wilhelm Ostwald’s double cone, and his way of producing the colour mixtures for the samples in the monochromatic triangles. The numbers that combine at each colour position represent the percentages of white, black and a full colour, to be mixed in a spinning disk in order to obtain the colour in question

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which will elicit the colour sensation. Finally, he mentioned the spinning disks with radial sectors of coloured papers, and an arrangement with a glass perpendicular to a table and two different coloured papers, one that is seen by reflection and the other by transmission, both superimposed in the image that the observer sees. In a paper of 1855, Maxwell referred to these same methods, citing Helmholtz. He repeated some of the experiments and also considered the method of binocular mixing, that is, presenting a different colour to each eye of an observer. All the issues discussed in this section drive us to consider the methods for mixing colours. Let’s take an example that Helmholtz already used: • If we mix blue and yellow using dyes, inks or colour filters, we usually obtain a green colour that is darker than both blue and yellow. This is a subtractive mixture. Some light is selectively absorbed by each colour layer; thus, the result is less light (Fig. 2.14). • If we mix blue and yellow by a superposition of lights on a screen, we obtain white: blue plus yellow (which in turn is red plus green), gives white. Obviously, white is lighter than both blue and yellow. This is a true additive mixture because the result is more light (Fig. 2.15). • But if we mix blue and yellow on a spinning disc, we obtain grey, not white. This grey is lighter than the blue sector and darker than the yellow one. It is an area-­ weighted average of the blue and yellow lightness. This is a partitive or optical mixture, similar to the one that results from the pointillist or divisionist technique of painting (Fig. 2.16).

Fig. 2.14  Subtractive mixture of yellow and blue transparent acrylics: the resulting green colour is darker than both. The numbers in the diagram below are the measured lightness; the black lines connect the lightness levels. When a V-shape is shown (i.e., when the point representing the lightness of the mixture is lower than the two points representing the lightness of the two colours), it is evident that it is a subtractive mixture

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Fig. 2.15  Additive mixture of two lights projected on a screen: blue and yellow are superimposed and yield white. The diagram with colour samples below (indicating the lightness) shows a Ʌ-shape, characteristic of additive mixtures

Fig. 2.16  Partitive or optical mixture produced by yellow and blue sectors on a spinning disk. Instead of showing a V- or a Ʌ-shape, the lines connecting the lightness follow a descending path (or an ascending path, if the colours are inverted in order)

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Harald Küppers (1928–2021) further developed the principles of colour mixtures, enumerating various “laws of colour synthesis” (1978 [1980, 145–179]). Among the most important ones are: • • • • • •

additive synthesis (for example, colour television), subtractive synthesis (for example, colour photography), layers of translucent and opaque colour (paints applied in overlapping layers), integrated mixture (opaque paints previously mixed and then applied in one layer), optical mixture (small colour dots not perceived individually, integrated by the eye), fast mixture (colour stimuli at very short time intervals).

Küppers asserts that “there are at least 11 laws of colour mixture” (1980, 177].

2.5 Colour Mixture as a Gradual Process In recapitulating, we see that until 1850, colour mixture was considered just one thing. Then, we find this process separated into additive and subtractive mixtures. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, a third process—partitive—starts to be distinguished. Towards the end of the twentieth century, Küppers asserts that there are at least 11 kinds of colour mixtures. Looking at this sequence, a question seems evident: Is there any final number for this? Or can this be considered a continuous, gradual process, where almost infinite divisions can be established between two extremes? Based on all the previous considerations, we can postulate a model where there could be gradual changes between additive and subtractive mixtures, passing through the intermediate step of partitive mixture (Table 2.1). And thus, a schematic three-dimensional model of gradual transformation can be proposed to encompass different colour systems that represent any possible mixture between additive and subtractive. This model will support our understanding of the evolution of colour systems in the twentieth century. At one extreme, the mixture of three coloured lights (usually, red, green, blue) gives white as a result. In the middle, an optical mixing of primary colours results in a middle grey. At the other extreme, the subtractive mixture of transparent inks, acting as layers that absorb light (as used in colour printing, for instance) yields a very dark grey, almost black, as the result. The base or the middle surface of these models may consist of triangles or chromatic circles, divided according to the number of primary or principal colours considered. And this surface gradually moves up (towards white) or down (towards black) along the achromatic scale (Fig.  2.17). Also, this surface, which contains all hues in their maximum saturation around the border, could be kept horizontal or tilted, according to the principle that, in terms of lightness, yellow is closer to white than to black, and blue (or violet, or purple) is closer to black than to white. This feature appeared at the end of the nineteenth century and continued in some of the twentieth-century systems (see in Fig. 2.19 the solids by Kirschmann, Titchener, Munsell, and Pope, as well as the PCCS and Coloroid).

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Table 2.1  Some of the gradual steps possible between truly additive and fully subtractive colour mixtures

Fig. 2.17  A model of gradual transformation of colour systems representing a sequence from additive to subtractive colour mixtures, from left to right. The shape of these three-dimensional models is just a synthesis, or an approximate representation. What matters is not the exact shape of the model (which can change to fit the needs of a specific system), but the relative position of the white and black poles, with respect to the circuit of full hues

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2.6 Punctuated Evolution of Colour Order Systems In the introduction, I announced I would present the history of colour systems as a continuous evolution. Looking back now to the development path I have sketched, we might modify that evolutionary image. Rather than a gradual, continuous transformation, it could be regarded as a punctuated evolution, with small steps or jumps with each change.8 With regard to spatial or geometrical aspects, first we find linear arrangements (Aristotle and followers). In the next step, the linear sequence of colours starts to show connections, and finally it is closed in a circumference (Fludd) or a triangle (Zahn), but with empty spaces inside. Next, Newton fills the circle, and achromatic colours disappear from the border: they go inside, occupying the centre of the circle or two-­ dimensional chromaticity diagram. With this revolutionary step, we enter the eighteenth century. While it took nearly two thousand years to close the circle, and almost one hundred years to fill it in, it took just a little more than 50 years to see this surface transformed into a three-dimensional space (Mayer, Lambert). These two important changes, which took place within the eighteenth century, bring us to the modern conception of colour systems (Fig. 2.18). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the three-dimensional models were further improved: additive and subtractive processes become separated, and the shapes start being divided into models with one vertex and models with two vertices. Some models begin to appear with the chromatic circle tilted (pure yellow closer to white, pure violet or purple closer to black), and thus the surface becomes more elliptical than circular. Certain twentieth-century models have—instead of convex volumes (spheres, cones, double cones, pyramids, double pyramids)—more complex shapes, with positive and negative curvatures, in both the chromatic surface of full hues and in the outer surface of the model (Fig. 2.19). This process of punctuated transformation through more or less small steps or divisions will undoubtedly continue. In concluding my survey, I want to add some considerations of what the next steps might be. I foresee two possibilities: 1. The addition of one or two more dimensions to the three-dimensional shapes, to encompass not only the three classical colour variables (e.g., hue, lightness, saturation) but also other variables of appearance, such as gloss and transparency (Caivano 1991, 1994; Caivano and Green-Armytage 2016). 2. The evolution of human colour vision towards a tetrachromatic system, as cases have already been found of women with tetrachromatic vision. Colour order systems should reflect this tendency. However, we cannot expect this kind of biological evolution to happen in the span of a few generations; these processes usually take a very long time, depending on the driving forces behind them.

 In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould introduced the notion of punctuated equilibria as an alternative to that of phyletic gradualism that prevailed in evolutionary biology until then (Eldredge and Gould 1972; Gould 1982). 8

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Fig. 2.18  An example that represents in a simple way the difference between gradual and punctuated evolution (left). A schematic tree of the evolution of colour order systems (right)

Fig. 2.19  Diagram showing a classification of some typical colour order systems since 1850 until the end of the millennium. In this case, the polar criteria for classifying the systems are: additive vs. subtractive, convex-simple vs. concave-complex, horizontal hue circuit vs. tilted hue circuit. Note that some systems are difficult to put in one group or another, which indicates that there are always some steps in between

References Aguilonius, Franciscus. 1613. Opticorum libri sex. Antwerp: Plantin. Aristotle. 1957. Peri aistheseos kai aistheton [On Sense and Sensible Objects]. In On the Soul, Parva naturalia, On Breath, bilingual Greek-English, ed. W.  S. Hett. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Baumann, Urs, Narciso Silvestrini, and Klaus Stromer. 2011. Colour Order Systems in Art and Science. In https://www.colorsystem.com

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Boutet, Claude. 1708. Traité de la peinture en mignature … auquel on a ajouté un petit traité de la peinture au pastel, avec la méthode de composer les pastels. The Hague: Louis and Henry van Dole. English translation, with a speculative essay on its authorship by Rolf G. Kuehni, available at: http://www.iscc-­archive.org/pdf/TraitePastel.pdf. Accessed June 2021. Boyle, Robert. 1664. Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours. London: Henry Herringman. Caivano, Jose Luis. 1991. Cesia: A System of Visual Signs Complementing Color. Color Research and Application 16 (4): 258–268. ———. 1994. Appearance (cesia): Construction of Scales by Means of Spinning Disks. Color Research and Application 19 (5): 351–362. ———. 2018. Colour from a Gradualist Perspective. In Proceedings of the International Color Association (AIC) Conference 2018, ed. M.  Gamito and M.  J. Durão, 31–38. Newtown: International Colour Association. Caivano, Jose Luis, and Paul Green-Armytage. 2016. Appearance. In Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, ed. M.R. Luo, 40–47. New York: Springer. Chevreul, Michel Eugène. 1864. Des couleurs et de leurs applications aux arts industriels à l’aide des cercles chromatiques. Paris: Baillière et fils. da Vinci, Leonardo. (1943 [1490–1516]). Trattata della pittura. Spanish version by M. Pittaluga, Tratado de la pintura. Buenos Aires: Losada. Dinkova-Bruun, Greti, G. Gasper, M. Huxtable, T. McLeish, C. Panti, and H. Smithson. 2013. The Dimensions of Colour: Robert Grosseteste’s De colore. Edition, Translation, and Interdisciplinary Analysis. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. Eldredge, Niles, and Stephen Jay Gould. 1972. Punctuated Equilibria: An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism. In Models in Paleobiology, ed. T.J.M. Schopf, 82–115. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper. Félibien, André. 1676. Des principes de l’architecture, de la sculpture, de la peinture, et des autres art. Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard. 2nd edition, 1690. Field, George. 1841. Chromatography, or A Treatise on Colours and Pigments. New edition. London: Tilt and Bogue. Fludd, Robert. 1629. Medicina catholica. Frankfurt: C. Rötelli. Forsius, Sigfrid. 1611. Physica. Manuscript in the Royal Library, Stockholm. See Hård (2005). Gage, John. 1993. Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. London: Thames and Hudson. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1982. Punctuated Equilibrium—A Different Way of Seeing. New Scientist 94 (April 15): 137–139. Grassmann, Hermann. 1853. Zur Theorie der Farbenmischung. Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 165 (5): 69–84. Grosseteste, Robert. Ca. 1230. De colore. In Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, vol. IX.  Münster: Freie Kunstschule, 1912. English translation included in Dinkova-Bruun et al. 2013. Hård, Anders. 2005. Personal communication, including a copy of various pages of Forsius’ manuscript on Physica, an English translation by Hård, and his own comments and drawings, 16 pages. Harris, Moses. Ca. 1770. The Natural System of Colours. London. Hayter, Charles. 1826. A New Practical Treatise on the Three Primitive Colours. London: Printed for the author and sold by John Booth. Itten, Johannes. 1961/1970. Kunst der Farbe. Ravensburg: Otto Maier. English version by E. van Hagen, The Elements of Color. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Kircher, Athanasius. 1646/1671. Ars magna lucis et umbrae. Rome. New edition, Amsterdam: Jansson & Waesberge.

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Kuehni, Rolf. 2005. Colour: An Introduction to Practice and Principles. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley. Kuehni, Rolf, and Andreas Schwarz. 2008. Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Systems from Antiquity to the Present. Cary: Oxford University Press. Küppers, Harald. 1980. Fundamentos de la teoría de los colores [Das Grundgesetz der Farbenlehre]. Translation by M. Faber-Kaiser. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1772. Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide. Berlin: Hande und Spener. English translation, with an introduction and biographical information, by Rolf Kuehni, Johann Heinrich Lambert’s Farbenpyramide, 2011. Lang, Heinwig. 1983. Trichromatic Theories Before Young. Color Research and Application 8 (4): 221–231. Le Blon, Jacob Christoph. 1725. Coloritto; or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting. London. Lee, Barry B. 2000. Commentary to the English publication, translated by Adriana Fiorentini, of Tobias Mayer article: ‘On the relationships between Colours’. Color Research and Application 25 (1): 66–68. Maxwell, James C. 1855. Experiments on Colour, as Perceived by the Eye, with Remarks on Colour-blindness. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh XXI, Part 2: 275–299. Mayer, Tobias. 1758/1775. De affinitate colorum commentatio. Göttingen: manuscript. Published in Opera inedita Tobiae Mayeri, ed. G. C. Lichtenberg, vol. I. Göttingen: Dieterich. Newton, Isaac. 1704/1952. Opticks: or A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. London: Smith and Walford. New edition based on the 4th edition of 1730. New York: Dover. Osborne, Roy. 2015. Books on Colour 1495–2015: History and Bibliography. Morrisville: Lulu Press, Thylesius Books. Pope, Arthur. 1922. Tone Relations in Painting. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Runge, Philipp Otto. 1810/2008. Die Farben-Kugel. Hamburg: Friedrich Perthes. English translation with an essay by Rolf Kuehni, Philipp Otto Runge’s Colour Sphere. Scarmilionius, V.A. 1601. De coloribus. Marburg. Spillmann, Werner. 2001. Farbskalen—Farbkreise—Farbsysteme. Wallisellen: Applica. ———, ed. 2009. Farb-Systeme 1611–2007. Farb-Dokumente in der Sammlung Werner Spillmann, with texts by Karl Gerstner, Verena M. Schindler, Stefanie Wettstein, Isabel Haupt, Lino Sibillano and Werner Spillmann. Basel: Schwabe Verlag. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1810. Zur Farbenlehre. Tübingen: Cotta. von Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig. 1852. On the Theory of Compound Colours. Philosophical Magazine 4: 519–534. ———. 1867. Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik. Hamburg: Leopold Voss. Westland, Stephen, Kevin Laycock, Vien Cheung, Phil Henry, and Forough Mahyar. 2007. Colour Harmony. Colour: Design & Creativity 1 (1): 1–15. Zahn, Johannes. 1685/1702. Oculis artificialis teledioptricus sive telescopium. Würzburg: Heil. 2nd edition, Nuremberg: Lochner. José Luis Caivano is Professor, Faculty of Architecture, University of Buenos Aires, where he is Director of the Colour Research Program. He is also a Research Fellow of the National Research Council (Conicet), Argentina. Caivano is the author of more than 130 published articles.  

Chapter 3 Materialisation of Vision: Colour Standards in the Early Sciences, Handicrafts, and Arts André Karliczek1 1 

(*)

Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany [email protected]

Abstract  The development of universal and binding norms and standards was fundamental to the emergence of modern science. The quantification of nature by means of various measuring tools in the eighteenth century was followed by the standardisation of their non-measurable, sensual qualities, such as colour. Following Linnaeus’ revolutionary teachings in classifying natural history, standardising such visual properties as colours or patterns became an essential desideratum. They often allowed naturalists to distinguish insects—on a species level—and generally minerals too. But how were scientists to single out the colours of nature at a time when the available natural colourants were very limited, and no binding colour nomenclature was established? How could an eighteenth-century naturalist describe or measure the colours of nature so confidently that another would rediscover it in nature without ever having seen it before? The paper takes these questions to the fore and traces the emergence of colour standards in the early sciences in all three realms of nature (minerals, plants, and animals). It shows how natural history investigation has been able to draw on procedures already established in artisanal and artistic practice and adapt them to their specific requirements such as colour charts, colour atlases, colour wheels and elsewhere. Keywords  Colour systematisation · Materialisation of vision · Colour measurement · Colour standards

Regardless of whether colours are considered in science and medicine as a feature of natural objects or as a means to visualise processes and interrelationships (Bock von Wülfingen 2019), the underlying methodological approach remains the same: Colour sensations enable us to differentiate similarities and differences in the world that surrounds us. We as humans can then ask for a specific meaning or can add such. Our capacity to distinguish colours and to materialise them in the form of standardised colour samples while, at the same time, differentiating between them via colour terminologies makes colour the ideal tool for sciences that seek to describe, analyse and order the world by comparing similarities and differences.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_3

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There is a problem here, however. Colours are perceptions and we humans are not very good at remembering colours. We hardly succeed in assigning colour stimuli to certain colour terms in a way that is equally coherent to others, as comprehension depends on such factors as an individual’s degree of colour vision, the colour environment or cultural affiliation (Berlin and Kay 1969; Davidoff et  al. 1999; Jonauskaite et al. 2020). For a scientific1 use of colours—as a reliable distinguishing feature as well as for a binding communication—materialisation of what is seen, in the sense of a standardised reference of colour samples and terms, is therefore necessary. The history of this standardisation is on the one hand closely connected to the need within natural science for colour differentiation and, on the other hand, with the development of technical possibilities for the production of identical and consistent colour samples. In charting this history, it is also important to remember that a standard only becomes a useful tool for scientific work once it is established, and can be handed down. The article is a synthesis of research findings from the past 15 years. It is based on the author’s publications, most of which are in German and, in the first part, outlines findings that were originally worked out closely on the historical source material (Karliczek 2013a, b, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021; Karliczek and Schwarz 2016a, b; Breidbach et al. 2010; Karliczek and Breidbach 2011; Vogt and Karliczek 2013; Ludwig et al. 2022).

3.1 Ordering Colours: Colour Systems and Colour Reference Systems Two types of scientific systems of colour can be distinguished in eighteenth-century writings: colour systems and colour reference systems. Colour systems depict a certain order through the relationships of the individual colour tones. The respective order criteria are not necessarily derived from basic and mixed colours but are based, for example, on philosophical, theological, mathematical or metaphysical premises (Kuehni and Schwarz 2008; Boskamp 2008; Caivano this volume). On the other hand, colour reference systems establish a relationship between individual colour samples, whose mixing components are cited, and colour terms and thus verbally secure a visual colour impression. In this way, colour descriptions or analyses can be reproducibly standardised. Figure 3.1 shows the temporal distribution of colour systems and colour reference systems from the seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. While colour systems can be traced back to antiquity, attempts to standardise colours for scientific purposes became common only after 1760. It is therefore not surprising that there were also attempts to further develop colour systems as colour standards. Among the best known of these hybrid systems are Moses Harris’ (1730–1787) The Natural

 Since the sciences as we know them today only emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, I use the term “scientific” here in a general way to indicate natural history, natural philosophy, medicine, and similar disciplines. 1

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Fig. 3.1  Chronological distribution of colour systems and colour reference systems from the mid-seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth century. The red dashed line marks the publication date of the 10th Edition of Linné’s Systema naturae. (© André Karliczek)

System of Colours2 or Ignaz Schiffermüller (1727–1806)’s Versuch eines Farbensystems of 1771 (Kleinwächter this volume). This finding is astonishing, as the principle of colour ordering and referencing was known long before, from artistic and artisanal practice. For example, Richard Waller (d. 1715)’s Tabula Colourum Physiologica of 1686, which appears to be the only example from before the mid-eighteenth century, is also an adaptation to scientific purposes of the colour table of the miniature painter Elias Brenner (1647–1717) (Kusukawa 2011).3 In the contemporary scientific context, however, Waller’s table remained a singularity that was hardly noticed or passed on. There are numerous reasons for this, but the most important is that there was no call for colour standards in science in the late seventeenth century. The need did not arise until the second half of the eighteenth century, when colour, previously regarded as an epiphenomenon of natural bodies, had become stabilised within the sciences in two ways. On the one hand, this stabilisation resulted from the optical quantification and thereby definition of differently refrangible rays of sunlight by Isaac Newton (1643–1727) (Newton 1704). Handcraft and arts, here especially the painting practice in plein air, on the other hand, led to a stabilisation of colour mixtures by defining exact quantities of colourants4 or certain manufacturing practices (Gage 2006, 2009; Stijnman this volume). Colour therefore gradually became ‘tangible’ in the sense of determination and could thus inter alia be used as a determining characteristic of natural bodies or an analytical measurement value of natural processes.

2  Harris first published a precursor to his well-known colour system in 1782  in his work An Exposition of English Insects. 3  Richard Waller’s A Catalogue of Simple and Mixt Colours is the first hitherto known attempt to establish a general standard of colour for the matter of natural scientific description. Waller, who discovered the basic idea of a mixed colour table from the Swedish miniature painter Elias Brenner, showed how the best-known mixtures of blue, red, and yellow can be made. The text in both English and Latin describes a colourant mixture table with instructions for mixing the colours, to allow for copies (Waller 1686). 4  One must consider that most colourants available before the 1850s were derived from natural substances and varied accordingly depending on their origin.

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3.2 Natural History: Colour Tables and Colour Scales Two scientific developments related to this change toward colour as a determining characteristic. First, the classification of natural history according to the Systema naturae of Carl von Linné (1707–1778), which introduced the binomial nomenclature, advanced to become a trans-European phenomenon of natural history, in the 10th edition of 1758 (Linné 1758; Müller-Wille 1999).5 The second scientific development was the general instrument-supported quantification of nature in the eighteenth century (Frängsmyr et al. 1990; Chang 2007). The first systematic approaches to the standardisation of colours, then, developed in the 1760s, primarily in German-speaking countries, as so-called colour reference systems (Karliczek 2016).6 These were combinations of colour swatches and unique colour terms or numberings, which secured a colour term with reference to a visual colour impression. In the grouping of colour reference systems, a distinction can be made between colour tables and colour scales (Caivano this volume). Colour plates (Fig. 3.2) are collections of colour samples which are oriented in type and extent to the requirements of a particular field of natural research and serve only to provide a reproducible description. For example, different colour tones are needed to describe butterflies than are used for plants, fungi or minerals. In addition to the subject-specific variants, colour tables appeared in the form of comprehensive colour atlases, some of which contained more than 5400 colour samples. Figure 3.3 shows only a selection of red tones from Christian Friedrich Prange (1752–1836)’s Farbenlexicon from 1782 (Prange, 1782).7 On the other hand, colour scales that went beyond mere description also began to appear at this time: These served as tools of colour measurement and analysis. The colour tones within any colour scale thus represented certain quantities of substances or indicated processes in their changes. Examples of this are uroscopic charts8 in medicine (Prout 1821) and the so-called cyanometer (Saussure 1790), an instrument for measuring the blueness of the sky and thus determining the quantity of opaque vapours in the

 Marked by a dashed red line in Fig. 3.1.  The first design was by Jacob Christian Schäffer in 1769; his Entwurf einer allgemeinen Farbenverein provided the formal rules for a useful scientific reference system. It consists of a part of a colour pattern that represents a consecutively numbered table with different tones of colour, together with an index of names that references a coloured pattern with an ordinal number and in so doing binds a concrete impression of colour with the name of a colour. With recourse to Schäffer, these rules and major colours of A. G. Werner in his “Kennzeichenlehre” from 1774 were taken up and made widely known by his pupils. In this context, we also refer to Giovanni Antonio Scopoli who already in 1763 in his Entomologia carniolica had attempted a standardisation of colour impressions by use of rotating and different coloured spherical discs. His attempt however has not been recognized (Scopoli 1763). 7  Following Prange in 1794, the anonymous Viennese Farbenkabinet gathered together no less than 5000 colour patterns, each made from coloured strips of paper pasted into the book (Anonymous 1794). 8  Uroscopic charts date back to the four-humours theory of antiquity and first appeared in colour in the late Middle Ages, e.g. by Johannes Ketham (Johannes de Ketham 1495). 5 6

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Fig. 3.2  Colour tables from botany (left) and mineralogy. (Source: Carl Ludwig Willdenow: Grundriss der Kräuterkunde. Berlin, 1792, Tab. IX.; Henri Struve, Méthode analytique des fossiles, fondée sur leurs caractères extérieurs. Lausanne, 1797)

Fig. 3.3  Colour tables of red tones. From: Christian Friedrich Prange, Farbenlexicon. Halle, 1782, Tab. XIII–XIV. (Source: Thuringian University and State Library, Jena)

air (Fig. 3.4). The common principle underlying both colour tables and colour scales is that of a simple visual comparison between a test object and standardised colour swatches. This comparison was performed by the eye, which in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was generally considered an objective mirror of a coloured world (Boskamp 2008).

3.3 Knowledge Transfer from the Arts and Crafts The principle of comparison was adopted by the early sciences around 1800 on the one hand from the practice of handicrafts and on the other hand from plein-air painting and the art of illumination, that is the hand-colouring of natural-historical illustrations (Nickelsen 2006). Colour references of this time are known from handcrafts, for

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Fig. 3.4 Cyanométre [Cyanometer] of Horace-Bénédict de Saussure (1788). (Source: Bibliothèque de Genève)

example from Josiah Wedgwood’s Jasperware9 and other ceramic production. In the example given in Fig. 3.5, the notations on Wedgwood’s ceramic samples refer to manufacturing instructions in an experiment book10. Sample colour depended on such parameters as its position in the oven, the temperature and the firing time. The abbreviations TTBO (Tip top of the bottle oven), TBO (Top of the bottle oven) and MBO (Middle of the bottle oven) indicate the position of the cullet in the oven and thus the relative temperature during firing. The numbers also code other aspects of the recipe or the pre-­treatment of the ceramic mixture. A similar principle of coding was used in porcelain manufacturing but here, the recipes and manufacturing processes were even more secretive than Wedgwood’s experiments. This was mainly due to the great efforts of the European ruling houses at the turn  In 1768, Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) invented the earthenware named after him, Wedgwood ware, of which the often bi-coloured Jasperware was a variety. An industrially-processed ceramic material, its malleability and colourability had a great influence on the development of styles in English ceramics. 10  The experiment book is part of the collection of the World of Wedgwood in Barlaston, Stoke-­ on-­Trent (UK). 9

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Fig. 3.5  Tray of Jasper Trials (1773). (From: The Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Stoke-on-­ Trent, UK)

of the eighteenth century to produce the highly valued Chinese-style porcelain themselves. The first European porcelain manufactory, founded in Meissen in 1710, used mining and metallurgical know-how in its production, drawn from the mining tradition and science training for mining and smelting officials in Freiberg and later of course from the nearby Mining School of Freiberg in Saxony founded in 1765. The small Meissen porcelain tablets (Heide et al. 2016) from the estate of the Freiberg geognost Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750–1817) shown in Fig. 3.6, refer to a retransfer of knowledge—here, that of stabilising colours—from arts and crafts back to science at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Szalay this volume).

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Fig. 3.6  Panels of Meißener Porcelain (before 1819). (From: Geosciences Collections, TU Freiberg Mining Academy)

In plein-air painting and scientific illumination, on the other hand, the principle of colour referencing depended on numbers or letters used as colour codes on sketches. This made it possible for artists to separate the step of drawing or sketching from that of colouring, especially important in the open air as the colours seen would not have to be mixed and applied immediately. Sketches could be coded quickly using the colour reference numbers as notations. Examples are known from, among others, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840).11 Of particular interest here is the German landscape painter Ernst Fries (1801–1833) because he sometimes used colour terms instead of letters (Fig. 3.7). There are other indications that this principle of “painting by numbers” was common in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As Giulia Simonini describes in her essay in this volume, Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777)’s well-­ known “Farben Pyramide” (Lambert 1772) also contains number codes keyed to commercially-­available paintboxes. (Simonini, this volume). It is likely that Fries’s or Friedrich’s codes refer to similar colour references, but they are not yet identified. For the same reason, works of the Austrian nature painters and brothers Ferdinand (1760–  Caspar David Friedrich, Waldstudie (ca. 1811), Pencil, 19,2  ×  21,1 cm, private collection. From: http://caspardavidfriedrichkalender.blogspot.com/2015/07/caspar-david-friedrich-­kalenderam-15.html. (Last Accessed 12 Feb 2021). 11

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Fig. 3.7  Ernst Fries, Tivoli, 21. November 1826. (From: Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle)

1826), Josef (1756–1830) and Franz (1758–1840) Bauer (Lack and Ibanez 1997) have become particularly well-known: Not only have their sketches with colour codes and coloured illustrations been preserved but the corresponding colour references have been handed down as well (Fig. 3.8).

3.4 Example: The Spread of a Colour Standard in Early Mineralogy At the beginning of the nineteenth century, there was an increased need for colour standardisation in the early sciences. This can be illustrated through an example from mineralogy. In his seminal work Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien (On the External Characteristics of Fossils) from 1774, Werner, the Freiberg geognost mentioned above, created a terminology from the colours of fossils (which in contemporary times was understood to mean minerals, rocks and fossils). His colour order was based on eight main colours, which in turn were subdivided into 54 variations, which Werner called “changes” (Fig. 3.9). The colour names he assigns, e.g., silver-white, sky-blue or copper-red, follow the Linnéan principle of binomial nomenclature, with a genus name and a species name. However, unlike that system, it is the latter term that indicates the main colour. At the same time, Werner’s generic names follow the principle of denomination, that is they are derived from the designation of a natural body where the

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Fig. 3.8  Bauer Bros, Colour Reference Chart. (From: Archivo del Real Jardín Botánico, CSIC, Madrid)

concrete colour is most clearly visible. Werner’s approach to standardisation, however, lacked defined paper-based colour samples. Werner used his sets of coloured minerals or Meissen porcelain panels (Fig. 3.6) in his lectures (Hoffmann and Breithaupt 1818), but these unique suites were not a useful colour standard for mineralogy because they were difficult to copy and distribute. Werner’s pupils and followers from the 1790s onwards resolved this difficulty by developing colour tables (Fig.  3.2). Examples include the work of Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Widenmann, Franz Joseph Estner and Johann Georg Lenz (Karliczek, 2016). Lenz is especially interesting because he provided both colour samples and coloured

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Fig. 3.9  Abraham Gottlob Werner, Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien, Leipzig 1774, 128. (Source: Thuringian University and State Library Jena)

images of the corresponding minerals. Therefore, in addition to the colour, Lenz’s images also illustrated the ideal form and structure (Figs. 3.10 and 3.11). Werner’s great popularity in his time was mainly due to the recognized importance of mineralogy for the state: The identification of its practices made it easier to find and exploit important resources. The above-mentioned Freiberg Mining Academy was one of the first institutions to endorse this approach. Accordingly, it attracted many national and international

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Fig. 3.10  A selection of minerals from the Estate of A.  G. Werner. (Source: Geosciences Collections, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg)

Fig. 3.11  Johann Georg Lenz, Mustertafeln der bis jetzt bekannten einfachen Mineralien (...), Jena 1794, 70–71, 80–81, 104–105. (From: Thuringian University and State Library Jena)

students and through them, Werner’s colour scheme found its way into Europe and the U.S. (Karliczek 2020). In addition, Werner’s prominent position in contemporary geognostic discourse between Plutonists and Neptunists catalysed this spread. Werner’s student Robert Jameson (1774–1854) founded a Wernerian Society in Edinburgh and persuaded the nature painter Patrick Syme (1774–1845) to employ Werner’s colour order system in what became one of its most famous iterations. This work, called Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours (Syme 1814, 1821), was not aimed solely at mineralogists but sought to be a general colour standard for the sciences (cf. Davidson et al. 2021). With this goal in mind, Syme extended Werner’s 54 colours to 108 in the first and 110 in the second edition. Certain colour names were also changed. These changes to the original standard then also allowed application in other sciences, e.g. medicine (Karliczek 2021). Despite the title, this does not mean that Werner’s colour standard was handed down to subsequent generations. Owing to the changes Syme made,

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Werner’s colour standard was no longer clearly represented in Syme’s nomenclature. This prevented scientific continuity in documenting the colours of minerals and thus limited a corresponding tradition of knowledge formation. This example shows how colour standards developed in parallel to the emergence of various natural sciences, and were adapted to professional necessities and scientific requirements via various intermediate stages. These changes were not mere extensions, however, but so fundamental that they affected the original standard and all references to it.

3.5 General Requirements of a Scientific Colour Standard The adoption of craft and artistic practices to standardise colours into natural history and the early sciences in the first half of the eighteenth century was not accomplished easily. In both arts and sciences, colour impressions might be verified by colour samples with known mixing ratios, but this form of standardisation was usually idiosyncratic—related to the needs of an individual artist or craftsperson. A general standardisation aimed at objectivity and durability was not achieved until the twentieth century. In this respect, the manifold examples of scientific colour reference systems at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Fig. 3.1) obscure the fact that none of these attempts became a general standard during this period although numerous subsequent uses of individual colour references have been documented (Karliczek 2016). Owing to this absence of a universal scientific colour standard even into the twentieth century, it makes sense to consider the special requirements of such a document or system. These include: 1. Reproducibility: A colour standard can only become a standard if the colour samples can be distributed widely. Thus, the colour standard must be generally available. That is to say, there must be a large number of visually identical specimens available at an affordable price. In order for the standard to be viable over long periods, the colour samples must be reproducible in the same way, that is, the colourants required for mixing the colour shades must themselves be qualitatively standardised. This was not the case with natural colourants and only became possible with the advent of synthetic inks and automated printing techniques. 2. Consistency/Reliability: The colour samples must not change when subject to normal scientific uses, even when deployed in the open air, strong sunlight, or high humidity. They must therefore be durable and reliable in order to remain a standard. The named porcelain tablets from Meißen with onglaze colours are particularly noteworthy in this respect. At the beginning of the twentieth century, colour standards made of glass flux stones, which could be used under adverse climatic ­conditions, were also found to be of value in ethnology and anthropology, for example (Karliczek and Schwarz 2016a, b; Simonini 2022). 3. Compatibility: In order to be usable over longer periods, a colour standard must guarantee sufficient openness concerning continued scientific development and therefore the increase of knowledge. This means that it must not be a closed system, but must allow the inclusion of new colour tones as further need arises. And vice versa, a newly issued standard must be able to integrate earlier colour tones and

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designations, otherwise, all references in descriptions and publications to them would be lost. For a colour standard to be truly international, the colour nomenclature also must be as general and intercultural as possible.

3.6 Conclusion The need for colour standards began to manifest within natural history and the branches of science that developed from it, such as mineralogy, botany, and zoology, by the eighteenth century. Naturalists relied on a principle of colour referencing to regularise colour impressions. Their efforts represent a materialisation of vision through the adoption and adaptation of colour samples that were already established in artisanal and artistic communities. While even at the beginning of the nineteenth century the requirements for a colour standard of value to the sciences could not be realised, various pragmatic solutions were developed. These were often disseminated only within the author’s own community and were only very rarely handed down over longer periods of time. The parallel attempts to adapt and objectify colour standards from other fields prove the great interweaving of science, art and craft at this time.

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de Saussure, Horace-Bénédict. 1790. Description d’un ‘cyanomètre’ ou d’un appareil destiné à mesurer l’intensité de la couleur bleue du ciel. Mémoires de l’Académie des sciences. Torino: Académie des sciences. Frängsmyr, Tore, J.L.  Heilbron, and Robin E.  Rider, eds. 1990. The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century. University of California Press. Gage, John. 2006. Colour in Art. World of art. London: Thames & Hudson. ———. 2009. Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. London: Thames & Hudson. Heide, B., Paskoff, S., Massanek, A., and Heide, G. 2016. 249 Coloured Plates of Meißen Porcelain: A Part of the Mineral Collections of Abraham Gottlob Werner. In Enhancing University Heritage-Based Research. Proceedings of the XV Universeum Network Meeting, ed. G. Wolfschmidt. Hamburg, 12–14 June 2014. Nuncus Hamburgensis, 33: 58–71. Hoffmann, Christian August Siegfried, and August Breithaupt. 1818. Handbuch der Mineralogie. Vol. Bd. 4, H. 2. Freiberg. Jonauskaite, Domicele, Ahmad Abu-Akel, Nele Dael, Daniel Oberfeld, Ahmed M.  Abdel-­ Khalek, Abdulrahman S. Al-Rasheed, Jean-Philippe Antonietti, et al. 2020. Universal Patterns in Color-emotion Associations are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity. Psychological Science 31 (10): 1245–1260. Karliczek, André. 2013a. Die Bemessung des Himmels: Das Cyanometer des Horace-Bénédicte de Saussure. In Ueber Die Natur Des Lichts, ed. Olaf Breidbach, 49–60. Wiederstedt: Novalis Museum. ———. 2013b. Vom Phänomen zum Merkmal: Farben in der Naturgeschichte um 1800. In Erkenntniswert Farbe, ed. Margrit Vogt and André Karliczek, 83–111. Jena: Inst. für Geschichte der Med., Naturwiss. und Technik. ———. 2016. Natur der Farben—Farben der Natur: Die Eigenschaft zwischen natürlicher Ordnung, Naturbeschreibung und Naturerkenntnis um 1800. In Die Farben Der Klassik, ed. Martin Dönike, Jutta Müller-Tamm, and Friedrich Steinle, 173–204. Schriftenreihe Des Zentrums Für Klassikforschung. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. ———. 2017. Farbtheorie und wissenschaftliche Erkenntnis. In Gesprächs-Stoff Farbe, ed. Konrad Scheurmann and André Karliczek, 576–587. Cologne and Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag. ———. 2018. Zur Herausbildung von Farbstandards in den frühen Wissenschaften des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ferrum 90: 36–49. ———. 2020. Silberweiß, schmalteblau und kupferroth—A.  G. Werner und die Entwicklung und Verbreitung von Farbstandards in der frühen Mineralogie. In Abraham Gottlob Werner Und Die Geowissenschaften Seiner Zeit. Zum 200. Todestag Des Geologen, Mineralogen Und Montanwissenschaftlers., D 250: 69–82. Freiberger Forschungshefte. Freiberg: Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg. ———. 2021. One for All? Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours as a General Standard of Colour and its Particular Use in Medicine. In Nature’s Palette, ed. Patrick Baty, 224–35. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691222714-­011. Karliczek, André, and Olaf Breidbach, eds. 2011. Himmelblau: das Cyanometer des Horace-­ Bénédict de Saussure (1740–1799). Sudhoffs Archiv, Sudhoffs Archiv 95 (1): 3. Karliczek, André, and Andreas Schwarz, eds. 2016a. Farre: Farbstandards in den frühen Wissenschaften. Jena: Salana. ———. 2016b. Mit Haut und Haar. Vom Merkmal zum Stigma—Farbbestimmungen am Menschen. Farre. Farbstandards in Den Frühen Wissenschaften. Jena: Salana. Kuehni, Rolf G., and Andreas Schwarz. 2008. Color Ordered: A Survey of Color Systems from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Kusukawa, Sachiko. 2011. Picturing Knowledge in the Early Royal Society: The Examples of Richard Waller and Henry Hunt. Notes and Records of the Royal Society 65 (H. 3): 273–294. Lack, H.  Walter, and Victoria Ibanez. 1997. Recording Colour in Late Eighteenth Century Botanical Drawings: Sydney Parkinson, Ferdinand Bauer and Thaddaus Haenke. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 14 (2): 87–100. Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1772. Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide, wo die Mischung jeder Farben aus weiss und drey Grundfarben angeordnet, dargelegt und derselben Berechnung und vielfacher Gebrauch gewiesen wird: Mit einer ausgemahlten Kupfertafel. Berlin: Haude & Spener. Lenz, Johann Georg. 1794. Mustertafeln der bis jetzt bekannten einfachen Mineralien. Jena. Ludwig, Sämi, Astrid Starck-Adler, and André Karliczek, eds. 2022. Colors & Cultures. Interdisciplinary Explorations. Berkeley, Mulhouse, Jena: Salana. Müller-Wille, Staffan. 1999. Botanik und weltweiter Handel: zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707-78). Studien zur Theorie der Biologie. Berlin: VWB, Verl. für Wissen. und Bildung. Newton, Isaac. 1704. Opticks: Or, A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. London: Smith & Walford. Nickelsen, Kärin. 2006. Draughtsmen, Botanists and Nature: The Construction of Eighteenth-­ century Botanical Illustrations. Dordrecht: Springer. Prange, Christian Friedrich. 1782. Farbenlexicon. Halle: Johann Christian Hendel. Prout, William. 1821. An Inquiry into the Nature and Treatment of Gravel, Calculus, and Other Diseases Connected with a Deranged Operation of the Urinary Organs. London: Cradock. Scopoli, Giovanni Antonio. 1763. Entomologia carniolica exhibens insecta carnioliae indigena et distributa in ordines, genera, species, varietates: Methodo linnaeana. Vindobonae. Simonini, Giulia. 2022. James David Forbes’ Mayerian Triangle (1848–49) and the Enamels at the Studio del Mosaico Vaticano. In Colors & Cultures. Interdisciplinary Explorations, ed. Sämi Ludwig, Astrid Starck-Adler, and André Karliczek. Berkeley, Mulhouse, Jena: SALANA. Syme, Patrick. 1814. Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours: With Additions, Arranged so as to Render it Highly Useful to the Arts and Sciences, Particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Morbid Anatomy. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood. ———. 1821. Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours. 2nd. ed. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood. Vogt, Margrit, and André Karliczek, eds. 2013. Erkenntniswert Farbe. Jena: Inst. für Geschichte der Med., Naturwiss. und Technik. von Linné, Carl. 1758. Caroli Linnæi. Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I.  Editio Decima, Reformata. Holmiae: Salvius. Waller, Richard. 1686. A Catalogue of Simple and Mixt Colours, with a Specimen of Each Colour Prefixt to its Proper Name. Philosophical Transactions 16: 24–32. Werner, Abraham Gottlob. 1774. Von den äusserlichen Kennzeichen der Fossilien. Leipzig: S.L. Crusius. Willdenow, Carl Ludwig. 1792. Grundriss der Kräuterkunde. Berlin: Haude und Spener. André Karliczek studied history of science, prehistory and biological anthropology at the Friedrich  Schiller  Universität Jena. His scientific work focuses on the development of colour standards in the early sciences and the epistemic significance of evolutive and ecological influences on visual perception.  

Part II

Colour Theory and Colour Order

Chapter 4 A Tale of Five Cities: Jacob Christoff Le Blon and His Development of Trichromatic Printing Ad Stijnman1 (*) 1 

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract  Jacob Christoff Le Blon (1667–1741) is the inventor of trichromatic printing. This is a technique that superimposes layers of respectively blue, yellow and red semi-transparent ink onto white paper, parchment or fabric, in his case using mezzotint plates. Other ways of colour printing had been used before, but this was the first method to create all desired hues by over-printing the three primary colours, instead of using ready-made colour mixtures (spot colours). The method was greatly admired by his contemporaries and it earned him English and French royal privileges. The present chapter follows the developments of Le Blon’s trichromatic printing as he lived and worked in five cities: Frankfurt, Rome, Amsterdam, London and Paris. These cities respectively stand for his initial artistic training, maturing of his artistic insight, development of colour theory and its practical application in trichromatic printing, financial success with his method, and eventual dissemination of technical details of his colour printing process. Le Blon used his process to reproduce oil paintings by famous masters, such as Titian, Correggio and Van Dyck, and for printing anatomical figures in their natural colours. In conjunction with his development of a trichromatic colour system, Le Blon was also the first person to articulate the difference between two types of colour mixing (later to be called additive and subtractive), defining colour produced by light and by paint or ink as two different physical phenomena. His process saw the success of French intaglio colour prints in the eighteenth century and chromolithography in the nineteenth century. It remains significant as the basis of the CMYK colour system now employed for offset printing, digital printing, colour-­photocopiers and desktop printers. Keywords  Le Blon · Trichromatic printing · Colour printing

Jacob Christoff Le Blon (1667–1741) is recognised as the inventor of trichromatic printing. This was a radically new concept of colour printing at the turn of the eighteenth century when he began to explore its underlying ideas. Le Blon’s process involved the super-imposition of three layers of respectively blue, yellow, and red ink on white paper, parchment or fabric. It was the first method by which all desired hues of colour could be created by over-printing with the three primary colours, rather than relying on hand-colouring techniques. His success was a feat that astonished his © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_4

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contemporaries and earned him English and French royal privileges. His invention also marked the triumph of a specific colour order in printing: trichromacy. Le Blon was also the first to articulate the difference between what later came to be called “additive” and “subtractive” colour mixing. This was a landmark change within the study of colour because he defined colour mixing by light and colour mixing by paint or ink as two different physical phenomena, something scientifically observed only by the middle of the nineteenth century (Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume). This chapter contributes to existing studies of Le Blon and his trichromatic printing process by connecting his artistic developments to the cities where he lived and worked. Every place he stayed offered him new opportunities to develop and demonstrate his ideas and skills, opportunities he was able to act upon to advance his project.1 Le Blon’s formative years were spent in his birthplace, Frankfurt am Main, and his artistic insight matured in Rome. From this city he moved to Amsterdam where he studied colour in theory and practice, invented the trichromatic system for use in painting and printing, and had his first success. He received substantial financial support in London, which allowed him to further develop his process by including a fourth plate inked in black for deepening shades or adding lettering, and a fifth inked in white for printing highlights. Le Blon long kept the technique secret and only disclosed it to the public in Paris, the city where he died. There Le Blon demonstrated his process twice and offered for sale revealing colour trial proofs. The technical explanation he gave to a royal committee checking his working manner was published only after his death.

