Regency Colour and Beyond, Yale and Storm Thorgerson

I have just heard the news about the death of Storm Thorgerson at the age of 69, who designed many iconic (and I feel this is an instance where the word is actually appropriate) album covers, including Pink Floyd's for Dark Side Of The Moon (1973). A simple idea brilliantly executed. I particularly liked his stained-glass version of it for the 2003 anniversary edition.

Hats off to Storm, and may he rest in peace.

In other news, details about my display on/of Regency colour and colour theory at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, 15 June to 13 October 2013 have gone live on the Pavilion website. The new What's On (May - August 2013) also gives information on a couple of talks and curator's tours I will be giving. I recently gave a lecture on the subject at the Regency Society of Brighton and Hove's AGM, where guests got a preview of what will be on display:

Regency Colour and Beyond, 1785–1835 

15 June to 13 October 2013
Royal Pavilion  

Admission payable, members free

‘The Pavilion is enriched with the most magnificent ornaments and the gayest and most splendid colours; yet all is in keeping and well relieved.’
J.D. Parry, An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Coast of Sussex, 1833

In Regency times, visitors to George IV’s Royal Pavilion were astonished at the flamboyant colours in the exotic interiors of the palace.  These new temporary displays in the Royal Pavilion explore the interior décor and Regency understandings of colour.  Revealing the palace’s innovative and radical use of colour during the Regency period, visitors can discover why certain colours were used and how their use here continues to influence us through the ages.

Related events:

Light and colour from the East? 

Thursday 27 June

Royal Pavilion, William IV Room and tour of the displays

1pm Free with Royal Pavilion admission, book in advance

Alexandra Loske, co-curator of Regency Colour, talks about Chinoiserie style and Eastern influences in the Pavilion followed by a short tour of the displays.

Curator’s tours

Wednesday 3 July, repeated Monday 16 September

An introduction to the displays by Alexandra Loske

1-1.30pm Free with Royal Pavilion admission

A hugely enjoyable project to work on. I am currently writing the labels and panel texts for the display (it cannot be called an exhibition because it will not be installed in the main exhibition space), meaning I have to reduce everything I know about Regency colour, colour theory and the Royal Pavilion into a handful of sentences.

Related to the project I will be pontificating about the colour blue in fashion and culture at Fabrica Gallery in Brighton on 9 May.

Just after the installation of the display I shall be jetting to New York (it has been too long since I have been there!) and then to New Haven, where I will be attending the Summer Seminar at the Yale Center for British Art. I applied for one of the 10 free places for it, replaced every single 'colour' in the application with 'color' and was lucky enough to be given a place, with flights and accommodation paid for. I am tremendously excited about it.

Yale Center for British Art 

2013 Summer Seminar

Coloring Color: The history, science and materiality of paint

From June 17–21, 2013, the Center convenes its third Graduate Student Summer Seminar. Titled “Coloring Color: The history, science and materiality of paint,” the seminar, which is organized by the Center’s Conservation Department, will concentrate on the physical materials of color. The seminar will examine color from historic and scientific perspectives, explore its physical definitions and biological responses, and create a familiarity with the language of color as it evolved historically. The aim of the seminar is to equip students with a fundamental understanding of the history and theory of color, and to develop an understanding of the appearance of color in paintings and works on paper.

Berlin Blues - A very short history of Prussian Blue

 Mauritius 1847 "Post Office" 2d. deep blue, unused.

In the collection of the British Library.

The famous Blue Mauritius 2p stamp from 1847 (of which only 12 survive) was printed in the pigment 'Prussian Blue' [Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃], also known as Berlin Blue and, occasionally, as Parisian Blue. It is an iron compound and was probably invented by the German chemist and colourman Heinrich Diesbach in Berlin in 1706 (hence the name). At the time he was working and experimenting with the alchemist Johann Konrad Dippel.  Prussian Blue is often considered the first 'modern' colour, i.e. anorganic and synthetically produced and was a good alternative to the expensive pigment mineral pigment ultramarine. The earliest example of Prussian blue used in oil painting is believed to be The Entombment of Christ, painted by either Adriaen or Pieter van der Werff in 1709. Other early users were Canaletto and Watteau. 

Pieter or Adriaen van der Werff: Detail of  Entombment of Christ
(Picture Gallery, Sanssouci, Inv. No. GK I 10008) 

By the 1720s the pigment was widely available in Europe and was mentioned by the English chemist John Woodward in 1726. From then on it was used in painting as well as as an architectural colour in the production of block-printed wallpaper.

