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And this kind of visual freedom is typically

answered in the stone mouldings of the Making colour
painted architecture. Although Veronese
owed a debt to the ‘real’ buildings of San- London
micheli and Palladio, as Marini suggests
in her elegant essay, it is also true that his by ULRIKE KERN
painted architecture resists any attempt to
reconstitute the logic of an actual structure. AN EXHIBITION ON the subject of colour has
It would also be inaccurate to talk of not been attempted before. Given that colour
‘accessories’, ‘settings’ or ‘backgrounds’ in is a broad and wide-ranging topic, this perhaps
Veronese’s painted world, given that these is no surprise. The study of colours extends
elements are granted pictorial equality with well into the fields of history, science and
the figures themselves, indicating that the culture, as has been demonstrated by John
painter was unable or unwilling to construct Gage, and, as Rosamond Harley has made
a clear hierarchy between them. clear, every pigment has its own story con-
Veronese’s anti-intellectual approach to cerning its chemical composition, processing
painting provided an alternative to the sig- and handling, naming and categorisation.1
nificance and urgency of works by the late The exhibition Making Colour at the National
Titian, Tintoretto and Bassano in an increas- Gallery, London (closed 7th September),
ingly ‘serious’ age. If his invitation to enter was introduced by an historical overview of
into a free sensuous play of invented forms the topic, and continued with individual sec-
and patterns found many followers among tions, playfully organised around the spectral
later artists, it inevitably frustrated the colours of blue, green, yellow and orange, red 55. David contemplating the head of Goliath, by Orazio
inquisitors of the Counter-Reformatory and purple, as well as gold and silver. Paintings Gentileschi. c.1612. Oil on lapis lazuli, backed with
church, whose primary concern was to limit were displayed along with pigment spec- slate, 25 by 19 cm. (Private collection; exh. National
‘artistic licence’. Perhaps, too, Veronese’s imens, or pigment and painting were merged Gallery, London).
visual freedom must continue to frustrate together, as in Orazio Gentileschi’s David con-
the meaning-hungry demands of the deter- templating the head of Goliath, painted on a slab his Juno and Argus painted in primary colours
mined iconographer of today. To this extent, of lapis lazuli (Fig.55). The exhibition includ- with a rainbow to represent the relationship
the tireless quest for ‘original meaning’ to ed pieces ranging in date from late antiquity to between light and colour (Wallraf-Richartz
be found in Alessandra Zamperini’s recent contemporary, but focused on the early mod- Museum, Cologne). The National Gallery
monograph seems misplaced.2 This monu- ern era to c.1900. The paintings were almost possesses beautiful paintings that illustrate
mental production, featuring three hundred exclusively drawn from the Gallery’s own changes in the appearance of pigments. The
superb colour illustrations, provides a fine holdings, complemented by objects from durability of ultramarine and the effects of
alternative for those who did not manage to other British collections, an economical metallic composites, in particular, can be
see the exhibitions, or for those who want a approach and, for the aims of the exhibition, appreciated, while paintings affected by fading
more permanent reminder of the spectacu- a justifiable one, considering that there is no and darkening raise the important and not
larly visual qualities of Veronese’s art. That such thing as a canon of paintings of colour. uncontroversial question of how to deal with
Veronese is particularly suited to this kind of Besides, only a few artists treated the topic as the effects of time on works of art. There is
coffee-table production is telling enough: subject-matter, as did, for instance, Rubens in no catalogue as such, but a slim publication
the other great sixteenth-century Venetians from the National Gallery’s series A Closer
have proved more difficult to accommodate Look serves as a companion to the show.2
to such a format. Zamperini’s mostly well- The exhibition was organised along hist-
argued text does battle with the sumptuous orical lines, which helped to explain which
production in a blow-by-blow account of pigments were preferred by painters, when and
the painter’s career, in which the main why. Colour theory was represented by the
emphasis is on pinning down the precise appealing illustrations of colour treatises, such
subject-matter, patron or (with a rather scat- as the first symmetrical colour circle by Moses
ter-gun approach) the visual source in each Harris of 1776 or samples of watercolours
example. It is, however, difficult to square by Théodore Turquet de Mayerne (Fig.54).
this kind of rational scholarly exercise with These diagrams provided valuable information
the exuberant and essentially ambiguous pic- about assessing, mixing and categorising
torialism of the paintings themselves. There colours, and the sheer scale of the books indi-
remains the suspicion that in the search for cated that they included a considerable amount
the nuts and bolts this author has misrepre- of text. England, in particular, has produced
sented Veronese, whose main achievement various writings on colour, some neatly written
was to undermine the authority of the text manuscripts, some as illustrated printed books.
by the force of his visual realisation. In order to convey the variety of theories of
colour, whether concerning the preparation
1 Catalogues: Veronese. By Xavier F. Salomon. 272 pp. and use of pigments, colour combinations
incl. 164 col. ills. (National Gallery, London, 2014), and mixtures, or optical problems, it would
£35 (HB). ISBN 978–1–85709–553–1; and Paolo have been good to have included more such
Veronese: L’illusione della realtà. Edited by Paola Marini examples, if only to reflect how much thought
ills. (Mondadori Electa, Milan, 2014), €35. ISBN
and Bernard Aikema. 399 pp. incl. 190 col. + 6 b. & w. lay behind the making and use of colours.
Most of the exhibits in the sections devoted
978–88–918–0150–0. Catalogue numbers cited in this
review refer to the Verona catalogue; paintings shown
to a single colour were chosen to display the
54. Pictoria, sculptoria et quae subalternarum artium, by
in London only are indicated in the text. Théodore Turquet de Mayerne. 1620–46. Manuscript,
qualities of specific pigments, ranging from the
2 Paolo Veronese. By Alessandra Zamperini. 351 pp.
watercolour and ink on paper. (British Library, intensity and durability of ultramarine, the
incl. 300 col. ills. (Thames & Hudson, London, 2014), London, MS Sloane 2052, fol.80v; exh. National changeability of some greens and yellows, the
£60. ISBN 978–0–500–09383–2. Gallery, London). variety of ingredients used to create different
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EXHIBITIONS