4.1 Frankfurt am Main Le Blon was born into a Huguenot family in Frankfurt am Main in 1667.2 The Huguenot diaspora had dispersed the Le Blon family from northern France (Lilien 1985, 12–13, 86). After the death of her husband George Le Blon in 1576, Le Blon’s great-great-­ grandmother Jacobina Bouriauduc had moved to Frankfurt with three of her five sons. From there, the family further spread to Amsterdam and London in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Details of Le Blon’s earliest education are unknown, but he would have received a basic education in art-making from his father Christoff II Le Blon (b.1639), an artist-­ engraver and book dealer. Christoff II had himself been apprenticed to his grandfather, the famous artist Matthäus Merian the Elder (1593–1650). The Merian-Le Blon family

 This chapter is an abbreviated and revised version of the introduction of NHD (J.C. Le Blon) 2020, 1:xxv–cl, with more emphasis on the theme of the present volume. All Le Blon prints and their states are reproduced in full colour in these two volumes. For ease of reference, the prints in this chapter are therefore given the same serial numbers, marked as ‘NH XX’. 2  The personal name recorded in the baptism registers is “Jacob Christoff”; although variations of the name occur, this is the form and spelling followed here. 1

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included several well-respected artists; the most renowned was Matthäus’s daughter, and Le Blon’s grand-aunt, Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717). One story of Le Blon’s early education does survive. The technical chapter of his posthumous manual L’Art d’Imprimer les Tableaux (Paris 1756) includes the report of his demonstration of the process to a royal committee that would determine his receipt of a privilege. In that report, Le Blon explained that his inspiration for adding a fourth plate inked in black to the three inked in the primary colours came from his years at school (Le Blon 1756, 131–132). As un amusement de Collège, he had learned to make a glass transfer painting, or print-behind-glass (Massing 1989, 2008; Stijnman 2012, 266). One side of a glass plate was covered with a sticky coating of resin in oil of turpentine and a print placed, face-down, onto the coating. Once the coating was dry, the exposed reverse of the printing paper was dampened with water and the damp paper removed by careful rubbing off with the fingertips. This left the (black) ink adhered to the glass and allowed painting the glass in oil colours over the print’s design. Viewing the result from the other (glass) side, one saw black lines with colours behind them.

4.2 Rome In 1696, at the age of 29, Le Blon travelled to Rome in the retinue of Count Georg Adam von Martinitz (1645–1714), imperial ambassador to Pope Innocent XII (1615– 1700) (Van Gool 1750–1751, I: 343). He may have been active there as a painter of miniature portraits, his professional occupation when registered as a citizen of Amsterdam in 1705, see below. Like most young artists who found themselves in Rome, he spent his time drawing antique ruins and sculpture (Houbraken 1718–1721, II: 280; NHD (Le Blon)3 2020, I:xl & Appendix 7, cxliii). Because in 1731 he sent a gift of a number of his colour prints from London to the Accademia di San Luca, the painter’s guild in Rome, we can assume he became acquainted with this institution while living there (Keyssler 1742, 2:41–42).4 Le Blon claimed on several occasions to have worked in the atelier of Carlo Maratti (1615– 1713), although his name is not found with Maratti’s students (Vertue 1933–1934, 53; MdF 1745, 143–44; Gautier 1749a, 159 & 162; Le Blon 1756, vj).5 He would have been familiar with the Bentveughels, a social group of northern, mainly Netherlandish artists, although again, his participation is unconfirmed (Baverez 2015). He certainly befriended other artists, because he told the Dutch biographer Arnold Houbraken (1660–1719) about the artists he had met in Rome (Houbraken 1718–1721, II: 279, 280, 284, 287; III: 232, 233). Among them was Bonaventura Jansz. van Overbeke (1660–1705), who so appreciated his company that he invited Le Blon to travel to Amsterdam with him, at

 Hereafter cited as NHD 2020  52nd letter: Neu erfundene Art die Gemählde abzudrucken. 5  Information kindly supplied by Fabiola Mercandetti. 3 4

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van Overbeke’s expense. The pair arrived in town in 1702.6 Jacob Christoff Le Blon was now 35 years old. Le Blon’s life in the eternal city appears to have elevated his judgement regarding Italian art. This training proved useful when faced, as later in London, with private collectors of Italian master paintings. It would also have made him familiar with a brighter, southern palette, i.e. with clearer colour expression than the more subdued colours of his initial training in Germany. This may have influenced his ideas on colour separation and the use of primary colours.

4.3 Amsterdam Several of Le Blon’s family members already lived in Amsterdam, including descendants of the engraver and Swedish agent Michel Le Blon (1587–1658), a brother of his grandfather Christof I Le Blon (1600–1665), and the above-mentioned Maria Sibylla Merian with her two daughters. His relatives would have found him a place to stay initially. Le Blon quickly established himself, as he married Gerarda Vloet (1679–1716) in 1705,7 and became a citizen (poorter) in the same year.8 Their son Theodorus was born on 11 June 1706 and buried on 29 June.9 Le Blon made a living as a painter of miniature portraits, presumably making contacts through his family and Van Overbeke. For example, he painted pendant miniature portraits of the well-to-do Adriaan van Loon (1631–1722) and his wife Cornelia Hunthum (1634–1721), on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage in 1706.10 Le Blon also painted miniature portraits of the parents of the linguist, theologist and art lover Lambert Hermansz. Ten Kate (1674–1731). His contact with Ten Kate and the painter Hendrik van Limborch (1681–1759) proved important to the development of trichromatic painting and printing. Ten Kate lived in Amsterdam on the Herengracht, a principal canal, and Le Blon and his wife moved to the Leliegracht, around the corner,  Act by notary David Walschaert concerning the division of jewellery amongst family members dated 26 September 1702, also undersigned by Bonaventura van Overbeke; Amsterdam, Municipal archive, Notariële archieven, archiefnummer 5075, inventarisnummer 5801, aktenummer 63146. On 28 September 1702 Van Overbeke, then living on the Leidschegracht in Amsterdam, revised his testament with the same notary; Amsterdam, Municipal archive, Notariële archieven, archiefnummer 5075, inventarisnummer 5801, aktenummer 63147. 7  They vowed to marry on 13 February 1705; Amsterdam municipal archive, ondertrouwregisters, source: DTB 538, p. 87; ondertrouwregister: NL-SAA-26050612: Jacob Cristoffel le blon van frankfoort fijnschilder [miniature painter] oud 34 jaren op de singel grafft met zijn vader Consent & gerarda vloet van A: oud 26 jaren op de Cloveniers burgwal. Le Blon first lived at the Singel and moved in with Gerarda, who already lived with her sister and brother-in-law on the Kloveniersburgwal. 8  Amsterdam, municipal archive, Poortersboek 10, p. 291 (7 May 1705); Scheltema 1863, 74. 9  Amsterdam, municipal archive, Begraafboeken 1093 (Zuiderkerk), fol. 60v. 10  More miniature portraits of members of the Van Loon family are attributed to Le Blon; Amsterdam, Museum Van Loon, inv. nos. 135–8, 135–9, 554, 555. NHD 2020, I: xli, figs 16, 17. 6

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in 1707 (Miedema 2006 [1707], I: 49–50; II: 56; NHD 2020, I: cxxvi, cxliii; Van de Roemer 2015, 168–169). Van Limborch lived in The Hague, about 60 km away, but the three men would meet occasionally. Ten Kate, often referring to Le Blon, and Van Limborch maintained a correspondence from 1707 to 1725, writing in detail about the interest the three shared: researching colour and light (Miedema 2006).11 It is largely about what they had carried out, there is little theory involved. Their correspondence first spoke about tonalities in rendering shades, noting that Le Blon performed the practical aspects and the more intellectual Ten Kate reported the results to Van Limborch. Van Limborch would then conduct his own experiments and report back on them. When, in the correspondence, the men discussed the mixing of primary colours, they noted repeatedly that specific colourants and their mutual ratios determined the hues created (Miedema 2006, I: 196).12 For example, in 1708 it was found that “if one mixes only red, blue and yellow [paint], in proper proportions, this will yield a neat halftone that perfectly corresponds to a mixture of white and black” (Miedema 2006, I: 124).13 To create this neutral grey, they mixed the three primary colours (hoofdkoleuren) in the ratios: one part red (majeroenrood),14 1½ part yellow (schijtgeel, a precipitated yellow lake) and about 8 parts ultramarine blue (Miedema 2006, I: 129). We now call this trichromatic subtractive colour mixing (c.f. Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume, Fig. 17). Le Blon, Ten Kate and Van Limborch began their research into colour not long after Isaac Newton (1643–1727) published his research on light as Opticks (Newton 1704). He had experimented with prisms dividing beams of white light into—as he discerned— seven “Original or primary colours”: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (see Caivano, Fig.  5) (Newton 1672, 3082; Newton 1704, 114). He found that any colour on the spectrum could be produced by the combination of its two adjacent colours. Displaying the spectrum as a continuous circle of colour, two opposite colours on that circle yield “some faint anonymous Colour” (Newton 1704, 116; c.f. Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume). Newton did not try to mix three colours of light and therefore was not aware that the three primary colours together would create white light again. The linguist Ten Kate learned English to be able to read his copy of Opticks in its original language (Ten Kate 1732, i). He and Le Blon experimented accordingly, with light dispersed through a prism. In 1710, Ten Kate wrote Van Limborch they had found that “[white day]light entering a room consisted of red, yellow and blue rays of light mixed in certain ratios, as shown by experiments with a prism” (Miedema 2006,

 Compare this to the work by Johann Heinrich Lambert: see Simonini, Chap. 7, this volume.  This is similar to the experiments by Mikhail Lomonosov; see Stanulevich, Chap. 5, this volume. 13  Ten Kate to Van Limborch of 9 May 1708: Indien men enkel rood, blaaw, en geel in een goede proportie onder een mengt, zullen dezelve een nette mezetint uijtleveren, die volmaakt overeenkomt met wit en zwart onder een. 14  It is uncertain what kind of red colourant this may be, but perhaps English red, an artificial red ochre, because Le Blon brought it from England (Miedema 2006, I:184; 2:94. Simonini (2020, 477) believes majeroenrood could refer to a red hue similar to the colour of (purplish) flowers of Marjoram (Origanum majorana) but does not discuss a particular pigment or dyestuff. 11 12

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I:162).15 More particularly, they found the ratio to include six times more blue than any of the two other hues, observing that blue was the weakest colour.16 This is the essence of trichromatic additive colour mixing (c.f., Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume, Fig. 17). Le Blon’s next set of experiments, conducted between 1708 and 1710, were directed toward printing with three primary colours. The Ten Kate-Van Limborch correspondence occasionally hints at Le Blon’s being busy with printing but does not mention any details about colour printing. A letter from Le Blon to Van Limborch, from early in 1711, refers to his invention (mijne vinding), but without more information.17 A month later, the brothers Conrad Zacharias (1683–1734) and Johann Friederich von Uffenbach (1687–1769) visited Le Blon (NHD 2020, 1: cxxvi–cxxviii; Von Uffenbach 1754, 3: 534–35; Van Gool 1750–1751, I: 344; Van de Roemer 2015, 170). He showed them a single colour print, of a penitent Mary Magdalene (NH 53). The brothers were astounded, found it marvellous and asked how he had created it. But Le Blon stated that the secret was only for gentlemen who would pay handsomely for it and, indeed, his techniques were published only in full after his death. No copy of this Mary Magdalene can be traced, but Conrad Zacharias von Uffenbach also referred to a portrait of Ernst Wilhelm von Salisch (1649–1711, NH 41), a Prussian General in the service of the Dutch Republic who had died just 4 days before their visit to Le Blon and whose portrait he had printed in December 1710 (Fig. 4.1). Five copies of the portrait remain and all show they are printed from three plates inked in black, yellow and red respectively. Like all Le Blon’s later prints, the plates were made in the mezzotint technique, creating tonalities essential for his colour printing. Finer lines and dots were made by engraving because this was technically not possible in mezzotint. The portrait is set in an oval and has additional hand-colouring in blue and white. The area outside of the oval is painted black and, in three copies, has an outline of the oval and the signature (below) drawn in gold. The practical consideration for printing in black would have been that a large part of the portrait was covered by the General’s (steel) armour and the only blue elements were the blue irises of his eyes. Two possible other prints, a Virgin (NH 50) and a Sleeping Nymph (NH 55), made in Amsterdam are documented, but also untraced. An early test plate of a St Bonaventura (NH 16) is a mezzotint inked in black only. The fifth print, an Anatomical Dissection of a Shoulder and Collar Bone (NH 45) was printed from three mezzotint plates inked in blue, yellow and red. It is unsigned and undated. The two extant copies are both pasted onto folded sheets of blue paper with a letterpress dedication from the medical doctor Arent Cant (1695–1723) to his father Petrus Cant. Arent Cant studied medicine at Leiden University from 1716 to 1721 and had ambitions for publishing works on anatomy. In the year of his promotion to Doctor Medicinae, he published not only his dissertation but also an anatomical volume that

 Lambert ten Kate to Hendrik van Limborch 3 February 1710, fol. 1r, lines 39–44 [l. 39] het generale Licht dat in een vertrek komt … [l. 40] alleen uijt het mengsel bestaet van roode, geele & blaeuwe Ligstralen in een zekere ratio ondereen … [l. 44] gelijk uijt de wiskonstige proeven van het Prisma blijkt. 16  Miedema 2006, I:162; Ten Kate to Van Limborch 3 February 1710. 17  Miedema 2006, I:18 4; Le Blon to Van Limborch 3 January 1711, fol. 2v. 15

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Fig. 4.1  Jacob Christoff Le Blon after v.K., Ernst Wilhelm von Salisch, 1710, state II, first plate mezzotint with engraving in black, second plate mezzotint in yellow, third plate mezzotint in red, on parchment, coloured by hand, oval line and lettering in pen and gold ink; 39.7 × 31.5 cm; London, British Museum, 1844,0425.6

included six engraved plates after his own designs. He was in contact with the painter-­ engraver Jan Wandelaar (1690–1759) about plans for an anatomical atlas. Perhaps he discussed the idea with Le Blon shortly before or at the time of his promotion, inviting him to make a print in his colour process. A second boy, named Christodorus, was born to Le Blon and his wife Gerarda in 1715, but by the spring of 1716 both mother and child had died.18 Maybe the loss of his family inspired Le Blon to move on by seeking sponsorship for his printing project in The Hague later that year (Conti 1756: xclviii; Miedema 2006 vol. II: 254–55), and Paris in 1717 (Castel 1737, 1436; Van Gool 1750–1751, I:346; Vertue 1933–1934, 10; Rodari 1996, 61), but both without success. Le Blon’s cooperation with Ten Kate and Van Limborch stood at the base of his theoretical development into colour research, which he applied practically in his printmaking experiments for the development of his trichromatic colour printing method.  Baptism of Christodorus on 6 September 1715; Amsterdam municipal archive, doopregisters 1544–1811, source: DTB 109, p. 457 (folio 229), no. 13; baptism register NL-SAA-24146461. Burial of Gerarda Vloet on 6 February 1716; Amsterdam municipal archive, Begraafregisters 1553–1811, source: DTB 1057, fol. 166r, burial register before 1811 NL-SAA-11163950. Burial of Christodorus on 19 March 1716; Amsterdam municipal archive, DTB 1057, fol. 166v; Van Gool 1750–1751, vol. 1, p. 346. 18

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However, it was his move to London in 1718 that provided the boost he sought for his career.

4.4 London Le Blon had visited London before, from January to May 1710 (Miedema 2006, I:162, 168, 169, 184; 2: 35). At that time, it is likely he met the art collector Colonel John Guise (1682/83–1765), who would strongly support him in setting up his printing business.19 Among Le Blon’s early assistants in London were the L’Admiral brothers, Jan (1699–1773) and Jacob (1700–1770). Born in Amsterdam, they received their first artistic education from their father Jacob L’Admiral Sr. (1665–1727). They moved to London in 1718, to be trained by Le Blon in his method (L’Admiral 1774, 3). Until 1723 they worked in his printshop creating mezzotint plates, after which they moved to Paris for the advancement of their careers (NHD 2020, 1:lii, cxxix–cxxx).20 The early years in the capital were also Le Blon’s best years. He received an English royal privilege for 14 years for his process in 1719, which allowed raising joint stock funds that would establish the business.21 A company, the Printing Office, was founded with Guise as president before mid-1721 (C.f. NHD 2020, 1:xciv). Enthusiasm was great among investors and Le Blon received a generous salary of five guineas a week as supervisor (Desmaiseau 1722, 49; Van Gool 1750–1751, 1:347–48). The workshop was established at the Dutchy House in the Savoy, near Somerset Yard and just off The Strand, (Desmaiseau 1722, 49; The Daily Courant 8 May 1722, issue 6410; Vertue 1933–1934, 10)., with Le Blon living nearby at “The Bible and Dial, over-against Katherine-street in the Strand” (The Daily Courant, 13 May 1720. Issue 5791). 4.4.1 The Start of Colour Print Production The first colour print produced by Le Blon was a Sudarium of St Veronica (NH 8) (Fig. 4.2) (Desmaiseau 1721, 116; 1722, 48; NHD 2020, cxxxiv, cxxxviii). The second, a Preparation of Dissected Human Male Genitalia (NH 46) was offered for sale on 26 August 1719 (Fig. 4.3) (Desmaiseau 1722, 48; The Daily Courant, 26 August 1719, issue 5598; Hahn and Dumaitre 1962, 10). The third, a portrait of George I (NH 36)  Van Gool 1750–1751, vol. I, 346 (as Collonel Gy, whom Le Blon had already met in Amsterdam); Vertue, 10, V. 5; Lambert 1987, 87. According to Vertue (31), it was Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax (1661–1715) who encouraged Le Blon to come to London; Burch 1910, 53. But more likely Guise, who was president of the board of the Picture Office, Le Blon reproduced paintings from his collection and Guise told Van Gool he lost between £600 and £700 in Le Blon’s project. (Van Gool 1750–1751, I:349). 20  They were back in Amsterdam in 1730, where Jacob married on 30 November of that year; Municipal Archive Amsterdam, Ondertrouwregisters 1565–1811, DTB 571, p.  227, Ondertrouwregister: NL-SAA-26041185. 21  Public Record Office in London, Patent Roll, reference No. C 663530 No. 3, 3rd part of 5 Geo I, 5 February 1719, No. 423; Desmaiseau 1722, 49; Woodcroft 1969, 84–85. 19

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Fig. 4.2  Jacob Christoff Le Blon, The Sudarium of St Veronica, 1719, first plate mezzotint in blue, second plate mezzotint with engraving in yellow, third plate mezzotint with engraving in red, 8.8 × 11.1 cm; Paris, Institute Nationale d’Histoire de l’Art, coll. Doucet, EA LE BLON 1

Fig. 4.3  Jacob Christoff Le Blon after an anatomical preparation by Nathanael Sankt André, Preparation of Dissected Human Male Genitalia, 1719, first plate mezzotint with engraving for the veins in blue, second plate mezzotint in yellow, third plate mezzotint with engraving for the arteries in red, fourth plate engraving for the nails and lettering in black, 20.2 × 27.3; Amsterdam, RP-P-1910-1582

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(The Daily Courant, 13 May 1720. Issue 5791), and the fourth, a Virgin and Child and St John the Baptist (NH 13) (The Daily Courant, 13 May 1720. Issue 5791), were both advertised in 1720. These prints display nearly the full technical development of his process in the years 1719–1720. The Sudarium seems to be an experimental piece: Le Blon probably used its creation to train his staff after a design he painted.22 Its three plates were small (8.8 × 11.1 cm), which allowed a short production period, perhaps just a week, compared to an estimated 6 months for large plates (NHD 2020, 1: lxviii). In a relatively short time, the plates could be cut to size, polished, rocked and, after the design was transferred, scraped and polished, with a few details engraved. We can note the experimental aspects on surviving prints, because a blue/yellow and a red colour progress proof exist, three impressions in black/yellow/red, and one in blue/yellow/red. Also, most impressions are on paper, but one is on linen and another on parchment.23 Both the Preparation and the Anatomical Dissection Le Blon made for Arent Cant are printed from three plates inked in blue/yellow/red. The print for Cant is pasted to a blue sheet that has a letterpress key to the image, although the print itself is without lettering. The Preparation was over-printed with a fourth plate, inked in black, with engraved lettering indicating specific details. Some of its copies are pasted to blue paper with a key in letterpress, as are the copies of Cant’s example. The portrait of George I, published on 14 May 1720 (The Daily Courant, 13 May 1720. Issue 5791), appears to be Le Blon’s dedication to the King who granted him a privilege the year before. The portrait was printed from five plates rather than the three more typical of Le Blon’s work to this time; the additional plates increased the technical complications of the work. The first plate printed on the sheet is in mezzotint, with additional engraved details; it was inked in black; the mezzotinted parts depict the armour similar to the portrait of Von Salisch, and the engraved lines are for the black tips of the ermine tails, and the irises and hairs of the King. The second, also in mezzotint, was inked in blue. The third combined mezzotint with engraved lettering and was inked in yellow. The fourth, red-inked plate, was in mezzotint with additional engraving and stippling to enhance the shades. The fifth had engraved lines for the hairs for the King’s wig, because such fine lines could not be scraped from a mezzotint plate, and was inked in white. London artists were not pleased with Le Blon’s prints and especially King George’s portrait was found “a wretched thing, since that they have done better” (Vertue 1933–1934, 10). Better in painting perhaps,24 but at this point in Le  The oil sketch is kept in Oxford, Christ Church Picture Gallery, inv. no. JBS 259.  The only impression on linen traced thus far is the Berlin copy of NH 8(5). A Sleeping Nymph is documented as printed on canvas or was perhaps printed on paper and pasted to canvas, as Le Blon was common to do to make his prints look like paintings; Van Gool 1750–51, vol. I, 345. Two more copies of the Sudarium, an unidentified woman’s head and an unidentified man’s head all printed on satin were put up for auction in 1773, but are untraced (Van der Marck 1773, lots 452 and 453). For impressions on parchment see the Vienna copy of NH 8(5), three copies of Von Salisch (NH 41, state II) and an untraced copy of St Mary Magdalene (NH 53). 24  The colour print was made after a painting by Le Blon; Daily Courant, 13 May 1720. Issue 5791: “from an Original of Mr. Le Blond [sic]”. This may be an anonymous painting in the Royal Collection, UK (RCIN 406429). 22 23

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Blon’s career his colour-printed portrait of George I was his tour de force, a highlight showing what he and no one else was technically capable of in printmaking. With the establishment of The Picture Office, a fund of several thousand pounds became available for expansion in 1721 (Demaisseau 1722, 49; Van Gool 1750–1751, 1: 347; Vertue 1933–1934, 10). Le Blon began a series of prints after paintings by recent or current masters such as Correggio, Kneller, Rubens and Titian. Le Blon printed these images using blue/yellow/red only, occasionally adding a plate for black or pale grey as replication demanded. Subject matter in this grouping of masterworks included biblical, allegorical, mythical and anatomical subjects, as well as saints and portraits (Figs. 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6). 4.4.2 Success and Decline The portrait of George I (1720) measured c. 45 × 34 cm; Le Blon later increased the size of the copperplates he used up to an impressive 62 × 93 cm (Stijnman 2020: lxv, table). The largest sizes were printed on the paper format called Grand Aigle (The Daily Courant, 12 July 1726, Issue 7718; 21 July 1726, Issue 7726; 29 July 1726, Issue 7733; 1 August 1726, Issue 7735; 3 August 1726, Issue 7737), which measured c. 67 × 99 cm (Reynaud 1981, 89; Gaudriault 1995, 16; Stijnman 2012: 260). Copperplates this large could not be printed on a common wooden rolling press, which had rollers 2 feet (c. 62 cm) wide (Stijnman 2012, 295). It, therefore, comes as no surprise that, in advance of the bankruptcy of The Picture Office, a large rolling press was offered at the auction of the inventory of his workshop on 27 July and 3 August 1726: “several … Presses, whereof one is of Brass Metal, the Rowlers being one Yard long, and 45 Inches in Circumference”. (The Daily Courant, 12 July 1726, Issue 7718; 21 July 1726, Issue 7726; 29 July 1726, Issue 7733; 1 August 1726, Issue 7735; 3 August 1726, Issue 7737; NHD 2020, 1: lxiv) That is, the rollers of the press were made of brass rather than wood, and fitted in a wooden frame. At a width of a yard (c.91.5 cm) the rollers, and thereby the press, were exceptionally large for the period (Stijnman 2012, 291, 294– 295). It was also exceptional to find a rolling press with metal rollers, something very uncommon before 1810 (Stijnman 2012, 300–304). It may express the urge seen to accommodate the printshop with only the best equipment for the best results and therefore the highest profits. It means that after duly training staff and further technical developments, the workshop was in complete command of the colour printing process in any technically feasible format. Le Blon’s role at the Picture Office was as Supervisor or General Manager, in addition to which he prepared the designs for the engravers and touched up the impressions after printing.25 The basis of the trichromatic process was the super-imposition of the ink layers, which became known early in his London period (Desmaiseau 1722: 47). However, crucial for the high quality of the prints were the recipes for the blue, yellow and red inks. They needed to be both bright and transparent, as well as printed on white

 NHD 2020, 1: cxxxi, Egmont Papers, p. 137: letter of John Percival to William Perceval of 19 August 1721; Van Gool 1750–1751, I:347; Vertue 1933–1934, 10. 25

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Fig. 4.4  Jacob Christoff Le Blon, Liberality and Modesty, 1722–1725, three plates in mezzotint in blue, yellow and red respectively, 90.8  ×  63.2  cm; Vienna, Albertina, box Französische Farbstiche GM /// 2 (Liberality, holding the pair of compasses, is on the left)

paper, to create the desired luminous effect.26 Le Blon was particular about them and he therefore may have prepared the colourants himself, because the colour ink recipes were only disclosed to the public after his death (Le Blon 1756, 115–24; NHD 2020, 1: lxxv–lxxxi). The business was a success, at least for a few years. King George I ordered prints, and so did Philippe II (1674–1723), Duke of Orleans and Regent for the future Louis

 On the required transparency of the inks or paints and their white background see also Simonini, Chap. 7, this volume. 26

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Fig. 4.5  Jacob Christoff Le Blon after Pietro da Cortona, Endymion sleeping, 1721–1722, three plates in mezzotint in blue, yellow and red respectively, 63.8 × 83.7 cm; Dresden, Kupferstich-­ Kabinett, A 85255

XV (1710–1774), and The Picture Office sent prints overseas to France and Spain.27 Although the workshop produced 5000 prints within 3 years, Le Blon proved a poor manager and in 1722, given the high debt, he was replaced. Another 5000 prints were pulled in the subsequent 10 months, seemingly of poor quality.28 Business declined thereafter until its closure in 1725 (The Daily Post, 17 May 1725, Issue 1760; 18 May 1725, Issue 1761; 21 May 1725, Issue 1764). The inventory of the printshop including the copies Le Blon had painted for the engravers to replicate was auctioned (The Daily Courant, 12 July 1726, Issue 7718; 21 July 1726, Issue 7726; 29 July 1726, Issue 7733; 1 August 1726, Issue 7735; 3 August 1726, Issue 7737), and the remaining prints were sold (The Daily Courant, 5 August 1726, Issue 7739; The Daily Post, 5 August 1726, Issue 2142). The Picture Office was declared bankrupt on 22 November 1726 (The Daily Courant, 19 November 1726, Issue 7830), after which stakeholders were paid in money and prints in December, and the Picture Office came to an official close (The Daily Courant, 2 December 1726, Issue 7841; 16 December 1726, Issue 7853; 17

 NHD 2020, 1: cxxxi; Egmont Papers, p. 137: letter of John Percival to William Perceval of 19 August 1721; NHD 2020, 1:Appendix 5, cxxxvii, Prospectus, fol. 74v. 28  NHD 2020, 1:Appendix 4, cxxxi, Egmont Papers, p.  315: letter by David Dering to John Perceval of 7 March 1723; NHD 2020, 1:Appendix 4, cxxxi, Egmont Papers, 219: letter by John Perceval of 27 March 1722; Van Gool 1750–1751, 1:348. 27

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Fig. 4.6  Jacob Christoff Le Blon after Godfrey Kneller, Mary II, Queen of England, four plates in mezzotint in black, blue, yellow and red respectively, 75.3 × 60.1 cm; Dresden, Kupferstich-­ Kabinett, A 85258

December 1726, Issue 7854). Van Loon suggested that Le Blon was threatened with jail because of the failure of the printing business (Van Gool 1750–1751, 1:349). However, he confused this with the failure of his weaving project, see below. 4.4.3 An Anatomical Atlas, and Coloritto Le Blon, ever an inventive person, was already working on three other projects. Presumably Arent Cant’s idea for an anatomical atlas had suggested the same to him. In 1719, he had collaborated with Nathanael Sankt André (1679/80–1776), a physician to the royal household, on his Preparation. Two years later, Le Blon advertised an anatomical atlas that would have 12 colour prints of the same quality as the earlier print with support by Sankt André (MdF 1721, 116; Desmaiseau 1721, 359; JdS 1722, 117;

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Le Blon 1725, iv–v; Van Gool 1750–1751, I:354; Hahn and Dumaitre 1962, 10; Lilien 1985, 37–38). When the physician became involved in a medical hoax, he lost his position at court and Le Blon’s project was cancelled. Another project was more lasting. It concerned Coloritto; or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting (London 1725), a manual on painting skin tones with red, yellow and blue paint, plus black and white, illustrated with five Heads (NH 47) and four Palettes (NH 48).29 Le Blon explained how all hues can be created by mixing only primary colours of paint: yellow and red make orange, blue and yellow make green, and so on. The Palettes have dashes of colours of the colour mixtures he recommends; the Heads show the effects of colour mixtures in painting. This is now called subtractive colour mixing. In an important passage of Coloritto, Le Blon described the difference between the (subtractive) mixing of paint, or ink, and the (additive) mixing of light: Painting can represent all visible Objects with three Colours, Yellow, Red, and Blue; for all other Colours can be compos’d of these Three, which I call Primitive … And a Mixture of those Three Original Colours makes a Black, and all other Colours whatsoever; as I have demonstrated by my Invention of Printing Pictures and Figures with their natural Colours [i.e., subtractive colour mixing]. I am only speaking of Material Colours, or those used by Painters; for a Mixture of all the primitive impalpable Colours, that cannot be felt [i.e. colours of light] will not produce Black, but the very Contrary, White; as the Great Sir Isaac Newton has demonstrated in his Opticks. (Le Blon 1725, 6–7) [emphasis original]30

Le Blon is clear about the difference between his practice of mixing the three primary colours of paint to create black or any desired colour of paint, and the experiments of Isaac Newton, in which he mixed the primary colours of light to create white light. Both Le Blon’s practical instructions and his observations for mixing either primary colours of paint to black or all colours of light to white go back to the experiments Le Blon and Ten Kate had made in Amsterdam. They may have felt inspired by Newton, but Newton did not formulate a three-colour theory. The men developed their observations and the division between the two natural phenomena themselves, but also without substantiating this theoretically. Despite the clear difference, many scholars since Le Blon’s death related his colour printing process to Newton’s research into optics, but without properly understanding both or without identifying the part of Newton’s research on which Le Blon based his process. Some, even recently (Burch 1910, 51–52; Grasselli 2003, 24), thought that his trichromatic printing was based on a three-colour theory by Newton. What they did not yet realise was that the mixture of paint or ink and the mixture of light concern two dif-

 The Heads (Le Blon 1725, 8–9) are after a plaster cast of a young woman’s head. They are printed from one mezzotint plate inked in black or two super-imposed mezzotint plates inked black/red, with additional hand colouring. They are not printed with three or four colours. The Palettes are printed in a monochromatic yellow-brown with all colour dashes painted in by hand; these dashes are nowadays darkened due to oxidation of the lead white they contain. 30  The mixture of “Impalpable Colours” is what later was called additive colour mixing and the mixture of “Material Colours” is subtractive colour mixing. 29

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ferent physical phenomena, which are nowadays expressed as subtractive and additive colour mixing respectively, a distinction only recognised by the middle of the nineteenth century (Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume). Simply stated, the more colours of paint or ink you mix the darker the mixture will be, while the more colours of light you add the brighter it will become until it is white (Stijnman 2019). It is worth noting, too, that Newton not only never offered a three-colour theory, but he did not even try mixing three colours of light (Newton 1704, 116) What mattered to him was that “in all whites produced by nature, there uses to be a mixture of all sorts of rays, and by consequence a composition of all Colours” (Newton 1704, 116). He researched the behaviour of light, not paint or ink, and was not interested in printmaking. Newton therefore only discussed additive colour mixing, which Le Blon properly observed, while he himself explained its difference from subtractive colour mixing. 4.4.4 The Weaving Project Le Blon’s third idea rested, according to Cromwell Mortimer (1702–1752), on the application of his trichromatic process to coloured wool-and-silk weavings (Fig. 4.7). Mortimer published the only detailed descriptions of the method in 1731. He described how Le Blon initially considered

Fig. 4.7  Jacob Christoff Le Blon, Head of Christ, c. 1727–1732, mechanical tapestry, wool and silk, 73.5 × 53 cm; Spalding, Lincs., U.K., Spalding Gentlemen’s Society

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what the Effect of weaving Threads of different Colours would be, when all the Threads were so fine, as not to be distinguished at a small Distance one from another. By the same principles of producing any visible Object with a small number of Colours, he arrived at the Skill of producing in the Loom all that the Art of Painting requires. (Mortimer 1731, 103–104) [emphasis original]

However, because the colours of weft threads used in weaving did not behave as paint or light do, and because they could not be placed sufficiently close to each other, white or black could not be attained, but only a brownish hue which Cromwell called Light Cinnamon (Mortimer 1731, 104). Wherefore, in Weaving he hath been obliged to make use of white and black Threads, besides red, yellow, and blue; and tho’ he found he was able to imitate any Picture with these five Colours, yet for Cheapness and Expedition, and to add a Brightness where it was required, he found it more convenient to make use of several intermediate Degrees and Colours (Mortimer 1731, 105). [emphasis original]

Helen Wyld, who examined a number of these weavings, found at least 12 different colours (Wyld 2020, cx–cxvii). She also concluded that the application of a trichromatic system to weaving was technically not feasible. In his colour printing layers of transparent ink composed of a multitude of tiny dots were over-printed (on a white support) to create compound hues, which super-imposition is technically not possible in weaving by which much coarser coloured threads were placed next to each other. It is an obvious practical impossibility that caused the failure of translating Le Blon’s trichromatic concept to weaving fabric, even if the highest quality silk was used. Le Blon was granted a royal privilege31 for this weaving project in 1727, and received enough support to construct workshops and attract employees but, owing to mounting debts, this project also went bankrupt (Wyld 2020, cvii–cxix). Because of this, Le Blon was involved in several lawsuits by and against him in 1734 and 1735. He and his ­associates were eventually summoned to court on 28 June 1735 and, because they failed to appear, again on 29 September 1735 (The London Gazette, 28 June 1735, Issue 7415; 26–29 July 1735, Issue 7423). Le Blon did not wait for a verdict. He fled to The Hague where he found the support he needed to move to Paris; he arrived in that city in late 1735 or early 1736. English capital supported Le Blon to bring his trichromatic process to great heights. The early 1720s saw the production of colour prints without equal in print history. They were the fruit of Le Blon’s long research into the behaviour of colour, and finding techniques and materials to reproduce oil paintings in print as close to the originals as possible. However, poor management led to inferior products which brought the project to an end, and a subsequent colour weaving project also failed.

 London, British Library, Add Ms. 36,126 (years 1726–1727), fol. 175r–177v, dated 29 March 1727, (warrant signed by Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, not by George I); Lilien 1985, 44–47. 31

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4.5 Paris Le Blon’s earlier visit to the city, in 1717, was not forgotten by Louis Bertrand Castel (1688–1757), a Jesuit scholar engaged in colour research when, in August 1737 he published a review of Coloritto (Castel 1737, 1436). In that report, Castel reminisced that Le Blon had been secretive about his colour printing process in earlier references about his work. He also found Coloritto so inarticulate that he could not deduce Le Blon’s method from it, although he admired the volume’s figures. Castel, therefore, was pleased to have attended a demonstration by Le Blon of trichromatic printing before writing his review. He described the printing process as he had observed it in detail and was delighted by the diversity of colour nuances produced (Castel 1737, 1442–1443). During this sojourn in Paris, Le Blon’s most important supporter was Antoine-César Gauthier de Montdorge (1701–1768), director of the Chamber of the Royal Revenues (Chambre aux deniers) (Simon 2016; Hilaire-Pérez 2000, 120). Montdorge was instrumental in the grant of a royal privilege to Le Blon in 1737 (Lilien 1985, 65–66). Le Blon sold a half-interest in this patent to Claude François Le Marchand des Descatillons to finance a colour-printing workshop (Lilien 1985: 65; Hilaire-Pérez 2000, 120–21). Finally, about this time a daughter Marguerite was born to Le Blon and Catherine Poulle (d. 1 May 1741).32 4.5.1 Demonstrating the Process To confirm his privilege, Le Blon had to give another, official demonstration of his process to a royal committee, which he did on 12 October 1738 (Lilien 1985, 64, 144– 45; Hilaire-Pérez 2000, 157). Montdorge compiled a report, with Le Blon’s explanations, that was not meant for the public and in general, the process was kept secret.33 However, in that same year, Le Blon’s printshop produced the portraits of Anthony van Dyck (NH 33) and André Hercule de Fleury (NH 34). Both images were offered to the public in sets of four colour-trial proofs (without a completed print) in August 1738 (Inventaire 1741: fol. 4v; Le Blon 1738; Wildenstein 1960, 97–98). The Van Dyck set included proofs in black, yellow, black/yellow and red. As the painter is depicted wearing a large black garment there was no blue used in the design, similar to the portrait of Von Salisch. The Fleury set included proofs in blue, yellow, blue/yellow and red (Fig.  4.8). The final print is lettered in the lower margin in yellow Opus Inventionis impri- / mendi Coloribus naturalibus and in blue in Gallia primum/J.C. le Blon Artis Inventor/fecit et excudit (The first work of printing in natural Colours in France, made and published by J.C. Le Blon Inventor of the art). Only the lower margin of the first plate is inked in blue. The rest is inked à la poupée in black. The image is over-printed with a plate inked in white for the hairs and gaze collar.

 Marguerite was about four-and-a-half years old when Le Blon’s inventory was drawn up on 31 May 1741 (Inventaire 1741, fol. 1r; Wildenstein 1960, 96). 33  Montdorge published Le Blon’s instructions in 1756 as part of the polemic with Gautier. 32

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Fig. 4.8  Jacob Christoff Le Blon after Hyacinthe Rigaud, compilation of the four progress proofs of the portrait of André Hercule de Fleury: mezzotint with engraving and dotting in blue, mezzotint with engraving in yellow, blue over-printed with yellow, mezzotint with engraving and dotting in red; Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, Box 350, nos. 27 (blue), 25 (yellow), 28 (blue/yellow), 26 (red)

That Le Blon used primary colours was already known: these proofs showed the steps of the printing process and underscored that Le Blon was its inventor. The Fleury colour-trial proofs clearly show that the colour order was blue, yellow and finally red.

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A contemporary text written in pen and ink in the upper margin of a copy of the full-­ colour print, including the fourth plate inked in white, emphasises this, as it notes: “12 JvrB/ 22 JvrJ 7 feuerR/ 23 feuerBlc/”.34 In other words, the blue (Bleu) was printed on 12 January, the yellow (Jaune) on 22 January, the red (Rouge) on 7 February and the white (Blanc) on 23 February. Unfortunately, the year is not given: it could be 1738 when the print was advertised in the Mercure de France (Le Blon 1738). Here is another example of how Le Blon implemented his concept of colour order and combination into practice. The blue ink Le Blon used was the darkest and most opaque of his primary colours. Technically, therefore, it makes sense that he printed with it first; if printed last it would obscure the yellow and the red ink layers. He could print a copperplate with engraved lines inked in black over the layers in primary colours for sharp details such as lettering, for example in the Preparation (see Fig. 4.3) and the plate with highlights inked in white was printed last, as the annotations explain. However, he would print a plate with tones in mezzotint inked in black first if he wanted to deepen the blue superimposed on it (NHD 2020, 1:lxxii–lxxiii). 4.5.2 Workshop Staff We are fairly well informed about Le Blon’s staff in Paris. Pierre François Tardieu (1711–1771) was the first engraver employed at the workshop. Tardieu produced copperplates for a Virgin half-length (NH 51) that were used for the demonstration attended by Castel, and copperplates for the portraits of Anthony van Dyck (NH 33) and André Hercule de Fleury (NH 34) in 1738. The Fleury print was superimposed with a fourth plate with details in white, as had the print of George I. The plate for white was prepared by Jacques-Fabien Gautier (later Gautier-Dagoty, 1716–1785) (Montdorge 1749, 177), a Marseille native who had arrived in Paris in 1736, bringing his own ideas on colour printing that he discussed with Castel (Gautier 1749a, 163–164). This again led to an invitation by Montdorge to work for Le Blon starting 24 April 1738 (Gautier 1749a, 117–118, 163–164). Gautier’s ambition and his ideas about colour printing led him to suggest that he and Le Blon become partners. As could be expected the reply from Le Blon, well-experienced and with an international reputation, to the young provincial artist in his employ was negative, and Gautier left again after 6 weeks to set up a workshop for the production of colour prints with what he had learned from Le Blon. During his time in Le Blon’s workshop, Gautier had seen the over-printing of three plates inked in blue, yellow and red. What he most likely had not been aware of was the importance of the choice of colourants for optimal results (NHD 2020, 1: lxxix–lxxxi). For blue both men used Prussian blue, the brightest available blue. For yellow Le Blon used a brightly coloured vegetable dyestuff, while Gautier used a dull yellow ochre. For red Le Blon had his special preparation based on cochineal and brazilwood, with Gautier printing with the common vermilion. Although Gautier did use different colour palettes depending on the subject, his choices of colourants always resulted in opaque inks, compared to the semi-transparent inks Le Blon’s process required (Gautier 1749a,  Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, Den Kongelige Kobberstiksamling, Box 350, no. 29; NHD 2020, 1:lxvii, fig. 47. 34

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169–172). As a result, when Le Blon superimposed his three colours at maximum strength the result was a neutral dark grey, while Gautier’s combination would create a dark red-brown, because the opaque vermilion was on top, largely hiding the colours underneath (Gautier 1749a, plate accompanying pp.  169–172, see colour mixture ABCD). Jean Robert (c. 1720–1782), who replaced Gautier, made the plates for a portrait of Louis XV (NH 37) in 1739. As with the print of George I, it was printed in five colours (NHD 2020, 1: lxxi–lxxiv). The first three were black, blue and then yellow respectively. The black would deepen the superimposed blue, a working manner he had used several times before in London (See NH nos. 32, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44). It was not according to his trichromatic concept, as Le Blon was well aware of, but it reduced the amount of work (Le Blon 1756, 104–105; Montdorge 1749, 176; NHD 2020, 1: lxviii). The fourth plate was inked in two colours: red for the mezzotint elements in the face and white for the engraved hairs. This saved the costs of a fifth copper plate and its printing. Furthermore, regarding tasks assigned to Le Blon’s staff, it was the Irish artist Nicholas Blakey (1713–1758) who executed the preparatory painting for the portrait of Louis XV (Gautier 1749b, 115; Le Blon 1756, 133). The professional plate printer Jean Mouffle printed all Le Blon’s copperplates, except those for the Virgin half-length (NH 51) that were printed by his colleague M. Tournelle during the demonstration that Castel attended. Mouffle also prepared the copperplates for another, larger portrait of Louis XV (NH 38) that Robert scraped, but which was never finished (Gautier 1749b, 116; 1865, 319–20).