Prussian Blue is found in some wall decorations of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton dating from the early nineteenth century.

Prussian blue block-printed wallpaper  in the Banqueting Room of the Royal Pavilion.

Free lecture at University of Sussex on Languages of Colour anthology 20 November 2012

I will be talking (I prefer that to calling it lecturing) about the joy of editing the recent Frogmore anthology Languages of Colour. Details below, all welcome:

Tuesday 20 November:

Languages of Colour

17:30 until 18:30
University of Sussex

Language Learning Centre, Arts A
Speaker: Alexandra Loske
Part of the series: SCLS Language and Culture series

Alexandra Loske recently edited and published an anthology entitled Languages of Colour, comprising poetry, prose, critical writing and art work on the theme of colour. The title might suggest a discussion of linguistic aspects of colour, but in this context 'languages' stands for the many different approaches and attitudes to colour and how colour is used as a tool in various art forms and disciplines, just as actual languages vary and interact with each other. In this lecture art historian and erstwhile linguist Alexandra Loske will talk about the idea, concept and inspiration behind the anthology, the selection and commissioning of material, and observations on the theme of language, colour, poetry and art made during the editing process.

Alexandra Loske is a doctoral researcher at the department of Art History at the University of Sussex and is currently investigating the use of colour in the interiors of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. She also has a background in languages and linguistics and is the managing editor of the Frogmore Press.

All that glitters might be silver .. and other pieces I have written recently

I have been busy guest-blogging elsewhere and some of the posts had a colour theme, so I will shamelessly link them to my own blog:

Here is a piece I wrote a while ago for a museum journal that is sadly no longer produced in print, but I thought it deserved to see the light of day somewhere, so it went on the official Royal Pavilion and Museums blog. It focuses on early reactions to and descriptions of the Royal Pavilion in small handbooks, of the type a reasonably well-off visitor to Brighton would have bought on a visit in the 1820s. The interior of the Pavilion was deemed important enough to include engraved plates (some of them coloured) showing some of the rooms in the handbooks:

 “It enchants the senses, and excites…” 

19th Century Reactions to the Interior of the Royal Pavilion

 

http://rpmcollections.wordpress.com/2012/08/03/19th-century-reactions-to-the-interior-of-the-royal-pavilion/

Coloured plate in a handbook of Brighton from 1825

The next one, also on the Royal Pavilion blog, is about Princess Charlotte's silver wedding dress from 1816 (currently on display at the Royal Pavilion) and her father's fondness for silvered surfaces in the decorative scheme of the Royal Pavilion:

All that glitters might be silver…..in the Royal Pavilion

 

http://rpmcollections.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/all-that-glitters-might-be-silver-in-the-royal-pavilion/

Silver wall decorations in the Banqueting of the Royal Pavilion

Charlotte's wedding dress from 1816

From here I jump forward by a whole century: A brief cameo of the artist couple Dod and Ernest Procter, inspired by my most recent curatorial project, a small exhibition about the life and work of the composer Frederick Delius, which was on display at the Royal Albert Hall during the Proms 2012. One of the key objects was a rarely seen portrait of Delius by Ernest Procter, which is a larger version of the one on permanent display in the National Portrait Gallery.

 

From Delius to Dod Procter

http://rpmcollections.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/from-delius-to-dod-procter/

Frederick Delius by Ernest Procter, 1929, on display at the Royal Albert Hall

Dod Procter, Early Morning, 1927
 © Brighton Museum & Art Gallery

 

And lastly, a first mention of a lecture I will give on Tuesday 20 November at the University of Sussex, about editing the anthology Languages of Colour:

http://frogmore-jp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/poems-from-russia-sasha-dugdale-and.html

Temperamental Roses: On the beauty of colour circles

On the occasion of the imminent publication of my anthology on the theme of colour and colour theory here is an extract from it. I have been working very closely with the cover artist David J Markham, who was commissioned to come up with a contemporary take on the Goethe/Schiller circle from 1799. This short piece includes David's comments on the commission.

'Languages of Colour', a collection of writings and artwork on the subject of colour and colour theory, will be published on 31 May 2012 by The Frogmore Press.
90 pages, 20 colour illustrations, more than 30 contributors.