of the Chinese porcelain bowl, while we can

deduce from seventeenth-century sources that
he was probably aware of the fugitive quality
of the pigment in an oil medium (Fig.57)?
Was he trying to render an authentic hue by
using the same pigment as used in the actual
porcelain, or did he value the low price of
the pigment above its limited durability? The
problem of permanence was crucial for artists
and collectors, and synthetic pigments did not
entirely solve the issue. After the initial popu-
larity of Prussian blue in the early eighteenth
century, for example, the synthetic pigment
soon showed instances of fading, one of which
can be seen in Gainsborough’s portrait of Mrs
Siddons (National Gallery).3 The introduction
of synthetic pigments also led to doubts as to
their durability. Considering that they could
fade and change quickly, it seems relevant that
Gainsborough, when using delicate synthetic
Naples yellow, painted his two little daughters
chasing a brimstone butterfly (Fig.56).
The presence of a fragment of blue crystals
56. The painter’s daughters in Roger Hiorns’s Seizure of 2008 added a
chasing a butterfly, by Thomas contemporary component and another aspect
Gainsborough. c.1756.
Canvas, 113.5 by 105 cm.
to the exhibition’s title, Making Colour, since
(National Gallery, London). the theme of this work is creating the colour.
Nevertheless, it was somewhat isolated in the
shades of red, the uniqueness of orange and impact that the discoveries of synthetic pig- exhibition: Hiorns’s art functions in a different
purple pigments, or the techniques of applying ments must have had on artists. The most frame of reference to that of earlier exhibits,
metallic colour. A fundamental problem in the enthusiastic reaction was probably the passion and without addressing the modernist break in
history of colours is their durability, and the for purple in the Victorian era, following artistic conventions or offering examples of
samples of watercolours on paper and coloured the discovery in 1856 of synthetic purple by more recent works of art to provide a context,
glazes on maiolica plates demonstrated the Sir William Perkin. Yet, concerning the ways the shift of intention was not easy to follow.
attempts made to create normative systems of in which artists dealt with the problem of To use chemical processes to create colours
colours to provide guidelines for artists. The changeability of pigments, some issues were was already a theme in Andy Warhol’s Oxi-
comparisons of natural and synthetic pigments left untouched. Why, for instance, did Jan dation paintings of the late 1970s, albeit with
in the different sections gave an idea of the Janz Treck use smalt for the blue ornament a more radical and less enchanting effect.
The exhibition was compelling in bringing
together wonderful objects and transmitting
57. Still life with a pewter theoretical ideas in a vivid yet informative
flagon and two Ming bowls, by way. It was an engaging show about the uses
Jan Janz Treck. 1651.
Canvas, 76.5 by 63.8 cm.
of pigments and their behaviour, about the
(National Gallery, London). achievements of chemistry and the advance-
ment of scientific research in the field of
conservation. Fascinating as is it, much of
what could be learned was somewhat on the
technical side. Specific art-historical issues, and
in particular the artists’ intentions, were dealt
with less extensively. Making colour also
involves colouring, making choices of colours
and colour combinations to give a certain
appearance and atmosphere to a painting. Yet
it is easy to find aspects that have not been cov-
ered in an exhibition on a topic as multifaceted
as colour. The curators put together a sound
presentation on ‘this complex hymn [that] is
called colour’,4 as Baudelaire put it, and they
deserve much credit.
1 J. Gage: Colour and Culture. Practice and Meaning

from Antiquity to Abstraction, London 1993; and R.D.

Harley: Artists’ Pigments c.1600–1835. A Study in English
Documentary Sources, London 1970.
2 D. Bomford and A. Roy, eds.: A Closer Look: Colour,

London 2009.
3 J. Kirby: ‘Fading and Colour Change of Prussian

Blue: Occurrences and Early Reports’, National Gallery

Technical Bulletin 14 (1993), pp.62–71.
4 C. Baudelaire: ‘On Colour’, in J. Mayne, transl. and

ed.: The Mirror of Art, Oxford 1955, p.49.

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