4.6 Gautier and Le Blon’s Heritage In May 1740 Le Blon advertised for subscriptions to an anatomical atlas, as he had in London. This volume would include 60 colour illustrations, with explanations. He had received 31 subscriptions, Blakey had begun to prepare designs and Robert to scrape the plates when Le Blon died on 15 May 1741 (Inventaire 1741: fol. 1r, 3v, 5r; Wildenstein 1960, 96, 98). As his wife had predeceased him 2 weeks earlier, their daughter Marguerite, was Le Blon’s sole heir. Gautier reacted by immediately applying for a royal privilege for colour printing, which was granted on 5 September 1741 and revoked 5 months later, by an action of Le Blon’s heirs (NHD 2020, 1: xlvii). Gautier got what he wanted in the end, as Marguerite’s guardian and Le Marchand des Descatillons later sold the privilege and the inventory of Le Blon’s workshop to a straw man representing Gautier. Gautier developed his own manner of producing colour prints. He also first printed a mezzotint plate inked in black, followed by three plates in the primary colours, but the results were less refined than Le Blon’s prints because Gautier’s rocking was coarser and irregular. Gautier also used opaque inks that largely did hide lower ink layers in over-printing, while Le Blon used transparent inks that produced much better compound hues.

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Theoretically, over-printing of blue, yellow and red inks should create black, but even with the present knowledge of inks and colourants only a dark grey is feasible due to the imperfections of the various components of the inks. In principle, Le Blon used the blue-inked plate for creating the deepest shades. But if a very deep blue or actual black was required, he chose to use black ink to save costs and time, which was economical. Gautier’s approach was different (NHD 2020, 1: lxxviii–lxxix). He used three colour palettes, each with different kinds of blacks, blues, yellows and reds, depending on the hues of his subject. Because most of his inks were not or not very transparent, as were Le Blon’s inks, their super-imposition was less effective; the top layers of colour partly hid lower layers instead of creating compound hues. Gautier printed black first to increase the tonalities of all colours printed on top but, at the same time, this black reduced the brightness of the over-printed colours. On the whole, this was more opportunistic and not according to the ideal mixing of primary colours. Le Blon, Van Limborch and Ten Kate had studied the behaviour of colour paint and light, arriving at conclusions that went beyond what Newton had found. From these Le Blon developed a novel colour printing process, including particular colour ink recipes best suited for optimal results. Gautier never reached Le Blon’s level, technically or artistically. He came to Paris with some ideas on colour printing based on printing fabric with woodblocks he had seen in calico workshops in his hometown Marseille. His first colour print of a shell, made before he met Le Blon, was compiled from three plates, inked in dark brown, yellow-brown and red respectively (Gautier 1741, 2927 (Une Coquile Turbinite, nommée Drap d’or); 1749a, 162–164, with original print; Rodari 1996, 109, Fig. 87). Gautier seems to have created his first trichromatic print, a Head of St Peter from three plates in blue/yellow/red in his spare evening hours during his stay at Le Blon’s workshop (Gautier 1741, 2927 (Une Tête de S. Pierre); Rodari 1996, 108, Fig. 86). Only after he had quit Le Blon’s employ did he begin to produce prints in black over-printed with primary colours (Fig. 4.9). The merit of Gautier’s work is his high-output print production. At first, he created colour prints after oil paintings by renowned artists (Gautier 1741, 1742). He had more success, following Le Blon’s idea, with the anatomical atlases he began to publish in 1745 (Gautier 1746). After Le Blon’s death, Robert continued working in his manner; in 1749 he advertised a four-colour print of the Crucifixion, after a design by Nicholas Delobel (1693–1763). For this print, he was granted a common royal privilege to secure the publication, but Gautier misunderstood, believing that it concerned a privilege for trichromatic printing, for which he had acquired the privilege. Gautier became enraged and a polemic between him and Robert, Montdorge and others ensued, lasting until the Mercure de France stopped publishing his letters to the editor in 1756.35 To our advantage, the ultimate effect of the feud was that Gautier published his technique in various letters (Gautier 1749a, b). Montdorge in turn published L’Art d’Imprimer les Tableaux in 1756. Its first part contained the text of Coloritto and the second part was the text of

 His last two letters were only published in 1865. For references to the complete polemic see Stijnman 2012, 578–579, nos. 453–456; 586, nos. 521–523; 591–592, nos. 566–568; related are MdF 1755 and Le Blon 1756, 130–134. 35

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Fig. 4.9  Jacques-Fabien Gautier-Dagoty, Bowl with Plums, four plates in mezzotint in black, blue, yellow and red respectively, 22.2 × 28.6 cm; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-OB-33.835

the report of the royal committee, with Le Blon’s explanation of his process (Le Blon 1756, 85–134).36 It shows how close his trichromatic manner stayed to the original concept, but also explained practical limitations and technical shortcuts to arrive at desired effects. Gautier also taught his five sons the process; they in turn produced colour prints. His most talented son Edouard (1744–1783) moved to Italy where he taught printing with four plates to Carlo Lasinio (1757–1839), who practised it until the 1790s (Cassinelli 2004, XII–XIII, 5–9, 40–43). In England, trichromatic printing stopped with the closure of Le Blon’s workshop and no further prints in this process were ever made. In Holland, Jan L’Admiral made seven trichromatic anatomical prints in 1736–c.1741 (Fig. 4.10), but he did not have any followers. German multiple plate colour prints were created in the second half of the eighteenth century, presumably under influence of French colour printing of the period, so not following Le Blon’s example directly. In these ways, Le Blon’s process was disseminated, leading to a flourishing of French colour prints in the second half of the eighteenth century (Model and Springer 1912; Dodgson 1924; Carlson and Ittman 1984, 22–24; Grasselli 2003; Twyman 2013, 19–21). Trichromatic printing disappeared again in the 1790s, but its concept was revived by Godefroy Engelmann Sr (1788–1839) in 1837 (Lilien 1985, 124–27, 146;  The original manuscript of the report, Opérations nécessaires pour graver et imprimer des estampes, A l’imitation de la Peinture, is lost. 36

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Fig. 4.10  Jan L’Admiral, Anatomical Plate Representing a Human Heart, 1740–1745, first plate mezzotint with engraving and dotting in blue, second plate mezzotint in yellow, third plate mezzotint in red, fourth plate etching in red, 18.8  ×  22.7  cm; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1961-51

Twyman 2013, 99–110; forthcoming). Engelmann would develop lithographic colour printing, super-imposing blue, yellow and red respectively, like Le Blon, with a fourth layer of black ink for details or dark tonalities, or when the design required a pure black area. He patented this system as chromolithography, which would become the most important colour printing method in the nineteenth century (Twyman 2013).

4.7 Conclusion Le Blon, Ten Kate and Van Limborch conducted experiments with mixing paints and light to come to results that went further than Newton’s. They brought back the number of primary colours to only three, as is the present standard trichromatic colour order. Next, Le Blon went to great lengths to develop this initial concept into practice, something Newton and his followers had not done. He succeeded in implementing the observation that—with suitable colourants mixed in proper ratios—any possible hue could be created in his trichromatic printing method. That success had a strong impact on subsequent approaches to ordering colours in the eighteenth century. Looking in more detail at Le Blon’s life shows how closely the places where he lived were entangled with his work. Le Blon went from initiating concepts and first practical

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success in Amsterdam and following exploitation and admiration in London, to scorn and juridical persecution, until he found final recognition in Paris at the end of his life. Le Blon’s trichromatic process stood at the base of the classical French colour prints of the latter eighteenth century. The process was revived as chromolithography in the nineteenth century and developed into the CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) colour system in the twentieth century, which is still used in offset printing, digital printing and colour copying. Important also for the history of colour is that Le Blon was the first to articulate in writing that mixing paints and mixing lights (later called additive and subtractive colour mixing) followed different rules, although he could not define what caused the difference. The lack of theoretical foundation meant this aspect of his work sank into oblivion: that it concerned two different physical phenomena was only understood from the middle of the nineteenth century. Le Blon was more a man of practice, nevertheless, his initial spark should be remembered well. Acknowledgements  I gratefully acknowledge Frits Garritsen for making the New Hollstein D&F volumes on Le Blon and the brothers L’Admiral possible and the work of Simon Turner as their editor. With thanks to: Suzanne Baverez for discussing whether Le Blon had been a member of the Bentveughels in Rome; to Sarah Lowengard for discussing various aspects of Le Blon’s work; to Ann Massing for discussing glass transfer painting, or prints-behind-glass; to Fabiola Mercandetti for checking whether Le Blon had worked in the atelier of Carlo Maratti in Rome; and to Hessel Miedema (†) for discussing with me Le Blon’s life and work in Amsterdam.

References37 Baverez, Suzanne. 2015. La Schildersbent: Un réseau d’artistes Néerlandais à Rome Au XVII Ème Siècle (v. 1620–1720). These en préparation, Université Paris sciences et lettres. https:// www.theses.fr/s175695. Burch, R.M. 1910. Colour Printing and Colour Printers. London/New York: Pitman (repr. 1985). Carlson, V.I., and J.W. Ittman, eds. 1984. Regency to Empire: French Printmaking 1715–1814. Baltimore/Minneapolis: Museum of Art/Institute of Arts. Cassinelli, Paolo. 2004. Carlo Lasinio, incisioni. Florence: Olschki/Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, XC. Castel, L.B. 1737. Article LXXXII. Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences & des beaux arts, commencés d’être imprimés l’an 1701 à Trevoux, August, 1435–1444. Conti, Antonio. 1756. Prose e poesie. Vol. II. Venice: s.n. de Montdorge, Antoine-César Gauthier. 1749. Réponse de M. de Montdorge, aux informations de M. Rémond de Sainte Albine, au sujet de la contestation entre deux élèves de feu M. Le Blond, sur l’art d’imprimer les tableaux. Mercure de France (July): 173–179. Desmaiseau, P. 1721. Extrait d’une Lettre écrite de Londres le 27. Mars 1721. Journal des sçavans September: 359–360.

 NB: advertisements in London newspapers are described in full in the footnotes and not entered in this bibliography. 37

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———. 1722, July. Lettre écrite de Londres par M. Des-Maiseaux … à M. l’Abbé de Veissiere … touchans l’Art d’imprimer des Tableaux & des Ptortraits en couleurs, etc. A Londres, le 23. Febrier, 1722. Journal des sçavans 46–49: 117. Dodgson, Campbell. 1924. Old French Colour-Prints. London: Halton and Smith. Gaudriault, Raymond. 1995. Filigranes et autres caractéristiques des papiers fabriqués en France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: CNRS/J. Telford. Gautier, Jacques-Fabien. 1741. Une coquile turbinite, nommée drap d’or. Mercure de France, 2927. ———. 1742. Tableaux imprimés. Mercure de France, 1841–43. Gautier-Dagoty, Jacques-Fabien. 1746[−1748]. Myologie complette en couleur et grandeur naturelle, composée de l’essai et de la suite de l’essai d’anatomie, en tableaux imprimés, 2 vols. Paris: Gautier (etc.). ———. 1749a, July. Lettre à M. de Boze [etc.]. Mercure de France 1749: 158–172. ———. 1749b, October. De la lettre sur le systême des quatre couleurs primitives du Sr [J.-F.] Gautier-Dagoty. Mercure de France 1749: 102–119. ———. 1865. Lettres à l’auteur du Mercure sur l’invention et l’utilité de l’art d’imprimer les tableaux, ed. P.I. Revue universelle des arts 21: 306–324. Grasselli, Margaret Morgan, ed. 2003. Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in Eighteenth-century France. Washington: National Gallery of Art. Hahn, André, and Paul Dumaitre. 1962. Le livre d’anatomie en couleurs au XVIIIe siècle, de J.C. Le Blon à J. Gautier-d’Agoty. Médecine de France: Panorama de la pensée médicale littéraire et artistique française 40: 10–13. Hilaire-Pérez, Liliane. 2000. L’Invention technique au siècle des lumières. Paris: Albin Michel. Houbraken, Arnold. 1718–1721. De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen: waar van ‘er vele met hunne beeltenissen ten tooneel verschynen, en hun levensgedrag en konstwerken beschreven worden: zynde een vervolg op het Schilderboek van K. v. Mander, 3 vols. Amsterdam: For the (widow of) the Author. Inventaire. 1741. Inventaire après déces de Jacques-Christophe Le Blond, Paris 31 May 1741 (ms. in Paris, Archive Nationales, Archives des Notaires de Paris. Minutier Central. Cote LIII, 298, reference code: MC/ET/VII/105). JdS. 1722. [Subscriptions]. Journal des sçavans (July): 117. Keyssler, Johann Georg. 1742. Neüeste Reise durch Teütschland, Böhmen, Ungarn, die Schweitz, Jtalien, und Lothringen [etc.], 2 vols. Hannover: Förster. L’Admiral, Jacob. 1774. Naauwkeurige waarnemingen omtrent de veranderingen van veele insekten of gekorvene diertjes [etc.]. Amsterdam: Sluyter. Lambert, Susan. 1987. The Image Multiplied: Five Centuries of Printed Reproductions of Painting and Drawings. London: Trefoil. Le Blon, Jacob Christoff. 1725. Coloritto: or, The Harmony of Colour in Painting. London. ———. 1738. Lettre de M. J.C. le Blon, écrite de Paris le 18. Août 1738, au sujet des Estampes Colorées. Mercure de France (August): 1802–1804. ———. 1756. L’Art d’imprimer les tableaux: traité d’après les écrits, les opérations & les instructions verbales de J.C. le Blon. Paris: Le Mercier [etc.] (2nd ed. Paris 1768). Lilien, Otto M. 1985. Jacob Christoph Le Blon, 1667–1741: Inventor of Three- and Four Colour Printing. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. Massing, Ann. 1989. From Print to Painting: The Technique of Glass Transfer Painting. Print Quarterly 6: 382–393. ———. 2008. Hinterglassmalerei. Print Quarterly 25: 60–61. MdF. 1721. [Note by the editor]. Mercure de France (June/July): 115–16. ———. 1745. Tableaux imprimés. Mercure de France (March): 143–46. ———. 1755. Lettre à l’auteur du Mercure. Mercure de France (December): 206–209.

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Miedema, Hessel. 2006. Denkbeeldig schoon: Lambert ten Kates opvattingen over beeldende kunst, 2 vols. Leiden: Primavera. Model, Julius, and Jaro Springer. 1912. Der französische Farbenstich des XVIII. Jahrhunderts. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Mortimer, Cromwell. 1731. An Account of Mr. James Christopher Le Blon’s Principles of Printing, in Imitation of Painting, and of Weaving Tapestry, in the Same Manner as Brocades. Philosophical Transactions 37: 101–107. Newton, Isaac. 1672. Letter Containing his New Theory about Light and Colors. Philosophical Transactions 80: 3075–3087. ———. 1704. Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. London: Smith and Walford. NHD (J.C. Le Blon). 2020. Jacob Christoff Le Blon and Trichromatic Printing, Comp. by Ad Stijnman, with a contribution by Helen Wyld, ed. by Simon Turner, 2 parts. Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & Vision, in co-operation with The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700). Reynaud, Marie-Hélène. 1981. Les moulins à papier d’Annonay à l’ère pré-industrielle: les Montgolfiers et Vidalon. Lyon: Vivarais. Rodari, Florian, ed. 1996. Anatomie de la couleur: l’invention de l’estampe en couleurs. Paris/ Lausanne: Bibliothèque nationale de France/Musée Olympique. Scheltema, P. 1863. Namen der schilders, die in de eerste helft der achttiende eeuw te Amsterdam poorters zijn geweest. P.  Scheltema. Aemstel’s oudheid of gedenkwaardigheden van Amsterdam V, 65–83. Amsterdam: Scheltema. Simon, Robin. 2016. The Identity of ‘Gautier, Sécretaire du Roi’ by Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) and Aspects of Early Colour Printing. The British Art Journal 17 (1): 69–73. Simonini, Giulia. 2020. Color Charts in Eighteenth-Century Europe. History, Developments and Applications. PhD diss., Technische Universität Berlin. Stijnman, Ad. 2012. Engraving and Etching 1400–2000: A History of the Development of Manual Intaglio Printmaking Processes. London/Houten: Archetype/Hes & De Graaf. ———. 2019. Ink and Light—Le Blon’s Colorito and Newton’s Opticks. https://www.thinking3d. ac.uk/LeBlon1725. Accessed 1 Oct 2022. Ten Kate, Lambert Hermansz. 1732. The Beau Ideal. London: Clarke et al. Twyman, Michael. 2013. A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour for All. London/New Castle: British Library/Oak Knoll. ———. forthcoming. The Foundation of Commercial Colour Printing 1835–1840. In Printing Colour 1700–1830: Histories, Techniques, Functions and Receptions, ed. M.M. Grasselli and E. Savage (Proceedings of the Britsh Academy). Van de Roemer, Bert. 2015. De gebroeders Von Uffenbach en de creative industrie van Amsterdam in de vroege achttiende eeuw. Amstelodamum 102 (4): 161–174. Van der Marck, Johan. 1773. Auction. Amsterdam: de Winter & Yver. Van Gool, Johan. 1750–1751. De nieuwe schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen [etc.], 2 vols. The Hague: For the author. Vertue notebooks Volume III. 1933–1934. The Twenty-Second Volume of the Walpole Society 1933–1934. Volume III. Oxford: Vertue Note Books. Von Uffenbach, Zacharias Conrad. 1753–1754. Merkwürdige Reisen durch Niedersachsen, Holland und Engelland, 3 vols. Frankfurt/Leipzig/Ulm: Gaum. Wildenstein, Georges. 1960. Jacob Christoffel Le Blon ou ‘le secret de peindre en gravent’. Gazette des Beaux-Arts LVI: 91–100. Woodcroft, Bennet. 1969. Printing Patents, Abridgements of Patent Specifications Relating to Printing, 1617–1857. Repr. London: Printing Historical Society.

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Wyld, Helen. 2020. Jacob Christoff Le Blon’s Secret for Weaving Tapestry. In Jacob Christoff Le Blon and Trichromatic Printing, comp. by Ad Stijnman, with a contribution by Helen Wyld, ed. by Simon Turner, 2 parts. Ouderkerk aan den IJssel: Sound & Vision, in co-operation with The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700). Ad Stijnman (PhD University of Amsterdam, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London) is a professional printmaker and an independent scholar of historical printmaking processes. His speciality in both is manual intaglio printmaking techniques. He has lectured and published widely on the subject.  

Chapter 5 Colour Theory by Mikhail Lomonosov: From Dyes and Mosaics to a Trichromatic Idea Nadezhda Stanulevich1

1 

(*)

The laboratory of museum technologies, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera), Saint Petersburg, Russia [email protected] Abstract The Russian academic, scholar and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) was interested in the subject of optics from the beginning of his career. When, in the 1740s, he turned to the manufacture of mosaics and the problems of obtaining pure mineral colours, he extended this interest to the practical phenomena of colour and especially trichromacy. Lomonosov sent to the Imperial Academy of Arts the first samples of pigments in October 1749: analogues of the Prussian blue pigment that was then imported to Russia. He completed his first mosaic work in August 1752. He would go on to create or oversee 29 mosaic portraits, holy images, and battle paintings. Lomonosov’s theory of colours developed alongside his practical work. He extended his corpuscular theory to include both the kinetics of material bodies and the kinetics of the matter of ether; he combined these chemical and physical views to produce a wave theory of light and colour. Lomonosov presented a theory that explained why combining red, yellow and blue lights yields white light in a lecture to the Imperial Academy of Arts, “Origin of Light and Colours” (1756). This work was published in Russian 1 year later and in Latin translation in 1759. This essay will present an overview of Lomonosov’s early optical theory and show how he adapted it based on the understanding he developed while in more practical realms. Keywords  Lomonosov · Colour theory · Light theory · Mosaics · Glass · Chemistry · Optics

Preparing the text of my doctoral thesis about the history of colour photography at the turn of the twentieth century, I discovered a lack of explanations, in Russian or in other languages, of theories of colour that would have been familiar in eighteenth-century Russia. A particularly noticeable absence was any detail about Mikhail Lomonosov’s views. This man, often considered the first native Russian natural philosopher, was the first Russian member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, someone well-known for © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_5

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the breadth of his interests. Lomonosov (1711–1765) investigated chemistry, physics, meteorology, geography, and geology. He wrote about philosophy, history, philology and literature. He was the type of polymath who would write a poem to propose establishing a manufacture. Lomonosov’s experiments with colour, and his engagement in the production of pigment colours, mosaics and coloured glasses, confronted and resolved technical, historical and art-historical issues. The present article will combine various available sources about the theoretical and practical activities of Lomonosov in light and colour. In doing this, I will highlight the way his practical endeavours guided his optical theory toward a greater reliance on trichromacy for colours of light and material colours.

5.1 Lomonosov’s Life and Education Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was born in Mishaninskaya (now Lomonosovo), a village in the Archangelgorod Governorate, more than 1000 km north of St. Petersburg. His father, Vasily, a prosperous peasant fisherman turned shipowner, amassed a fortune transporting goods. Lomonosov’s mother, Elena, was the daughter of a deacon (Menshutkin 1911). Lomonosov’s early learning was provided by the Church, and so orthodox religious literature was the basis of his education. However, with the help of one of the prosperous peasants in their village, Lomonosov became familiar with two non-religious topics: Slavic grammar and arithmetic. Furthering his education required study in Latin, yet owing to his peasant status Lomonosov could not enter the Slavic-Latin school, held in Kholmogory, the local administrative centre, at the house of the bishop. He became determined to continue his studies in Moscow, where no one would know he was a peasant. Thus, late in 1730, aged 19 and with his father’s permission to be absent until the fall of 1731 (Menshutkin 1911, 9), Lomonosov left his native place and set off for Moscow to enrol in the Slavonic–Greek–Latin Academy. He stayed away for the next 10 years. Throughout this time, his father paid a poll tax for his son,1 as Russian law considered him a fugitive from his native place (Menshutkin 1911, 27). The burden this placed on the family may explain Lomonosov’s disastrous financial situation throughout his student years. In Moscow, Lomonosov sought to conceal his humble origin, as his peasant status would have limited or prevented his further education. He was successful in this effort and, while his education was now under the control of both the Orthodox Church and the Academy, he was able to study Old Russian literature as well as natural philosophical topics such as physics and mathematics. He continued to pursue his interests in both the sciences and literature throughout his life.

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 Regarding the parameters of peasantry in Russia, see Mironov, 2000.

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In 1735, Lomonosov asked permission from the Archimandrite to continue his education at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,2 where he hoped to expand his knowledge of physics and mathematics by studying various book collections (Menshutkin 1911, 13). He found he was dissatisfied with the education he was receiving, and so returned to Moscow to resume his studies at the Slavonic–Greek–Latin Academy. As one of its best students, on his graduation he was awarded a scholarship by the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg to attend Saint Petersburg University; he began to study there in January 1736 (Menshutkin 1911, 17). Lomonosov dove into his studies and, 6  months later, was rewarded with a four-year grant from the Russian Academy of Science to study abroad, in Germany. Lomonosov first attended the University of Marburg, where his teacher was the rationalist philosopher Christian Wolff (1679– 1754), and then studied in Freiberg, a centre for geological training (Menshutkin 1911, 18). Lomonosov’s German education included languages, philosophy, physics, chemistry, mining and metallurgy (Makarov 1949b, 7); this became the foundation for his further research in St. Petersburg, where he settled on his return to Russia on 8 June 1741. Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741, but did not obtain a permanent position immediately; he began to work with the mineralogical collection of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg. This research was curated by professor of botany Johann Amman (1707–1741) (Menshutkin 1911, 28). The two men, and others, published descriptions of the mineralogical collections. Soviet researcher Ilarion Shafranovskii reviewed and analysed three manuscripts of the collection (Shafranovskii 1961). He identified Lomonosov’s remarks on the texts and argued that Lomonosov had gained an understanding of all collection items (Shafranovskii 1961, 4). In Lomonosov’s notes, Shafranovskii specifically identified a desire to create Russian scientific terminology. The last version of the mineralogical collection was published as Pars tertia, qua continentur res naturales ex regno minerali in 1745. Lomonosov’s applications for permanent work were successful the following year when he was appointed to an adjunct position at the Academy (Kudriavtsev 1950, 26). Owing to his training in Germany and his scientific activities on his return to Russia, Lomonosov held considerable prestige at home, and his scientific works were widely known among the communities of natural philosophers in Europe. His theories, especially those concerning heat and the constitution of matter, were analysed with interest in European scientific journals. He became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences of the Institute of Bologna. An issue that arises with any research into Lomonosov concerns the lack of original sources. Researchers discovered at his death that many documents had been lost. Still, some holograph manuscripts, and contemporaneous works of others that discuss Lomonosov’s activities, survive. Lomonosov’s institutional correspondence is housed at the Archives of the Academy of Sciences and the Russian State Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg. These papers may be supplemented with laboratory inventories from the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg and with work aggregated in the

 Education at the academy was open to all classes of society (National University of Kyiv-­ Mohyla Academy 2011). 2

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Soviet era now found in several state libraries and museums collections, such as the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). The Kunstkamera also maintains a Lomonosov collection that includes personal objects such as equipment and instruments, books, paintings, engravings and drawings, mosaics, furniture, and decorative arts (Breneva and Moiseeva 1995, 6). The Kunstkamera-­ Lomonosov connection is a strong and important one as, between 1741 and 1765, he presented his scientific reports to the Russian Academy of Science, in the Conference Hall of the Kunstkamera. This connection led, in 1949, to the founding of the Lomonosov Museum (Vavilov 1949, 7) as a department of the Kunstkamera.

5.2 Lomonosov’s Interest in Colour Theory Evidence of Lomonosov’s early interest in colour theory can be found in Elements of mathematical chemistry (1741). In this unfinished work, he describes colour as existing in bodies as weight, cohesion, elasticity, or taste and smell do. His work on the topic did not begin in earnest until several years later (Lomonosov 1950, 83). Appointed a professor by the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg in 1745, he translated into Russian a work of his former teacher, Christian Wolff. In Institutiones philosophiae experimentalis (“Studies in Experimental Philosophy”), Wolff describes the nature of colour.3 Lomonosov dedicated the second (1760) edition of this translation to the statesman and diplomat Count Mikhail Illarionovich Vorontsov (1714–1767); in the dedicatory letter, he explained his interest in the nature of colour. Lomonosov mentioned that research into colours attracted him more than other physics research because it depended more on chemistry, which he considered his primary profession. In the dedication, he also noted that he had started intensive work on a colour theory, based on the Roman mosaics that Count Vorontsov had brought to St. Petersburg in the later 1740s (Lomonosov 1934a, 298–299). The particulate or pointillistic nature of mosaic images could be seen as a visible manifestation of Lomonosov’s corpuscular theories of chemistry, including colour combination. Lomonosov completed and published only one work specifically on his theory of light: Lecture on the Origin of Light, A New Theory of Colour, presented in a public Meeting of the Imperial Academy of Science, 1st July 1756, by Mikhail Lomonosov (Lecture on Light).4 The Imperial Academy of Sciences issued 400 copies of this work, in Russian, in 1757; a translation into Latin was published in 1759. (Lomonosov 1961, 536) Over the next 2 years, Lomonosov’s theory received mixed reviews. One reviewer criticized Lomonosov for challenging Isaac Newton’s law of refraction of rays but

 See e.g., §315–322 in Thümmig 1729.  Слово о происхождении света, новую теорию о цветах представляющее, в публичном собрании императорской Академии Наук июля 1 дня 1756 года говоренное Михайлом Ломоносовым. (Slovo o proiskhozhdenii sveta, novuiu teoriiu o tsvetakh predstavliaiushchee, v publichnom sobranii imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk iiulia 1 dnia 1756 goda govorennoe Mikhaĭlom Lomonosovym); in English, see Leicester 1970, 247–269 3 4

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found the theory of colours successfully explained and proved (Neue Zeitungen von Gelehrten Sachen auf das Jahr 1758, 873–877). Others pointed to the original nature of Lomonosov’s idea about particle combination as the basis of the development of the nature of light and colours (Journal encyclopédique par une société de gens de lettres 1759, 3–14); or recognized the paper as “ingenious” (Monthly Review 1759, 255). Lomonosov’s work influenced continued developments in colour theory. For example, the English optical philosopher and polymath Thomas Young (1773–1829) mentioned Lecture on the Origin of Light in the section of A catalogue of works relating to natural philosophy and the mechanical arts, devoted to physical optics (Young 1807, 290). Aspects of Lomonosov’s colour theory can be found in his notebooks, collected in the twentieth century and published as 276 notes about physics and corpuscular philosophy (Lomonosov 1950, 103–167). An earlier collection, Chemical and optical notes (Lomonosov 1934b, 402–450), includes recipes for coloured glasses and mosaics. We know that Lomonosov planned to combine all his notes into one publication, but this effort was never completed.

5.3 Russian Colour Theories Before Lomonosov Philosophical works in Old Russian don’t include discourses about colour; it is likely that any scientific study of colour in Russia undertaken before the eighteenth century would have been considered heretical. Unlike the Western explorations of lines, circles, and triangles of the time (Caivano this volume), the Old Russian concept of colour emphasised uniformity and an obvious hierarchy: Colour was a part of the world created in the image of God and a product of God’s mind. (Amosov 1986, 99). Artists who worked in the Old Russian style relied on clear (unmixed) tones of blue, red, green and yellow in their paintings and drawings. Until the seventeenth century, the first three colours were used in icons and mosaics; each was correlated with a biblical character’s status. Yellow, as the equivalent of gold, was not subject to such hierarchical relationships. As the art historian A.  A. Amosov mentions (1986, 100), in traditional painting, colours might be highlighted through the placement of tonal compliments or contrasts. “Broken” or mixed colours began to appear in Russian-made art in the second part of the seventeenth century. The discovery of the possibilities of combining red, yellow and blue to obtain other colours was added to the Russian colouristic during Peter the Great’s time (Amosov 1986, 102–103). The discrepancy between the system of three colours of the Old Russian school, which Lomonosov would have encountered in his childhood, and the new painting school, whose works he would have seen while studying in Moscow, may have played a role in his turn to the study of colour. Amosov considered Lomonosov’s sensitivity to colour as a product of his life in the North of Russia: He was raised in a colourful world of local flora, changing illumination patterns in the Arctic region, the Aurora Borealis and the brightness of northern-style icons and folk painting (Amosov 1986, 93).

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5.4 Lomonosov’s Colour Theory and Experiments Since the beginning of his career, Lomonosov preferred experimental scientific work to theoretical positioning5: his experiments with colour, which reflect this preference, were both physical and chemical. When attempting to understand the experimental basis of colour, Lomonosov looked to the works of Isaac Newton (1643–1727), Edmé Marriotte (1620–1684), and René Descartes (1596–1650) to propose statements about the nature of colour (Lomonosov 1970, 35, 50; Lialikov 1951, 17–32). In his lecture describing light, Lomonosov told his audience at the Academy of Sciences that he would rely on recent scholarship (like many scientists today) because it represented the best knowledge available. He identified two paths. One, which began with Descartes, saw light as continuous oscillations (particles). In contrast, Newton believed light flows from the light source “like a river” (waves). Noting that both schools consider light “exceedingly subtle”—that is, intangible—Lomonosov (1970, 249) defines his experimental consideration as determining which is better. To establish this, Lomonosov marked out three types of motions for ether (the atmosphere, approximately): it could flow, vibrate or rotate. Considering various natural phenomena, his own experiments and observations of the reaction of metals, including in metallurgy, he concluded that the oscillating motion (vibrations) of the ether is the cause of light (Lomonosov 1952, 326–327; Lomonosov 1970, 255–256). Lomonosov’s corpuscular explanation for the existence of colours required him to introduce the combination of particles, picturing the structure of the universe as consisting of invisible globules of different sizes that engaged each other by cohering like teeth on a gear-wheel (Lomonosov, 1952, 329; Lomonosov 1970, 257). Lomonosov separated all ether particles into three different sizes, all of which had a spherical shape. The first type of particle was the largest and, by continuous mutual contact, had a squared-­ off arrangement to each other. Ether particles of the second type, being much finer, were located in the intervals between the first parts. The third sort of particle is of the same order of arrangement. The above-mentioned geometrical dimensions were the smallest types of particles—in the intervals between the second type of particles (Lomonosov 1952, 331; Lomonosov 1970, 259). These latter sorts of ether particles are connected to the other sorts but are incompatible with different particles. Lomonosov described the relationship between the particle types as partially independent. Two sorts of particles can remain without turning while the third rotates, and when two sorts turn, one can be motionless, or equally, all three can move or remain at rest without depending on each other (Lomonosov 1952, 332; Lomonosov  1970, 260). Lomonosov described the classification of sensible bodies as chief or subsidiary. The first was assumed to be salty, sulphurous, or mercurial material; the second was pure water or ether. In his opinion, the three sorts of ether particles agreed with the three sorts of true primary particles—sulphur, salt and mercury—a prevailing philosophy of chemical combination at the time. Lomonosov revealed this interaction in his speech:

 For example, Lomonosov in Definition VI, Theorem I of Elements of mathematical chemistry wrote: “A true chemist should be theoretical and practical” (Lomonosov 1970, 53). 5

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The first size of ether corresponds to salt; the second size with mercury; and the third size with sulphur or inflammable material; and with pure earth, with water, and with air are joined all that is blunt, weak, and imperfect. Finally, I find that from the first type of ether arises the colour red, from the second, yellow, and from the third, blue. Other colours are generated from mixtures of the first ones. (Lomonosov, 1952, 332; Lomonosov 1970, 260)

Lomonosov believed that the different sizes of the particles, and their arrangement described above, are required by nature itself. Nature needs an equal distribution of particles in order: firstly, to have the same proportion of the three kinds of ether, independent of external influences; secondly, similar particles continue to interact regardless of external influences (Lomonosov 1952, 334; Lomonosov 1970, 262). In many respects, Lomonosov’s ideas presage those of Franz Uibelaker, four decades later (Kleinwächter, this volume). Lomonosov also worked to define various changes in the qualities of colours by pointing to their similarity to things of consistent colour, as when scientists must describe the colours of chemical bodies (Lomonosov 1951, 499). He considered identifying in nature items that could serve as standards for basic colours. For red, he suggested blood, hydrangea petals, carmine-coloured wool, and minium (red lead). Yellow might be set by looking at saffron, chamomile, or ochre. His standards for light blue were a clear sky, a cornflower, or ultramarine. Lomonosov considered this identification necessary to distinguish primary and unmixed colours from others (Lomonosov 1951, 500). The notes of Jacob Christoff Le Blon (1667–1741), the German inventor of trichromatic printing, offer a more detailed, but similar explanation using the example of painting and engraving the above model of three colours: red, yellow and blue (Stijnman, this volume). Among Lomonosov’s papers is a letter to Count Vorontsov, dated 19th January 1764, that mentions his acquisition of new optical instruments that would prove his theory of colours by division into primaries (Lomonosov 1948, 275). In the opinion of historian K.S. Lialikov, these optical instruments were possibly similar to a modern spectrometer (Lialikov 1951, 24). Specialists have dated Lomonosov’s miscellanea, published as 276 notes about physics and corpuscular philosophy, to 1742–3 (1950, 549–550). In the collection, Lomonosov recorded his thoughts and plans and transcribed excerpts from scientific literature, including his research into primary colours. The entries on colour and light show his interest in such themes as vision, experiments and experimental description, and the nature of light. For example, Lomonosov’s note number 183 (141) contains an excerpt in French of Marriotte’s experiments at colour splitting. Lomonosov later mentioned Marriotte’s thoughts as evidence for his theory of colours and noted that Marriotte did not refute Newton. Instead, he tried to correct Newton’s theory about the separation of light by the refraction of the rays into colours and only confirmed that in nature there are three, not seven chief colours (Lomonosov 1952, 334; Lomonosov 1970, 261–262). In an earlier note (number 134), Lomonosov had made clear the intention behind his experiments, noting: It is necessary for [me to conduct] deep research into how coloured rays penetrate transparent bodies and [how this phenomenon occurs] primarily through the compound-colour glasses; this will provide proof of my position on colours and its justification through this research. (Lomonosov, 1950, 131)

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Lomonosov believed he was expanding on the work of his predecessors, including Newton, Mariotte, and Descartes, by adding his new vision experiments and connecting colours one saw with colours one could make. A description included in Chemical and optical notes (406–7) explains the principle of an apparatus for the separation of colours. The accompanying drawing (Fig.  5.1) contains a scheme to mark the observation screen with colour names. In the first column, the Cyrillic letters at the left correspond to the seven colours of eighteen century Russia: krasnyĭ (red), rudozhёltyĭ (orange), zhёltyĭ (yellow), zelёnyĭ (green), osinovyĭ (blue-green), goluboĭ (blue) and vishnёvyĭ (violet). The small letter in the second column means a fragment of white paper illuminated by the same colour lights. The capitalised Latin letter indicates the placement of coloured papers. Lomonosov noted seven spectral colours, found by applying in succession transparent filters made by coating pieces of Holland paper with a gum mixed with cinnabar, Naples yellow and Prussian blue respectively. Using these filters, he explored monochromatic light, prisms and reflectance, showing that orange, green, blue-green and violet were mixed colours. Lomonosov also described how combinations of complementary colours, e.g., orange and blue, green and red, violet and yellow, would each give a white colour. His considerations were important to the formation of a scientific and theoretical base for colour science in Russia, which, like many fields of knowledge, began to unfold in the Western direction during the reign of Peter the Great. The fragmentation and loss of records of Lomonosov’s work over time mean we do not know whether Lomonosov mentioned the difference between the mixing of paint,

Fig. 5.1  Lomonsov’s scheme to mark the observation screen during his experiment with complex colours. The letters at left correspond (top to bottom) to: krasnyĭ (red), rdozhёltyĭ (orange), zhёltyĭ (yellow), zelёnyĭ (green), osinovyĭ (blue-green), goluboĭ (blue) and vishnёvyĭ (violet). Lomonosov, Chemical and optical notes, note 9. (Scan made from Lialikov, 1951, 26)

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Fig. 5.2  Obtaining colours after refraction through a prism of two beams transmitted through two diopter tubes. Lomonosov, Chemical and optical notes, note 4. (Scan made from Lialikov, 1951, 27)

Fig. 5.3  Location of the slits in the Lomonosov colourimeter that was used for the determination of three-colour additive colour mixing. Lomonosov, Chemical and optical notes, note 24. (Scan made from Lialikov, 1951, 28)

for example, and the mixing of light (later framed as subtractive vs. additive mixtures), as at the time described by Le Blon on Coloritto; or the Harmony of Colouring in Painting, (London 1725; Caivano, this volume; Stijnman, this volume). Experiments with light prevail in the surviving Lomonosov’s records. Other notes present further aspects of Lomonosov’s experiments to establish the principle of addition of colours. In one (Fig. 5.2), he described passing the sun’s rays through two dioptre tubes so they converged at an angle of 30°. He then refracted the beams as they exited the tube, using a prism, and observed the result. The colour mixing gave compound colours: violet, green and orange (Lomonosov 1934b, 403). In K. S. Lialikov’s opinion (1951, 28), this example of colour combination is a more simple proof than Newton’s earlier description. Lomonosov also supported his principle of three-colour additive and subtractive colour mixing using his colourimeter (Fig.  5.3). To determine the former, he passed sunlight into a camera-obscura through two controllable slits. By manipulating the slits, he could arrange to see the rays of only three colours, presumedly the principal colours (Lomonosov 1934b, 410–411). The principle of subtractive colourimetry (as we would call it) is depicted in note 163, also in a drawing (Fig. 5.4). This shows the mixing of prismatic colours using two

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Fig. 5.4  Using two prisms (wedges of coloured glasses) and grids with different relative thicknesses to mix prismatic colours. Lomonosov, Chemical and optical notes note 163. (Scan made from Lialikov, 1951, 29)

prisms. Lomonosov’s prisms were wedges of coloured glasses; Lialikov has remarked, in his comment to that note, that the wedges of coloured glass were chosen because they did not refract light. For his demonstration, Lomonosov used grids to separate segments with different relative thicknesses of the coloured glasses, and therefore with the different absorption of primary colours (Lialikov 1951, 28). The experiment outlined in note numbered 46 has analogies to the (much later) painting techniques known as pointillism, to the raster photography practised by John Joly in Great Britain and to the Lumière brothers’ work in France in the later nineteenth century. Lomonosov described how lines and pixels that are drawn by different colours on black paper could be seen as white figures (Lomonosov 1934b, 421). This experience connects Lomonosov’s theoretical work with his artistic practices, including the creation of colour mosaics

5.5 Light and Colour Chemistry Lomonosov based most of his statements about light and colour on experiments conducted in his laboratory. His practical experiments with colour were also carried out there, where he could clean and process materials obtained from manufacturing chemists and others who supplied industry. Lomonosov worked intensively in the field of minerals’examination (Lomonosov 1957, 377) and research into the dependence of a substance’s colour on its composition (Lialikov 1951, 23) after the beginning experiments on the preparation of coloured glasses in his chemical laboratory in September 1748 (Lomonosov 1961, 432).