ISBN 978-0-9570688-0-3

£10 incl. postage if ordered directly through the Frogmore Press.

The cover is also available as a high quality Curwen Studio print, signed by both the artist and the editor. Limited edition of 12. £95 plus postage.

TEMPERAMENTAL ROSES

On the beauty of colour circles

 The image on the cover of this anthology was inspired by a colour circle from 1799, the result of an inebriated and excited exchange about colour between Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Here the two German poets align colours with the traditional four temperaments choleric, sanguine, melancholy and phlegmatic. In an even earlier sketch Goethe assigns sensual and character qualities to colours, such as good, powerful and gentle. These aspects of Goethe’s research are later explored comprehensively in the didactic part of the 1810 edition of his Theory of Colours, arguably the most comprehensive — and criticised — work on colour theory published in the 19^th century. Just as this colour circle developed from a conversation so did the image for the cover of this book. Here is the artist David J Markham’s account of it:

“After submitting work for the publication I struck up a conversation with Alexandra Loske about the design for the cover. As the conversation ebbed and flowed Alexandra brought to my attention the Goethe/Schiller ‘Temperament Rose’ from 1799. I think we reached the conclusion simultaneously to create a modern interpretation. I was struck by the beauty of the original circle. What I've tried to do is put a new spin on the circle that has a bearing on the original, the role of the target in art and the interpretation of what became a symbol of a 1960s youth movement.  The original circle is paler and less conspicuous than my interpretation. I wanted to generate a bright image that was dynamic and embraced colour, while shadowing the original copy and retaining the words in the correct boxes. Jasper Johns and Peter Blake both found inspiration from targets and this is how the colour circle emerged for me. Alexandra’s location near Brighton conjured images of the Mod movement and their use of the target. Isn't it strange how a target can one minute represent the RAF and then the next a youth movement? Same colours — just a different emotional and ideological attachment. That’s the story of how a circle became a target.”

Goethe/Schiller: The Temperament Rose, 1799
    © Klassik-Stiftung Weimar 

Throughout history writers on colour have attempted to visualise and schematise the order and arrangement of colour. In many cases the result is a circular shape, sometimes based on overlapping triangular shapes which denote the three primary and three secondary colours. Even Newton, who in his Opticks from 1704 eschews a symmetrical order, proposes a colour circle, which he duly cuts into uneven cake slices to represent his seven prismatic colours in accordance with musical scales. Newton’s illustrations were about colour but not in colour, but the later eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw a surge in publications on colour theory, many of which included hand-coloured illustrations.

Moses Harris

In 1766 the English entomologist Moses Harris offered two detailed colour circles, a re-interpretation of Newton’s prismatic order with a total number of eighteen named tints in each circle. Advances in printing generally and lithographic methods in particular resulted in a wave of stunningly beautiful illustrations in the field of colour, culminating perhaps in 1810 in a coloured etching created by the German Romantic painter Philipp Otto Runge, showing us four views of a three-dimensional colour sphere. Flower shapes, and roses in particular, are often alluded to in title and design, as is the human eye; the latter certainly by this point seen as the place of perception, of visual decoding, and perhaps as a gateway to understanding, as well as to the soul. At one point Goethe designed a small vignette showing his own eye under a rainbow.

Philipp Otto Runge

In England one of the most productive colour theorists of the early to mid-19^th century was George Field, who experimented with star and flower-like shapes, always based on a circular order. The only known female colour theorist of that time was the now largely forgotten flower painter Mary Gartside, apart from including a standard colour circle in her books An Essay on Light and Shade (1805) and Essay on a New Theory of Colour (1808), also created colour blots for each of her proposed harmonious colour arrangements. These blots, although faintly resembling flower heads, are of a stunning abstract beauty. This was perhaps unintended but might have influenced artists such as J.W. Turner. In the early 1840s Turner painted two canvasses with the title Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory). These swirling and almost completely abstract compositions with their direct reference to colour theory bear a striking resemblance to Gartside’s colour blots. 

Mary Gartside

This is perhaps an indication that artists tend to think of colour and light as circular or concentric in structure and shape, but could also highlight the close connection between colour, vision and the human eye, as well as expressing notions of completeness and perfection. With scientific knowledge increasing in the later 19^th century, representations of colour order change dramatically, but among artists and ‘colourmen’ (producers and suppliers of pigments and paints) the circle, or variations on it, survives, as can be seen in the example of a standard painting manual from the early 20^th century at the beginning of this book. By commissioning a modern take on a colour circle from 1799 I was hoping to continue the tradition of beautiful, if often highly unscientific, representations of colour.