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Lomonosov described the interplay between his colour theories and his practical work to his colleague at the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg, the mathematician Leonhard Euler on 12th February 1754 (Lomonosov 1948, 155– 159). In the effort to develop his colour theory, he became passionately engaged in the dissolution and precipitation of minerals. This led to almost 3000 experiments to reproduce colours in glass. Lomonosov’s experiences contributed practical information to the development of his colour theory and also led him to establish a manufacture to make mosaics from coloured glass. Lomonosov had several chemical laboratories at his disposal: one at the Academy, a home laboratory established by 1753 and, later, a laboratory at the mosaics factory in Ust’-Ruditsa, southwest of St. Petersburg (Barzakovskїĭ and Raskin 1951, 124). Historian V. K. Makarov determined that Lomonosov’s home laboratory was located in a separate single-story building near his house in the Moyka Embankment (Makarov 1961, 349). Unfortunately, the house and other nearby buildings have not survived. A separate, private, laboratory was necessary owing to Lomonosov’s periodic disagreements with the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg, but it further indicates Lomonosov’s special capabilities and resources as an organizer, and his constant interest in experiments, including in the field of chemistry. The Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg was also interested in practical aspects of Lomonosov’s work in colour. In 1745, he and other scientists were asked to compare dyes made from foreign madder root (rubia tinctorium) with those made with madder root (rubia peregrina) from Kizliar and Astrakhan, in the Russian Caucasus (Luk’ianov and Raskin 1951, 320). Over the next 5 years, Lomonosov and his colleagues explored madder root grown in Russian territories. This research promoted the founding of industrial enterprises that worked with Russian raw materials (Luk’ianov and Raskin 1951, 323). Lomonosov was also engaged in the development of an analogue of the Prussian blue pigment that was then imported to Russia in quantity. He sent to the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg the first samples of this colour for painters on October 1749 (Luk’ianov and Raskin 1951, 324). As he worked on his colour theory, Lomonosov studied combinations of two pigments; the use of mineral purple and iron predominated in his notes. Lomonosov also tried to obtain a yellow pigment from iron and, in other pigment experiments, he worked with both phytogenic and animal materials, including brazilwood, cochineal, indigo, turmeric, rhubarb root, and violet syrup (Raskin 1961, 267). It is worth noting that the recipes preserved among Lomonosov’s manuscripts have not yet received close examination. Further research would permit a better integration of this aspect of his work with his colour theory and glassmaking enterprise. Based on extant materials, we do know that Lomonosov was working on processes to colour glass by 1749. In his search for colours for glass (Fig. 5.5), Lomonosov found that his theory of matching particles provided a reason for a solid colour. Another set of glassmaking experiments sought a way to substitute Russian sand for that imported from France and the Netherlands for glass making. He used precipitated colours as a base for making coloured glasses. The number of trials conducted by Lomonosov at the Academy Laboratory decreased after 1752, as work began on the mosaic factory in Ust’-Ruditsa. In the autumn of 1752,

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Fig. 5.5  Samples of pigments and plaster cast from the chemistry laboratory of M.V. Lomonosov. eighteenth c. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). MAE RAS ML-219/1

Lomonosov proposed to the Academy of Sciences and Arts the formation of a glass manufacture that could supply the coloured glasses needed for Imperial projects. In the proposal, which took the form of a poem, Lomonosov requested such special treatment as tax holidays, a production monopoly and import bans. He also sought invitations to foreign specialists to help establish the new factory. The Government gave building permission on 14th December, 1752 (Osipov 2011). The lands comprising the site of the future manufactory were given to Lomonosov, and a long-term loan was allocated for the construction under guarantees from a patron, the minister Ivan Shuvalov (Osipov 2011, 47). The manufacture opened in 1754 (Makarov 1949b, 14). The main buildings of the factory at Ust’-Ruditsa were erected in the spring of 1755 and the manufacture remained on that site until 1766 (Makarov 1949b, 23). Information about the mosaic manufacture at Ust’-Ruditsa was lost twice: the archive was destroyed during the Civil War in 1919 and again during the Second World War, when the area around the factory was destroyed (Osipov 2011, 72). A subsequent archaeological expedition to Ust’Ruditsa in 1949 helped to reconstruct the factory topography and so the sequence of technological operations (Osipov 2011, 65). Lomonosov’s factory produced a variety of coloured glass including smalts, the small, often irregularly shaped, richly coloured tesserae used in decorative work. Lomonosov wrote in his prospectus that the manufacture would produce mosaic-­ decorated tables and mirror frames, as well as caskets and snuffboxes (Fig.  5.6). Lomonosov worked to revive what he described as the lost technology of making smalts and planned to produce as many as 2000 poods for the mosaics by 1766.6 The manufacture also produced smaller items, such as glass beads, and spangles (Osipov 2011, 88). In the first half of 1766, the manufacture produced two poods of spangles. As the  The pood is a measure of weight roughly comparable to the English “stone”. Its weight was established as 16.30 kg in 1899. 6

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Fig. 5.6  Samples of laminar and chopped smalts. eighteenth c. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). MAE RAS ML-205

v­ olume of spangles imported to Saint Petersburg port varied from 1748 to 1762 was 7–29 poods per year, this represented a considerable achievement, and savings (Osipov 2011, 91). Lomonosov also extended his concerns to the invention of instruments for working with glass stock, including a pyrometer to calculate melting temperature. Lomonosov had started experiments with mosaic-making in the late 1740s, even before the construction of the manufactory was completed. His first example, which copied a Madonna by the Neapolitan painter Francesco Solimena (Makarov 1949a, 32), used 4000 different pieces of smalt and was completed in August 1752. The image, presented to the Empress Elizaveta on 4th September 1752, was received favourably (Lomonosov 1961, 445). Unfortunately, Lomonosov did not maintain a list of the mosaics produced by his studio. However, in the mid-twentieth century V.K.  Makarov (1949a, 28), in a dissertation on Lomonosov’s artistic heritage, established such a list. He established five time periods of mosaic activity and, from various documents, determined that Lomonosov and his master artists created about 40 mosaics. Of these, 29 examples are today preserved at Hermitage, the State Russian Museum, the Kunstkamera, the State Historical Museum and other state collections. In the first period of mosaic production (1751–1755), which took place in the Academy of Science laboratory, Makarov placed 4 works: two portraits by Lomonosov (a “Miraculous Image”, and a picture of Peter the Great) and three by his students Matvey Vasil’ev and Efim Mel’nikov, “Apostle Peter in the Roman Manner” and two pictures of Peter the Great (Fig. 5.7). The subsequent opening of the factory in Ust’Ruditsa marks the beginning of the second period (1755–1761); researchers noted a series of different portraits and images with biblical subjects (Makarov 1949a, 28). For these works, Lomonosov created the combination of ingredients. He often weighed the compositions himself and placed them in the oven (Makarov 1949a, 6). Lomonosov also developed the instruments used to cut the smalts (Makarov 1949a, 9). He also

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Fig. 5.7  Portrait of Peter I (1672–1725). Lomonosov Mikhail. 1757. smalt, linden wood, paint, copper. Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). MAE RAS ML-2315

designed mosaics and sometimes edited others’ designs (Makarov 1949a, 26). Mosaics with his signature, but without a written legend of creation can be considered controversial cases. Among the planned mosaic images were 12 showing the life of Peter the Great that would be produced at Lomonosov’s home laboratory (1762–1764, the third period), and were intended for installation at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Saint Petersburg. The only one completed during Lomonosov’s life was the battle picture, “The Battle of Poltava”. Over-sized at 6.4 m high and 4.8 m wide, it took 2 years to complete. (Osipov 2011, 104). Makarov (1949b, 23) identified some mosaics made before 1769 with the signature of Matvey Vasil’ev; his leadership of the manufacture (1765–66, the fourth period) continued work at Ust’Ruditsa after Lomonosov’s death in 1765 and later in the studio at the Court Building Department (1766–1769, the fifth period). In addition to mosaic portraits, the glass-mosaic manufacture engaged in related commercial activities, as Lomonosov had proposed. A factory report from 1766 men-

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tions that the glass manufacture in Ust’-Ruditsa produced two poods of spangles during half of the year (Osipov 2011, 91). The spangles were essential to the decoration of the Chinese palace of Oranienbaum, constructed in the 1760s (Osipov 2011, 97). The spangle-­work cabinet at the Chinese palace still retains its original finish: the walls of the room are decorated with fabric embroidered in a complicated pattern using multicoloured silk yarns and pearl spangles (Peterhof 2020). The original floor decoration at the palace was made with mosaics from the Lomonosov factory (Nikiforova 2010, 26). An example of such a large art order for the Lomonosov factory speaks to the success of its creator in working with recipes for coloured glasses and mosaics. Long-term experiments with reagents of various compositions and colours, observations of various natural phenomena, and optical experiments allowed Lomonosov to create successful pigments for his factory and build a theory of the origin of colour that had not previously been discussed in Russia.

5.6 Conclusion Mikhail Lomonosov was the first scientist to try to explain the nature of light and colour in Russian. His notes on colour theory are based on chemical and optical experiments, and observations of various natural phenomena. Active participation in establishing a chemical laboratory at the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in Saint Petersburg contributed to the success of his work and its status both in Russia and abroad. Lomonosov extended his corpuscular theory of nature to all realms of the natural world, from the kinetics of material bodies to the kinetics of the matter of ether. He used this theory when he combined his chemical and physical views to produce a wave theory of light and colour. His principle of combining particles can be considered comparable to others in modern science. Lomonosov determined through his novel experiments that all colours could be produced by the three primary colours: red, yellow and blue, a concept familiar to artists and later confirmed by Thomas Young. Lomonosov defined similar ‘primary colours‘and ‘mixed colours’ (orange, green, blue-green and violet) and found three pairs of complementary colours. He depended on the experiments of Edmé Mariotte as evidence of the existence of three primary colours in the spectrum (Lomonosov 1970, 260–62). Lomonosov explained the principle of different colourimeters. His experiments with recipes for coloured glasses, and his chemical and technological work on glass and mineral dyes, led to the introduction of new formulas and new methods of processing glass batches into the manufacturing practices, and so supported the creation of finished coloured glass. Just as his theoretical work had been informed by practice, so too had his practical work demonstrated his theoretical ideas about colour and the uses of its order. For the reasons described above, there are few studies of the connection between Lomonosov’s colour theory and his experimental results in describing the order of colours and their relationships. None connects this information to his practical endeavours, despite his state beliefs. I hope this essay points a path to further research in this interesting and important topic.

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Luk’ianov, P.M., and Raskin, N.M. 1951. O rabotakh Lomonosova po kraskam [About Lomonosov’s work in dyes]. In Lomonosov: Sbornik stateĭ i materialov [Lomonosov: Collected Articles and Materials], ed. S.I. Vavilov, 319–325. Moscow, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Makarov, V.K. 1949a. Khudozhestvennoe nasledie M.V. Lomonosova: (mozaika). [Art Heritage of M.V. Lomonosov: (Mosaics)]. Dissertation,Leningrad: Institute of Painitng, Sculpture and Architecture. ———. 1949b. Lomonosovskie mozaiki [Lomonosov’s mosaics]. Leningrad: State Russian Museum. ———. 1961. Domashniaia khimicheskaia laboratoriia Lomonosova [The Home Chemistry Laboratory of Lomonosov]. In Lomonosov: Sbornik stateĭ i materialov [Lomonosov: Collected Articles and Materials], ed. S.I. Vavilov, 347–349. Moscow, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Menshutkin, B.N. 1911. Mikhailo Vasil’evich Lomonosov. Zhizneopisanie. [Mikhail Vasil’evich Lomonosov. Biography]. St. Petersburg: Printing-house of the Imperial Academy of Science. Mironov, B.N. 2000. The Social History of Imperial Russia 1700–1917. Boulder: Westview Press. National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. 2011. History. https://www.ukma.edu.ua/eng/ index.php/about-­us/history. Accessed Sep 2022. Nikiforova, L.V. 2010. Stekliarusnyiĭ kabinet Kitaĭskogo dvortsa v Oranienbaume: siuzhety i obrazy [The Spangles Cabinet in the Chinese Palace of Oranienbaum: Subjects and Images]. Isroriia Peterburga [History of St. Petersburg] 53: 24–29. Osipov, D.V. 2011. Usad’ba Lomonosova Ust’-Ruditsa – fabrika tsvetnogo stekla [Ust’-Ruditsa— Lomonosov’s Estate and Factory for Coloured Glasses]. St. Petersburg: Serebrianyĭ vek. Peterhof State Museum-Reserve. 2020. Chinese Palace. https://en.peterhofmuseum.ru/objects/ oranienbaum/kitayskiy_dvorets. Accessed 20 Dec 2020. Raskin, N.M. 1961. Opisi khimicheskoĭ laboratorii Lomonosova (1757–1760). [Inventories of Lomonosov’s Laboratory (1757–1760)]. In Lomonosov: Sbornik stateĭ i materialov [Lomonosov: Collected Articles and Materials], ed. S.I.  Vavilov, 265–325. Moscow, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Shafranovskii, I.I. 1961. Minerologicheskiĭ katalog Lomonosova. [Mineral Catalogue by Lomonosov]. In Ocherki po istorii geologicheskih zhahiĭ [Essays on the History of Geological Knowledge], vol. 9, 3–21. Moscow, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Thümmig, Ludwig Philipp, and Renger’sche Buchhandlung. 1729. Institutiones philosophiae wolfianae in usus academicos adornatae editio nova ed. Francofurti & Lipsiae: Prostant in Officina Libraria Rengeriana. Vavilov, S.I. (ed.) 1949. Muzeĭ M.V. Lomonosova: kratkiĭ putevoditel’ [Lomonosov Museum. A Short Guidebook]. Moscow, Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR. Young, T. 1807. A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts. Vol. II. London: Joseph Jonson. Nadezhda Stanulevich has been a Curator for Photography at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum and served as Chief Curator at the Kozlov Museum (Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences). Since September 2019, she has been a Researcher at the Kunstkamera, also in St. Petersburg.  

Chapter 6 Schiffermüller and Newton United in Sinter – Franz Uibelaker’s Two-Colour-Theory (1781) Tanja C. Kleinwächter1 (*) 1 

Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany [email protected]

Abstract  Franz Uibelaker’s theory of colours, part of and derived from his mineral system of the Carlsbad sinter (System des Karlsbader Sinters… 1781), is one of many contributions from all fields of research, education, and practice to the systematization of colours in eighteenth century Europe. The final plate in the volume shows three colour circles: Uibelaker’s scheme and (adjusted) ones by Ignaz Schiffermüller and Isaac Newton. We find in this work a rare attempt to establish a dichromatic colour theory as well as to unite and overcome the eighteenth-century dispute on the right/true set of colours by merging and enhancing Schiffermüller’s and Newton’s colour circles or theories. Uibelaker’s theory of colour is not mentioned by his contemporaries nor by subsequent investigators who contributed to the systematization of colours, and he is widely ignored in the historiography of colour order. His work is not listed in German- or English-language colour bibliographies. Yet Uibelaker’s colour theory is one of the few two-colour theories, and his dichromatic colour circle is the only one known to me. This paper is the first to examine the colour theory of this learned Benedictine and secular priest. Keywords  Colour systematization · Colour order · Colour circle · Colour nomenclature · Natural history · Mineralogy · Isaac Newton · Ignaz Schiffermüller

A sinter is a geologic incrustation of siliceous or calcareous matter that presents in various forms and colours. The sinter stones found in the Bohemian spa town of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), mostly calcium carbonate-based aragonites, were widely known to eighteenth-century collectors of natural history specimens (Baier 2012) (Fig. 6.1). The different shapes and colour shades of sinters led the enlightened Benedictine Franz Uibelaker to collect and study them and, in 1781–82, to publish System des Karlsbader Sinters, a treatise on their natural history. The work contains descriptions and illustrations of 256 sinter minerals. Among the illustrations is a colour plate showing Uibelaker’s sinter-based colour system. The illustration refers to his two-colour theory, also presented in this treatise. Uibelaker’s colour circle draws in significant ways from

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_6

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Fig. 6.1  System des Karlsbader Sinters 1781, Tabula XIX Blauer Sinter, Durchsichtiger. Transparent blue sinter, described on p. 30 of the text, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich Rar 2463

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the trichromatic colour circle of the Austrian naturalist Ignaz Schiffermüller (1727– 1806), published in 1771, and the septichromatic one by the natural philosopher Isaac Newton (1643–1727), first published in 1704 (see Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume). Uibelaker’s work is little known today and may have been equally obscure in his own time. The history of his collecting, and bibliographic analysis of the treatise, are correspondingly underexplored. Fewer than a dozen copies of System des…Sinters are extant now and it is unclear how large the original edition had been. Its high cost—six Reichsthaler, according to the title page—further suggests it may never have widely available. Nevertheless, in this paper, I aim to make Uibelaker’s work visible again and provide ground for further studies. Here, I examine Uibelaker’s sinter-based colour system and his colour circle, and highlight its unique, if widely neglected position among late eighteenth-century colour proposals. While much about Uibelaker’s system remains unknown, this rare deployment of a dichromatic theory offers insight into the diversity of discussions about colour in the later eighteenth century.

6.1 About the Author Johann Georg Uibelaker was born on 24 June 1742 in Meersburg on Lake Constance. Little is known about his early life, except that he studied natural philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine in Freiburg and Straßburg during the later 1750s and early 1760s. On joining the Benedictine order at Petershausen, an abbey next to the town of Constance, in 1763, he took the name Franciscus (Franz). As a monk, Uibelaker performed several administrative positions on behalf of the abbey—sequentially or simultaneously serving as secretary, translator, architect and teacher and, notably, as the legal representative on behalf of the monastery. His interest in the sciences continued and was recognised by others, as this learned monk was invited to become a member of several academies of sciences in the 1770s. When legal duties brought him to Vienna for longer periods, as happened several times, Uibelaker took advantage of the frequent and often prolonged idle periods to continue his research at the Imperial Library and the Observatory. The same routine was probably adopted when he studied at the Theresianum, the academy in Vienna that trained its students for the civil service and had been the workplace of Ignaz Schiffermüller until 1778.1 We know the preface to System des Karlsbader Sinters was written in Vienna, and he probably wrote the main part of the volume there too, combining his own work with administrative duties on behalf of the monastery. Uibelaker’s duties at Petershausen ended with his secularisation in 1782 by Pope Pius VI. An anonymous essay critical of the influence of monasteries (Der von seinem Ursprunge an bis auf diese Stunde in seiner Blöße dargestellte Mönch, 1784) referred to him and caused a sometimes-hot-tempered discussion about this causa Uibelaker and the role of monasteries in general. The newly secularised priest, or Weltpriester,2  On Schiffermüller see below.  A Weltpriester or secular priest is one unaffiliated with an order. It was a mandatory requirement of the Church that a pension or benefice be paid to these men. 1 2

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denied authorship of the essay but reacted to the debate based on his person (Abgenöthigte Ehrenrettung des Herrn Abbe Ubelakers oder Beantwortung der Mönchsbrochüre: Was sind die Reichsprälaten, und wie sind sie es worden? 1785). It is apparent from this episode that Uibelaker had fallen victim to the vagaries of political interests at the dawn of secularisation in the southwestern German region (Bechler and Schiersner 2016). On leaving monastic life, Uibelaker took up a series of positions in the region that demonstrate his many interests and broad capabilities, as well as his need for an income. Named Principal (Studiendirektor) of the school system in the principality of Fürstenberg, he was active in the establishment of critical reforms there. In Singen, another town located near Lake Constance, he was director of a manufactory. Other tasks Uibelaker undertook included the translation of a 1784 treatise on balloon flights by Barthélémy Faujas de Saint-Fond (1741–1819), the writing of school books, archival instructions, and more. Ennobled in 1787 by the Fürst von Schwarzenberg, we know that by 1808 the Edle von Uibelaker lived in Graz; all traces of him disappear by the end of that decade (Weber 2016). Uibelaker’s life—like that of the Jesuit Schiffermüller, creator of a model for his colour circles—can be seen as an example of the importance holders of Church positions were to research and education in the eighteenth century. Such opportunities declined with the push toward the secularization of contemplative orders that took place at the end of the century. The disappearance of collections of natural specimens, instruments, and books held by religious institutions was a loss for the republic of letters.

6.2 The Natural History of Sinters In the preface to his treatise, Uibelaker criticised the neglect of sinter stones as a mineral form despite the rising interest in the natural history of minerals: he stated that his work would serve as a corrective by contributing to the understanding of their mineralogy. Uibelaker’s explanation assumed that the hot springs of Carlsbad had played an important role in sinter formation, but he believed their main components were calcareous soils (Kalkerde) and clay (Ton). As he noted in the preface to System des Karlsbad Sinters, a sinter is just lime. That is why he considered conchylia (Konchylien)—shells and other molluscs, especially those identifiable in limestone blocks—related to sinter stones (Uibelaker 1781, Vorrede). 6.2.1 Uibelaker’s Collection and Investigation of Sinters The sinter collection Uibelaker used, the basis of his study, included more than 600 specimens, and was described by a contemporary as “one of the most, if not the most extensive sinter collection of the eighteenth century.” (Hauntinger and Spahr 1964, 27–28) Uibelaker collected the stones himself in Carlsbad, the Sudeten mountains, Hungary and Croatia during his aforementioned administrative idle periods. He also purchased a large number of sinter stones from Joseph Müller (1727–1817), a gemstone cutter and collector based in Carlsbad, who was known for the souvenir boxes of sinters

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he assembled and sold to tourists (Eichler 1989). In addition to a selection of sinters, Müller’s boxes included a booklet written by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832), who is known to have occasionally accompanied Müller on his collecting tours in the Carlsbad region (Goethe 1807; Baier 2012; Eichler 1989). After the cancellation or disintegration of the Petershausen monastery, the contents of its library went to the nearby Cistercian abbey of Salem. The location of any remnants of the collection today is unclear as, after secularisation, the Salem collections were also liquidated (Thalheim and Lehrberger 2009). Uibelaker studied various sinter species and categorised them by colour, durability and shape (Gestalt or Ausbildung) (Uibelaker 1781, 3). He assumed that sinter colours are caused by the interplay of acidic and alkaline (basic) salts—Feuersalz and Wassersalz, two terms related to the then-prevalent phlogiston theory of chemical combination (Uibelaker 1781, 45f). To further understand the colour variations and combinations, and knowing that calcareous materials are alkaline (basic) in nature, he undertook chemical experiments on the sinter with tannic, nitric, hydrochloric and sulfuric acids.3 The colour shifts of what are now called pH-sensitive materials were well-­ known at the time. Red cabbage, hydrangea flowers, and syrup of violets (see below) are familiar examples of this phenomenon. In his explanation of sinter formation, it is not surprising that Uibelaker relied on the work of three prominent Swedish natural historians: the mineralogists Johann Gottschalk Wallerius (1709–1785) (Wallerius and Denso 1763) and Axel Fredrik Cronstedt (1722–1765) (Cronstedt 1760), and the taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus (1707– 1778) (Linné 1766). Publications of their work formed the foundation of most mineralogical understanding in Europe of the later eighteenth century. For expertise on the history of Carlsbad, Uibelaker turned to the Carlsbad physician-mineralogist David Becher (1725–1792) (Becher 1772); his descriptions of chemical experiments and context also refer frequently to a 1780 publication by dyer Jeremias Friedrich Gülich (1733–1808). 6.2.2 Uibelaker’s Treatise on Sinter Uibelaker’s System des Karlsbader Sinters unter Vorstellung schöner und seltener Stücke samt einem Versuche einer mineralischen Geschichte desselben und dahin einschlagenden Lehre über die Farben was published in the Bavarian city of Erlangen. The treatise, dedicated to Fürst Wenzel von Fürstenberg, is comprised of 72 pages of text in four sections (Abtheilungen), plus a preface. As noted above, it includes 254 hand-­ coloured images of sinters, plus a plate with three colour circles, also hand-coloured. These images were engraved by I. Nußbiegel, and I.G. Sturm, and illuminated by the Viennese painter Laubacher (Thalheim and Lehrberger 2009, 111). The colour circles were made by I. Kellner. The images are integrated within the text: the first three chapters present sinters according to Uibelaker’s classification: Earths, Sinters, and Pisolites (pea grits) (Uibelaker 1781, 3). The fourth section contains Uibelaker’s colour theory.  These were known to Uibelaker as Galläpfelpulver, Salpetergeist, Salzgeist, and Vitriolgeist, respectively. 3

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6.3 A Colour System from Sinter Studies 6.3.1 Basic Colours In the fourth section of his treatise, titled Abhandlungen über den Karlsbader Sinter, Uibelaker presented the theoretical considerations that led him to conclude that red and blue are the basic colours in the realms of plants and minerals. His method was to first determine the colour types that appeared naturally in sinters, especially the colour gradients. He then considered the changes to natural colours caused by his chemical experiments with acids, adding to these his observations of colour phenomena in nature, such as light reflections on snow, and the biblical separation of the sea and the sky (Scheidung von Meer und Himmel) ((Uibelaker 1781, 42f; 43f). In his theory, Uibelaker differentiated between the nature of red and blue, which he called the essential positive colours, and the dependent negative colours black and white (Uibelaker 1781, 49). Red represents fire or salt; blue represents water or alkali. The mixture of red and blue—manifesting as violet—also played an important role in his considerations. Uibelaker’s observations and experiments with syrup of violets (Veilgensyrop) (Uibelaker 1781, 5a); 5e)) led him to confirm his two true primaries violet-red (Veilchenroth) and blue-violet (Veilchenblau) (Uibelaker 1781, 41f). A mixture of both primaries in equal parts creates pure violet, the hue to which he gave the number one in his colour circle. Thus, Uibelaker reduced all mixtures and gradients of sinters to the main colours red and blue. All other colours are variants or shades of these two, he explained. For example, yellow is an attenuated red (abgeschwächtes Rot, Fig.  6.2) (Uibelaker 1781, 41, 9, 68), and green is a variant of blue (Uibelaker 1781, 41, 30). 6.3.2 Table 39 The final plate of Uibelaker’s volume, labelled Tabula XXXIX (Fig. 6.3), shows three illuminated circles. The upper circle depicts a ring of 12 colours, each shading into the two adjacent to it, they are numbered and named from the top-most, designated I. Blau, through green, yellow, reds, to violets and ending with XII. Feuerblau (dark blue). An inscription inside this colour ring indicates it shows the colour system of the aforementioned Ignaz Schiffermüller, who had published his ideas about colour theories and his colour order system in 1771 and 1772 (Lersch 1984). The lower portion of the page depicts two concentric colour rings or colour circles. Uibelaker identifies the interior circle, marked “A”, as based on the colour system of the English natural philosopher Sir Isaac Newton. Newton’s 1704 publication of Opticks, included an illustration of his experiments with light and the prism. In his description, a prism can be used to split white light into seven colours: red, orange, yellow, green blue, indigo, and violet. Uibelaker’s depiction of the Newtonian circle also divides the ring into seven sections, but his depiction reverses their order and alters it—listing violet, blue, green, yellow, gold, orange, and scarlet (Fig. 6.4).4  This list starts at centre top and proceeds in a clockwise direction: Violet, Himmelblau, Grün, Schwefelgelb, Goldgelb, Auroragelb, Feuerroth. 4

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Fig. 6.2  System des Karlsbader Sinters 1781, Tabula II, Fig. 10 Verhärtete Erde, Blättrige. The transition from bright yellow to a reddish yellow, as Uibelaker describes on page 9. ETH-­ Bibliothek Zürich Rar 2463

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Fig. 6.3  System des Karlsbader Sinters 1781, Tabula XXXIX. Table 39 contains the colour circles of Schiffermüller, Newton and Uibelaker. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich Rar 2463

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Fig. 6.4  Schiffermüller’s colour circle, showing the blended transitions between colours. For Isaac Newton’s colour wheel see (Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume, Fig.  2.5). Versuch eines Farbensystems 1772 (unaltered second edition of 1771). Bavarian state library 4 Phys.sp. 217

Table 39 shows this Newtonian circle set into a larger circle, which depicts 28 colours: this is Uibelaker’s own colour circle. As with Schiffermüller’s and Newton’s devices, each colour blends into or out of its neighbour. The colours are identified by name, except for the seven shared with the inner circle. Those colours are identified with a number outside of the pair of circles. In this image, Uibelaker included a series of lines that connect the colours of the inner ring to those of the outer one. And, because Uibelaker believed violet was the most significant colour, he labelled it with the number one (1) on both circles A and B. Despite the visual connection to Newton’s circle included on the plate, closer examination makes clear that Uibelaker based his colour circle on Schiffermüller’s order, numbering and colour names (Fig. 6.5). In contrast, we find Newton’s colour wheel the more altered exemplar. The seven Newtonian colours are equally-spaced and horizon-

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Fig. 6.5  Comparison between the colour circles by Schiffermüller 1771 and Uibelaker 1781. © TCK 2020

Fig. 6.6  How Uibelaker “turned” Newton’s colour wheel of 1704. © TCK 2020

tally mirrored, contrary to Newton’s unequal and asymmetric arrangement. Newton’s indigo colour is absent; instead, Uibelaker added an extra yellow and, as a result, shifted orange and red upwards on the circle. The numbers assigned to Newton’s seven colours are placed on the opposite side of Uibelaker’s colour circle, included in the pattern of his colour names (Fig. 6.6).

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6.4 Uibelaker’s Colour Names and Numbers As described above, Uibelaker identified the seven Newtonian colours on his colour plate (Table 39) using Arabic numerals. Violet, as No. 1, is centred at the top of his colour circle. The numbers of the other colours alternate between the right and the left side from the top down. On the left side are sky blue (No. 2), aurora (No. 4) and golden yellow (No. 6); on the right side, fire-red or scarlet is numbered 3, green and Schwefelgelb are numbers 5 and 7 respectively.5 This ordering system demonstrates Uibelaker’s concerns with complementary colours, although that term was not used at the time. Newton had added no figures or numbers to his colour wheel; the Latin and Greek letters he employed were not adopted by Uibelaker (Table 6.1). The terms or names for colours Uibelaker did provide can be separated into four categories. Certain colours reference objects found in nature, such as sea green and orange-yellow (Meergrün, Pommeranzengelb). A second group of colours are named for natural phenomena, such as the dark blue he calls Feuerblau. The two other groups are those colours named for persons (Kaisergelb), and those names that indicate an origin, such as French blue (Franzblau). Ten of these names are also found in Schiffermüller: eight in his colour circle, and two others in his nomenclature table (Schiffermüller 1772) (Fig. 6.7). Schiffermüller did not publish the complete system he had announced; his treatise covers only the colour blue, although it also includes black. Accordingly, Uibelaker had no template from Schiffermüller for the other colours he included. It is further interesting to note that Uibelaker used only two generic or unmodTable 6.1  The colour names of Uibelaker’s circle Moving clockwise from the twelve-o’clock (top) position, Uibelaker identifies his colours as German original namea Violet 1 Veilchenblau Feuerblau Franzblau Himmelblau 3 Stahlgrün Meergrün Sattgrün Grün 5 Pappelgrün Pistaziengrün Olivengrün Schwefelgelb 7 Kaisergelb

English translation Violet 1 Violet-blue Dark blue French blue Sky blue 3 Steel green Sea green Deep green Green 5 Poplar green Pistachio green Olive green Sulphur yellow 7 Kings yellow (orpiment)

German original namea Jonquille Schüttgelb Goldgelb 6 Safrangelb Kurkume Pomeranzengelb Auroragelb 4 Souci Capucin Scharlach Feuerroth 2 Karmesinroth Mortdoré Veilchenroth

English translation Jonquille Dutch pink Golden yellow Saffron Turmeric Bitter orange Aurora yellow 4 Marigold Capucin Scarlet Dark red 2 Crimson Mordoré Violet red

The numbers refer to colours included in Uibelaker’s depiction of Newton’s colour circle

a

5

 Himmelblau, Auroragelb, Goldgelb, Feuerroth, Grün, and Schwefelgelb, respectively.

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Fig. 6.7 Schiffermüller, Blaue Schattirung/Color Caerulus/Les Nuances des Bleu: A–F.  This nomenclature table lists the first order of the first class of Schiffermüller’s colour system. Uibelaker took the names Franzblau (Ia) und Himelblau (Fa). Versuch eines Farbensystems 1772. Umeå university library, John Ekströms boksamling Qv 00007

ified colour terms in the nomenclature of his system: violet (1) and green (5). Whether this is a reference to Newton, who used these terms in his colour wheel, is unclear. In addition to his use of 24 German-language colour names, Uibelaker chose four French colour terms: Jonquille, Souci, Capucin, and Mortdoré. Jonquille is described as a brownish yellow (Braungelb) (Guineau 2005, 408: 1–3) or, later, a chrome yellow (Eastaugh et al. 2013, 213). Souci and Capucin are a yellow-orange and a red-orange hue, respectively (Guineau 2005, 671: 187). These three colour names appear to be

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common; more unusual and more complicated to resolve is the colour term Mortdoré. According to the modern colour historian Bernard Guineau, doré, or jaune doré, were common terms, and there are other combinations from the epoch that incorporate or designate doré (Guineau 2005, 270). Mort is a contraction of mercure de (Guineau 2005, 480), suggesting that this colour is a gilded vermilion hue. In the nomenclature he chose for yellow and orange hues, Uibelaker also referred to the work of another religious who was also a colourist: the anti-Newtonian Louis-­ Bertrand Castel (1688–1757) (Castel 1740; Uibelaker 1781, 42). As those are the components of Uibelaker’s circle that differ most from Newton and Schiffermüller, perhaps he wanted to underline their novelty by choosing French colour terms.

6.5 Conclusion Keeping in mind that a theme of this volume is the issues that arose in efforts to order or systematise colours in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, Uibelaker’s approach supports our understanding that there was no consensus about this topic, an understanding that counters the common description of colour order in the epoch. Further research will better establish the influences on and impacts of his observational-­ experimental conclusions. Nevertheless, we find in Uibelaker’s work a concern typical among natural historians of his era, as his effort and his approach address the recognized urgent need for a viable system of colours (see Karliczek, Chap. 3, this volume). Uibelaker’s conclusions offer a rare glimpse of the differing ways this concern could be resolved, as he emphasized dichromacy in his colour circle and theory. This in turn shows his early, even if ultimately superficial, attempt to enhance the breadth of physical or natural philosophical knowledge used in colour order considerations.

References Baier, Johannes. 2012. Goethe and the Thermal Springs of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad, Czech Republic). Jahresberichte und Mitteilungen des Oberrheinischen Geologischen Vereins 94: 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1127/jmogv/94/2012/87. Becher, David. 1772. David Bechers der Arzneyk. Dokt. neue Abhandlung vom Karlsbade in dreyen Theilen, vol. 1. Prag: Wolfgang Gerle. Bechler, Katharina, and Dietmar Schiersner. 2016. Aufklärung in Oberschwaben. Barocke Welt im Umbruch. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Castel, Louis-Bertrand. 1740. L’optique des couleurs, fondée sur les simples observations, & tournée surtout à la pratique de la peinture, de la teinture & des autres arts coloristes. Paris: Briasson. Cronstedt, Axel. 1760. Versuch einer neuen Mineralogie. Kopenhagen: Roth. Eastaugh, Nicholas, Valentine Walsh, Tracey Chaplin, and Ruth Siddall. 2013. Pigment Compendium. A Dictionary and Optical Microscopy of Historical Pigments. London/New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

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Eichler, Richard W. 1989. Der Edelsteinschleifer und Mineralienhändler Joseph Müller aus Liebenau. Sein Leben im kunsthandwerlichen Umfeld an Jescheken und Iser und seine Begegungen mit Goethe in Karlsbad. Informationen für sudetendeutsche Heimatsammlungen: Archive, Heimatstuben, Museen 31 (32): 5–40. Faujas de Saint-Fond, Barthélemy. 1784. Beschreibung der Versuche mit den aerostatischen Maschinen der Herren von Montgolfier, nebst verschiedenen zu dieser Materie gehörigen Abhandlungen. Aus dem Französischen übersetzt nebst acht Kupfertafeln. Trans: F. Uibelaker. Leipzig: Weidmanns Erben und Reich. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1807. Sammlung zur Kenntniß der Gebirge von und um Karlsbad. Karlsbad: Johanna Franieckischen Schriften. Guineau, Bernard. 2005. Glossaire des matériaux de la couleur: et des termes techniques employés dans les recettes de couleurs anciennes. De diversis artibus, vol. 73 = N.S. 36. Turnhout: Brepols. Gülich, Jeremias F. 1780. Vollständiges Färbe- und Blaichbuch zu mehrern Unterricht, Nutzen und Gebrauch für Fabrikanten und Färber. Zweyter Band enthält das neueste praktische Farbensystem. Vollständiges Färbe- und Blaichbuch zu mehrern Unterricht, Nutzen und Gebrauch für Fabrikanten und Färber, vol. 2. Ulm: Stettin. Hauntinger, P. Johann Nepomuk, and Gebhard Spahr. 1964. Reise durch Schwaben und Bayern im Jahre 1784. Weißenhorn: A. H. Konrad. Kleeraube, Johann. 1784. Der von seinem Ursprunge an bis auf diese Stunde in seiner Blöße dargestellte Mönch, oder Frage: Was sind die Prälaten? Antwort: Sie scheinen, was sie nicht sind, und sind, was sie nicht scheinen. Eine Anekdote zur alten und neuen Kirchengeschichte Deutschlandes. Pfaffenhausen. Lersch, Thomas. 1984. Von der Entomologie zur Kunsttheorie. Ignaz Schiffermüllers Versuch eines Farbensystems (1771). Miszellen zur Problemgeschichte der Farbenlehre. In De arte et libris. Festschrift Erasmus, 1934–1984, ed. Abraham Horodisch, 301–316. Amsterdam: Erasmus Antiquariaat en Boekhandel. Newton, Isaac. 1704. Opticks: Or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light. London: Smith and Walford. Schiffermüller, Ignaz. 1772. Versuch eines Farbensystems. Wien: Augustin Bernardi. Thalheim, Klaus, and Gerhard Lehrberger. 2009. Pater Franz Uebelacker und sein Prachtband über den Karlsbader Sinter aus dem Jahre 1781. Nachrichtenblatt zur Geschichte der Geowissenschaften 19: 107–118. Uibelaker, Franz. 1781. P. Franz Uibelakers der Weltweisheit Doktors, des unmittelbaren freyen Reichsstifts Petershausen Benediktiner Ordens Kapitulars ... System des Karlsbader Sinters unter Vorstellung schöner und seltener Stücke samt einem Versuche einer mineralischen Geschichte desselben und dahin einschlagenden Lehre über die Farben. Erlangen: Walther. ———. 1785. Abgenöthigte Ehrenrettung des Herrn Abbe Ubelakers oder Beantwortung der Mönchsbrochüre: Was sind die Reichsprälaten, und wie sind sie es worden? Dem Publikum mitgetheilt von einer Gesellschaft seiner Freunde. Leipzig. von Linné, Carl. 1766. Systema Naturae. Stockholm. Wallerius, Johan Gottschalk, and Johann Daniel Denso. 1763. Mineralogie oder Mineralreich. Zweite verbesserte und vermehrte Auflage. Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai. Weber, Edwin Ernst. 2016. Vom klösterlichen Aufklärer zum Gegner des Mönchtums: der Petershauser Benediktiner Franz Übelacker. In Aufklärung in Oberschwaben. Barocke Welt im Umbruch, ed. Katharina Bechler, 209–235. Tanja C. Kleinwächter studied history of science and technology and gender studies in Berlin. Her research focuses on the systematisation of colours in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is a PhD candidate and organised the workshop Ordering Colours.  

Part III

Arts, Crafts, Commerce and Colour Order

Chapter 7 Calau’s Punic Wax, Lambert’s Farbenpyramide (1772), and Prefabricated Watercolour Cakes Giulia Simonini1 1 

(*)

Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany [email protected]

Abstract  What does the development of prefabricated watercolour cakes in the late eighteenth century have to do with an astronomer and a court painter? The answer is a book called Farbenpyramide, published in 1772. Authored by Johann Heinrich Lambert with the help of Benjamin Calau, Farbenpyramide describes a procedure and exact calculations to manufacture a trichromatic colour chart, namely one painted with only three colourants.

In this paper, I investigate the impact that Lambert’s Farbenpyramide, combined with Calau’s Punic wax, had on their contemporaries. I demonstrate that, although it has never been associated with Farbenpyramide, the invention of prefabricated watercolour cakes was one outcome of this project. Paint blocks rapidly spread all over Europe and prompted the incredible success that watercolour painting enjoyed from the end of the eighteenth century. Keywords  Paint-by-number · Watercolour · Prefabricated color cakes · Johann Heinrich Lambert · Farbenpyramide · Benjamin Calau

7.1 Watercolours and Plein-Air Studies Before I delve into the colour-pyramid-making project of Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777) and Benjamin Calau (1724–1785), and its significance to the development of watercolour painting, it is important to remind you of the absence of watercolours in plein-air painting practices of the mid-eighteenth century. Lambert noticed this problem and offered two solutions to it in the book analysed in this paper. He suggested using a paint-by-number technique when working en plein air, whereby a drawing is notated with the numerical code from Lambert’s colour chart and painted afterwards in the studio (Lambert 1772a, 110). An alternative was that an artist could travel with a pencil, some paintbrushes, paper and three basic colours that Calau conveniently sold as wax tablets or sticks (Lambert 1772a, 119). Moreover, the collaboration of Lambert and Calau in this pyramid-making project accidentally gave birth to a product ––the prefabricated watercolour cake–– that solved this problem for good. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_7

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Clues about techniques used in plein-air during the seventeenth century can be found in Cours de Peinture par Principes (1708), in which the French art theorist Roger de Piles (1635–1709) discusses several methods “to retain colours of” the “extraordinary beauties” of nature for painters working en plein air (de Piles 1708, 249),1 including charcoal, monochrome wash (lavis), pastel crayons or oil colours (de Piles 1708, 246–248). He deemed oil-coloured sketches better for vistas than charcoal drawings, even if landscapists had to carry with them considerably more equipment.2 Before William Windsor invented glass syringes and Thomas Brown collapsible colour tubes, both of which occurred in the early 1840s, painters stored their oil colours for plein-air painting in skin bladders. Bladders were not very practical because as Rosamond Harley explains “paint tended to ooze around the holes [in the bladders], rubbing off onto other bags and their painter’s hands” (Harley 1971, 1). Watercolours were even less practical for field work than oils because they were laid out for use in open shells or gallipots more suitable for studio practice.3 Documentary sources from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries give instructions for manufacturing travelling boxes (“pocket deske”) where painters might store these shells in different compartments “to keep them from stirring, & fridgeing in the box”(Tallian 2009, 73).4 Thus these liquid colourants could be carried around only with considerable care. This is likely the reason why de Piles did not include them among the plein-air painting options. A recommendation of pastel crayons over watercolours in an anonymous English painting manual first printed in 1731 points to the continuing issues in using the latter for landscape studies (The Art of Drawing 1732, 58). The author however describes and includes one of the earliest depictions of a colour box for plein-air watercolour painting, of use to “such persons, who are curious in making observations of the colours of flowers” (The Art of Drawing 1732, 66). (Fig.  7.1) The “portable case for colours” should be an ivory board the size of a snuff box with several hollowed-in cavities. The colours had to dry inside the cavities so that the case could be carried in a pocket. The case was protected by an ivory cover of the same size that could be used as a palette

 “pour en retenir les couleurs” and “beautés extraordinaires”.  The equipment for sketching in oil en plein air was: “une boëte plate qui contient commodément leur palette, leurs pinceaux, de l’huile & des couleurs” and he goes on “Cette maniere qui demande à la verité quelque attirail, est sans doute la meilleure pour tirer de la Nature plus de détails, & avec plus d’exactitude” (de Piles 1708, 247). 3  This is, for instance, evident in the painting An Illuminator of Books attributed to Willem Key, National Museum of Fine Arts, La Valletta (https://www.europeana.eu/hu/item/08533/artifact_ aspx_id_436), see Gage 1998, 37. The use of shells is confirmed by document sources such as Nicholas Hilliard’s A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning where the painter describes how to store powder pigments in boxes of ivory or paper envelopes “that I may easily temper them with my finger in a shell, adding gum at discretion; so I have them always clean and fair and easier to work.” Cain and Thornton 1992, 92; Tallian 2009, 73. On shells as colour containers see Howard 2006. 4  This is an extract from the Hoskins manuscript, written by John Hoskins, a pupil of the English miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. Note that “to fridge” means “to alter.” 1 2

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Fig. 7.1  Unknown artist, Engraving representing the “portable case for colours” in Anonymous, The Art of Drawing and Painting in Water-colours (1732, second ed.), p.  67, Max-Planck-­ Gesellschaft für die Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin, MPIWG:EBYPC0RW, License CC-BY-SA, http://echo.mpiwg-­berlin.mpg.de/MPIWG:EBYPC0RW

(The Art of Drawing 1732, 67).5 However, it was well-known that reconstituted colours were not as good as fresh ones. Moreover, draughtsmen needed very clean fingers to moisten these dry watercolours,6 a scenario rather hard to imagine in the field. Consequently, we may assume that, if artists wanted to work en plein air with colours, they relied on the options listed by de Piles. Watercolours became the favourite medium of plein-air painting with the development of the prefabricated watercolour cake. This invention is generally attributed to two British colour-makers, the brothers Thomas (1736–1799) and William Reeves (1739– 1803) who, in 1781, were awarded the Greater Silver Palette of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (currently Royal Society of Arts) for this new product (Observations 1813, 91; Goodwin 1966, 19; Clarke 1981, 14–16; Ormsby et al. 2005, 50; Simon 2019, 93).7 The watercolour cake is a solid block of colour premixed with binders, plasticizers, humectants, and preservatives (Ehrenforth 1994, 20–21; Ormsby et al. 2005, 47). Before this invention, painters both professional and amateur had to manufacture their own colourants, buying from apothecaries and colour sellers the powder pigments, plants, animal products, and minerals. They would then grind, boil, distil, and mix with binders and other additives before use.8 The only  Because the colours were dry, these were also called “dry colours” and were the prototype of the modern watercolour cakes I discuss in this paper, see The Art of Drawing 1732, 61; Ehrenforth 1994, 20. However, in English literature “dry colours” are usually pastel crayons, see Shelley 2011, 8. 6  John Bate (1635, 203) observed that “once dried in the shell, never worketh so well afterwards. But if happen that you have tempered too much of a colour, and that it bee dried in the shell, you must temper them with your finger very cleane”. 7  On Thomas and William Reeves see Simon 2009. 8  Retailers of colourants and art supplies emerged in Venice around the late fifteenth century and in less than two centuries spread all over Europe (Levy-van Halm 1998; Matthew 2002; Krischel 2002; DeLancey 2011). 5

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exception was pastel crayons, which, since 1663, had been available for purchase singly or in boxes. This advantage made these coloured sticks beloved by dilettanti and professionals during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Jeffares 2006; Prolegomena, 31; Shelley 2011, 5; Sauvage and Gombaud 2016, 115).9 Similarly, the invention of prefabricated watercolour cakes would contribute to the success of watercolour painting during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In this paper, I argue that prefabricated watercolour cakes were invented in Prussia roughly a decade before Reeves’s award. The “partners in crime” who should be credited with primacy for this invention are the Swiss mathematician and astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert and the Berlin court painter Benjamin Calau. This invention was brought about after the construction of a trichromatic colour chart in the shape of a tetrahedron that Lambert and Calau called Farbenpyramide. The chart was washed with three colourants mixed with Calau’s Punic wax and fully described by Lambert in Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide wo die Mischung jeder Farben aus Weiß und drey Grundfarben angeordnet, dargelegt und derselben Berechnung und vielfacher Gebrauch gewiesen ist (1772a).10 In the next sections, I shall introduce the dramatis personae involved in this extraordinary project, discuss the nature of Calau’s Punic wax, explain the theory followed to develop Farbenpyramide, and illustrate how the chart was fabricated and was used by deploying a numerical pendant. The central section describes the development of the prefabricated watercolour cakes, showing how Calau sold these in a neatly ordered box that mirrored the second triangle of Lambert’s and Calau’s trichromatic chart. Calau paradigmatically defined the order of the cakes in his box as “natural”, possibly referring here to natural epitomes––such as rainbows––in which colours appeared similarly arranged (Calau 1774, n.p.; 1775, 304). Finally, the last sections trace the circulation and imitation of this invention in other German territories and in Great Britain. 7.1.1 A Dynamic Duo, Punic Wax, and Trichromacy Lambert and Calau probably met in Berlin in 1771, when both had risen to important positions at the Prussian court of Friedrich II (1712–1786). Lambert moved to Berlin in 1764 when he was elected ordinary member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften; in 1770 he was appointed Building Inspector (Oberbaurat) for the state (Lichtenberg 1778, 266, 268; Steck 1943, 17, 21; Humm 1972, 117–118, 122). Calau arrived at the capital at the beginning of the 1770s: His position as Court Painter was due to his report (1769) describing his invention of a “Punic or Eleodoric Wax”. The name of Calau’s wax referenced the lost technique of encaustum, an ancient painting method in which pigments mixed into melted beeswax were burned into the painting support.11 On 3  The sale of ready-made pastel sticks is confirmed by de Piles 1684, 92, and The Art of Drawing 1732, 58. 10  “Description of a Color Pyramid Painted with Calaus’ Wax Where the Mixture of Any Color from White and Three Basic Colors is Arranged, Explained, and Its Calculation and Multiple Uses Are Shown”. Translation from Kuehni 2011. Hereafter Farbenpyramide. 11  “Das punische oder eleodorische Wachs”. The report is dated 25 September 1769, see Calau 1769, 16; Heldt 2005, 154; Ihlenfeld 2015, 49; Dijksterhuis 2015, 29. 9

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October 1771, Calau demonstrated to members of the Akademie der Wissenschaften his newly rediscovered wax to make “a sort of encaustic” (Ouvrages 1773, 35).12 Calau’s invention must have caused a sensation as 11 days later, the King granted Calau the monopoly (privilegium privativum) for the sale of his Punic wax and awarded him an annuity of 300 talers (Heldt 2005, 154).13 The success of Calau’s wax may lie in the almost mythological narrative the painter provided for his serendipitous discovery. At the age of 19, Calau left his hometown Friedrichstad (North Frisia) to join his father and brother in St. Petersburg (Heldt 2005, 145–147). When he moved to Saxony three years later, Calau brought with him a mysterious vegetal juice that Russian painters had used since ancient times to paint icons (Lambert 1772a, 53).14 The purported ancient Russian origin of Calau’s juice, and his recognition that it was a kind of wax, led him to stress a correlation with the lost encaustum that Pliny had ascribed to the craft of ancient Greek painters (Rice 1996, 197; Pliny the Elder et  al. 2012, 122–123).15 During his years in Saxony, Calau experimented with the Russian juice, planning to revive encaustic painting. Efforts to revive this technique were very much alive in Calau’s time. Archaeological excavations at Pompeii during the first half of the eighteenth century unearthed extraordinary, well-preserved Roman frescos, which inspired efforts to recapture the lost Plinian encaustum. By the time Calau began his experiments, many other painters and antiquarians had tried to unveil the ancients’ secret. Among the most famous were Count de Caylus, Jean-Jacques Bachelier and Baron Carl von Taubenheim (Rice 1996, 198–199). Calau’s product was different, however. “His wax is and is not a wax”, Lambert (1772a, 50) states cryptically in Farbenpyramide, meaning that Calau’s product was not ordinary beeswax common to many previous attempts but something soluble in water (Dijksterhuis 2015, 30). Moreover, Calau’s technique did not produce a true encaustic painting, as his procedure did not involve burning-in the painted area (Rice 1996, 199). Calau indeed argued that the true ancient encaustum was a painting technique consisting of a cold mixture of wax, pigments, water, and possibly other  “une espece d’Encaustique”.  A copy of this privilege was printed in the second report on Calau’s wax, which is an amended reprint of the 1769 version (see note 11), dated 1 January 1772, see Calau 1772, 16. The privilege documents that Calau was already Court Painter in 1771 as it reads “Nachdem bey Sr. Königl. Majestät in Preussen, Unserm allergnädigsten Herrn, der gegenwärtig in Dero Dienste stehende, ehemalige Sächsische Hofmaler, Benjamin Calau […]”. That is “After that Benjamin Calau, formerly court painter in Saxony, who is currently at the service of Our most merciful His Royal Majesty of Prussia […]”. And then some lines below “vorbemelten Hofmaler, Benjamin Calau” i.e. “the previously mentioned court painter Benjamin Calau”. 14  Lambert provides this anecdote: “Hr. Calau die ersten Spuren zu seinem Wachse, und zwar ohne sie zu suchen, in Rußland gefunden. Die ältern rußischen Maler bedienten sich seit längsten Zeiten, um ihre Heiligen zu malen, bey Anmachung der Farben gewisser Säfte, die aus dem Pflanzenreich waren.” That is “Mr. Calau found in Russia the first traces of his wax, without looking for them. To paint their saints, the ancient Russian painters had been using for a long time a certain juice from the plant kingdom to be mixed with their colors.” 15  Sixth-century icons from St. Catherine’s Monastery (Sinai) painted in encaustic can be regarded as models for later Russian icons, see Büll 1977, 388–390. 12 13

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substances (oils, gums, sugar).16 This mixture was an ink that, when dry, encapsulated the pigment in a protective film that kept its colour fresh and brilliant. Calau’s unusual interpretation of the ancient technique may have been suggested by the double meaning of the late Latin word encaustum. As in ancient Greek (ἔγκαυστον), its adjective form means “burnt-in” but, as a substantive, it indicated a purple-red ink, made by burning the gastropod murex (Bolinus brandaris) and reserved for use by Roman and Byzantine emperors (Harper 2001; OED 2022; Magrini 2006). This second meaning of encaustum is the root of many European vernacular terms for ink.17 Calau himself would find parallels between the coloured mixtures obtained with his Punic wax and Chinese inks (chinesische Dinte/Tusche). He also called the encaustic colours of the ancients Wachstinte (wax tint) or simply Tinte (tint) (Riem 1787, 103, 105). Tinte and Tusche mean both ink and watercolour. In the reports of his Punic wax (1769 and 1772), Calau explained that it could be mixed with any colourant, and used to paint or dye any material, including leather and porcelain. In the earlier report, he advertised blocks of his Punic wax in four colours (white, yellow, red, and black) that intentionally match the ancient tetrachromatic Greek palette described by Pliny.18 This selection disappears in the subsequent amended report (Calau 1772).19 The same year, Lambert disclosed in Farbenpyramide that Calau “grinds each of the three basic colours with the appropriate amount of wax and forms them into pastels or tablets” (1772, 119).20 These three basic colours were Prussian blue, gamboge, and carmine, the same used to wash the colour plate of Farbenpyramide. In this work, Lambert advocated for trichromacy, a doctrine positing that three colours could create all others. Calau, involved in his pyramid-making project, changed his views about colour combination as a result. Therefore, the pyramid-making project and the encounter with Lambert changed the painter’s perspective. At some point before 1772, Calau relinquished the Plinian four-colour theory to embrace the trichromatic one.

 This interpretation originated in a passage from Pliny, where the historian listed two sorts of encaustic painting. Calau’s understanding of the ancient painting technique was presented by Andreas Riem in a book entitled Die Mahlerei der Alten (1787) that he compiled with Calau’s original notes posthumously. See on Calau’s cold encaustic technique Riem 1787, 101–106. 17  Such as inchiostro (Italian), encre (French), inkt (Dutch), inkoust (Bohemian). See OED 2022, ink. 18  “Ingleichen kann man den Liebhabern sowohl mit weißem [...] eleodorischen Wachse, wie auch mit denen auf vorbeschriebene Art präparirten vier Hauptfarben, als: weiß, gelb, roth und schwarz, aufwarten” (Calau 1769, 15). That is “Similarly, white [...] eleodoric wax as well as the four main colours prepared as described above, namely white, yellow, red and black, are available to enthusiasts”. In his Natural History, Pliny wrote “four colours only ––white from Milos, Attic yellow, red from Sinope on the Black sea, and black called atramentum–– were used by Apelles, Aëtion, Melanthius and Nikomachus in their immortal works”. Quoted from Gage 1994, 29. 19  Calau (1772, 15) mentioned here only the sale of yellow and brown wax. 20  “Herr Calau [...] zerreibt jede der drey Grundfarben mit der zugehörigen Portion Wachse, und macht Pastelle oder Täfelchen daraus”. The translation is partly taken from Kuehni 2011, 76. Calau’s acceptance of trichromacy is also evident from one of his notes quoted by Riem 1787, 119. 16

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Let us now move on to the other protagonist of this story. Lambert studied the properties of pigments and coloured light in his early years in Switzerland but his penchant for trichromacy was likely spurred by an encounter with Tobias Mayer (1723–1762) in Göttingen in 1756.21 In 1745, Mayer had published a colour-mixing scheme based on trichromacy and in 1758 he presented before the members of the Göttingen Akademie der Wissenschaften an innovative trichromatic colour-mixing triangle (Forbes 1980, 132; Caivano, this volume). Lambert (1772a, 33) encountered the summary of Mayer’s lecture soon after its publication and reading it triggered his later colour studies.22 In a 1769 lecture to the Berlin Akademie der Wissenschaften, Lambert attempted to bring together the light- and pigment-measuring method he developed for Photometria (1760) and the artistic utility of the Mayerian triangle. He described those properties of colours (in pigments and in objects) that might be applied to a painting to imitate nature more accurately.23 Up to this point, Lambert had worked on colours alone. Meeting with Calau marks a turning point in Lambert’s colour investigations because Lambert could have never fabricated the trichromatic colour chart without the help of a professional. Moreover, Calau owned a monopoly on the Punic wax, a product that Lambert deemed fundamental for the whole project. An account of the first encounter of the two men is given in Farbenpyramide (Lambert 1772a, 46–47). Calau’s introduction to Lambert was arranged by the engraver and draughtsman Johann Wilhelm Meil (1733–1805). Lambert was looking for a skilled artist-practitioner, someone intellectually and technically able to compensate for his deficiencies, to fulfil a colour-mixing project. At this first meeting, Calau extolled his rediscovered Punic wax; Lambert was struck that this substance was water-soluble yet did not alter the hue of colourants mixed into it. Lambert understood that this binder would allow him to paint his colour scheme in watercolours without having to accommodate the hue changes that always occur in drying. Lambert believed he had found the right colleague for his colour-mixing project.24 Lambert had identified red, yellow, and blue as the three “basic colours” (Grundfarben) for his system, but he was uncertain which colourants matched these ideal hues and would work best in the mixing. Lambert showed Calau a version of Mayer’s triangle he had painted using vermilion, litmus, and gamboge and asked his advice about obtaining a better result than this “hieroglyphic” triangle (Lambert 1772a,

 Lambert’s early interest in coloured lights and pigments is documented in a journal (Monatsbuch), which he began in 1752, see Bopp 1915. 22  “Da ich 1758, als ich diese Nachricht lase”. “Because, when I read the summary in 1758”. For the summary see Mayer 1758. 23  The lecture was printed in Lambert 1770. An English translation of Photometria has been published, with comments, in Lambert and DiLaura 2011. 24  Lambert did not explicitly disclose if it was Johann Wilhelm or his older brother Johann Heinrich Meil (1729–1803) to introduce him to Calau, but since Johann Heinrich moved to Berlin in 1774 only (Donop 1885, 216), we can safely assume “Herr Meil” (Lambert 1772a, 47) was Johann Wilhelm, see Deuter 1990. 21

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46).25 Calau offered to test different pigments mixed with his wax. This was the outset of the extraordinary pyramid-making project (Lambert 1772a, 47).

7.2 The Pyramid-Making Project. Colours and Numbers Almost immediately after their first meeting, Calau produced three different colour-­ mixing triangles, each with different basic colours. The most problematic basic colour was red, for which Calau tested three different pigments: cinnabar, carmine, and Florentine lake. The best yellow, he determined, might be either king’s yellow or gamboge. For blue, Calau chose a local invention, Prussian blue (Lambert 1772a, 55–57). Lambert and Calau were most satisfied with the triangle painted with carmine, gamboge and Prussian blue: these three pigments produced a wide gamut of mixtures and also could be used as inks (Tuschen) or as transparent washes (Lambert 1772a, 57). The transparency of colourants was a fundamental quality, necessary to integrate into the mixing scheme the fourth non-material colour, one not produced by a colourant, white. In Farbenpyramide, Lambert explained that white did not exist as an ink (Saftfarbe) and thus was provided by the paper. Lambert and Calau deployed the whiteness of the paper layer and the transparency of their basic colourants–– progressively adding more water––to develop the chart into the third dimension (Lambert 1772a, 72–73). Lighter nuances in the upper part of the pyramid were thus obtained through optical mixing. Exploiting the whiteness of the paper layer was already common in engravings, lavis, and monochrome drawings.26 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Le Blon pushed this practice to a new level with the invention of trichromatic printing, in which he exploited white paper to create highlights and lighter hues in his coloured mezzotint plates (Stijnman, this volume). In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, watercolourists explored the use of coloured transparent washes to confer lightness and luminosity on their works.27 Thus, Lambert and Calau relied for the first time on a well-known practice to construct a three-dimensional colour-mixing scheme. While Mayer’s colour-mixing triangle developed (theoretically) in a double tetrahedron, Lambert’s scheme was represented by a single tetrahedron. The different shapes depended on Mayer’s and Lambert’s discordant interpretations of black. Mayer’s triangle is the base of a double tetrahedron and displays only “perfect colours” (colores perfectos), i.e., those not modified by white or black. The two tetrahedra in Mayer’s

 Mayer’s primary colourants were azurite, orpiment, and vermilion, though. On Lambert’s hieroglyph see Dijksterhuis 2015, 29. 26  Thédore Turquet de Mayerne (1620–1646, fol. 29v) observed that “les Enlumineurs modernes n’usent d’aucun blanc, au lieu duquel ils espargnent le papier ou velin sur les jours”. 27  The birth of modern watercolour is often credited to the famous draughtsman Pierre-Joseph Rédouté about this time, thanks to his vélines du Roy with this new technique (Druten 2013, 12). 25

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solid include 12 darker and 12 lighter levels toward black and white, respectively.28 Unlike Mayer, Lambert believed (like Le Blon) that a true black colour could be achieved through mixture in a proper ratio of his three basic colourants, and so located black within the triangles making up the pyramid (Lambert 1772a, 59, 73; Dijksterhuis 2015, 37). Finding Mayer’s black tetrahedron dispensable, he reduced the three-­ dimensional scheme to a single pyramid. Moreover, Lambert’s and Calau’s decision to include black among the mixtures and exclude white as an actual colourant was motivated by a colour theory antithetical to the Newtonian one. In Lambert’s view, if black could be gained by a mixture of the material primaries, white had necessarily to be their absence. For the base of the colour pyramid published in Farbenpyramide (Fig. 7.2) Lambert and Calau chose to display seven intermediate steps between two primaries.29 The illustration of the coloured pyramid is a tetrahedral construction with the face on the front side open that Lambert described as “an open triangular box divided into sections”.30 An anonymous reviewer of Farbenpyramide in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1774, 1:277) observed a similarity with cupboards or buffets common in eighteenth-century Lower Saxony.31 Likewise, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis (2015, 26) compares Lambert’s and Calau’s triangular box to “cabinets of shells, minerals, coins and insects”. The pyramid was thus an assemblage of colour samples arranged in trichromatic order that the beholder would have associated with something common but marvellous at the same time. Lambert’s open triangular box contains a socle with 12 colour swatches and eight triangular levels,32 displaying 107 samples, or 108 including the (white) uncoloured one at the top. The samples in the socle are common eighteenth-century colourants (such as indigo and Florentine lake) “to be compared to the colours in the pyramid” (Lambert 1772a, 117; Kuehni 2011, 75). The colours of the triangles are compounded from carmine, gamboge, and Prussian blue. These three basic pigments are the angular colours in all but the uppermost, white level. Secondaries are found along the sides of each level; the tertiaries fill each central area. Ascending from the lowest to the highest triangle, the number of colour samples decreases, and their colours become increasingly transparent (Lambert 1772a, 75–79; Jones 2013, 219). The eight levels comprise 45, 28, 15, 10, 6, 3, and 1 samples, respectively.

 Mayer manufactured the triangle of perfect colours following the trichromatic tenets, but his double tetrahedron remained a theoretical concept. For the double tetrahedron see Caivano (this volume) and Pietsch (2014, 157) for Mayer’s coloured triangle. 29  This was a halfway point between Mayer’s triangle with twelve and Lambert’s first hieroglyph, with five. 30  “eines offenen dreyeckichten und in Fächer abgetheilten Kästchens” Lambert 1772a, 74; Kuehni 2011, 49. 31  “wozu die in Niedersachsen sehr gebräuchliche pyramidenförmige Eckschränke oder Buffette allenfalls das Muster geben könnten”. That is “for which the pyramid-shaped corner cupboards or buffets, which are very common in Lower Saxony, could at best provide the model”. 32  Called “Triangel” by Lambert 1772a, 75. 28

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Fig. 7.2  Johann Heinrich Lambert and Benjamin Calau, Colour Pyramid, in: Johann Heinrich Lambert, Beschreibung einer ... Farbenpyramide (1772a), ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, Rar 5100, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-­rara-­3770

Lambert included a numerical pendant to the pyramid in his book. This was an ingenious device to put his trichromatic colour chart into practice (Fig. 7.3), showing sets of numbers arranged in a pyramid shape similar to the Farbenpyramide. The numbers in the pendant coded a set of mixtures of the three basic colourants that Lambert and Calau had carefully gauged with a goldsmith’s scale (Lambert 1772a, 60). While Mayer had briefly theorised the utility of his triangle for painters (Mayer and Lichtenberg 1775, 38),33 Lambert extensively discussed possible uses of his pyramid by several practitioners. Moreover, the combination of a numerical pendant and the coloured chart made Lambert’s Farbenpyramide a practical tool that was fundamental to ease communication between two or more actors. Lambert described the uses of the two images in the final chapter of his book, “Use of the Colour Pyramid” (1772a, 108–126).34 He regarded his pyramid as a colour order

 “in arte praesertim pictoria” i.e. “particularly in the art of painting”. Compare this with Lee 2000, 70. 34  “XIII. Abschnitt. Gebrauch der Farbenpyramide”. 33

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Fig. 7.3  Johann Heinrich Lambert and Benjamin Calau, Numerical Pyramid in: Johann Heinrich Lambert, Beschreibung einer ... Farbenpyramide (1772a), ETH-Bibliothek Zurich, Rar 5100, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-­rara-­3770

system (1772a, 108) and “a generalised chart of colour samples” (1772a, 110),35 something that could be useful to painters, dyers, printers, and merchants. According to Lambert, if his colour pyramid became customary, it would allow people to communicate colour-related information through the numbers of the pendant. Using this system, drapers could order textiles of pre-established nuances from dyers. Tailors could review the colours of fabrics in their stock. Their customers could commission dresses in a similar way (Lambert 1772a, 108–9; Steinle 2015, 59). Lambert encouraged dyers to dye yarns with the same mixing ratios provided in the pyramid, to avoid trial-and-error 35

 “eine allgemeine Farbenmustercharte”.

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practice, and even challenged them to extend the pyramid chromatically (Lambert 1772a, 109–110). Lambert also suggested his colour mixtures in the pyramid as possible references for making trichromatic prints (Lambert 1772a, 120–123). Although in Farbenpyramide Lambert did not discuss how to manufacture colour boxes with prefabricated watercolour cakes, traces of these items can be found in other manuscripts and printed sources. I will now bring these up, describing them first and then arguing their relevance in the history of prefabricated watercolour cakes.

7.3 A Triangular Box with Prefabricated Watercolour Cakes I have previously mentioned that, in Farbenpyramide, Lambert maintained that travelling artists could dispense with colour boxes that held many different colours (for instance those of pastel crayons) if they relied on trichromacy: The three basic colourants were sufficient to produce all nuances. Even Calau had noticed this practical advantage of trichromacy when, in 1772, he reduced the four main colours (white, yellow, red, and black) of his Punic wax tablets to the Farbenpyramide’s three basic pigments. Lambert, in his discussion, observed another interesting and valuable property of Calau’s coloured tablets. If they were rubbed against a glass plate, and the residue diluted with water and gum, the resulting colour could be painted on the paper (Lambert 1772a, 119–120). Calau’s colour tablets thus “serve as their own grinding stone” (Lambert 1772a, 120).36 As this is similar to the way Chinese black ink sticks are turned into a workable liquid for writing or drawing (Diderot and D’Alembert 1755, 5:634), Calau highlighted this connection in two advertisements (Calau 1774, n.p.; 1775, 304) that touted his sale of a box filled with coloured Punic-wax tablets.37 Albrecht Pohlmann and Annik Pietsch both refer to Calau’s colour box as a by-product of Farbenpyramide but did not recognize any further significance to the object and its contents (Pohlmann 2010, 232; Pietsch 2014, 171–172). However, I will demonstrate that these boxes were the first made up of prefabricated watercolour cakes. Calau’s two advertisements, Exposé concis de la boete à couleur méthodique (1774) and Kurzer Bericht von der methodisch angeordneten Farbenschachtel (1775), offer clues to the differences between Calau’s 1772 red, yellow, and blue wax tablets and those sold later in the box. Calau explained that the wax tablets in the box, unlike his loose pastels, were already prepared with gum Arabic. The artist could simply drip water onto a tablet, and saturate the water with colour by rubbing the water into the tablet with the paintbrush. The water turned into an ink (Tinte) with which one could immediately write or draw.38 Prefabricated watercolour cakes were born.

 “so dienen sich selbst zum Reibsteine”.  “on en peut s’en servir comme de l’encre à la chine”. 38  The title of Calau’s advertisements means “Concise Report on the Methodic Colour Box” (1774, n.p.) and “Short Report of the Colour Box Arranged Methodically” (1775, 304). The French version may have been published as a pamphlet, whereas the German one appeared in a printed journal. Both are dated 24 June 1774, even though one was published the subsequent year. 36 37

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The idea of producing—and selling—prefabricated watercolour cakes was surely Lambert’s as, prior to the pyramid-making project, Calau had not sold his wax tablets premixed with gum Arabic. Moreover, Lambert demonstrated his interest in inks already in 1770, in a lecture to the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin (Lambert 1772b). We may assume, therefore, that Lambert was primed to recognize the potential of such a product. As no example of Calau’s colour box seems to have survived, we have little information about its finer details. Still, it is possible to establish its shape and content from a collection of sources and these clues allow a graphic reconstruction of Calau’s box (Fig.  7.4) (Calau 1774, n.p.; 1775, 305).39 The colour box is mentioned in Calau’s advertisements, and in Lambert’s correspondence; other details can be gleaned from two publications (Riem, 1787; Walter, 1821). In a letter to the physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) written on 15 March 1774, Lambert mentioned that he convinced the reluctant Calau to produce colour boxes for amateurs (Appendix I). A letter from Lambert to the chemist Gottfried Christoph Beireis (1730–1809) dates the production of these colour boxes to 1773 (Appendix II).40 Lambert shared further details about the number of colour cakes and the box itself in these letters, explaining that

Fig. 7.4  Giulia Simonini and Andrea Rinaldi, Reconstruction of Calau’s watercolour box produced in 1773–4

 The reconstruction does not include the piece of Punic wax enclosed by Calau: “In der Schachtel liegt auch [...] ein Täfelchen von dem punischen oder eleodorischen Wachse” or “J’ai joint à mes boete à couleurs une tablette de la cire punique ou eleodorique”. 40  Friedrich August Walter (1821, 103) argued instead that Calau produced several mixed watercolours (Wasserfarben) in 1774 and that he had sold some of these in a box. Walter drew the date from Calau’s reports. 39

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Calau had produced 17 or 18 boxes by 1773, it appears that most were pre-­subscribed and, by 1774, had all been sold. We can trace several of these. Lambert bought three boxes, perhaps ones that had remained unsold.41 Lambert names two buyers of Calau’s boxes: his friend Meil and the painter Christian Bernhard Rohde (1725–1797). The boxes comprised 28 colour cakes corresponding to the colour samples of the second triangle in the Farbenpyramide.42 The 28 colour cakes in the box were probably circular, as Lambert calls the cavities in which they were placed “little bowls” (Schüßelgen). Moreover, that these cakes were round is supported by the fact that Lambert and Calau inserted a painted triangle in the box, which depicted the hue of each cake in the shape of “spheres” (Kugeln). This painted schematic triangle included in the box would have helped the purchasers to discern the colours, as the cakes often appeared more saturated than they would in use. Lambert had sent one of these painted triangles to Lichtenberg, who commented that it was a pleasant gift and that “a colour box arranged in this way occupies the eye and the mind at the same time, and thus provides more in itself than many a painting. I wish that Mr Calau could have decided to make several [colour boxes]”.43 Lichtenberg’s comments confirm that Calau’s colour box had a triangular shape, mimicking the triangles in the pyramid and the painted key included in the case. Two further sources corroborate the triangular shape. In his notes, published posthumously by Andreas Riem (1787, 119–120), Calau described it as “my pyramid-shaped colour box” and, in his advertisements, stated that the colours were arranged in the box to correspond to those of the painted triangle.44 In the latter Calau also explained (1774, n.p.; 1775, 304) that the little bowls in the box––Calau called them Muschel, like the traditional shell containers for watercolours––were arranged in their “natural order” and each was numbered.45 By “natural order”, Calau surely meant the little bowls were arranged, as established in the Farbenpyramide, through the trichromatic theory: the basic colours in the corners, the secondaries along the sides, and the tertiaries inside the  This piece of information can be found in the sale catalogue of Lambert’s library and scientific instruments: “Drey Farben-Schachteln mit Farben, so mit Calauschen Wachse angemacht worden”, that is “Three colour boxes with colours mixed with Calaus’ wax” Verzeichniß der Bücher 1778, 65. 42  Annik Pietsch (2014, 172) mistakenly conjectured that the colour box contained the 45 colours of the first triangle. 43  “Ein sehr angenehmes Geschenck für mich war der Farbentriangel. Ein auf diese Art eingerichtetes Farben Kästchen beschäfftigt zugleich das Auge und den Verstand und gewähret also für sich allein schon mehr als manches Gemählde. Ich wünschte, daß sich HE.[rr] Calau hätte entschliessen mögen mehrere zu verfertigen”. Nachlass Johann Heinrich Lambert 1774b. The letter has been published in Bernoulli 1781, 1:476–478; Lichtenberg et al. 1983, 447–449. 44  “meine pyramidenförmige Farbenkästchen”. By that he meant very likely that the colour box was triangular. “Auf diesem Triangel sucht man die Farbe und damit auch die Muschel auf, die man gebrauchen will” or “Ce triangle peut servir de direction, les couleurs y etant placées dans le même ordre” Calau 1774, n.p.; 1775, 304. 45  “Sie liegen in ihrer natürlichen Ordnung und jede Muschel ist [...] numerottirt” or “Elle sont rangées dans leur ordre naturel et numerottées”. Very likely these numbers corresponded to those in the numerical pendant published in Farbenpyramide. 41

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central area of the triangle. However, by natural, he perhaps also meant to emphasise a correlation to natural phenomena in which colours were similarly arranged, such as the rainbow and the spectral colours. The colour case provided a full palette of colours from a light yellow to a sort-of black. Draughtsmen and landscapists could thus take the box into the field and paint their works in full colour instead of completing the drawing in the studio. The box presented a viable and practical solution to the previously stressed problem of watercolour painting en plein air. The needed paraphernalia were only Calau’s box, water, paintbrushes, and a sketching block.

7.4 The First Imitators: Pfannenschmid, Bettkober, and Steiner Lambert’s struggle to convince Calau to produce the colour boxes, and their limited production, suggests that Calau did not see their potential value to artists, and perhaps less so its economic returns. Moreover, the fact that Lambert owned three of these boxes may imply that they were hard to sell despite their fairly low price.46 It is thus interesting to note that, in the 1780s, two Berlin colour manufacturers were still producing inks (Tuschen) “according to Lambert’s principles”.47 These principles were very likely those described in Farbenpyramide; that is, the three basic colourants were combined with Calau’s Punic wax. The production continued until the dawn of the nineteenth century. By that time, the invention had found its market, although Lambert’s and Calau’s names were no longer associated with this product. One reason for this lack of recognition may have been that Calau never applied for a privilegium privativum, the special privilege that would have ensured him the monopoly on this product. Moreover, both Lambert and Calau died not long after the production of the colour boxes began, in 1777 and 1785 respectively. These events opened the path to imitators. The first, August Ludewig Pfannenschmid, was a Hanover-based sealing wax manufacturer active by 1769. In 1777, he asked members of the Royal British and Electoral Brunswick-Lüneburg Agricultural Society in Celle to assess the quality of 12 inks (Tuschen) that he sent them. The society approved Pfannenschmid’s inks, noting that they hoped he could lower their price for export abroad.48 Interestingly, the report also mentions that Pfannenschmid’s inks were much cheaper and thus more palatable for the masses than a similar product sold “under the ostentatious name of Chinese inks”  They cost only 1 Taler and 8 Groschen. In comparison, in 1799, a watercolour block (Tafel) of carmine red sold for the same price in Berlin; one pound of the best carmine red cost 120 Taler. (Abgabe von Farbestoffen 1798–1802, 15v–16r). The boxes could be purchased from Calau or from the shop of Simon Schropp, a Berlin merchant and cartographic publisher, see Calau 1774, n.p.; 1775, 304. 47  See note 57, below. 48   Königliche Großbrittannische Churfürstliche Braunschweigische Lüneburgische Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft. The connection to Great Britain was due to the ascendance of George of Hanover, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg, to the British throne in 1760. The information on Pfannenschmid’s inks can be found in Nachricht 1777, 872. On the beginning of Pfannenschmid’s activity in 1769 see Pfannenschmid 1813, 951. 46

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(Nachricht 1777, 872).49 We have seen that Calau had compared his tablets to Chinese inks, therefore we may assume that the report of the learned society––citing Pfannenschmid’s words––was referring exactly to the colour tablets Calau sold in the box. Given that the novel ingredient in Calau’s ready-for-use colours had been his Punic wax, it may be no coincidence that a sealing wax manufacturer tried to replicate them. An advertisement of 1813 claims that the Pfannenschmid manufactory was the first to sell “coloured inks not as an imitation, but as the first invention” (Pfannenschmid 1813, 951).50 The goal of this claim was to extol Pfannenschmid’s inks as the original ones and to imply that his competitors copied his invention. However, Pfannenschmid’s invention postdates Calau’s watercolour tablets and was thus itself an imitation given that, in another article (1785) he declared that “in 1776 I communicated the first attempts of my 12 sorts of colour inks and in 1777 I delivered these improved to the audience”.51 A clear connection between Calau’s tablets and Pfannenschmid’s inks is revealed in a book about the latter (Pfannenschmid 1781). In this publication, Pfannenschmid discussed a trichromatic colour-mixing system based on Lambert’s Farbenpyramide and Tobiae Maieri Opera Inedita (Mayer and Lichtenberg, 1775). Pfannenschmid criticized these works citing, (1781, 52) among other reasons, the poorly coloured plates “in our copies”.52 Pfannenschmid may have been drawn to Lambert’s book hoping to find clues about Calau’s Punic wax, in order to reproduce it. When, two years later, Calau announced the sale of a colour box, Pfannenschmid might have sensed an opportunity. Indeed, in his book, Pfannenschmid enclosed a triangle of 64 uncoloured circles (Fig. 7.5). He expected his readers to colour the triangle as he instructed them, and thus assess the trichromatic theory he presented. The reader could mix the three primaries according to the given ratio or purchase all 64 premixed colours from Pfannenschmid.53 Both the circular shape of samples within Pfannenschmid’s triangle and his recommendation that it be used as a mixing or painting guideline recall the coloured triangles of Calau’s boxes that were based on the second triangle in Lambert’s pyramid. Like those two, Pfannenschmid’s triangle has three angular and five secondary colours on each side. Inside the area, though, Pfannenschmid placed 46 instead of Lambert’s 10 tertiaries.54 To colour the triangle with Pfannenschmid’s inks, the purchaser was guided

 “unter dem prahlenden Namen chinesischer Tusche”.  “nicht als Nachahmung, sondern als erste Erfindung”. 51  “Im Jahre 1776 machte ich die ersten Versuche meiner zwölf Sorten Farbentusche bekannt; 1777 übergab ich solche dem Publiko verbessert”. 52  “auf unserm Exemplare”. 53  Up to that very moment, Pfannenschmid had sold only 12 inks in Germany and other countries, see Pfannenschmid 1781, 148–149; Pietsch 2014, 173. 54  This increase was derived from a starting ratio of each primary (1/18 instead of 1/6), which increased or decreased as a multiple of three in the secondary colours. The ratio of primaries in tertiary mixtures was produced with a decrease of two parts of one primary and an increase of one part of each of the two other primaries. Graphically, this is evident in the subdivision of the area of the triangle. While Lambert’s second triangle comprises 28 samples, Pfannenschmid subdivided the area into 49 triangles, in each of which he placed one circle. To reach the number 64, Pfannenschmid inserted further 15 circles where the lines forming these triangles intersect. 49 50

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Fig. 7.5  August Ludewig Pfannenschmid, Colour-mixing triangle to be coloured by purchasers of his book and his 64 prepared Muschelfarben, in August Ludewig Pfannenschmid, Versuch einer Anleitung zum Mischen aller Farben aus blau, gelb und roth, nach beiligendem Triangel (1781), Zentralbibliothek Zürich, NP 2310, https://doi.org/10.3931/e-­rara-­35731

by numbers that labelled both the samples and the premixed colourants (Pfannenschmid 1781, 153).55 The numerical association of colourants and samples also appeared in Calau’s box. Therefore, it is likely that Pfannenschmid had been among the buyers of Calau’s colour box. If we assume that Pfannenschmid’s Tuschen were based on Calau’s, how were they? And how were they arranged in the box? No clue emerges in Pfannenschmid’s publication about his box of colour and consequently, there is nothing about any arrangement of his inks into it. In his book, however, Pfannenschmid described selling his inks in mussel shells (Pfannenschmid 1781, 153, 154). Calau, too, called his prefabricated tablets Muschel highlighting the association with traditional watercolour containers. Pfannenschmid also called them Muschelfarben (shell colours) in a petition for recognition of this invention sent, in 1782, to the Berlin Königliche Akademie der Künste (Die von dem Pfannenschmidt 1782–1783, [1r]; Pietsch 2014, 175, 581). The Academy was not interested in rewarding Pfannenschmid; a note in the archive states that two

 “Um einen Triangel [...] zur Farbenprobe zuzubereiten, ist also weiter nichts nöthig, als daß man eine jede Farbe in das Fach des Triangels trage, wohinein sie nach der auf der Rückseite der Muschelschale befindlichen Numer gehört.” 55

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Berlin colour manufacturers were already deploying “Lambert’s principles” to manufacture Tuschen.56 Identification of these two Berlin manufacturers is worth consideration especially as they may not have been the only purveyors of Lambert’s principles. It appears, that, despite Calau’s reluctance to manufacture colour boxes and the small number produced, appreciation of the concept increased over time. One colour-maker who may have looked to Calau’s invention to develop his own was the sculptor and wax modeller Johann Karl Ludwig Bettkober (1739–1808?). In a letter to Friedrich II of Prussia from 1782, Bettkober claimed to be “the sole inventor and European manufacturer of fine coloured inks, which are very useful and almost indispensable to engineers and all people, who draw and paint on paper”(Bettkober 1782).57 Another Berlin-based manufacturer was Joseph Steiner, who in 1786 produced “true inks equal to the Chinese ones, 24 kinds of fine coloured inks, and 24 kinds of regular” ones (Nicolai 1786, 2:542– 543).58 Like Calau’s triangular boxes, no exemplar of those sold by Bettkober and Steiner survives. Therefore, we cannot tell if the colours in their boxes were arranged according to “their natural order” as Calau’s. We know however that Bettkober and Steiner manufactured these inks or watercolours following “Lambert’s principles”. Whether this meant that the manufacturing of the cakes proceeded according to Lambert’s instructions in Farbenpyramide or that Bettkober and Steiner generically followed the tenets of trichromacy is not known, though. Calau’s “natural order” of the cakes likely fell into oblivion like the names of their true inventors. A test made on Steiner’s watercolours, along with some unnamed English ones, in 1797–1798 shows that the cakes were not necessarily mixtures of Lambert’s three basic colourants but were also manufactured with ordinary pigments. The test was eternalized in a colour chart made by the flower painter Johann Friedrich Schulze (1748–1824) (Fig.  7.6),

 The note was possibly written by the painter Johann Christoph Frisch (1738–1815), see Pietsch 2014, 175–176. The text reads: “Er müsste aber hierin was recht vorzügliches leisten, da wir schon hier in Berlin zwey Männer haben, die uns nach Lamberts Grundsätzen die schönsten Farben bereiten, und Tusche geliefert haben, ehe noch die vom Herrn Pfannenschmidt bekannt wurden”. That is “But he would have to do something quite excellent in this, since we already have two men here in Berlin who, according to Lambert’s principles, have prepared the most beautiful colours for us and supplied us with ink before those of Mr. Pfannenschmidt became known” (Die von dem Pfannenschmidt 1782–1783, [2v]). 57  “In ganz Europa bin ich der einzige Erfinder und Anfertiger der feinen couleurten Tusche, welche den Ingenieurs und allen, die auf Papier zeichnen und mahlen, sehr nützlich und fast unentbehrlich sind”. Passage quoted by Mackowsky 1909. Bettkober is referred to as the inventor of coloured inks by Füßli and Füßli 1806, 71; De’ Boni 1840, 101. Nicolai (1786, 2:542) stated only that he was a colour manufacturer, who produced blue and other Tuschen. 58  “ächten dem chinesischen gleichkommenden Tusch, und 24 Sorten feine Farbentusche, und 24 Sorten ordinäre”. Steiner arrived in Berlin in 1785. This is documented by a letter that he addressed to the minister Heynitz on 23 October 1797, where he reveals “Es war mir stets die heiligste Pflich, dem Lande, dessen Schutz ich mich seit 12. Jahren als Ausländer erfreuen kann, so nützlich als möglich zu werden” that is “It has always been my most sacred duty to become as useful as possible to the country, whose protection I have enjoyed as a foreigner for 12 years” (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 15r). 56

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Fig. 7.6  Johann Friedrich Schulze, Colour chart made to test and compare Joseph Steiner’s and English watercolour cakes (1797), attached to a letter that Chodowiecki sent to Heynitz, Berlin, GStA PK, I. HA Rep 76alt, III Nr. 346, p. 16v

where one can read pigment names such as sienna (Terra di Siena), vermillion (Zinnober), umber (Umbra), and ochre (Ocker).59 The chart shows 24 colour samples labelled with names (Steiner’s) and a further eleven samples marked with numbers (the English ones). The samples are arranged in a grid-like table without references to Calau’s “pyramid-shaped colour box”. The original or “natural order” arrangement probably waned in the 1780s, when the rise of a similar if not identical product in Britain threatened the promising trade of these early German watercolour cakes. The reason for this shift in the organisation of the cakes in the box was purely economic. 7.4.1 Watercolour Cakes as a British Product Without “Natural Order” Annik Pietsch maintained that Pfannenschmid’s petition at the Berlin Akademie der Künste arrived simply too late to deserve an award (Pietsch 2014, 175). I argue instead that he pillaged and appropriated Calau’s and Lambert’s invention. He adopted the “natural order” of Calau’s box in his triangle and very likely Lambert’s principle to

 On the painter, see Lacher 2004, 90. Annik Pietsch (2014, 176) maintains instead that it was Chodowiecki who painted the chart. 59

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produce the mixtures. He must have tried to imitate Calau’s Punic wax, too. Pfannenschmid forcefully sought an official approbation of his Muschelfarben, and in 1785, the Agricultural Society of Celle awarded him a medal. Pfannenschmid’s Muschelfarben were successfully sold in Rome, Naples, Paris and Moscow (Wehrs 1789, 604).60 Given the connections between Hanover and Great Britain, and approbation from the Brunswick-Lüneburg Agricultural Society (which qualified as British), Pfannenschmid’s product may have also reached the British Isles around 1777. The novelty may have spurred imitations there, as it had before.61 Hence, it may not be a coincidence that the Reeves brothers received a London-based award four years later for their watercolour cakes.62 Not much is known of this early product, which the brothers advertised in Morning Herald on 31 December 1782 as “neat colours” (Goodwin 1966, 16). One of the earliest still-extant Reeves’ watercolour boxes, dating to 1814, shows how the cakes were arranged in parallel rows (Fig. 7.7), and not distributed in a form of a triangle as in Calau’s triangular box (see Fig. 7.4). The arrangement of the 18 colour blocks resembles that of the colour tested in the aforementioned chart (see Fig. 7.6). I do not consider this a coincidence: This new arrangement no longer reflects Lambert’s interest in systematising colour-mixing via mathematics and organising the result into a coherent whole. Rather, the new presentation stresses that his principles were quickly rejected to boost the sale, and thus the profitability, of this new invention. Instead of the 28 mixed colours of Calau’s box, or the 64 sold by Pfannenschmid, the Reeves reduced the number of blocks in their boxes. This manoeuvre lowered the price considerably. The English product rapidly became so successful that even in Prussia, where the ancestor of this product had been launched just a decade earlier, the competition for it was fierce. For this reason, the Prussian minister Friedrich Anton von Heynitz (1725–1802), curator since 1786 of the Akademie der Künste, requested in 1789 that its members test Prussian-prepared colourants (Lacher 2004, 41). Between late 1797 and 1798, Johann Christoph Frisch, Daniel Chodowiecki (1726–1801), and Peter Ludwig Lütke (1759– 1831) tested Steiner’s inks and some un-specified English ones which were painted in the aforementioned colour chart (see Fig. 7.6). Chodowiecki also went to Bettkober’s shop to obtain his inks to be tested and compared with the others, but the colour maker had stopped manufacturing these “because the entrance of the English had completely inhibited the sale of his own”.63

 A 1795 advertisement provides additional places and the names of his factors, see Pfannenschmid 1795. 61  This is for instance the case of one of Pfannenschmid’s former factors, who leaked the secret of his Tuschen and started producing them independently, see Pfannenschmid 1785. 62  An anonymous writer instead credits only Thomas Reeves with this invention, dating it to c. 1783. See Observations 1813, 91; Goodwin 1966, 19; Clarke 1981, 14–16; Ormsby et al. 2005, 50; Simon 2009, William and Thomas Reeves 1780–1783; Simon 2019, 93. 63  “weil der Eingang der Englischen den Abgang der Seinigen ganz gehemmt hatte”. Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 16r, letter by Chodowiecki to Heynitz, 12 November 1797. 60

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Fig. 7.7  Mahogany box containing painting accessories and materials (including 18 paint blocks), Reeves & Woodyer, London, c. 1814, London, Victoria & Albert Museum, Museum number: T.294:1–1975

The examiners noticed that Steiner’s inks were “similar to the English ones, but stronger and more beautiful” (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 17r).64 On 7 April 1798, Steiner asked that, to benefit his fabrication of inks, foreign inks would be banned or heavily taxed; his request was accepted and the Royal Commerz-Collegium increased the duty on foreign inks (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 20r). Since the higher tax on these watercolour cakes burdened Prussian painters, the Academy members quickly asked (on 5 May 1798) for a reduction (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 23r). In 1798, Heynitz asked for another test, in which the Academy members had to compare the quality of Steiner’s inks, the English ones, and those manufactured by Ahrend August Hartmann (1752–1818) in Braunschweig, who was “now deemed the

64

 “den englischen ähnlich, aber viel kräftiger und schöner sind”.

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first colour technician in Germany for lavis, water and oil colours” (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786–1798, 26r).65 That year, Hartmann dispatched to the Academy one of his boxes with 24 colour cakes accompanied by an interesting letter revealing that the English competitors were none other than the Reeves brothers. Hartmann’s Tuschen can be documented as for sale from June 1793, when they were heralded in Intelligenzblatt. The advertisement describes Hartmann’s 12 cakes as having on the top in relief the inscription “A.  A. Hartmann, extra feine Farben-Tusche” and on the back his signet (Hendel 1793, 464).66 As Hartmann explains in his letter to the Berlin Academy dated 2 June 1798, he changed the inscription and the signet in 1795 to make his cakes look like English ones. On the back of his cakes, Hartmann wrote “Refoes” instead of Reeves “and where the English recommendation engraved in copper bears the name of the Secretary, More, in mine it is to be read Wore including some spelling mistakes” (Die verlangten Gutachten 1786– 1798, 30r).67 This evidence hints at the extent of Reeves’ success and shows how German colour makers, albeit producing an identical or better product, had to resort to any kind of ruse to survive the competition. It is especially noteworthy here to emphasise that only 12 cakes were sold in Hartmann’s 1793 colour box. The eleven English colours tested in 1797–1798 at the bottom of the chart (see Fig. 7.6) were very likely the Reeves’, too. This documents that the Reeves had radically reduced the number of Calau’s colours. The British boxes lacked moreover the “natural order” layout with and for which the first watercolour cakes had been initially developed. The fact that German colourmen also rejected this “natural order” was possibly an effect of the commercial boost that English colourmen had impressed on the new invention. However, Pfannenschmid originally developed only 12 inks, too. 20 years after the invention of the prefabricated watercolour cake in Prussia, it was known as a British product. The Reeves’ product, and British watercolour cakes in general, dominated the market: They were cheaper, had fewer colours, and had been publicly recognized almost immediately as an invention. But the British colourmen also deprived this invention of its “natural order”, that is of the complex mathematical and trichromatic method that Lambert and Calau had followed to produce the first ones in 1773.

 “wird jezt für den ersten Farben Laborant in teutschland gehalten, so wohl für die Lavermahlerey, als die mit Waßer u[nd] Öhl”. Hartmann was active as a porcelain painter in Fürstenberg; owing to an eye disease, he started producing colours (Meusel 1815, 182). 66  The advertisement reads “bey mir die von Herrn Mahler Hartmann zu Braunschweig neu verfertigten Farbentusche zu bekommen sind. ... Jeder Farbenkasten enthält 12 Tafeln, deren jede auf der einen Seite mit A. A. Hartmann, extra feine Farben-Tusche, und auf’m Revers mit dessen Signet, bezeichnet ist.” That is “the new colour inks made by Mr. painter Hartmann in Brunswick are available from me. ... Each colour box contains 12 cakes, each of which is marked on one side with A. A. Hartmann, extra fine colour ink, and on the reverse with his signet.” 67  “auf der Rückseite stat[t] des Nahmens Reeves auf den meinigen Refoes zu lesen ist, und ein der im Kupfer gestochenen Recomendation in den Englischen der Nahmen des Secretaire More steht, und in der meinigen Wore zu lesen ist, auser einigen schreibfehlern in der Englischen Sprache”. 65

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7.5 Conclusions When, in 1771, Calau and Lambert inaugurated their pyramid-making project, they could not foretell a larger project that would change art practices worldwide. Lambert’s Farbenpyramide was conceived as a practical tool, and Lambert explored ways to make the trichromatic pyramid useful to practitioners. Collaboration with Calau added at least one application to the possibilities. Lambert came to see the extra advantage of his colour chart to artists and draughtsmen who sought to paint outside of the studio. The “natural order” of the colours in the levels of the coloured pyramid and the quality of being “their own grinding stone” of Calau’s wax tablets were the drives of a new invention: a box with self-contained prefabricated colour cakes. Lambert justified the urge to manufacture and sell such a product in his letter to Beireis. He stated “with that, the matter” discussed in Farbenpyramide “does not remain a mere theory” (Appendix II). Although Calau’s and Lambert’s names are no longer associated with this invention there is no doubt they fathered it. The colour box that Calau produced in 1773, a result of the interplay between his Punic wax and the principles of Lambert’s Farbenpyramide, became critical to the fortunes of watercolour painting two decades later. When Lambert noted that Calau’s colour tablets could be “their own grinding stone”, he was not yet concerned with the idea of a saleable colour box—he hoped only that his pyramid served practical uses. While neither Calau nor Lambert succeed in commercialising their invention, their water-soluble prefabricated tablets were rapidly imitated albeit deprived of their “natural order” by other colour manufacturers in Germany and England. The cheaper British watercolour cakes soon flooded the market because the Reeves offered fewer paint blocks than their German competitors. They had no interest in maintaining the trichromatic arrangement of Calau’s box perhaps because many of the mixtures in the central area were too similar. The invention of watercolour paint blocks increased the popularity of that technique among professional painters and amateurs alike. Thanks to these ready-made colourants, artists could dedicate more time to the painting activity, and art enthusiasts could dabble in watercolour painting without troubling to prepare the colours themselves. Moreover, this medium was more versatile than oil. It was used by map makers, draughtsmen, miniature painters, scholars, and amateurs alike. The invention of watercolour cakes solved a significant practical problem in plein-air painting: how to carry into the field liquid inks or use reconstituted watercolours that were notably deemed unusable. The significance of this invention to art practices is apparent when we note that the Society of Painters in Water Colours, founded in 1804 (Smith 2002, 4), was the first artist society to focus on the medium rather than a subject or training. We can further point to the influence of Calau’s prefabricated colour cakes on increasing the accessibility of painting practice: Not only did this technique appeal to landscapists and travelling artists, but watercolour also became regarded, increasingly, as suitable for women and inexperienced enthusiasts.

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A key ingredient for the original development of the watercolour cake was Calau’s mysterious Punic wax.68 Neither Pfannenschmid nor the Reeves revealed the recipe for their inks, but it is possible that the work of these men was based on clues about the vegetable wax used by Calau. When incorporated into prepared watercolours, they did not dry poorly, as traditional watercolours did. Both Pfannenschmid and Bettkober were familiar with the properties of different waxes through their occupations, and both men likely incorporated this understanding into their products. The Reeves brothers’ paint block probably used a waxy binder, too. In a letter to the Royal Society of Arts dated 1849, a successor company described the colours in their paint box as “wax colours” (Goodwin 1966, 34–35). Although it is impossible to assess the composition of Calau’s Punic wax, laboratory analysis might indicate the presence of a vegetal product, something eighteenth-century colour makers and chemists understood as a wax, in Reeves’ and other still extant late-eighteenth-century watercolour cakes: this was undertaken for gums.69 Such a product could have been, for instance, glycerol, which the Swede chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–1786) isolated from olive oil in 1783, and which became, like other syrups and sugars, a humectant for watercolour cakes (Ehrenforth 1994, 54–55; Lennartson 2017, 78–79). Although this point needs to be further explored, I can conclude by emphasising the role that colour order played in the invention of prefabricated watercolour cakes. Lambert clearly had two main goals for his Farbenpyramide. First, he wished to organise colour mixing in a coherent system that “considerably helps and eases the memory” (Lambert 1772a, 110).70 Lambert’s colour chart was––in his own words––a “signpost” (Wegweiser) toward easy colour-mixing practice (Lambert 1772a, 116). Second, Lambert wanted that his colour chart “does not remain a main theory” (Appendix II). He underlined this point once again with a 19-page chapter of Farbenpyramide, discussing possible applications in the arts and crafts. But it is with the prefabricated watercolour box that many of his theorised applications finally materialised. Painters could use watercolour in the field without having to carry around traditional paraphernalia. They could concentrate on painting rather than on the manufacturing of colours. Finally, the box was an ancestor of the painting-by-number sets developed by Dan Robbins in the 1940s, a technique first theorised in Lambert’s Farbenpyramide (Lambert 1772a, 110). This last point deserves a digression, to which I will dedicate another article, though. In conclusion, an illustration that was described as “an open triangular box” painted with the purported Punic wax of ancient painters led to the production of the first colour box with prefabricated watercolour cakes and changed the art world forever.

 Walter (1821, 104) stated that his father Johann Gottlieb Walter (1734–1818), the Professor of Anatomy at the Collegium medicum-chirurgicum in Berlin, had personally met Calau and seen his wax in 1771. Calau’s Punic wax reminded Walter senior of the wax he used for anatomical preparations. 69  The varieties of gums present in watercolour cakes have been analysed by Ormsby et al. 2005. 70  “Dieses dient dem Gedächtniß zu einer sehr merklichen Erleichterung”. 68

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Appendices Appendix I Excerpt of Lambert’s letter to Lichtenberg. Basel, UB, Nachlass Johann Heinrich Lambert, L I a 706: Briefe von Johann Heinrich Lambert an Adressaten G–O, Bl. 404r; Lambert an Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 15 March 1774a. The letter was published in Bernoulli (1782, 2:471–475). Author’s transcription and translation.  ranscription T Ich hatte die Größte Mühe ihn zu bereden, daß er einige Farbenschachteln für liebhaber aus den 3 Grundfarben verfertigte. Er machte endlich doch mit einem male 18, welche die 28 Farben des 2ten Triangels enthalten. Die meisten waren voraus bestellt, und die übrigen sind nun auch verkauft. Beÿligendes Blättgen zeigt, wie sie hell und dunkler aussehen. Die Dunkelheit hätte noch weitter getrieben werden können. Die Farben in der Schachtel ligen in eben der Ordnung, und da die meisten sehr schwarz in der Schüßelgen aussehen, so habe ich einen solchen triangel beÿgelegt, ohne eben die Geduld zu nehmen die Schattirung aufs feinste auszumalen. Es ist aber auch nicht nöthig sie ganz nahe oder durch ein Vergrößerungs Glas zu betrachten. An Schönheit fehlt es diesen Farben nicht. Nur sind die Mittelfarben nicht vollkom[m]en an ihrem orte, weil das dazu gebrauchte Carmin und Berlinerblau nicht nochmals war geprüft worden, da beydes von dem vorhin geprüften nicht verschieden zu seÿn schien.  ranslation T I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him [Calau] that he should manufacture some colour boxes for enthusiasts from the 3 basic colours. He finally made 18 at once, which contain the 28 colours of the second triangle. Most were pre-ordered, and the remaining ones are now also sold. The attached sheet shows how they look light and darker. The darkness could have been pushed even further. The colours in the box are in the same order, and since most of them look very black in the little bowls, so I have put in such a triangle, without even taking the patience to paint the shading in the finest detail. But it is not necessary to look at them very closely or through a magnifying glass. These colours do not lack beauty. Only the middle colours are not fully in their place, because the carmine and Prussian blue used for this purpose had not been tested again, since both did not seem to be different from the previously tested. Appendix II Excerpt of Lambert’s letter to Beireis, including a passage not included in Bernoulli (1782, 2:261–262). Basel, UB, Nachlass Johann Heinrich Lambert, L I a 705: Briefe von Johann Heinrich Lambert an Adressaten A–F (1759) Bl. 44, Lambert an Gottfried Christoph Beireis, 03 July 1773. Author’s transcription and translation.

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 ranscription T Herr Calau macht nun wirklich Farbenschacteln, worinn die 28 Farben des zweyten Triangels der Pyramide in eben der Ordnung gelegt sind: an denen sich folglich jede Stufen der Helligkeit sehen lassen. Damit bleibt nun die Sache nicht bey der blossen Theorie. Unser berühmte Historienmahler Rohde so wohl wie Herr Meil waren mit unter den ersten Käufern. Von 17 Schachteln, die er das erste mal machte, wurden 12 gleich den ersten Tag weggekauft. Die Farben sind fein, jede schattirt sich selbst, und man hat mit Mischen keine Zeit aufzuopfern. Auf Verlangen legt Herr Calau 28 in eben der Ordnung gemahlte oder abgebildete Kugeln bey, damit man jede Schattirung einer jeden Farbe sogleich sehen könne.  ranslation T Mr. Calau really does make colour boxes in which the 28 colours of the second triangle of the pyramid are arranged in exactly the same order: consequently, every level of brightness can be seen. With that, the matter does not remain a mere theory. Our famous historical scene painter Rohde as well as Mr. Meil were among the first buyers. Of 17 boxes that he made the first time, 12 were sold out the very first day. The colours are fine, each shades itself, and one does not have to spend time mixing them. On request, Mr. Calau encloses 28 spheres painted or illustrated in the same order, so that one can immediately see the tint of every colour.

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———. 1772a. Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide wo die Mischung jeder Farben aus Weiß und drey Grundfarben angeordnet, dargelegt und derselben Berechnung und vielfacher Gebrauch gewiesen wird [...] mit einer ausgemahlten Kupfertafel. Berlin: Haude und Spener. ———. 1772b. Observations Sur l’encre & le papier. In Nouveaux mémoires de l’Académie Royale des sciences et belles-Lettres année, vol. MDCCLXX, 58–67. Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voß. Lambert, Johann Heinrich, and David L. DiLaura. 2001. Photometry: Or on the measure and gradations of light, Colors and shade. N.p: Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. Lee, Barry B. 2000. Commentary to the English publication, translated by Adriana Fiorentini, of Tobias Mayer article: ‘On the Relationships between Colours’. Colour Research and Application 25 (1): 66–68. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-­6378(200002)25:13.0.CO;2-­X. Lennartson, Anders. 2017. The Chemical Works of Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Cham: Springer. Halm, Levy-van, and Koos. 1998. Where Did Vermeer Buy his Painting Materials? Theory and Practice. In Studies in the History of Art, vol. 55, 136–143. Symposium Papers XXXIII: Vermeer Studies. Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, Ulrich Joost, and Albrecht Schöne. 1983. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Briefwechsel, Bd 1: 1765–1779 [Briefe Nr. 1–656]. Munich: Beck. Mackowsky, Hans. 1909. Bettkober, Johann Carl Ludwig. In Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart [. . .]. Ed. U. Thieme and F. Becker, 3:456. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann. Magrini, Sabina. 2006. Ink. In Brill’s New Pauly, ed. Hubert Cancik, Helmuth Schneider, Christine F. Salazar, Manfred Landfester, and Francis G. Gentry. https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-­9347_ bnp_e1215450. Accessed 27 Jan 2021. Matthew, Louisa C. 2002. ‘Vendecolori a Venezia’: The reconstruction of a Profession. The Burlington Magazine 144 (1196): 680–686. Mayer, Tobias. 1758. Bericht über Mayers Vortrag auf der Societätsversammlung. Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen 1758 (2): 1385–1389. Mayer, Tobias, and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. 1775. Tobiae Mayeri. In Vniversitate Litt. Gottingensi Qvondam Professoris Ac Soc. Reg. Scient. Sodalis; Astronomi Celeberrinim Opera Inedita I: Commentationes societatis regiae scientiarum oblatas quae integrae supersunt com tabula selenographica complectens. Göttingen: Johann Christian Dietrich. Meusel, Johann Georg. 1815. Schöne Künste. Lemgo, in der Mayer. Buchh.: Deutsches Künstlerlexicon; oder, Verzeichniss der jetzt lebenden deutschen Künstler. Nebst einigen Anhängen. Verfertigt von Johann Georg Meusel. K. Preuss. Hofrathe u. prof. Zu Erlangen u.s.w. Zweyte umgearbeitete Ausgabe. Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Ergänzungsblätter 23: 177–183. Nachricht von der Versammlung der Königl. 1777. Churfürstl. Landwirtschaftsgesellschaft zu Zelle, im Winter und Frühjahr 1777. Hannoverisches Magazin 55: 865–878. Nicolai, Friedrich. 1786. Beschreibung der Königlichen Residenzstädte Berlin und Potsdam, Aller daselbst befindlicher Merkwürdigkeiten, und der umliegenden Gegend. Vol. 2. Berlin: Nicolai. Observations on the Rise and Progress of Painting in Water Colour. 1813. The repository of arts. Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics 9: 91–94. [OED]. Oxford English Dictionary Online 2022. https://www.oed.com/. Ormsby, Bronwyn A., Joyce H. Townsend, Brian W. Singer, and John R. Dean. 2005. British Watercolour Cakes from the Eighteenth to the Eearly Twentieth Century. Studies in Conservation 50 (1): 45–66.

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Ouvrages. 1773. Ouvrages imprimés ou manuscrits, machines et inventions, présentés a l’Académie pendant le cours de l’année 1771. In MDCCLXX: Nouveaux mémoires de l’Academie royale des sciences et belles-lettre, 31–36. Berlin: G.J. Decker. Pfannenschmid, August Ludwig. 1781. In Versuch einer Anleitung zum Mischen Aller Farben aus blau, gelb und Roth, nach beiliegendem Triangel, ed. Ernst Rudolph Schultz. Hannover: Ernst Rudolph Schultz, Société des arts. ———. 1785. Anzeige Nummer 3, Der teutsche Merkur (Jänner) Christoph Martin Wieland.66 ———. 1795. VI.  Pfannenschmidsche Farben-Tuschen zu Hannover. In Intelligenz-Blatt des Journals des Luxus und der Moden, vol. 10, lxxviii–lxxix. ———. 1813. Bekanntmachungen. Allgemeine Handlungs-Zeitung: mit den neuesten Erfindungen und Verbesserungen im Fabrikwesen und in der Stadt- und Landwirthschaft 233: 951–952. Pietsch, Annik. 2014. Material, Technik, Ästhetik und Wissenschaft der Farbe 1750–1850: Eine produktionsästhetische Studie zur “Blüte”. In Und zum “Verfall” der Malerei in Deutschland am Beispiel Berlin. Berlin; Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag. Pliny the Elder, Roderich König, and Gerhard Winkler. 2012. Naturkunde: Buch XXXV: Farben. In Malerei. Plastik; lateinisch–deutsch, ed. Sammlung Tusculum, 3rd ed. Berlin: De Gruyter. Pohlmann, Albrecht. 2010. Von der Kunst zur Wissenschaft und zurück. Farbenlehre und Ästhetik bei Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932). Halle-Wittenberg: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Philosophische Fakultät I, Institut für Kunstgeschichte und Archäologien Europas. Rice, Danielle. 1996. Encaustic Painting. In The Dictionary of Art, ed. J.  Turner, 196–200. London: Macmillan. Riem, Andreas. 1787. In Über die Malerei der Alten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Kunst, ed. Bernhard Rode. Berlin: Friedrich Maurer. Sauvage, Leila, and Cécile Gombaud. 2016. Liotard, Stoupan and the colours available to 18thcentury European artists. In Sources on art technology: Back to basics: Proceedings of the sixth symposium of the ICOM-CC working group for art technological source research, held at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 16–17 June 2014, ed. Sigrid Eyb-Green, Joyce Townsend, Kathrin Pilz, Stefanos Kroustallis, Idelette van Leeuwen, International Council of Museums, and Rijksmuseum, 115–123. London: Archetype Publications. Schmuck, Friedrich. 2000. Der Farbentriangel des august Ludewig Pfannenschmid von 1781. In Farbmetrik und Farbenlehre–die Sammlung Friedrich Schmuck, ed. R. Fuchs and D. Oltrogge, 117–137. Patrimonia. 181. Berlin: Kulturstiftung der Länder. Shelley, Marjorie. 2011. Painting in the dry manner: The flourishing of pastel in 18th-century Europe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 68: 4–56. Simon, Jacob. 2009. British Artists’ Suppliers, 1650–1950. https://www.npg.org.uk/research/ programmes/directory-­of-­suppliers/r/#RE. Accessed 20 Dec 2020. ———. 2019. London, 1600-1800: Trading artists’ materials with Europe and worldwide. In Trading paintings and painters’ materials 1550–1800, ed. Anne Haack Christensen, Angela Jager, and Centre for art technological studies and conservation, 88–98. Archetype Publications. Smith, Greg. 2002. The emergence of the professional watercolourist: Contentions and alliances in the artistic domain, 1760–1824. In British art and visual culture since 1750. Aldershot: Ashgate. Steck, Max, ed. 1943. Johann Heinrich Lambert Schriften zur Perspektive. Berlin: Lüttke. Steinle, Friedrich. 2015. Colour knowledge in the 18th century: Practice, systematisation, and natural philosophy. In Colour histories: Science, art, and technology in the 17th and 18th centuries, ed. M. Bushart and F. Steinle, 43–65. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

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Tallian, Timea. 2009. John White’s materials and techniques. In European visions: American voices, ed. Kim Sloan, 72–76. British museum research publication 172. London: British museum Publ. Verzeichniß der Bücher und Instrumente, welche der verstorbene König. Ober Baurath und Professor Herr Heinrich Lambert hinterlassen hat, und die den Meistbiethende sollen verkauft werden. 1778. Berlin: Winterschen Schriften. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/ view/drs:16627532$1i. Walter, Friedrich August. 1821. Alte Malerkunst und Johann Gottlieb Walter’s, Stifters des anatomischen museums zu Berlin, Leben und Werke. Berlin: J. G.Hasselberg. Wehrs, Georg Friedrich. 1789. Vom Papier, den vor der Erfindung desselben üblich gewesenen Schreibmassen, und sonstigen Schreibmaterialien. Halle: bey Johann Jacob Gebauer. Giulia Simonini is a Post-doctoral fellow in the research group “Dimensionen der techne in den Künsten” at TU Berlin. Her PhD thesis was about eighteenth-century European colour charts. She has degrees in the history of art (M.A., TU Berlin) and art conservation (ABA Bologna), and has taught at Goethe University Frankfurt (2021) and Konstanz University (2022–2023) and participated in the research project “Die Ordnung der Farben” at TU Berlin (2017–2020).  

Chapter 8 Testing Ground: Colour Samples in European Porcelain Manufactories Gabriella Szalay1 (*) Kassel, Germany [email protected] 1 

Abstract  In this essay, I look at the challenges faced by the first generations of European porcelain makers when it came to the task of decorating their wares with colours. Beginning with the circumstances that led to the European invention of porcelain at the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden in 1708/1709, I trace the various trials and tribulations of the artisans, employed at the nearby manufactory in Meißen, as they searched for the correct materials and techniques for making and painting porcelain. Special attention is paid to the use of colour samples (Farbprobe), which began life as small pieces of porcelain covered in one or two strokes of coloured enamel to test—and thereby control—variables related to the choice of colourant, as well as the firing time and technique. As time went on, however, colour samples began to assume more and more elaborate shapes and designs, which reflected their growing role as a tool for both ordering and displaying one’s knowledge. Keywords  Porcelain · Meißen · Underglaze enamel · Overglaze enamel · Colour recipes · Purple of Cassius

When you tour the museum attached to the world-famous porcelain manufactory in Meißen, Germany, one of the first things that you see is a wall of colour (Fig.  8.1). Comprised of 80 square-shaped porcelain tiles, whose pristine white surfaces are covered in a broad array of coloured enamels, it stands as a testament to the manufactory’s technical prowess over its three hundred plus years in operation. It is an alluring image, encountered at the top of a long staircase near the entrance to the museum, and entices the viewer to step into the exhibition space beyond. That the curator should have chosen such a prominent location for this chromatic display is by no means an accident, as colour was—and remains—one of the central topics governing the history of European porcelain.1 As I will show, using the Meißen manufactory as my primary example, colour was at the heart of the innovation and competition that defined European  Given the central role played by colour in the history of European porcelain, it is surprising that it is mostly technical studies of that material which examine the topic in any significant detail. See for example Zumbulyadis and Van Thienen (2020). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_8

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Fig. 8.1  Porcelain Tiles with Color Samples, 21st century, Meissen Museum, MEISSEN®

porcelain manufactories over the course of the eighteenth century. Nowhere is this more evident than in the production of colour samples (Farbprobe).

8.1 Experimenting with Colour Colour was a major concern from the earliest moments of European porcelain production. A memorandum by Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719), one of the co-­inventors of European porcelain, underscores this point by emphasising the author’s ability to produce “good white porcelain with the finest of glazes and all the proper painting” (Böttger 1709).2 Dated 28 March 1709 and addressed to his patron, Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King in Poland (1670–1733), Böttger’s memorandum makes clear that it was not enough that, just months earlier, he and his colleagues had solved the centuries-old mystery of how to make porcelain (Schönfeld 1998). Rather, it was critical to find a way to compete with the finest vessels from Asia, especially China, where artisans had been practising the art of making porcelain since the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) (Weber 2013). Praised for its glistening white surfaces and decorative glazes and enamels, which came in a variety of colours, Asian porcelain was a worthy, if difficult model to follow. For one thing, “good white porcelain”, as Böttger described it, required high-quality kaolin; a kind of white clay that had long been mined in China.3 Kaolin was unknown to Europeans until the first deposit was discovered in Colditz, a mining district not far from Augustus’ court in Dresden, in 1708 (Schönfeld 1998, 725).4 While this kaolin

 “das guthe weisse Porcellain samt der allerfeinsten Glasur und allem Zubehörigen Mahlrwerk…” A transcription of Böttger’s memorandum can be found in Mields (1967). 3  A number of other ingredients have been used in combination with kaolin during the long history of porcelain production, but the traditional formula is 50% kaolin, 25% feldspar and 25% quartz. 4  Here I am following the general convention of linking the invention of European porcelain to the discovery of kaolin at Colditz. Reinhardt (1929, p. 143) notes the earlier use of kaolin brick in assay ovens in the Ore Mountains. 2

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was what made it possible for “true” or hard-paste porcelain to be produced for the first time on European soil, it also had a high iron content, which resulted in a body or paste that was more yellow than white (Hofmann 1932, 144).5 One could correct this problem by firing the resulting porcelain long enough for the iron content to burn out. But the kilns that Böttger and his colleagues had access to when Augustus founded the Meißen manufactory in 1710 were not yet up to the task (Gröger 1957). Indeed, the high temperatures required for firing porcelain, reaching upwards of 1400 °C, explain why it took Europeans so long to master its secrets, and why the Meißen manufactory was plagued with problems in its first decade of operation. Chief among the challenges that faced the young manufactory was how to decorate its small but growing repertoire of forms with “the finest of glazes and all the proper painting”. A trained apothecary with alchemical interests, Böttger had first-hand experience with some of the colourants that would be used for this purpose, such as the gold that was added to teapots and cups, after they had been fired. He was also well acquainted with recipe books used in the production of other high-firing materials, such as metal and glass, and realised that they could contain valuable insights into how to add colour to a vessel or figurine before it was fired (Böttcher 2014). Thus, the manufactory was soon experimenting with metal oxides, which had long been used in such circles and were known to produce brilliant results when handled correctly.6 However, since porcelain has its own special properties, recipes borrowed from other artisanal traditions first had to be adjusted and manipulated to fit its needs. In addition to the composition of the paste, one had to take into account the nature of the glaze, any materials that had been added to the metal oxide to turn it into a colourant, such as the flux, and how each of these elements responded to the kiln (Kingery and Vandiver 1986, 271; Domoney 2012, 17).7 Few of these details were resolved in Böttger’s lifetime: we can see this in a report written by the Meißen manufactory’s first Chief Inspector, Johann Melchior Steinbrück, in 1717. Notwithstanding the usual passages that one expects to find in such documents, wherein the author praises the ingenuity of his compatriots and the magnanimity of his patron, Steinbrück’s report is full of stories of partial successes and even outright failures—such as the struggle to replicate the Ming Dynasty blue-and-white ware that had become a favourite among European collectors. While Böttger and his colleagues knew that the blue was made from cobalt oxide and that the corresponding colourant had to be applied beneath a translucent glaze that contained alumina and silica, this seemed to  The term “true” for hard-paste porcelain differentiates it from soft-paste porcelain, which is made by combining ground-up glass, or frit, with a white clay body (usually marl). Soft-paste porcelain was first made in the workshops, set up in Florence by Francesco I de’ Medici (1541– 1587) in the late sixteenth century, charged with imitating Chinese porcelain. The “porcelain” manufactories that followed in France also produced soft-paste porcelain, including the famous French manufactory at Vincennes, which later relocated to Sèvres. 6  Here it should be noted that metal oxides were used as a colouring agent not only in glassmaking and cloisonné workshops, but also in faience manufactories, which served as an important predecessor to and source of information for the artisans at Meißen and later porcelain manufactories. 7  A flux is a substance that is used to lower the melting point of the glaze in question. Early on, the Meißen manufactory used lime. By the 1730s, it was experimenting with feldspar. 5

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be the extent of their progress.8 Although Steinbrück tried to maintain an air of ­optimism by detailing the improved kiln construction at the manufactory in recent years, and Augustus’ generous offer of 1000 Thaler to anyone who developed a reliable blue underglaze enamel, in the end, he had to concede that, “…something was still missing” (Steinbrück 1982, 72).9 Indeed, the earliest surviving examples of “blue painting” (Blaumalerei) from the Meißen manufactory are generally either too dark or too light in tone, or the colourant is distributed unevenly across the surface of the object in question. Sometimes it is so diffuse that it is difficult to distinguish the underlying design (Fig. 8.2). It would take the first generation of European porcelain makers well over a decade to conclude that these problems could be controlled through firing (temperature and time) or attention to

Fig. 8.2  David Köhler and Johann George Mehlhorn, Chinese Woman with a Fish Basket, Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1717/20, © Porzellansammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Photo: Adrian Sauer  It would not have been difficult for the artisans at Meißen to determine that cobalt oxide should be used to produce a blue colourant, as Saxony had been a major player in the global cobalt trade since the sixteenth century, providing cobalt in the form of smalt to potters and painters around the world, including China (Berrie 2016). 9  The full quote, which refers to colour samples, that were submitted by Böttger to the manufactory directorate for inspection reads, “…seine bisherige Proben zeigen, daß es an noch etwas fehle”. 8

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impurities in the materials used (Arnold 1989). This shows just how exaggerated Böttger’s claims, in the memorandum that he sent to Augustus, were. What is especially pertinent within the present context is the ways  in which early manufacturers of European porcelain resolved such issues through the use of colour samples.

8.2 Expanding the Palette In their simplest form, colour samples are small pieces of porcelain painted with one or more strips of an enamel colour before being fired. Colourants that are intended to serve as an underglaze enamel are applied after an initial, or biscuit, firing, which helps to “lock” the components of the paste into place.10 The biscuit porcelain object is dipped into a glaze and then returned to the kiln for a second, or glost firing.11 Colourants that are destined to act as an overglaze enamel are applied after the glost firing has been completed, and then the whole ensemble is returned to the kiln again. As a general rule, underglaze enamels are harder to control than overglaze enamels, since the kiln reaches its highest temperatures during the glost firing; this makes it difficult to prevent colourants from vitrifying or bleeding out. In fact, to this day, only a limited number of underglaze enamels are available to the makers of porcelain. While overglaze enamels are easier to manage, due to their relatively low melting points, they are subject to a host of variables that can lead to radically different results. For example, iron oxide assumes a coral tint when fired at 650 °C, a bright red tint when fired at 700 °C, and a purple-­ violet tint when fired at 750 °C (Domoney 2012, 23).12 One purpose of creating and maintaining colour samples is to help control such variables by providing a testing ground on which to try out new recipes and techniques, and thereby ensure that the final result is as close as possible to that intended by the maker. A teacup now in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts (MAAK) in Cologne and produced at the Meißen manufactory around 1740 shows this idea in action (Fig.  8.3). Covered in broad, long strokes of overglaze enamel, which run vertically along the axis of its body from the rim to the foot, at first glance, it seems to exhibit a variety of colours: gold, purple, violet, red. However, when we compare these colours to surviving documents from the period, it becomes evident that they all share an origin in the recipe for Purple of Cassius. Known to painters since the fifteenth century, and used in the production of glass since the seventeenth century, Purple of Cassius took its name (in part) from the purple precipitate that was formed by mixing gold with aqua

 Biscuit firing takes place at around 900 °C and, among other things, removes excess water from the paste. 11  Glost firing occurs between 1250 and 1400 °C depending on the precise composition of the paste and the glaze. 12  Another important variable to take into consideration while reading about the colour samples discussed here is that each metal oxide has a different melting point, so typically an object with multiple overglaze enamels will have to be fired multiple times (the exact number depending on whether some of the metal oxides can be grouped together). 10

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Fig. 8.3  Cup with Enamel Color Samples, Meissen Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1740, Museum of Applied Arts, Cologne, © Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln, Photo: Marion Mennicken, 2015

regia and tin (Hunt 1976). While there had been some attempts to use variants of this recipe during Böttger’s lifetime to develop a lustre, it was only in the 1720s that it started to be used in the production of overglaze enamels (Zumbulyadis 2013).13 The interest in Purple of Cassius at this moment is usually ascribed to Johann Gregorius Höroldt (1696–1775). First recorded as a painter in Strasbourg, Höroldt joined the Meißen manufactory in 1720 after having spent one year at the Du Paquier porcelain manufactory in Vienna. Nothing is known of his activity at the latter, which was the first of what would be many rivals to the Meißen manufactory.14 However, it seems that Höroldt somewhere, somehow gained knowledge of how to paint on porcelain, since he is recorded as presenting colour samples to the manufactory directorate upon his arrival in Meißen (Walcha 1959). He then set about the tasks of improving existing recipes and adding new colours to the manufactory’s repertoire. Judging by the recipe book that he penned in 1731, his plan was a resounding success (Höroldt 1731).15 With recipes for underglaze, as well as overglaze blue enamel, two kinds of red, three kinds of black, two kinds of yellow, two kinds of green, two kinds of purple, and multiple lustres using gold and silver, Höroldt’s book contains a wealth of information about sixteen colours in total; an astonishing display of technical knowledge accumulated within a short period of time (Mields 1963, 455).  Lustres are similar to overglaze enamels in that they are painted onto objects that have already been fired, glazed and fired again. Instead of metal oxides, they are prepared using gold, silver, copper and tin, which create a brilliant sheen upon firing. 14  Founded in 1718, the Du Paquier manufactory struggled in its first few years of operation: first with finding a local source of kaolin and then with perfecting its paste. 15  For a critical assessment of Höroldt’s recipe book, which was written under duress by the manufactory directorate, and appears to not be entirely user-friendly, see Lübcke (2000). 13

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As Höroldt was the head of the painting department when the cup that is now in Cologne was painted, it is safe to assume that his recipes served as the basis for its colours (Rückert 1990, 135–136, 160).16 This means that all sections marked P for purple (Purpur) were painted with an enamel that was made using Höroldt’s recipe for Purple of Cassius, which was similar to other examples found in period documents, except that Höroldt specified a longer time (8–10 days, as opposed to the usual 3–4) for precipitating the gold-tin-aqua regia solution (Höroldt 1731, 103–110; Mields 1963, 456).17 Meanwhile, the section labelled “Violet” was most likely made using Höroldt’s recipe for “Old Japanese Purple”, (Purpur nach altjapanischer Art) which was prepared in the same manner as Purple of Cassius, except that tartrate (Weinstein), a salt composed of potassium oxide and antimony oxide, was added to the resulting precipitate (Höroldt 1731, 150–151).18 Especially popular as a ground colour in the 1730s and 1740s, “Old Japanese Purple” or “Violet” demonstrates the seemingly endless variations that could be generated from a single recipe. To alter the hue of the final product, one needed only to mix in one or two additional ingredients. Artisans could also create multiple variations upon a hue by changing how they applied the enamel in question to an object (Kingery and Vandiver 1986). In the case of the cup now in Cologne, the painter first covered its exterior with a thin layer of enamel, resulting in a pale purple ground colour. They then added further layers of the same or related colourants, like the strip of gold (marked G) on the cup’s verso (Fig. 8.4). In some sections, we even find multiple layers overlapping one another. On the one hand, this can be read as an accidental effect, created by the painter’s brushstrokes. On the other, it can be understood as an intentional strategy of the painter, since overglaze enamels deepen in hue as the concentration of their colourant increases: a hard and fast rule that is at the heart of the difference between the additive and subtractive colour mixtures discussed by José Caivano elsewhere in this volume. This difference can be explained by the fact that what we perceive as colour is in effect the reflection of light from a particular source; when this source happens to be gold, the human eye registers the corresponding reflection in the red region of the visible spectrum. Thus, the higher the concentration of gold in a gold-based enamel-like Purple of Cassius, the more likely we are to perceive red (Lowengard 2008). While it is doubtful that the maker of the cup in Cologne was aware of this principle, which depends on Newtonian optics, they certainly knew—or at least learned through the preparation of colour samples like this one—that by adding more overglaze enamel to an object they could easily vary their results and thereby expand their palette.

 In 1731, with the arrival of Johann Joachim Kändler (1706–1775) to the Meißen manufactory, the workforce was divided effectively into the modelling department, led by Kändler, and the painting department, led by Höroldt, who was also placed in charge of the manufactory’s operations writ large. 17  This recipe is found in Chapter 10 of Höroldt’s recipe book, “Wie der Purpur zu Bereidet Wird”. A transcription of this recipe is to be found in Seyffarth (1957). For more on eighteenthcentury recipes for Purple of Cassius see Lowengard (2008). 18  The recipe for “Old Japanese Purple” appears in Chapter 16, “auf alte Japanische Art Purpur zu machen”. 16

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Fig. 8.4  The verso of the cup in Fig. 8.3, shows the buildup of colour, and a test of gold

8.3 Codifying the Process With so many factors affecting the final appearance of underglaze and overglaze enamels, it is hardly surprising that colour samples occupied an increasingly important role in European porcelain manufactories over the course of the eighteenth century. How this functioned in practice can be pieced together from contemporaneous written sources, such as L’art de la porcelain by the Comte de Milly.19 First published in 1771, Milly’s treatise contains invaluable information on the daily operations of the Meißen manufactory, gathered while the author served as an officer in the French army, which occupied the area during the Seven Years’ War. Among the passages of particular interest to us here are those in which Milly discusses colour samples. In keeping with what has been said so far, they are described as “pieces of porcelain” where “…one adds with a brush, two or three lines of broad strokes of the colours that one wants to test” (Milly 1774, 90).20 Milly notes that at Meißen, each stroke of colour was assigned a number, which was painted directly above that stroke and corresponded with the number on the box or container in which the colourant that served as its basis was stored. The same number was then entered into a book or register, in which the painter responsible for the said colour sample kept an accurate record as to how it had been made—presaging the kind of documentation practices that would later become a hallmark of the ceramics industry, as exhibited by André Karliczek’s discussion of Josiah Wedgwood in this volume (Milly 1774, 90).  Nicolas-Christiern de Thy, comte de Milly (1728–1784). Here I am using the German translation, published in 1774. All translations of the text into English are my own. 20  The passage in full, read as follows: “Auf diese Stücken Porcelain macht man mit dem Pinsel von der Farben, die man probieren will, zwey oder drey Linien breite Striche”. 19

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Referred to by Milly as the “Inventarium”, the purpose of this combination of colour samples and written instructions was to help painters make the right colour choices while ensuring that the finished product met the high standards of the manufactory. As we have already seen, the possibilities for creating variations upon a single hue were, at least in theory, unlimited, which explains why Milly urged painters to find a system for organising their ever-expanding palette. Otherwise, how was one to know which blue, purple or green had been used to decorate the various parts of a tea service, for example? The numbering system outlined by Milly was effective insofar as it offered a relatively straightforward means for keeping track of existing recipes while allowing room for the addition of new ones. It also proved to be somewhat unruly, however, in that, by the time a manufactory had been in operation for a few decades, variations upon certain hues could number in the hundreds. The cup discussed in the previous section, for example, exhibits a strip of colour marked P. No. 100, whereas a series of plates that were unearthed at the Meißen manufactory’s original location in the Schloss Albrechtsburg feature numbers ranging from 88 to 550. Made between 1760 and 1820, these plates contain another kind of notational system, namely the signatures of their makers (Krabath 2009).21 While it was not unheard of for porcelain painters to sign their names, it was rare, especially by the latter part of the eighteenth century, when it had become customary for members of both the painting and modelling departments to be assigned a number, which they would add to an object upon its completion (Rückert 1996). Given the nature and appearance of these plates, however, it is almost certain that they were not made for public consumption, but rather for internal use at the manufactory. This suggests that they were signed by their makers as a way of indicating which plate belonged to which painter. Indeed, Milly urges each painter to make their own colour samples, as a way of learning how to use the available colourants at a particular manufactory: “when the Inventarium comes out of the fire, one can see the strengths and weakness of the colour, and how much flux one had to use, in order to be able to recognize the strokes...” (Milly 1774, 91).22 These were then to be checked against colour samples that had been made by more experienced painters and which served as a kind of reference standard that could be used “to set up one’s palette” (Milly 1774, 91).23 Decisions regarding which colours to use on commissioned objects and which to use on those destined for sale, however, were often made by a higher authority than the  Personal communication with the archaeologist that led the team responsible for their excavation in 2009, Dr Stefan Krabath, confirms the difficulties of trying to match the names found on these plates (e.g. Naumann, Imhof) with those found in the manufactory’s archives, in large part because many of them belonged to multi-generational “dynasties” of artisans, which is still the case today. 22  “Wenn das Inventarium aus dem Feuer kommt, kann man die Stärke oder Schwäche der Farbe, und wie viel Fluß man dazu nöthig hat, aus den auf dem Inventario gemachten strichen erkennen.” (Milly 1774, p. 91) 23  The passage in question reads, “Wenn das Inventarium einmal zu Stande gebracht worden, so wird es zu Regel dienen, wornach der Porzellanmaler seine Palette einrichten kann.” For the use of similar reference standards in other, particularly textile, manufactories in the eighteenth century see Lowengard (2001). 21

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individual painter. Indeed, Milly’s description of the Inventarium shows us that by the 1770s there was a concentrated effort to standardise the colours that were being used by the painters at the Meißen manufactory—information that coincides with what we know of its organisational structure. Whereas in the early decades of the manufactory’s operation, we often find stories of individual painters developing and carefully guarding their own colour recipes, by the second half of the eighteenth century the manufactory directorate had begun to take active steps to combat such a practice (Mields 1963, 453).24 Worried that a recipe might be lost forever, should a painter die or leave the manufactory, Meißen (as well as many of its rivals) established a colour lab (Farbenlabor), run or overseen by technical experts (Klein 2014).25 These experts were often university-educated men who had specialised knowledge in the burgeoning science of chemistry and were charged with not only developing new colour recipes but also evaluating existing ones. They were also responsible for maintaining the boxes or containers mentioned by Milly which, to this day, are used to house the manufactory’s colourants in powdered form. A report (Gutachten), written by an unnamed technical expert in Dresden on 26 December 1776, illustrates the extent to which such individuals came to have control over the critical fortunes of colours (Anonymous 1776). Asked to evaluate a green overglaze enamel developed by a man named Thamm, who is identified in the report as the kiln master in charge of firing overglaze enamels, the anonymous author did little to conceal his displeasure. Noting how the enamel in question “…deteriorates and peels off in the fire and has no visible sheen” he recalled a similar incident in which years ago Thamm had developed a purple overglaze enamel that was unfit for the kiln.26 Nevertheless, because “it is overall difficult to write a report about an unknown colour, of whose ingredients one does not know with certainty”, the author still went to the trouble of testing Thamm’s colour against a green overglaze enamel that he himself had developed, as well as two enamels that exhibited similar hues and were housed in the manufactory’s colour lab.27 Finding the latter to be far superior to Thamm’s enamel, he concluded that, “in accordance with my duty, I cannot consider this to be a good, pleasing or lasting and fire-proof colour”.28 Thus, Thamm was neither compensated for his efforts nor was his green added to the manufactory’s repertoire.

 See for example David Köhler (1683–1723), who developed a recipe for underglaze blue enamel, which he wrote down in a notebook that he kept under lock and key until he finally revealed his secret to Höroldt upon his deathbed. 25  While Klein’s study looks at the Royal Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin (KPM) and not the manufactory at Meißen, it remains the most comprehensive study on this phenomenon to date. 26  “…habe im Feüer verderben, abspruüngen und ohne Glantz gesehen…” 27  “Es ist überhaupt Schwer ein Gutachten über ein fremde Farbe zu ertheillen, deren Bestand theille man nicht gewiß weist…” 28  “…so kann nach meiner Pflicht diese Fabr nicht Guth Schön vor haltbar und feüerbeständig erachten”. 24

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8.4 Displaying Results One of the reasons why technical experts, and the manufactory directorate who hired them, were so stringent about which colours were and were not to be entered into production is that colour provided a manufactory with the means to distinguish itself from the competition. The search for viable colourants for painting on porcelain began as the drive and desire to imitate Asian models; it soon became about attracting and maintaining clients in the face of the rival manufactories that started to dot the landscape in Central Europe. The first and arguably most formidable of these rivals was the Du Paquier manufactory in Vienna, founded in 1718. While the manufactory struggled in its first years of operation when it came to the quality of its paste, it quickly developed a palette of overglaze enamels that easily rivalled the one at Meißen (Lehner-Jobst 2009). The reason for this is simple: most if not all of its employees had been trained at Meißen, only to be lured away by the manufactory’s founder, Claude Innocentius Du Paquier (1679–1751), with promises of better pay and improved working conditions (Walcha 1958). Hence, as soon as a suitable source of kaolin was found in 1719, the artisans under Du Paquier’s employ could begin to decorate their wares in earnest, without having to suffer the same kind of set-backs or failures that characterised the earliest experiments with colour at Meißen. A cup that was decorated by Christian Daniel Busch (1723–1797) in 1746 shows just how far Meißen’s greatest rival had come by this point in terms of the technical know-how required for painting on porcelain.29 Painted on one side with a scene that invites comparison to the work of the French painter Jean-Antoine Watteau, and a landscape depicting a young woman set against a backdrop of imposing church steeples on the other (Fig. 8.5), it shows an impressive command of hues similar to the ones being used at Meißen: blue, purple, green, etc. (Hofmann 1932, 154). Here we also see how such hues could be used to create a sense of shadow and depth—a point of pride on the part of European porcelain painters, who openly and fervently competed with Chinese porcelain painters, whose work they felt to be lacking in this regard. My reasons for including it here, however, stem from the fact that it, too, served as a colour sample. Note the cloth that is held up by the woman, which is decorated with a grid of thirteen colours and an inscription that indicates these colours were being tested for potential use in a breakfast service for Count Philipp Joseph Kinsky (Folnesics and Braun 1907, 59).30 As Kinsky appears to have been responsible for Busch being called to the manufactory in Vienna, it is almost certain that the cup functioned as a showpiece with which to seek and gain his approval (Folnescis and Braun 1907, 59). Indeed, colour samples were not only a fruitful testing ground but were also an effective means of advertising one’s skills to potential employers and/or clients.

 Busch, like so many of the other early artisans employed at the porcelain manufactory in Vienna, began his career at Meißen, where he joined the painting department in 1741. He is first recorded at what was originally the Du Paquier manufactory, and then later renamed the Imperial and Royal Porcelain Manufactory after being purchased by Empress Maria Theresia, in 1745. 30  The inscription reads as follows: “Porcell: Farb: v: Ihro Exc: Grav: Phil: v: Kynsky”. 29

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Fig. 8.5  Christian Daniel Busch, Cup, Du Paquier Porcelain Manufactory, 1746, © Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna Photo: Joe Coscia, Jr./MAK

Undoubtedly one of the most extravagant examples of this kind of colour sample is the plate that was painted by Simon Feilner (1726–1798) at the Frankenthal porcelain manufactory in 1775 (Fig. 8.6). Decorated with sixty floral bouquets—no two of which are alike—it is a tour de force of flower painting (Blumenmalerei), especially since the entire plate has a circumference of 21 centimetres, which means that the scale of each bouquet borders on the miniature (Heuser 1922, 158). Equally impressive is its rich palette of colours, which are divided into nine separate hues, each appearing alongside a multitude of variations. Dedicated to the patron and titular head of the Frankenthal manufactory, Carl Theodor, Elector Palatine of the Rhine (1724–1799), whose initials are set into a blazing sun at the centre of the plate’s bottom, it was made at a moment in which Feilner found himself vying for position at the manufactory. Having joined its ranks five years earlier as a technical expert, he had found himself embroiled in a battle of wits (and wills) with its Director, Adam Bergdoll (1720–1797). Convinced that Bergdoll’s recipes for both the paste and the colours that were being used at the manufactory were subpar in quality, Feilner set about the task of convincing Carl Theodor of the same (Beaucamp-Markowsky 2008, 29–30). The plate seen here represents the final stage of Feilner’s plan, and was painted and fired after Feilner had convinced the Elector to release Bergdoll from his duties and name him his successor. Thus, in effect, it was a kind of contract, in which Feilner promised his employer that should he be named Director, the manufactory, which had been struggling fiscally for years, would enter into a new era of productivity (Heuser 1922, 157).31 Given this background, it is not without significance that Feilner also prepared a second plate, with the same design, which was presumably destined for the  The contract, signed by Feilner on 16 March 1775 stipulated that upon assuming his post, he was to hand over all of his technical know-how to the manufactory directorate in the form of a written document using a legible script (“deutlichen Niederschriebung”). 31

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Fig. 8.6  Simon Feilner, Trial Plate, Frankental Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1775 © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

painting department, where it was to serve as a model to which his fellow artisans could aspire (Beaucamp-Markowsky 2008, 31).32 By showing that he was capable of ­executing such a complicated object not just once but twice, Feilner was demonstrating that his command over colour was beyond compare. Colour samples were therefore also a way of displaying that one was capable of producing results; a function that is not to be underestimated at a time in which many a charlatan visited European courts, promising all kinds of technical capabilities on which they were unable to deliver.33

8.5 Conclusion While Feilner’s plate by no means represents the last word on colour samples, which continue to be made and used in European porcelain manufactories to this day, it remains one of the most visually stunning and technically complex objects of its kind. A far cry from the small “pieces of porcelain” mentioned in the earliest documents about the production of European porcelain, it shows how within the space of fewer than three generations artisans and technical experts were able to create a rich and

 This plate is now in the collection of the British Museum in London.  Johann Friedrich Böttger had once been such a confidence man, better known in the early modern period as a project maker, having arrived at the court of Augustus the Strong in Dresden after fleeing Prussia, where he had claimed to have the ability to transmute base metals into gold. 32 33

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vibrant palette of enamel colours, which they used to decorate what was, in essence, a “new” material. Without the benefit of colour samples, which allowed them to (among other things) test the relationship between the concentration of a particular colourant, its firing conditions, and the resulting hue, they would have likely been much less daring in their choices, and may perhaps have even remained content at imitating Asian models. Fortunately, colour samples enabled even those who were not usually involved in the preparation and application of colours, such as the kiln master Thamm, to try their hand at developing new and improved recipes. This does not mean, however, that we should understand them simply as sites of experimentation—they were also instruments for conveying and controlling information. Used to teach artisans that were new to a manufactory how to generate its signature palette, or to advertise their maker’s skills at critical moments in the latter’s fortune, colour samples played a pivotal role in both the production and ordering of knowledge at European porcelain manufactories. Acknowledgements  The majority of the research for the present chapter was conducted while I was the Renke B. and Pamela M.  Thye Fellow at the Busch-Reisinger Museum/ Harvard Art Museums (2018–2020). I am grateful to my supervisor, Lynette Roth, and my co-workers, Tony Siegel and Francesca Bewer, for their support.

References Anonymous. 1776, December 26. Gutachten, die grüne Farbe betreffend. AA III D 13. Werkarchiv der Porzellan-Manufaktur Meißen. Arnold, Klaus-Peter. 1989. Zur Gesichte der Meissner Blaumalerei im 18. Jahrhundert. In Meissener Blaumalerei aus drei Jahrhunderten, ed. Klaus-Peter Arnold, 25–43. Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlung. Beaucamp-Markowsky, Barbara. 2008. Frankenthaler Porzellan. Bd. 1: Die Plastik. München: Hirmer Verlag. Berrie, Barbara H. 2016. Mining for Colour: New Blues, Yellows and Translucent Paint. In Early Modern Colour Worlds, ed. Tarwin Baker et al., 20–46. Amsterdam: Brill. Böttcher, Hans-Joachim. 2014. Böttger: Vom Gold- zum Porzellanmacher. 2nd ed. Dresden: Dresdener Buchverlag. Böttger, Johann Friedrich. 1709, March 28. Acta Varia: Böttgersche und andere die Erfindung des Porzellans betreffende Papiere, 1701-1730. 6ABC0111.doc. Sächsiches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Dresden. Domoney, Kelly. 2012. Non-destructive Hand-held X-ray Flourescence Analysis of Meissen and Vincennes-Sèvres Porcelain: Characterisation, Dating and Attribution. PhD diss., Cranfield University. Folnesics, J., and E.W. Braun. 1907. Geschichte der K.K. Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur. Vienna: Druck und Verlag der K.K. Hof und Staatsdruckerei. Gröger, Helmuth. 1957. Öfen, Muffeln, und Brennverfahren von Johann Friedrich Böttger bis Johann Gregorious Hoerold 1710-1731. Silikattechnik 2: 275–279. Heuser, Emil. 1922. Porzellan von Strassburg und Frankenthal im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Neustadt an der Haardt: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt Carl Liesenberg. Hofmann, Friedrich. 1932. Das Europäischen Manufakturen im XVIII. Jahrhundert. Eine Kunstund Kulturgeschichte. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag.

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Höroldt, Johann Gregorious. 1731. Wahre und richtige Beschreibung der emallir oder Schmelzt Farben, wie ich solche mit Gottes Hilfe erfunden und bei hisiger Königl. Porcellain Manufactur itzo gebraucht werden, in Gleichen aus das Gold und Silber wie solches Tractiret werden muss. Pretiosa Nr. 6, Werkarchiv der Porzellan-Manufaktur Meißen. Hunt, L.B. 1976. The True Story of Purple of Cassius. Gold Bulletin 9: 134–139. Kingery, W. David, and Pamela B. Vandiver. 1986. Ceramic Masterpieces: Art, Structure and Technology. New York: Free Press. Klein, Ursula. 2014. Chemical Expertise: Chemistry in the Royal Prussian Porcelain Manufactory. Osiris 29: 262–282. Krabath, Stefan. 2009. Signierte Malproben auf frühem Meißener Porzellan. Archäologie in Deutschland 25: 53. Lehner-Jobst, Claudia. 2009. Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier und die Geschichte der Ersten Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur. In Fired by passion. Barockes Wiener Porzellan: die Manufaktur Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, ed. Meredith Chilton, 142–218. Stuttgart: Arnold. Lowengard, Sarah. 2001. Color Quality and Production: Testing Color in Eighteenth-century France. Journal of Design History 14: 91–103. ———. 2008. The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe. New  York: Columbia University Press. http://www.gutenberg-­e.org/lowengard/. Lübcke, Diethard. 2000. Höroldts Wahre und richtige Beschreibung der Emallir oder Schmelz-­ Farben (1732). Keramos 167-68: 197–202. Mields, Martin. 1963. Die Entwicklung der Aufglasurpalette des europäischen Hartporzellans bis 1731 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Arbeiten von Johann Gregorious Höroldt. Keramische Zeitschrift 8: 453–459. ———. 1967. Eine Versuchsaufzeichnung von Johann Friedrich Böttger aus dem Jahr 1708. Berichte der Deutsche Keramische Gesellschaft 44: 513–517. Milly, Herrn Grafen von. 1774. Die Kunst Porcelain zu machen. Brandenburg: Johann Wendelin Halle und Johann Samuel Halle. Reinhardt, Curt. 1929. Tschirnhauses Forschungslaboratorium für Porzellan in Dresden. Neues lausitzisches Magazin 105: 131–151. Rückert, Rainer. 1990. Biographische Daten der Meissener Manufakturisten des 18. Jahrhunderts. München: Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. ———. 1996. Alchemistische Symbolzeichen als Meißner Masse-, Former-, Bossierer- und Drehmarken im vierten Jahrzehnt des 18. Jahrhunderts. Keramos 151: 57–108. Schönfeld, Martin. 1998. Was There a Western Inventor of Porcelain? Technology and Culture 39: 716–727. Seyffarth, Richard. 1957. Johann Gregor Höroldt als Chemiker und Techniker. Mitteilungsblatt/ Keramik-Freunde der Schweiz 39: 22–25. Steinbrück, Johann Melchior. 1982. Berichte über die Porzellanmanufaktur Meißen von den Anfängen bis zum Jahr 1717. Kommentar Ingelore Menzhausen. Gütersloh: Prisma Verlag. Walcha, Otto. 1958. Christoph Hunger: ein wandernder Arkanist des 18. Jahrhunderts. Mitteilungsblatt/Keramik-Freunde der Schweiz 41: 30–34. ———. 1959. Höroldts erstes Arbeitsjahr in Meißen. Mitteilungsblatt/Keramik-Freunde der Schweiz 47: 28–31. Weber, Julia. 2013. In Meißner Porzellane mit Dekoren nach ostasiatischen Vorbildern, ed. Renate Eikelmann. München: Hirmer. Zumbulyadis, Nicholas. 2013. “…With a Dreadful Bang”—A Chemical History of Böttger Lustre. Keramos 222: 3–16. Zumbulyadis, Nicholas, and V. Van Thienen. 2020. Changes in the Body, Glaze and Enamel compositions of early Meissen porcelain, 1723- c. 1740. Archaeometry 62: 22–41.

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Gabriella Szalay Trained as a historian of art and science, Gabriella Szalay has held appointments at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and most recently the Busch-Reisinger Museum (Harvard Art Museums), where she was the Renke B. and Pamela M. Thye Curatorial Fellow from 2018 to 2020. Currently she is working as a curator at the Forum Wissen in Göttingen, Germany.  

Chapter 9 Fighting for the Best Pigment! Academic Colour Discourses in Kassel During the Nineteenth Century Sophie-Luise Mävers-Persch1 (*) 1 

Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Art History, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany [email protected] Abstract  Is it possible to reconstruct and optimise the gloss and the durability of the colours of ancient painting techniques? Which locally produced imitation of the pigment ultramarine could conquer the art market? In which ways does colour prevail in a newly developed colour-tone harmony? These questions were intensely debated by professors at the Academy of Arts in Kassel after its reorganisation in the 1830s. This paper discusses the assumption that the Academy supported experimental colour series both for economic reasons and out of an interest in the further development of ancient painting techniques. Colour order was fundamental for all experiments of these colour samples. Selected colours were arranged in a special order to test their intensity and to determine the suitability of the pigments for use on different materials. Based on an evaluation of correspondence lodged at the Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg, unconsidered by researchers so far, a stimulation of discourses regarding the effect of colour, its durability, production and systematisation can be traced. At the same time, studying the reactions of the reviewing academy teachers allows insight into the desire to deal reflexively with colour compositions made with resin oil and encaustic painting, and to develop a theory-based interest in colour terminologies in an artistic teaching and learning institution. Keywords  Kassel Academy of Arts · Encaustic painting · Colour-tone-­ harmony · Munich Industrial Exhibition · Resin-oil-painting · Artificial ultramarine

“[H]ere colour is an end in itself; it does not serve, but rules!”1 With these words, Ernst Alexander Wetzler, the inventor of a theory he described as Colour-harmony, a counterand side-art of tone-harmony, triggered a controversy among the professors of the Academy of Arts in Kassel (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814, 1832–1833). Founded in 1777, the institution’s governing body worked from its reorganisation in the 1830s to

 All translations were made by the author: Transcriptions of selected sections of the archival records in the original language are given in the appendix. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0_9

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establish itself as the principal authority on all artistic disciplines that affected the country’s artistic decisions (Mävers 2020, 221–28). A group of Academy professors was to be consulted in the preparation of expert opinions and questions of taste formation; their reach extended to innovations in trade that concerned the field of arts (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 31, 1832). Initiated by this new self-image of the institution, all debates on experiments with colours held in the country were examined, tested and discussed by the professors of the Academy. Their discourse regarding colour experiments concentrated on four questions: Is it possible to reconstruct and improve on the glossy nature of the colours used in ancient painting techniques? How can the durability of modern colour be increased? Which locally-produced imitation of the pigment ultramarine could compete with the original ultramarine in desirable qualities and thus conquer the foreign art market as well as the local one? And what system of colour order underlies the colour-tone harmony developed by a layman? These questions were important for academic discourse, as artist education followed didactic conventions that, for example, understood copying from originals as an integral part of teaching. Copying in this context involved not only adopting the composition of a painting but above all imitating as closely as possible the colours used in the original. In order to communicate the effect of colours, systematisation is needed – colours are ordered, named and differentiated in terms of their brightness, gloss and opacity so that terminologies such as colour scales are always discussed in connection with imitations of paintings and techniques. The influence of the Academy on colour experiments, the available knowledge of specialist literature about colour research and the protagonists behind the debate about colours can be reconstructed through the correspondence between the academy professors and both professional colour manufacturers and amateurs who experimented with colour. The extensive files, now preserved at the Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg, clearly reflect the intense discourse on colour taking place at an artistic teaching and learning institution in nineteenth-century Germany. The founding of the Académie de Peinture et de Sculpture de Cassel was part of a pan-European movement to liberate artists from the constraints of the guilds and to elevate the status of the artist through academic study. To promote artistic talent, foster national artistic development and participate competitively in national and international comparisons regarding the establishment of artistic innovations, such as in colour research, three artists employed at the court of Landgrave Friedrich II of HesseKassel (1720–1785) conceived of an art academy (Mävers 2020, 1–6; Knackfuß 1908). The architect Simon Louis Du Ry (1726–1799), the painter Johann Heinrich Tischbein the Elder (1722–1789) and the sculptor Johann August Nahl the Elder (1710–1781) had become acquainted with the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture de Paris and the Accademia Clementina di Bologna through their study journeys and transferred tried-and-tested concepts of institutional structure, artist- and manufactory promotion to the art academy to be established in Kassel (Mävers 2020, 30–69; 2018b, c). The artists convinced the Landgrave; the academy was founded and financed under his patronage. What would become a renowned and internationally well-connected academy for artist education was established in Hesse-Kassel (Biskup 2018; Presche 2018).

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The Academy records reflect an interest in the subject of colour from its founding. Individual members developed specific interests in colour research, especially in connection with old painting techniques. This can be traced through the correspondence of the Academy student Christiane Louise von Solms-Laubach (1754–1815) (Mävers 2018a, 2020, 83–109). In a letter (UB Basel L Ia 724: Bl. 100–106, Bl. 101, 1782) to the astronomer Johann III Bernoulli (1744–1807), she noted that she was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Benjamin Calau’s (1724–1785) Instruction dans l’art de se servir de la Cire Eléodorique-Punique, a report about encaustic painting techniques (Mävers 2020, 100–103; Calau 1769, 1782; Simonini, Chap. 7, this volume). She wanted to learn more about the lost knowledge of the wax-painting technique of Greco-Roman antiquity, for which Calau and others experimented to rediscover (Heldt 2005, 145–49). The fascination of the Kassel academics with the luminosity of the old wax colours did not abate in the nineteenth century, as the mystery of the technique remained unsolved because Calau’s technique did not involve burning-in colours, so no real encaustic painting could be produced. (Mävers 2020, 100–3; Heldt 2005, 145–49; Simonini, Chap. 7, this volume). In this essay, I present four case studies, based on colour experiments submitted to the Academy in the form of colour lists for evaluation. The reactions of the reviewers provide insight into an internal discourse regarding terminologies of colour and their systematisation. The main focus of this paper is based on two assumptions: First, in the 1830s, the Academy of Arts supported experiments with colours: they did so for economic reasons and in the interest of further development of old painting techniques. In addition, the Academy stimulated discourse on the effects of colours, their durability, production and systematisation, to raise the attractiveness of the location for young artists with affordable colour pigments; this was a theoretical discourse on colour orders and the latest imitation techniques in national and international competition. As a result, academic discourses on colour in Kassel had a direct impact on academic teaching and exhibition practice and on the commercial production of colour pigments in Hesse-Kassel. This contribution thus provides insight into a hitherto unknown transregional discourse regarding the development of artistic painting techniques, and the examination of colour orders, in an interdisciplinary exchange with other scientists and institutions. In this context, academic communication about the systematisation of colour preceded all experiments with colours and the theoretical examination of colour-tone harmonies.

9.1 Colour Effect: On Imitating the Intensity of Wax Colours of Old Painting Techniques In October 1839, the Academy was asked to evaluate the colour effect of an ancient painting technique that had been refined. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, chancellery assistant from Witzenhausen near Kassel and an amateur of painting, had undertaken to improve the traditional technique of wax painting. He hoped for financial support from the Academy (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839) (Fig. 9.1).

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Fig. 9.1  Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the Kassel Academy of Arts, 22 October 1839. (HLA-­ HStAM Best. 160 No. 42)

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In his petition, Schwarz argued for the advantages of wax painting over modern oil painting. Wax can be dried quickly with the use of a machine, which would allow a painting to be completed in a much shorter period. The surface of a painting made with wax colours is not as fragile as that of an oil painting. And finally, wax colours optimise the colour effect of a painting, since the gloss and freshness of the applied colours are preserved for longer (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839).2 The Academy’s judges were sceptical of Schwarz’s invention, noting that he hadn’t considered the current discourses on the rediscovery of encaustic paints and encaustic painting, and the accompanying difficulties (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839). Undeterred, Schwarz continued to present his long-term studies over 4 years, testing his colours for resistance to air exposure and optimising the drying process (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). In this and other ways, he incorporated the criticism of the Academy into his research. In response to criticism from the Academy, Schwarz tested the intensity of the colour effect. To do this, he made a painting with wax colours using different types of varnish as a surface coating and exposed it to the weather for 3 years (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). The wax colours did not lose their colour effect. In addition, he submitted “a colour scale of pigments mixed with wax” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844), further arousing the interest of the Academy. The professors recognised the usefulness of the technique for room decoration à l’antique and asked for further colour samples. The Academy’s experts told Schwarz that a precise listing of the components of the materials he used was necessary to be able to judge the long-term usefulness of the method for practical application in painting (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). Completely euphoric about this reply, Schwarz complied and his colour samples were subjected to a series of practical tests. Friedrich Wilhelm Müller (1801–1889), professor of history painting, tested the brilliance of Schwarz’s colours and their usefulness in overpainting, retouching, and wall- or easel-painting. He found the colour effect surprisingly intense, and he particularly emphasised that the binding material sent in “allows the use of certain beautiful colours which had previously been excluded from oil painting, such as the so-called Mennig and Kugellack […]” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). An Academy student named Link, from Fulda, also gave a positive assessment of the colour application on gypsum and a limestone wall (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). The arabesques made by Link and the portraits painted by Müller were exhibited in the Academy in 1844 and noticed by the Kassel architect, Johann Conrad Bromeis (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1844). Public reaction was also positive, the colours were described as similar to the paintings in Pompeii to the point of deception. Schwarz received financial support and the commitment for further project supervision from the professors (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1846). In a subsequent experiment, Schwarz tried to imitate marble with his wax colours. For this purpose, “the colours [Berlin red and Cremnitz white] were placed next to each other and melted together using heat [...] so that the pattern formed by itself” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1846). The colour effect contributed to the eagerness of Academy

 Schwarz also reported the problem that the gloss of the colour can be lost when it cools down if not enough pigment is used. 2

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members to send Schwarz’s samples of both encaustic painting and marbling on canvas, gypsum, sandstone and wax grounds to the Industrial Exhibition in Munich in 1854 (Hermann 1854, no. 3049, group XII, 100). The Exhibition evaluators declined to accept them, noting that, while Schwarz’s samples were praiseworthy, they were not sufficiently different in style from those already known. The rejection letter cited the 1830 decoration of the Königsbau in Munich and pointed to similar compositions published by Eichhorn in Berlin (Foltz 1855, no. 3049, 34).3 Schwarz, however, was familiar with the method improved by Albert Eichhorn (1811–1851) and had enhanced his own experiments with lacquer colours based on Eichhorn’s writing Die Wandmalerei in einer neuen Technik erfunden (Eichhorn 1853; HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1855). In the Munich Residence, the encaustic painting method developed by Franz Xaver Fernbach (1793–1851) was subsequently used by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1794–1872) and his students (Fernbach 1845, VIII). Schwarz had reported on a failed experiment conducted with these colours in 1846: the colours flaked off and could not withstand the heat of the encaustic process (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1846). As a result, the Academy professors were convinced that Schwarz’s work reflected the latest state of knowledge in specialist literature (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1855). A short treatise about the results of Schwarz’s project appeared (posthumously) in 1858. Müller endorsed the publication and again pointed out that the binder, which Schwarz had tested and optimised over several years, was particularly well suited for monumental and decorative paintings. He emphasised again that Schwarz’s binder creates an incomparable colour effect (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1858). The evaluation of the academy professors reveals that the testing of the practical applicability of Schwarz’s product was initially preceded by an experiment to test individual colours. The terminology used in the correspondence regarding the creation of a colour scale shows that a selection of colours was made for this purpose; they were then arranged in an appropriate colour order. Only in the next step were the same colours applied to different materials in order to test the gradations of the colours in terms of shadiness and brightness, thus adding another level of categorisation of each colour into saturated and bright. As a third step, paintings were made with these colours to test the colour effect in practical application. This multi-stage evaluation procedure illustrates that the systematisation of colour was the basis for executing experiments with colours at the Kassel Academy of Arts to test the colour effect.

 “Seine Proben enkaustischer Malerei auf Leinwand, Gyps, Sandstein und Wachsgrundirung enthalten viel Lobenswerthes, unterscheiden sich jedoch im Wesentlichen ebenso wenig (wie die vor sechs Jahren veröffentlichten Eichhorn’schen in Berlin) von der in München seit dem Jahre 1830 zuerst im Königsbau im ersten Stock [...] angewandten und bewährten Malart.” 3

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9.2 Colour Durability: The Desire for the Temporal Survival of Painting Friedrich Knirim, a drawing teacher and clerk from Eschwege (Hesse), also experimented with ancient painting techniques and, like Schwarz, hoped for support from the Academy. While Schwarz was committed to optimising the effects of colours, Knirim focused his colour experiments on their durability. The documents concerning his work clarify his assumptions. Knirim believed that painting techniques that had existed before the invention of oil painting possessed advantages in the durability of their colours, and that key to improving oil colours in this respect was the addition of a specific binding material. The product was tested in combination with white, ochre, blue and black pigments, but not red. This colour order was maintained in all experiments and was applied in diluted and impasto variations (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1848). Knirim was familiar with several theoretical works that discussed ancient colours and their durability. He cited the 1830 essay by Léonor Mérimée (1757–1836), and a book by Jakob Wilhelm Roux (1771–1830) published in 1824, which was recorded in an internal protocol by Robert (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39). Roux was interested in the systematisation of colours with regard to their practical application in painting; he discussed the problem that painters’ pigments were not pure enough and noted that it was important to differentiate between transparent, opaque and semi-transparent colours. A painting could be made out of translucent yellow, red and blue in combination with a good binder material that would dilute or thicken the colours, he argued. Knirim based his experiments on Roux’s idea of systematisation (Roux 1824, 9–10, 12–13). His rich knowledge, evident in his writing about the resin painting of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1835), impressed the Academy professors. They, too, saw the need to address the durability of modern paint. Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Robert (1763–1843), a drawing teacher, was in personal contact with Mérimée and had exchanged views on tempera painting with Roux, so he could critically evaluate Knirim’s book knowledge (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39). Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, who had developed a deep interest in mural painting during a trip to Italy, was dismayed by the poor condition of recently-made oil paintings, which had been copied from Italian originals. Some copies of masterworks had darkened so much, he noted, that their lost colouration could lead to mistaking the copies for originals (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1837). Müller concluded that the paintings in the Munich Residence were “still at a great distance from the old encaustic painting” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1837), hence the need for further action.4 The initial euphoria of the Academy professors turned into its opposite as Knirim submitted letters incessantly. In 1839, Knirim published a paper Die Harzmalerei der Alten, with sections on colour pigments, colour binders and colouring. Meanwhile,  In this regard, Müller was in contact with a friend, the architect Rudolf Wiegmann (1804–1865). According to the correspondence, Leo von Klenze (1784–1864) is said to have offered Wiegmann money if he told him his secret colour recipe, which was supposed to be similar to encaustic painting. Wiegmann had published “Die Malerei der Alten in ihrer Anwendung und Technik insbesondere als Decorationsmalerei” in 1836. Müller suspected that Knirim might have come to a similar conclusion as Wiegmann. 4

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Robert complained on August 4, 1837 (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1837), that Knirim ignored other specialist literature and that it was unimaginable he would not know the work Saggi sul ristabilimento dell’antica arte de’greci e romani pittori, which Vicente Requeno (1743–1811) had already published in 1787. In 1845, Knirim published another work: Die endlich entdeckte wahre Maler-­ Technik des klassischen Alterthums und des Mittelalters. The Academy’s opinion was drastic. “[A]t last, the truth is to be reported that the petitioner suffers from a fixed idea; and the traces of pathological overestimation of his own abilities can be seen everywhere in his completely incoherent study” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1846). Assessors from the Philipps-University of Marburg came to a similar conclusion in 1846, as they rejected studies Knirim submitted for a doctorate (UniA Marburg Best. 307 d Nr. 83 II, 1846) (Fig. 9.2). Knirim, believing he was being mistreated, began to market his work himself, sending it to Berlin for further approval (HStAM Best. 16 Nr. 6303). Johann Jakob Schlesinger (1792–1855), general restorer at the royal museums, tested the colour samples by using them for a copy of Antoine Pesne’s (1683–1757) “Portrait of Frederick the Great” (Stehr 2011, 80, 147).5 His assessment of Knirim’s work was ambiguous (Stehr 2011, 79, 167–69; GStAPK I. HA Rep. 76, Ve Sekt. 1 Abt. XV Nr. 92; GStAPK I. HA Rep. 137, II H Nr. 25).6 Schlesinger criticised both the chemical analyses Knirim presented, and his unprovable assumptions about fresco paintings, but recommended the method of balsam-wax-painting, at least for retouching paintings (Stehr 2011, 37–38, 80–81). Knirim’s ideas were also broadcast by Franz Kugler (1808–1858), who published a critical review in the Deutsches Kunstblatt in 1846 in which he spoke positively of the freshness of the colours (Kugler 1846). On the other hand, the professors of the Academy of Arts, including Carl Christian Aubel (1796–1882), who worked as a restorer, and Theodor August Brauer (1798– 1876), who taught perspective, were not convinced by Knirim’s colour samples in August 1848 (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1848). Their concerns meant that the colour samples were subjected to a series of tests, supervised by the director of the academy, Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl (1794–1887), following the ordering system described by Roux. A canvas was prepared, with a colour scale drawn on. Colours were applied to it in sections so that each colour was tested as impasto in the first row and diluted with Knirim’s binder material in the following row. A report shows the order of the five colours, with a systematic transition from light to dark shades: From Chemnitz white to Naples yellow and from ochre (light, medium) to blue and black. The white, according to the report, lost its purity on the addition of the binder material and became yellowish. The yellow became cloudy. The ochre tones became more saturated, at least compared

 In the list of Schlesinger’s copies compiled by Ute Stehr, only one copy after a painting by Antoine Pesne with a portrait of Friedrich Wilhelm I is listed. (SPSG Berlin-Brandenburg GK 381). 6  The original statement by Schlesinger is now kept in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin: GStAPK I.  HA Rep. 76, Ve Sekt. 1 Abt. XV Nr. 92. Schlesinger was requested by the Prussian Ministry of Culture to prepare this report. 5

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Fig. 9.2  Kassel Academy of Arts, Internal protocol, 26 May 1846. (HLA-HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1833–1867)

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to oil painting. The darker colours did not show any positive changes when enriched with the binder material (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1848). A rivalry between Knirim’s focus on colour durability and Schwarz’s concern with colour effects became real when the work of both men was exhibited at the Industrial Exhibition of 1854. Knirim received devastating criticism: “If the methods of painting are not such as to give the mind greater freedom during work, they are of little value” (Foltz 1855, no. 3050, 34).7 The improvement of the durability of the colours, which was the main focus for Knirim, was called into question. Despite his extensive theoretical knowledge of the painting techniques of earlier times, Knirim failed to produce a binder that could prevail in practical use  – neither the reviewers at the Industrial Exhibition nor the Academy professors found his product worthy of recommendation. The documentation of the Academy’s colour experiments shows two things: To test a binder for practical usefulness in oil painting, five colours with different shades were specially selected, namely white, yellow, ochre, blue and black. The practitioners were interested in testing a spectrum of light and dark colours in general, and especially to preserve yellow, ochre and blue (and not red) longer in paintings. In this respect, this selective colour order also demonstrates that difficulties were encountered in establishing the durability of these colours in painting. The decision to interrupt the project funding because Knirim’s colours were contaminated by the addition of the binder makes clear that the effect of the colours was more important to the assessment than their durability – the desire for the temporal survival of painting remained unfulfilled.

9.3 Colour Production: Artificially Produced Colour Pigments The professors at the Academy of Arts in Kassel were often asked for colour manufacturing advice by the Electoral Trade and Industry Association of Hesse, as that group assessed applications to reward specific processes. The potential for commercial success was important, but whether any colour product could be useful for artistic practice was also a consideration. In 1841, for example, samples of an artificially-produced colour blue were sent to the Academy by the Trade Association (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841). The search for a viable replacement for the rare and expensive ultramarine blue became en vogue throughout Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Germany, advertisements offered commemorative coins and prize money for the successful invention of a comparable blue pigment – the interest for both commercial use and for artistic practice was enormous. For example, the Association for the Promotion of Trade in Prussia offered a prize in 1823 for an innovative process to produce a competitive blue comparable to ultramarine in colour tone; an agricultural prize for a process to obtain artificial ultramarine was awarded by the Württemberg government in 1829 (Schmauderer 1969, 127–28). Academy papers describing the examination and assessment of materials,

 “Sind die Verfahrungsarten beim Malen nicht der Art, daß sie dem Geiste während der Arbeit größere Freiheit gewähren, so haben sie wenig Werth.” 7

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colours and pigments for artistic uses attest to a similar interest in Kassel (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115). The colour samples the Academy experts were asked to judge had been submitted by the Kassel-based colour manufacturer Georg Evert Habich (Lotze 2009, annotation 89, 169).8 Correspondence from 1796 shows that Habich attempted to obtain a privilegium exclusivum for the production of a blue dye in Hesse; in 1819, his wares expanded to include liquid blue, blue-coloured pigments and other chemical products (HStAM Best. 55 a Nr. 199, 1796; HStAM Best. 5 Nr. 3691, 1819; HStAM Best. 18 Nr. 863, 1819– 1823; HStAM Best. 251 Kassel Nr. 69, 1823). Thus, when submitting colour samples to the Trade Association on 13 July 1841 (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841), the Habich family could invoke 20 years of experience studying the composition of ultramarine and analysing the mineral composition of lapis lazuli. Because procurement of lapis lazuli from Bactria (Afghanistan) was both time-consuming and expensive, Habich and his sons Johann Martin and Georg Heinrich hoped to produce artificial ultramarine in their home town. They developed a pigment which they claimed to be “absolutely identical to the ultramarine of the ancients in terms of durability” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841), a colour that could withstand high temperatures and had a comparable chemical composition (Fig. 9.3). A committee of three Academy professors conducted practical experiments to verify Habich’s claims. Justus Heinrich Zusch (1783–1850), Ludwig Emil Grimm (1790– 1863) and Friedrich Wilhelm Müller (1801–1889) were commissioned to examine the artistic applications of the colour samples, especially their resistance when used in oil painting, and to make a comparison with previously known blue pigments (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841; Stanulevich, Chap. 5, this volume). Habich’s colour samples were subjected to an extensive series of tests. The pigment was mixed with oil, water and lime, among other things, to test the colour for durability. The tests meant the assessors could grade Habich’s artificial ultramarine mixtures in terms of its intensity and brightness, and thus order the colouration – from a dark blue for use in oil paintings, to a lighter, lucid blue for watercolour or tempera, and a matt blue for use in murals. All tests showed that the intensity of the colour tone, and its brightness, remained untouched. In addition, the colour samples were determined to be equal to the beauty of ultramarine (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1842). The report contains no information about the chemical composition of the colour samples. This was not revealed for 15 years when Georg Evert Habich published a report in the Polytechnisches Journal describing the composition of ultramarine and the sulphate process he used to imitate it (Habich 1856, 27–32). As early as 1828, Christian Gottlob Gmelin (1792–1860) had written about an artificial production process for ultramarine (Gmelin 1828). At about the time that Habich published his findings, Johan G. Gentele and Carl Fürstenau also published the technical composition of their ultra-

 The sons of Georg Evert Habich, Johann Martin and Georg Heinrich, who are mentioned in Cassel’s address book in 1844 as manufacturers of the company, were particularly active in this (Casselsches Adreß-Buch (1844), 84; Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, Sig. 37 Hist.Wiss. 6747). 8

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Fig. 9.3  Georg Evert Habich, Letter to the Electoral Trade and Industry Association of Hesse, 13 July 1841. (HLA-HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841–1842)

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marine products, too (Gentele 1856; Fürstenau 1864, 128, 133–34). The pigment samples from the Habich manufactory examined in the Academy can therefore be placed in a period in which there was a fundamental interest in the artificial imitation of ultramarine and competition for the best method of imitation in the German cultural area. The detailed documentation generated by Academy professors regarding tests of colour pigments shows that, in the 1840s, the Kassel Academy of Arts was familiar with the common processes of colour production, and had established a special interest in testing their suitability for artistic use. The arrangement of the experimental set-up reveals a division of the blue pigment into dark, light and matt in order to be able to test it on different surfaces, especially on wood, canvas, paper and walls. The professors’ verdict on the blue pigment from the Habich manufacture was exceptionally positive as they even argued that a cheap sale of the product could represent a benefit for painting itself (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841). With this positive feedback, which was passed on to the Electoral Ministry of the Interior of Hesse, the Kassel Academy of Arts contributed to the Habich manufactory being allowed to expand its colour production into the field of blue pigments for artistic use. In terms of the arrangement of the colours, a pattern can be seen in experiments with the products from Schwarz, Knirim and Habich. A spectrum of light to dark colours was always tested. Subsequently, the specific applicability for artistic use on different materials was investigated, while the naming of colours with regard to their effect became more and more precise and the most important criterion remained the intensity of the colour, its visual effect.

9.4 Colour Systematisation: How Does Colour Dominate in the Colour-Tone Harmony? In the midst of these practically-based discussions, the Academy professors also kept up an ongoing disagreement about a proposal for support and further development of a concept called “harmony of colours”. Ernst Alexander Wetzler, a native of Meerholz in Hesse who was employed by a law firm in Rothenbergen, submitted a project draft on this subject to the Electoral Hessian government in Hanau in 1832. This was a common procedure for amateurs hoping for financial support for their projects, but this request triggered a debate about administrative responsibility (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814). The Hessian Ministry of the Interior forwarded Wetzler’s enquiry and the written project proposal of his colour harmony concept to the Academy of Arts in Kassel for an expert opinion on 22 November 1832 (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1832). The reaction of the professors was divided, as they disagreed on whether practical artists were competent to evaluate the project. As practitioners, they might not be able to assess the feasibility of this tool (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). Wetzler’s concept of the “harmony of colour” was interdisciplinary, combining music with art, and treated its subject on a purely theoretical level. It is precisely for this reason that the defensive reaction of certain Academy professors is surprising. Scientific observations on light and colour had triggered a lively theoretical debate on art, on colour harmony, colour mixing and colour-ordering systems in the second half of the

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eighteenth century, one that continued into the beginning of the nineteenth century. New ideas about colour harmony were omnipresent in the discourses at art academies in Germany. In parallel with the time-immanent rapprochement of art with science, colour harmony was understood as traceable to scientific rules (Pietsch 2008, 19–28) (Figs. 9.4 and 9.5). Wetzler explained his motivation for writing about a harmony of colours in his project abstract entitled Colour-harmony, a counter- and side-art of tone-harmony (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814). He noted that the relationship between colour and the eye is the same as that between sound and the ear. His idea, therefore, was to develop a music of colours that could be perceived by the eye. The positioning of the term colour is appar-

Fig. 9.4 Ernst Alexander Wetzler, Project abstract “Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie”, undated. (HLA-HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814, 1832–1833)

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Fig. 9.5 Ernst Alexander Wetzler, Project abstract “Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie”, undated. (HLA-HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814, 1832–1833)

ent from Wetzler’s remark that he was “[not] talking about painting or painting figures with colours, where colour is merely the means of the plastic artist, but where colour is an end in itself […]” (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814). He planned to produce an instrument to visualise colour in a harmonious relationship. Wetzler describes his invention as one about time, rhythm and space, vocabulary he borrowed from music: An artificially arranged instrument shows us the colours in alternating appearances, in their transitions, in their spatial relationships, tuned and shaped, presented in a controlled manner in time and measure of time, like a musical instrument and [it] will have all the characteristics of being as pleasing to the eye as a musical instrument is to the ear. (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814)

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Wetzler presented his idea as a surprising novelty. When challenged about its incomprehensibility, he offered to write a second part that would contain more detailed explanations and a coloured execution of figures (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814). However, in a more comprehensive explanation of the project, currently held by the manuscript department of the Murhardsche Bibliothek Kassel (MB Hs. 314, 1832), Wetzler gives a detailed description of how individual colours would be systematised by the previously-­ mentioned instrument. Different colours would appear simultaneously, as would sequences of colours that were related to each other. The instrument would replicate musical chords and beats through colour (MB Hs. 314, 1832).

9.5 The Colour-Tone-Orchestra Wetzler mentions the decomposition of white light into seven spectral colours and the assumption that objects in darkness do not show any colours, without referring to Isaac Newton’s (1642–1727) work on Opticks (1704) (MB Hs. 314, 1832). It is possible that mentioning Newton seemed unimportant to him, as art-theoretical writings such as those by Christian Ludwig Hagedorn (1762), Johann Georg Sulzer (1792–1799) or Raphael Mengs (1782) contained Newton’s findings, and they understood optics as a self-evident component of their art theory. Moreover, Wetzler quotes without comment Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749–1832) criticism of Newton’s concept. Goethe had described his idea of two primary colours, blue and yellow, in the didactic part of Zur Farbenlehre, published in 1810. This knowledge was well-known within academic discourse. According to Wetzler, he would use information about spectral colours and primary colours to construct a colour system that would be the basis of his instrument. To that end, he explained the directions of movement of colours and non-colours underlying his colour harmony: Basically, Wetzler understood black and white as two extreme poles, with all other colours moving in a “dynamic colour direction” (MB Hs. 314, 1832) between them. White would have to make its way across the spectrum via blue; black would do the same via yellow. In addition, the white colour strives towards black and the black colour towards white. Thus, Wetzler believed his colour system should include all real colours and exclude non-colours such as black and white. Colours were to be understood as colour tones that formed a colour scale from the darkest blue through violet, red, and orange to the highest tone, yellow. Since green and yellow would be so close to each other, an additional “green scale” would have to be developed, Wetzler noted (MB Hs. 314, 1832). The next section of Wetzler’s treatise defined the subjective character of the colours blue, yellow, red, green, violet, orange, yellow-green, and green-blue. Yellow, for example, was associated with incompatibility and resentment; blue with simplicity and melancholy (Stanulevich, Chap. 5, this volume). In an addition to the colour system, Wetzler suggested that darker colours, comparable to bass instruments, should continuously accompany the lighter colours as an additional or supplementary passage (MB Hs. 314, 1832).

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Newton, who had already established a colour-tone analogy in his Opticks, arranged the colours in the order of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, to violet and assigned one tone of a musical scale to each. Wetzler’s colour arrangement was different, as he moved from blue to yellow and considered blue the darkest tone (where Newton had made it violet). Wetzler’s concept of colour harmony also lacks an exact correlation of colour scale to tone scale, nor are analogies between colour series and chords or intervals named in detail. Instead, Wetzler envisions three distinguishing theories: “1.) Each colour for itself. 2.) All colours against each other. 3.) All colours against the space” (MB Hs. 314, 1832). Thus, each colour has – within itself – several notes through its colour gradations, like a musical instrument that reproduces different notes of the scale. In principle, Wetzler understood all colours as individual instruments: if two colours appear next to each other, they are in an instrumental relationship to each other; if more than two colours appear next to each other, chords can be formed; if all colours appear simultaneously like a colour orchestra, a complete musical scale-system can be created (MB Hs. 314, 1832). As a result, this visionary colour-tone-orchestra is based on a systematisation of colour in analogy to a musical notation system, which, however, would have to be reorganised for each colour combination, comparable to a musical score, understanding the artist as a composer.

9.6 About the Imaginary Colour-Harmony-Instrument Finally, Wetzler wondered about the physical space required to implement this theoretical colour harmony concept as a practical mechanical instrument. His goal was to transform the different orders of colour harmony into a piece of colour music that can be experienced visually. At this point in the treatise, when the reader might expect a concrete spatial construction, Wetzler became vague and merely sketched ideas for implementation. He justified this imprecision by noting that no experience had yet been obtained through the perception of colour harmony (MB Hs. 314, 1832). For the first beginning, we take [...] the spherical shape – this shape is particularly pleasing to the eye [...]. One has [...] ten to twelve spheres [...] of coloured light [lined up] one behind the other, each slightly smaller than the other, until the last one [gets lost] in a small point of light. (MB Hs. 314, 1832)

Although the choice of the three-dimensional body of the sphere is reminiscent of Philipp Otto Runge’s (1777–1810) colour sphere of 1810 (Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume), it is clear from this brief description that Wetzler was not interested in arranging all the mixtures of a colour system in just one sphere (Runge 1999). Wetzler envisaged several transparent spheres of differing volumes. The spheres would become smaller according to the descending colour scale; they were spheres in which the total colour space could form and change. The individual colour tones could stand alone in this three-dimensional space, or form transitions to other colour-tone spheres through gradation. Colour tones would be visible in parallel, to create a colour beat or create harmonious colour transitions at different speeds (MB Hs. 314, 1832).

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Whether Wetzler broke new ground with his colour harmony, as he claimed, or simply ignored existing concepts of colour harmonies, tones of colour, colour music and colour instruments, is debatable and this was exactly what the Academy professors did. Johann Werner Henschel (1782–1850), Professor of Sculpture, referred to Isaac Newton’s comparison of colours with the musical scale (Steinle 2015, 47; Caivano, Chap. 2, this volume; Stijnman, Chap. 4, this volume; Kleinwächter, Chap. 6, this volume). He also cited Louis-Bertrand Castel’s (1688–1757) theoretical clavecin oculaire as well as the Farbenclavecymbel developed by Johann Gottlob Krüger (1715–1759) (Castel 1725; Krüger 1743; see also Hankins 1994; Jewanski 2006). Wetzler had not mentioned any of these (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). In 1725, in an article in the Mercure de France, the mathematician Castel had presented the idea of a harpsichord whose keys, when struck, activated a mechanism to bring out a coloured lantern (Hankins 1994). The prerequisite for this was an exact assignment of the notes of the harpsichord to the corresponding colours – an analogy that Wetzler deliberately avoided in his colour harmony. Küger further developed Castel’s idea, adding the features of simultaneity and harmony of colours. In his system, colours should not appear adjacent to each other but should overlap to form colour chords (Krüger 1743). In this respect, Wetzler’s colour harmony is similar, as Krüger’s Farbenclavecymbel made higher tones visible as smaller-sized circles of light and lower tones as larger ones. However, Wetzler never mentioned a musical instrument to provide his mechanical colour harmony – he seemed to have been more concerned with the construction of various colour spheres. As Henschel stated in 1833 (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833), Wetzler did not reflect those works by Castel and Krüger in his project sketch. Henschel criticised that no mechanical realisation existed so far but was hopeful that a colour harmony instrument could be produced in the future (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). Carl Christian Aubel (1796–1882) who, in addition to his professorship, was also inspector of the portrait gallery, rhapsodised about Wetzler’s basic idea: the instrument would be a “beautiful invention that expands art, forms the spirit in a new and noble way, and entertains in a magical way, thus creating effects that must be wonderfully exciting” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). Nevertheless, Aubel sharply criticised Wetzler for his poor handling of the distinction between a musical tone and a colour tone: A colour tone, unlike a musical tone, requires refinement by art. And finally, Aubel criticised the missing manual instructions for the construction of the instrument (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). That was precisely the problem: Wetzler had written a theoretical paper about the harmony of colours and had reflected on the practical carrying-out, but he had not formulated a realistic proposal for its production. This also bothered Robert and Grimm, and both men voted to consult a natural philosopher (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). The conclusion of that consultant, physicist Heinrich Buff (1805–1878), was that Wetzler’s proposal was an experimental act of the imagination with no scientific value (HStAM Best. 153/4 Nr. 55, 1833–1834). An undertone of annoyance emerges in the opinion written by the Professor of Architecture, Johann Heinrich Wolff (1792–1869). He was astonished that his colleagues did not feel responsible for the assessment and wanted to leave this task to a natural philosopher. He was convinced that Wetzler’s work could only be assessed by visual artists.

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A harmony of colours is less based on a mechanical idea than on the essential question: “[…] whether, by means of the [...] combination and interaction of colours, possibly through the medium of the eye, impressions on the human mind can be produced [in such a way] that they are able to grant a true living enjoyment of art [...]” (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). The fundamental failure of Wetzler’s project was his assumption that colour tone and musical tone are comparable, according to Wolff. Musical tones are based on a specific system of signs which underlies music, the colour tone precisely differs in that it is free of a system (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 51, 1833). Wetzler’s statement, therefore, that “the colour [is] in the same relationship with the eye as the tone is with the ear” (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814) is fundamentally wrong. The initial apprehension, that the assessment of a colour harmony and its practical implementation in a colour-harmony-instrument might exceed the competencies of the academy professors, turned out to be unfounded. The discourse of the professors at the Kassel Academy of Arts displayed their theoretical knowledge of historical and current concepts of colour harmonies and colour-tone harmonies. The question of how the colour dominates in the colour-tone harmony interested all the reviewers: This is seen in their discussions of Wetzler’s dramatic and controversial statement that “[here] colour is an end in itself; it does not serve, but rules” (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814). Wetzler’s idea differs significantly from previous conceptions of colour-tone-­instruments because he does not use a musical instrument as a model, but rather envisions a colour-sphereorchestra that could systematically visualise the harmony of colours he sets up – unfortunately the concept lacked the key to practical implementation.

9.7 The Facets of Academic Colour Discourses in Kassel The lively academic discourses on colour held in Kassel provide new insights into the interdisciplinary collaborations between a nineteenth-century Academy of Arts and institutions such as trade- and commercial associations, colour manufactories and universities. The debates about the binder material, developed by Schwarz for artistic use in mural painting, showed that the professors were excellently networked with their colleagues at the Munich Academy of Arts and were interested in the further development of old painting techniques both in theory and in practice. They discussed the question of whether the intensity of ancient wax-based colours could be replicated with new products, and were convinced that Schwarz’s product could be used to imitate encaustic painting. Knirim’s resin-oil mixture, which was in competition with Schwarz’s binder and which he claimed would extend the durability of colour, was negatively evaluated by the professors. Colour experiments, conducted to test Knirim’s materials, provide information about a scheme. Five colours were explicitly tested in a systematic transition from light to dark shades and both impasto and diluted. The revised curriculum at the Academy of Arts in Munich introduced the study of colour at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Pevsner 1986, 209). With the evaluation of the Academy files on the Habich colour manufactory, it can now also be con-

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firmed that, at the Kassel Academy, examination of colour experiments entered the classroom there as well and was discussed publicly at Academy exhibitions. Moreover, there was a fight for the best colour pigments. Artificially-produced pigments manufactured by the Habich family, visually similar to ultramarine, were tested by the students of the Academy of Arts and found to be worthy of promotion by the professors. Their expert opinion had a positive influence on the ability of a local colour manufactory to expand its business to include artistic as well as commercial colour pigments. With the protection of this colour manufactory, the Kassel Academy of Arts was able to enhance its reputation in international competition – and therefore supported experimental colour tests also for economic reasons (Mävers 2020, 245–263). The fact that numerous products could be manufactured locally, which would otherwise have had to be purchased at considerable expense, made Kassel even more attractive as a location for the education of artists. In addition to the discourses in Kassel on the production, application and improvement of colours, the question must be raised whether visual evidence of these colour experiments might one day be found in the depots of museums. Furthermore, the colour-tone-harmony presented by Wetzler, an act of imagination, illustrates the need to try out a playful applicability of colour systematisation through colour-sphere instruments in addition to a formal investigation of colour order discussions. It was an idea which remained unrealised in practice, but which kept the lively Kassel academic discourse on the effect of colour, its durability, production and systematisation going in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Appendices Transcriptions of selected sections of the archival records in the original language are given here. The spelling and orthography are based on the original manuscripts. Appendix I. HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814 Ernst Alexander Wetzler, Project abstract “Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie”, undated; (HStAM Best. 82 Nr. d 814, 1832–1833). “Daß die Farbe mit dem Auge in demselben Verhältnisse steht, wie der Ton mit dem Ohr, ist eine längst bekannte Sache – und so – dürfte man wohl glauben – ist für das Auge gleichfalls eine Musik vermittelst der Farben möglich. […] Freylich ist für diese Muse bis jetzo noch gar nichts gethan, während dem schon seit den ältesten Zeiten das Gebiet der Tonharmonie ausgebildet ist und noch Tag für Tag weiter ausgebildet wird. Es ist dieses in der That zu bewundern, denn Auge und Ohr sind von jeher als verschwisterte Organe angesehen worden, wobey sehr häufig dem Auge sogar der Vorzug vor dem Ohr gegeben wurde. – Jedoch, was seit langem verabsäumt worden ist, kann und soll auf Geschwindeste nachgeholt werden. Natürlicherweise ist hierbey nicht von der Malerey oder Ausmalung der Figuren mit Farben die Rede, wobey die Farbe blos als Mittel des plastischen Künstlers dient, sondern hier ist die Farbe sich selbst Zweck;

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sie dient nicht, sondern sie herrscht! Ein künstlich eingerichtetes Instrument zeigt uns die Farben in abwechselnden Erscheinungen, in ihren Uebergängen, in ihren Raumverhältnissen gestimmt und geformt, im Tacte und Zeitmaaße geregelt vorgetragen, wie ein musicalisches Instrument und wird alle Eigenschaften besitzen, durch das Auge eben so zu ergötzen, als wie ein musicalisches Instrument durch das Ohr ergötzt. Eine kurze Systems-Skizze, welche druckfertig liegt, soll der jungen Muse den Weg ins Leben bahnen. Sie hat den Zweck, dem Kunstfreunde die Art und Weise anschaulich zu machen, wie die Sache möglich und ausführbar ist, und ihn sonach in den Stand zu setzen, sich für die junge Muse zu interessiren und hierdurch dem unendlich mühevollen Streben des Verfassers zu lohnen. Bey der äußerst kurzen und compacten Fassung des Werkchens kann es sich, bey der überraschenden Neuheit des Gegenstandes  – zumal bey der Unvollkommenheit aller menschlichen Werke  – nicht fehlen, daß das Werkchen, obzwar im Ganzen die Sache erschöpfend, dennoch hier und da im Einzelnen unverständlich befunden wird. Deßhalb soll man jedoch den Muth nicht sinken lassen; denn findet die Sache nur irgend eine solche günstige Aufnahme, daß der Verfasser für die Progressen seines unternommenen Werks Hoffnung fassen kann, so ist er gesonnen, einen zweiten Theil nachfolgen zu lassen, welcher sich lediglich mit Erläuterungen beschäftigt und zu diesem Ende colorirte Figuren liefern wird. Das Werkchen wird einer soliden Buchhandlung in Commission gegeben werden, und diese wir die Subscription auf dasselbe eröffnen und die Versendung desselben besorgen.” Appendix II. HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39 Kassel Academy of Arts, Internal protocol, 26 May 1846; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1833–1867). “[So] ist nun [...] endlich die Wahrheit zu berichten, dass der Bittsteller an einer fixen Ideé leide; und die Spuren krankhafter Selbstüberschätzung sich überall in seiner ganz zusammenhanglosen Eingabe erkennen lassen.” Kassel Academy of Arts, Internal documentation about Knirim’s colour test series, 22 August 1848; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1833–1867). “Demgemäß wurde eine Farbenscala auf Leinwand vorbereitet […] und mit dem Knirymschen Bindemittel in Gegenwart der genannten […] Farbenpulver, in die Abtheilungen eingetragen. Dieses geschah jeder Farbe in doppelter Colorierung so das eine jede dieser Farben in der vorderen Reihe pastos, in der nachfolgenden mit dem Bindemittel verdünnt aufgetragen wurde.” Professors of the Kassel Academy of Arts, Internal summary of Knirim’s ideas, 4 September 1848; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1833–1867). “1 Die Technik, welche vor Erfindung der Öhlmalerei bestand, war vorzüglicher als diese. 2 Die Öhlmalerei [hat] bedeutende Mängel indem die Gemälde mit der Zeit trüber […] werden. 3 Es ist daher Bedurfnis geworden, ein anderes Bindemittel dem Öhl zu subsumieren und 4 [ein] solches kann die vom Verfasser bekannt gemachte Mischung betrachtet und durch fernere Versuche noch in höherem Grade vervollkommnet werden.”

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Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Robert, Internal protocol of the Kassel Academy of Arts about Knirim’s work, undated; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 39, 1833–1867). “Die Quellen, woraus der Verfasser geschöpft sind mir meißt alle bekannt und besitze die meißten oder kenne die Verfasser persönlich wie z.B. Mr. Merimée. Oder habe […] mit dem verstorbenen Prof. Roux in Correspondenz gestanden, besonders über die Enkaustick oder Wachs Malerey, die Harz Oel Malerey […]. […] Ein besonders schlagender Beweis, wie schnell sich die ältere Technik corumpirt haben muß, habe ich immer darin gefunden, daß die authentischen Copien nach Raphaelischen Werken von seinem großen Schüler Giulio Romano zehnmal mehr nachgedunkelt haben, als die Originale selbst, so daß man [das] Nachdunkeln und Schwärzen der Farben, oder eigentlich der Oelmalerei, als von der Länge der Zeit [bemessen], angenommen würde, diejenigen [Werke] wir als Copien des Giulio Romano nach Raphael kennen, umgekehrt als die Originale angesehen müßten werden. […] Namentlich hat man von München schon viele Mühe und Geld [aufgebracht], um das […] Geheimnis der antiken Wandmalerei zu entdecken, [doch] scheinen die Malereien in der Königl. Residenz noch in großem Abstande von der alten enkaustischen Malerei u. hinsichtlich des Stoffes sich zu befinden. […] Einer meiner Freunde, der Architekt Wiegmann steht jetzt in dem Rufe, das alte Geheimniß entdeckt zu haben. […] Allein mit dem eigentlichen Geheimniße ist er noch nicht hervorgetreten, obgleich ihm der geheime Rath v. Klenze in München, nachdem er eine Probe der Malerei des Herrn Wiegmann gesehen, ihm die Summe von 6000 Tl. geboten hat.” Appendix III. HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42 Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the Electoral Hessian Academy of Arts, 22 October 1839); (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “Wenn ich nun unterthänigst voraussetzen darf, daß die Wachsfarben durch das Licht nicht zerstört wurden, und daß auf dem Wege, wie ich das Bild verfertigte, vielleicht noch nicht gemalt worden ist, so dürfte ich wohl bemerken, daß das Wachsmalen einige angemessene Vortheile gegen die Oelmalerei erkennen läßt, namentlich verbinden sich durch’s Einbrennen die Farben gut, und man kann Gegenstände an einem Bilde in einem Tage anfangen zu malen und sie vollenden, weil sobald man die Einbrennmaschine benutzt hat, die eben aufgetragene Stelle zum Weitermalen schon trocken ist. […] Hierdurch folgt auch, daß ein Wachsbild, nicht so wie ein Oelgemälde vor Staub in Acht genommen zu werden [notwendig ist]; so wie auch nach Vollendung desselben der Mastixfirnis schon in einigen Tagen ohne den geringsten Schaden am Bilde zu verursachen angewendet werden kann. […] Beim Einbrennen der Wachsfarben, nehmen diese nun sehr schöne Frische an […].” Kassel Academy Directorate, Letter to Bernhard Carl Schwarz, 8 November 1839; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “[Daß] alle Versuche, welche seit Mitte des vorigen Jahrhunderts bis auf den heutigen Tag, zu einer Wiederbelebung derselben angestellt worden, nicht den Erfolg gehabt, den man sich davon versprochen, selbst in München haben die neuesten Erfahrungen

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sogar die Dauerhaftigkeit des Wachsmalens, wenn sie der Luft ausgesetzt ist, in großen Zweifel gezogen.” Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the Electoral Hessian Academy of Arts, 15 January 1844; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “[Meine Versuche] sind nicht ohne Erfolg geblieben. Denn wie die zu dieser Wachsmalerei angewandt werdenden Farben 2 bis 4 Tage auf der Palette naß erhalten werden können, so kann auch ihr gewöhnliches natürliches Trocknen nach ihrer Anwendung, dadurch daß das damit Gemalte der Wärme (bis zu 20–30 Rmr.) ausgesetzt so sehr beschleunigt werden, daß dieselben binnen 1-2 Tagen vollkommen trocken sind, so daß man z. B. im Stande ist ein Bild innerhalb 2er Tage zu malen einzubrennen und [ein] Werke ganz vollendet. […] Was die Dauerhaftigkeit dieser Wachsmalerei betrifft, so habe ich bereits vor drei Jahren […] die obere Hälfte eines mit Wachsfarben gemalten Bildes mit einem damals aber noch sehr mangelhaftem Wachsüberzuge, die andere Hälfte mit einem Ueberzuge von Mastixfirniß versehen, beide Firniße eingebrannt, dieses Bild dann drei Jahre im Freien nicht nur der […] Sommerhitze und der […] Winterkälte, sondern auch allen [Sonderheiten der] Witterung ununterbrochen ausgesetzt.” Ludwig Emil Grimm and Justus Heinrich Zusch, Two expert opinions of the academy teachers concerning the progress of Schwarz’s experiments, 5 February 1844; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). Ludwig Emil Grimm wrote: “6 bis 7 Jahre hat wie ich höhre H. Schwarz beobachtet u[nd] wenn es zehn mal mehr wäre liese sich doch auf die Haltbarkeit derselben noch nicht bauen, es sey denn dass H. Schwarz der noch ein Geheimniß aus seiner Erfindung macht, den Schlüssel dazu hat, was mir aber sehr problematisch zu sein scheint.” Justus Heinrich Zusch also demanded: “[…] auch müßte h. Schwarz Auskunft über die Bestandtheile seines Bindemittels (namentlich ein, reichlich mit Wasser versetztes fettes Öhl) geben damit man über die Solidität und Dauerhaftigkeit dieser Malerei genügend urtheilen könne.” Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, Internal Assessment, 15 August 1844; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “Das Schwarz’sche Bindemittel erlaubt die Anwendung von gewissen schönen Farben; welche von der Oelmalerei bisher ausgeschlossen waren; wie z. B. der sogenannte Mennig und der Kugellack.” Kassel Academy of Arts, Internal protocol concerning the experiments of Schwarz, undated; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “[Die] Eigenschaften [der Farbproben von Herrn Schwarz] machen sie u.a. besonders zur Decoration architectonischer Räume anwendbar, und gereichen ihr sehr zur Empfehlung denn der Auftrag der Farben […] kommt mit der aus den Gemälden in Pompeji bis zur Täuschung überein.” Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Documentation regarding his experimental colour test series, 6 May 1846; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858).

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“[Es] enthält einen Versuch zu einer marmorirten Wandverzierung, obgleich derselbe mit gewöhnlichem Berliner Roth und Cremser Weiß angefertigt, so ist er doch in jeder Beziehung gut erhalten. Bei der Anfertigung dieser marmorirten Platte, sind die Farben unwillkührlich neben einander gesetzt, und mittelst der Glühplatte aus- und ineinander geschmolzen worden, so daß sich die Formation gleichsam von selbst gebildet hat […].” Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter written to the Kassel Academy of Arts, 6 May 1846; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 42, 1839–1858). “[Selbst] in München, wo man zu Erlangung eines dauerhaften und wasserdichten Farbenbindemittels für Wandmalerei alles aufgeboten hat, nicht erreicht worden ist, indem dort bekanntlich Versuche vorliegender Art, welche der Witterung ausgesetzt wurden, nach Verlauf eines halben Jahres gänzlich mißlungen sind, weil solche zum Theil sich abgeblättert haben und zum Theil in der Sonne geschmolzen sind.” Appendix IV. HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115 Academy Professors Zusch, Müller and Grimm, Internal protocol concerning the Habich colours, 27 August 1841; (HStAM Best. 160 Nr. 115, 1841–1842). “Wir können also [den] eingehenden Farben hierdurch das beste Zeugnis geben, daß ihr Fabrikat als sehr gelungen [anzusehen] ist, das Verdienst um die Kunst selbst würde kein geringeres sein, wenn die Herrn Anfertiger dieses Fabrikat zu einem verhältnismäßig geringen Preis verkaufen, und dadurch den Gebrauch für die Malerei […] erleichtern könnten.”

References Archives Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin (GStAPK) GStAPK I. HA Rep. 76, Ve Sekt. 1 Abt. XV Nr. 92, Erhaltung und Wiederherstellung beschädigter Gemälde und die Behandlung der Kupferstiche sowie Anwendung des Copaia-Balsams zum Malen, 1832–1869. ———. HA Rep. 137, II H Nr. 25, Rezension [...] Schlesingers über ‘Die endlich entdeckte wahre Maler-Technik des klassischen Altertums und des Mittelalters, sowie die neu erfundene Balsam-Wachsmalerei’ von Friedrich Knirim, 1846.

Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg (HStAM) HStAM Best. 5 Nr. 3691. 1819. Gesuche des Fabrikanten Habich zu Kassel um Privilegien für die Anfertigung eines von ihm erfundenen flüssigen Blaus sowie auch anderer Farben und chemischer Fabrikate. Georg Evert Habich, Applications of the manufacturer Habich in Kassel, 1819.

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——— Best. 9 a Nr. 312. 1844. Audienzen des französischen Gesandten [Graf de Béarn] beim Kurprinz-Mitregenten. ——— Best. 16 Nr. 6303. 1834–1867. Gesuch des Kreisamtsschreibers Knirim um Unterstützung zu seiner weiteren Ausbildung zwecks Abfassung einer Anweisung zur Harz-Öl-Malerei aus dem Fonds der Akademie der bildenden Künste. ——— Best. 18 Nr. 863. 1819–1823. Gesuch des Fabrikanten Georg E.  Habich zu Kassel um Erteilung eines Privilegs zur Herstellung verschiedener Farben. Georg Evert Habich, Applications of the factory owner Georg E. Habich in Kassel, 1819. ——— Best. 55 a Nr. 199. 1796. Gesuch des Kaufmanns Georg Evert Habich aus Kassel zur Erreichung eines Privilegiums exclusivum zur Herstellung eines blauen Farbstoffes. Georg Evert Habich, Application of the merchant Georg Evert Habich from Kassel to obtain a privilegium exclusivum, 1796. ——— Best. 82 Nr. d 814. 1832–1833. Gesuch des vorhinnigen Justizkanzleiadvokaten Wetzler zu Meerholz um Bewilligung einer Unterstützung zur Ausführung einer unter der Benennung ‚Farbenharmonie‘ von ihm erfundenen Kunst. Ernst Alexander Wetzler, Project abstract “Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie”, undated. Wetzler, Ernst Alexander: “Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie”, 29 October 1832. ——— Best. 153/4 Nr. 55. 1833–1834. Gutachten über die Wetzlersche Farbenharmonie. Heinrich Buff, Expert opinion concerning Wetzler’s Haramony of Colours, 14 June 1833. ——— Best. 160 Nr. 31. 1828–1851. Akademie der bildenden Künste in Kassel; Regulative und Unterrichtspläne, (1774–1784). KAA (=Kassel Academy of Arts), Letter to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, 11 August 1832. ——— Best. 160 Nr. 39. 1833–1867. Forschungsarbeiten des Amtsschreibers und späteren Zeichenlehrers F. Knirim zur Technik der Harz-Ölmalerei und zur Malertechnik des Altertums und des Mittelalters. Friedrich Knirim, Letter to the KAA, 14 March 1835. Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, Internal protocol of the KAA about Knirim’s work, 9 March 1837. Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Robert, Internal protocol of the KAA, 4 August 1837. KAA, Internal protocol, 26 May 1846. KAA, Internal documentation about Knirim’s colour test series, 22 August 1848. KAA Professors, Internal summary of Knirim’s ideas, 4 September 1848. Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Robert, Internal protocol of the KAA about Knirim’s work, undated. ——— Best. 160 Nr. 42. 1839–1858. Gesuch des Steuerpraktikanten Schwarz zu Witzenhausen um Prüfung seiner enkaustischen Gemälde und Unterstützung. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the Electoral Hessian Academy of Arts, 22 October 1839. KAA, Letter to Bernhard Carl Schwarz, 8 November 1839. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the Electoral Hessian Academy of Arts, 15 January 1844. Ludwig Emil Grimm and Justus Heinrich Zusch, Expertises of the academy teachers concerning the progress of Schwarz’s experiments, 5 February 1844. KAA, Internal protocol concerning the progress of Schwarz’s experiments, 6 February 1844. KAA, Internal protocol, 3 June 1844. Friedrich Wilhelm Müller, Internal Assessment, 15 August 1844. Johann Conrad Bromeis, Internal protocol, 14 September 1844. KAA, Internal protocol concerning the experiments of Schwarz, undated. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Documentation about his experimental colour test series, 6 May 1846. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter written to the KAA, 6 May 1846. Ministry of the Interior of Hesse-Kassel, Record, 6 August 1846. KAA, Letter to the Kassel Ministry of the Interior, 31 January 1855. Bernhard Carl Schwarz, Letter to the KAA, 31 March 1855. ——— Best. 160 Nr. 51. 1832–1833. Gesuch des Advokaten Wetzler zu Rothenbergen um Unterstützung zwecks Fortentwicklung der von ihm erfundenen Kunst ‘Farbenharmonie’. Ministry of the Interior of Hesse, Extract from the protocol of the Ministry of the Interior for the KAA, 22 November 1832. Ludwig Hummel, Letter to the Electoral Ministry of the Interior of Hesse, 30 March 1833. Johann Werner Henschel, Internal expert opinion con-

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cerning Wetzler’s Harmony of Colours, 1833. Carl Christian Aubel, Internal expert opinion concerning Wetzler’s Harmony of Colours, 1833. Ludwig Emil Grimm and Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Robert, Internal expert opinion concerning Wetzler’s Harmony of Colours, 1833. Johann Heinrich Wolff, Internal expert opinion concerning Wetzler’s Harmony of Colours, 1 February 1833. ——— Best. 160 Nr. 115. 1841–1842. Gutachtertätigkeit der Akademie bei Patentierungsanträgen von Farbenherstellern. Georg Evert Habich, Letter to the Electoral Trade and Industry Association of Hesse, 13 July 1841. Protocol of the Electoral Trade and Industry Association of Hesse, Decision to hand over the Habich samples to the KAA for evaluation, 21 July 1841. Academy professors Zusch, Müller and Grimm, Internal protocol concerning the Habich colours, 27 August 1841. Justus Heinrich Zusch, Summary of the expert opinions on the tests with the Habich colour samples, 15 July 1842. ——— Best. 251 Kassel Nr. 69. 1823. Beabsichtigte Anlegung eines Stampfwerkes zur Fabrikation von Farben im Kasseler Zuchthaus durch den Fabrikanten Habich zu Kassel. Georg Evert Habich, Enquiry about the construction of a stamping plant for colour production in the prison in Kassel, 1832.

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Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel MB Hs. 314, Wetzler, Ernst Alexander: Farben-Harmonie, eine Gegen- und Seitenkunst der Tonharmonie, 1832. Universitätsbibliothek Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murhardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, Sig. 37 Hist.Wiss. 6747, Casselsches Adreß-Buch, 1844.

Universitätsarchiv Marburg Dekanatsakten allgemein und Verhandlungen der Fakultät. University of Marburg, Internal letter to the Faculty of Philosophy, August 11, 1846. University of Marburg. Internal letter to the Faculty of Philosophy, August 11, 1846. UniA Marburg Best. 307 d Nr. 83 II. 1846.

Primary Sources Calau, Benjamin. 1769. Ausführlicher Bericht, wie das punische oder eleodorische Wachs aufzulösen, daß sowohl Maler als auch andere Profeßionisten und Handwerker sich dessen mit Nutzen bedienen können. Leipzig: n.p. http://digital.slub-­dresden.de/id34510952X ———. 1782. Avertissement. Berlin: n.p. Castel, Louis-Betrand. 1725. Clavecin pour les yeux, avec l’art de Peindre les sons, & toutes sortes de Pièces de Musique von Louis-Betrand Castel. Mercure de France 11: 2552–2577.

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Index

A Academy of Arts (Kassel), 167, 169, 172, 174, 176, 179, 185–190 Aguilonius, Franciscus (François d’Aguilon) (1567–1617), 17, 18, 22, 23 Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 135, 137 Akademie der Künste Cassel, see Academy of Arts (Kassel) Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 122, 125, 131 Akademie der Wissenschaften, Göttingen, 125 Aristotle (384–322 BCE), 17, 34 Aubel, Carl Christian (1796–1882), 174, 184 Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King in Poland (1670–1733), 152, 163 B Basic colours, 3, 9, 91, 108, 119, 124–126, 132, 143 Bauer, Ferdinand (1760–1826), 46 Bauer, Franz (1758–1840), 47 Bauer, Josef (1756–1830), 47 Beireis, Gottfried Christoph (1730–1809), 131, 141, 143 Bentveughels, 59 Bergakademie Freiberg, 50 Bergdoll, Adam (1720–1797), 162 Bernhard Carl Schwarz (fl. early 19 c.), 169, 170, 188, 189 Bernoulli, Johann III (1744–1807), 132, 143, 169 Bettkober, Johann Karl Ludwig (1739–1808), 133–140, 142

Blakey, Nicholas (d. 1758), 77 Böttger, Johann Friedrich (1682–1719), 152–156, 163 Boutet, Claude (fl. 1673–1708), 21, 22, 25–27 Boyle, Robert (1627–1691), 23 Brauer, Theodor August (1798–1876), 174 Brenner, Elias (1647–1717), 41 Buff, Heinrich (1805–1878), 184 Busch, Christian Daniel (1723–1797), 161, 162 C Calau, Benjamin (1724–1785), 9, 25, 119, 122, 123, 131 Camera-obscura, 93 Cant, Arent (1695–1723), 62, 70 Cant, Petrus (c. 1670–c.1725), 62 Carlsbad sinter, 103, 106, 107 Carl Theodor, Elector Palatine of the Rhine (1724–1799), 162 Carolsfeld, Julius Schnorr von (1794–1872), 172 Castel, Louis Bertrand (1688–1757), 63, 74, 76, 77, 115, 184 Chevreul, Michel Eugène (1786–1889), 26, 27 Chodowiecki, Daniel (1726–1801), 137, 138 Chromaticity, 20, 34 Chromolithography, 80, 81 Colour and light, 61, 91 Colour and sound (music, orchestra), 20, 182–184 Colour circle, 8, 18, 20–22, 25–27, 103, 105–108, 110–113, 115

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. C. Kleinwächter et al. (eds.), Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d’histoire des idées 244, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34956-0

197

198

Index

Colour comparison, 16, 43, 177, 184 Colour diagrams, 9, 18, 19, 22–24, 26 Colour differentiation, 40 Colour displays charts, 9, 119, 122, 125, 128, 136–138, 141 circles, 8, 18, 20–22, 25, 27, 103, 106–108, 110–113, 115 enamel samples, 151, 155, 164 swatches, 42, 43, 127 tables, 9, 42, 43, 48 triangles, 24 wheels, 21, 111–114 Colour effect, 9, 169–172, 176 Colour environment (colour surround), 40 Colour experiments, 168, 169, 173, 176, 185, 186 Colouring materials, 3 Colour maker, 121, 136, 138, 140, 142 Colour manufacturing techniques, 4 Colour memory, 2, 142 Colour mixing and separation, 5, 16, 28, 58, 60–62, 71, 72, 81, 93, 125, 126, 134, 135, 138, 142, 179 Colour order, see Colour system Colour production, 9, 176–179 Colour reference systems, 1, 8, 40–42, 51 Colour scales, 42–43, 168, 171, 172, 174, 182, 183 Colour sensations, 30, 39 Colour solids cone, 17, 34 cube, 17 double-cone, 28, 29, 34 double pyramid, 25, 34 linear arrangement, 34 pyramid, 17, 25, 26, 34, 127–129, 141 ring, 17, 19, 108 sphere, 17, 34 Colour square, 151 Colour standard, 40, 41, 47–52 Colour system, 1, 8, 10, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 32–34, 40–42, 81, 103, 105, 108–114, 182, 183 Colour systematisation, 9, 179–182, 186 Colour tables, 42–43 Colour theory, 1, 8, 16–34, 86–99, 107, 108, 127 Colour-tone harmony, 168, 179–182, 185, 186

Colour tones, 40, 42, 51, 169, 176, 177, 182–185 Colour vision, 16, 34, 40 D da Vinci, Leonardo (1453–1519), 17 de Boodt, Anselm (1550–1632), 23 Delobel, Nicolas (1693–1763), 78 de Mayerne, Théodore Turquet (1573–1655), 126 de Piles, Roger (1635–1709), 120–122 Descartes, René (1596–1650), 90, 92 Du Ry, Simon Louis (1726–1799), 168 Dyes, 17, 28, 30, 86–99, 124, 129, 177 E Eichhorn, Albert (1811–1861), 172 Encaustic painting, 123, 169, 171–173, 185 Engelmann Sr, Godefroy (1788–1839), 79 Euler, Leonhard (1707–1783), 95 F Feilner, Simon (1726–1798), 162, 163 Félibien, André (1619–1695), 23 Fernbach, Franz Xaver (1793–1851), 172 Field, George (ca.1777–1854), 26, 27 Filters, 30, 92 Flower painting, 162 Fludd, Robert (1574–1637), 17, 19, 34 Flux (ceramic), 153, 159 Forsius, Sigfrid (1550–1624), 17–19 Friedrich II, King of Prussia (1712–1786), 122 Friedrich II of Hesse-Kassel (1720–1785), 168 Fries, Ernst (1801–1833), 46, 47 Frisch, Johann Christoph (1737–1815), 136, 138 Fürstenau, Carl (fl. late 18 c), 177 G Gamboge, 124–127 Gauthier de Montdorge, Antoine-César (1701–1768), 74 Gautier-Dagoty, Edouard (1745–1783), 79 Gautier-Dagoty, Jacques-Fabien (1716–1785), 76, 79

Index Gentele, Johan Georg. (1813–1895), 177 George I, King of Great Britain and Ireland and Elector of Hanover (1660–1727), 64, 67, 68, 73, 76, 77 Glass, 8, 30, 51, 59, 86, 89, 91, 94–97, 99, 120, 130, 143, 153, 155 Gloss, 34, 168, 171 Glost firing, 155 Gmelin, Christian Gottlob (1792–1860), 177 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832), 5, 26, 27, 107, 182 Gradualism, 34 Grassmann, Hermann (1809–1877), 28 Grimm, Ludwig Emil (1790–1863), 177, 184, 189, 190 Grosseteste, Robert (1168–1253), 17, 18 H Habich, Georg Evert (1868–1932), 177–179, 185, 190 Hagedorn, Christian Ludwig (1712–1780), 182 Halifax, Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of (1661–1715), 64 Harris, Moses (1730–1787), 4, 27, 40, 41 Hartmann, Ahrend August (1752–1818), 139, 140 Hayter, Charles (1761–1835), 26, 27 Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig von (1821–1894), 26, 28, 30 Henschel, Johann Werner (1782–1850), 184 Heynitz, Friedrich August von (1725–1802), 136–139 Hilliard, Nicholas (c.1547–1619), 120 Höroldt, Johann Gregorious (1696–1775), 156, 157, 160 Hoskins, John (1589–1664), 120 Houbraken, Arnold (1660–1719), 59 Hunthum, Cornelia (1634–1721), 60 I (Imperial) Academy of Sciences and Arts, Saint Petersburg, 87, 88, 95, 99 Itten, Johannes (1888–1967), 26, 27

199

J Jameson, Robert (1774–1854), 50 K Kate, Lambert Hermansz. ten (1674–1731), 60–63, 71, 78 Kircher, Athanasius (1602–1680), 17, 18 Kirschmann, August (1860–1932), 32 Knirim, Friedrich (1808–1874), 173, 174, 176, 179, 185, 187, 188 Krüger, Johann Gottlob (1715–1759), 184 Kugler, Franz (1808–1858), 174 Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, 87 L L’Admiral, Jan (1699–1773), 64, 79, 80 L’Admiral Jr, Jacob (1700–1770), 64 L’Admiral Sr, Jacob (1665–1727), 64 Lambert, Johann Heinrich (1728–1777), 9, 25, 26, 34, 46, 61, 119–144 Lapis lazuli, 177 Lasinio, Carlo (1759–1838), 79 Le Blon, Jacob Christoff (1667–1741), 2, 6, 8, 26, 28, 57–81, 91, 93, 126 Le Blon–Merian family, 58 Le Marchand des Descatillons, Claude François (fl. 1737–1742), 74, 77 Lenz, Johan Georg (1748–1832), 48, 50 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (1742–1799), 24, 25, 122, 128, 132, 134, 143 Light, see Colour and light Limborch, Hendrik van (1681–1759), 60–63, 78, 80 Lomonosov, Mikhail Vasilyevich (1711–1765), 6, 8, 27, 61, 85–99 Loon, Adriaan van (1631–1722), 60, 70 Lütke, Peter Ludwig (1759–1831), 138 M Main colours, 8, 47, 108, 130 Maratti, Carlo (1625–1713), 59 Mariotte, Edmé (1620–1684), 92, 99 Martinitz, Georg Adam von (1645–1714), 59 Maxwell, James Clerk (1831–1879), 28, 30 Mayer, Tobias (1723–1762), 24, 25, 27, 34, 125–128, 134 Meil, Johann Heinrich (1730–1820), 125

200

Index

Meil, Johann Wilhelm (1733–1805), 125 Meißen (Meissen) porcelain, 9, 16, 45, 46, 48, 151 Mengs, Anton Raphael (1728–1779), 182 Mérimée, Jean François Léonor (1757–1836), 173 Metal oxides, 153 Milly, Nicolas Christiern de Thy de (Comte de Milly) (1728–1784), 158 Mineralogy, 47–52, 106 Minerals, 42, 47–49, 51, 94, 95, 99, 103, 106, 108, 121, 127, 177 Ming Dynasty, 153 Mixture (materials) colourant, 17, 23, 24, 26, 28, 41, 128 light, 24, 26, 28 pigmentary, 28, 29 Mixture (processes) additive, 16, 25, 28–31, 93 optical, 25, 28, 30–32 partitive, 28, 32 subtractive, 20, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34 Mortimer, Cromwell (c.1693–1752), 72, 73 Mosaic, 8, 86–99 Mouffle, Jean (fl. 1737–1750), 77 Müller, Friedrich Wilhelm (1801–1889), 171–173, 177, 189, 190 Müller, Joseph (1727–1817), 107 Munsell, Albert (1858–1918), 22, 32 N Nahl, Johann August (Nahl the Elder) (1710–1781), 168 Natural history, 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 23, 42–43, 51, 52, 103, 106–107, 124 Newton, Isaac (1643–1727), 2, 3, 20, 21, 27, 34, 41, 61, 71, 72, 78, 80, 88, 90, 91, 105, 110, 111, 182, 183 O Old Japanese Purple, 157 Opaque colour (pigments, paint), 32 Optical instruments, 91 Ostwald, Wilhelm (1853–1932), 28, 29 Overbeke, Bonaventura Jansz. van (1660–1705), 59, 60

P Painting techniques, 94, 123, 124, 168–173, 176, 185 Palette, 23, 60, 71, 76, 78, 120, 121, 124, 133, 155–159, 161, 162, 164, 189 Particles, 89–91, 95, 99 Pastel crayons, 120, 122, 130 Patent, 74 Pesne, Antoine (1683–1757), 174 Petershausen, abbey of, 105 Pfannenschmid, August Ludewig (gl. 1781–1799), 133–140, 142 Philippe II, duc d’Orléans (1674–1723), 68 Pigments, 3, 6, 17, 24, 25, 28, 86, 95, 96, 99, 121–127, 136, 137, 168–190 Pliny the Elder (23/24 C.E.–79), 123 Pointillism, 94 Porcelain, 5, 9, 44, 45, 48, 51, 124, 140, 151–164 Porcelain manufactories, 9, 45, 151–164 Porcelain tiles, 151 Poulle, Catherine (d. 1741), 74 Prange, Christian Friedrich (1756–1836), 42, 43 Primary colours, 7, 22–24, 32, 57, 59–62, 71, 75–78, 80, 91, 94, 99, 182 Printing Office, The, 64 Prism, 25, 61, 93, 108 Privilege, see Patent Prussian blue, 76, 92, 95, 124, 126, 127, 143 Punctuated evolution, 34, 35 Punic wax, 119–144 Purple of Cassius, 155–157 R Redouté, Pierre-Joseph (1759–1840), 126 Requeno, Vicente (1743–1811), 174 Riem, (Johann) Andreas (1749–1814), 124, 131, 132 Robert, Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand (1763–1843), 173 Robert, Jean (1720–1782), 77 Rohde, Christian Bernhard (1725–1797), 132 Roux, Jakob Wilhelm (1771–1830), 173, 174, 188

Index Royal Commerz-Collegium, 139 Royal Society of Arts, 121, 142 Ruhl, Ludwig Sigismund (1794–1887), 174 Runge, Philipp Otto (1777–1810), 27, 183 Russian Academy of Science, see (Imperial) Academy of Sciences and Arts, Saint Petersburg S Sankt André, Nathaniel (1680–1776), 65, 70 Scarmilionius, V.A. (fl. 1601), 22 Scheele, Carl Wilhelm (1742–1786), 142 Schiffermüller, Ignaz (1727–1806), 2, 8, 41, 105, 111, 112, 114 Schlesinger, Johann Jakob (1792–1855), 174 Schulze, Johann Friedrich (1748–1824), 136, 137 Schwarz, Bernhard Carl (d. before 1859), 171–173, 176, 179, 185, 188–190 Sinter, 103–115 Slavonic–Greek–Latin Academy (Moscow), 86, 87 Smalts, 96–98 Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, see Royal Society of Arts Solms-Laubach, Christiane Louise von (1754–1815), 169 Song Dynasty (618–907 CE), 152 Spangles, 96, 97, 99 Spectral lights, 20, 28 Spinning disks, 28–31 Steinbrück, Johann Melchior (1673–1723), 153, 154 Subtractive mixture, 20, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32 Sulzer, Johann Georg (1720–1779), 182 Syme, Patrick (1774–1845), 50 T Tardieu, Pierre François (1711–1771), 76 Tetrachromatic vision, 34 Tischbein, Johann Heinrich (Tischbein the Elder) (1722–1789), 168 Tournelle, Monsieur (fl. 1737), 77 Translucent colour/paint, 28, 32, 173

201

Trichromacy, 8, 22, 26, 58, 86, 122–126, 130, 136 Trichromatic printing, 57–81, 91, 126 Trichromatic theory, 9, 16, 21–27, 132, 134 U Uffenbach, Johann Friederich von (1687–1769), 62 Uffenbach, Zacharias Conrad von (1683–1734), 62 Uibelaker, Franz (Johann Georg) (1742–1808, after), 2, 4, 8, 21, 91, 105–115 Ultramarine, 61, 91, 168, 176–179, 186 Underglaze enamel, 154, 155 V Vloet, Gerarda (d. 1716), 60, 63 Von Linné, Carl (1707–1778), 42 Vorontsov, Mikhail Illarionovich (1782–1856), 88, 91 W Waller, Richard (d. 1715), 41 Walter, Friedrich August (1764–1826), 131, 142 Walter, Johann Gottlieb (1734–1818), 142 Wandelaar, Jan (1690–1759), 63 Wedgwood, Josiah (1730–1795), 44, 45, 158 Werner, Abraham Gottlob (1749–1817), 4, 42, 45, 47, 49, 50 Wetzler, Ernst Alexander (b.1788), 2, 20, 167, 179–186 Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), 87, 88 Wolff, Johann Heinrich (1792–1869), 184 Y Young, Thomas (1773–1829), 26, 89, 99 Z Zahn, Johannes (1641–1707), 23, 24, 34 Zusch, Justus Heinrich (1783–1850), 177, 189, 190