Monochrome palate cleansing and a plate-ful of colour

Colour pattern plate, hand-painted china, based on a 19th original by Müller & Hennig, Dresden

I have veered away from colour a little and spent the last few months curating an exhibition at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery of monochrome etching by a contemporary of Whistler: Robert Goff - An Etcher in the Wake of Whistler. Leafing through and comparing hundreds of copper plate etching has made me quite sensitive to different shades of sepia and how the colour of paper used affects the overall appearance of an etching. Dealing with these prints was also a bit of a palate cleanser and whetted by appetite for writing up my doctoral thesis on the use of colour in Brighton's Royal Pavilion. The process of curating this exhibition was not without colourful incidences though. The first set of promotional photographs taken by the University of Sussex were very nice I thought (see example below). However, there was a second photoshoot where we tried to add a splash of colour into the photographs and it was suggested I should wear a colourful top and large jewellery. I can't show these pictures yet as they will be used elsewhere first, but I found myself chuckling at the thought of having to upstage the etchings. 




Symphony in black and sepia



'Temperament rose' colour circle
by Goethe and Schiller, 1799

Meanwhile, I have entered the final stages of editing the anthology Languages of Colour and will soon have to start talking to printers. The fabulous cover art by David J Markham, a new interpretation of Goethe and Schiller's Temperamenten-Rose, will be shown here first.

2012 started very colourful for me with an unexpected and very generous belated Christmas present that deserves mentioning here. I had had my eye on the porcelain plate with colour samples, seen at the top of this blog post, for a while. It is a reproduction of a 19th century ceramic paints sample plate, available from the oh-so-wonderful-and-high-quality-but-pricey-things retailer Manufactum. The colours are scientifically arranged colours made by Müller & Hennig, a Dresden china paint firm whose products were used by the Meissen china factory. The shades are numbered but, according to Manufactum, the key to this colours and numbers code has been lost. When I have a bit of time I might try and research this particular arrangement. The plate is a thing of beauty and sits on my desk (under a monochrome Goff etching) and I hope it will keep me going in the next few months when I will be writing the thesis. It is hand-painted, which of course means the pigments are not mixed into the clay or under a glaze, so liable to scratching, but the colours won't fade.

I have seen a couple of original colour sample plates from the 19th and early 20th century. There is at least one in the V&A (Stoke-on-Trent, 1900, see below) and a couple of years ago I saw one by Staffordshire chemist and colour manufacturer Robert Gordon Emery at an antiques fair. The price tag was in the region of £2000 and it appears to have found a buyer. When created these plates for not meant to be mass-produced and sold, they were merely colour charts for internal use and promotional purposes. I am of course coveting an original sample plate, but for now the Manufactum reproduction will do very nicely indeed.

Staffordshire potteries colour sample plate
Signed, inscribed and dated:
Robert Emery, Cobridge, Stoke on Trent, 1919

Plate of white earthenware, painted with samples of enamel colours numbered in gold, glazed by W.J. Furnival, made in Stoke-on-trent, 1900. V&A

Probably best not to put any of these in the dishwasher.

John Piper in Kent and Sussex and Charles Lock Eastlake at the National Gallery

John Piper: Brighton Pavilion, 1938

I have just returned from an intensive 3-week trip around the country, visiting over 30 historic country houses. I found good examples for the use of silver in interior decoration and some exciting colour samples in lesser known John Nash buildings. Of this more in a little while.

This post is just to draw attention to two colour-related exhibitions I must not miss and would like to recommend. They neatly span the 19th and 20th century. I have not been to either of them but will go soon.

The National Gallery, London, has put on an exhibition celebrating the life and work of its first Director, Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865), who translated the didactic part of Goethe's Zur Farbenlehre into English, published in 1840 as Theory of Colours .  He was a friend of Turner, whose heavily annotated copy of Eastlake's translation I have mentioned before, and later corresponded with Arthur Schopenhauer, discussing colour theory.
 Art for the Nation: Sir Charles Eastlake at the National Gallery

27 July – 30 October 2011

Admission free

Charles Lock Eastlake (1793–1865)

  

At the marvellous Towner Gallery in Eastbourne you can currently see John Piper in Kent and Sussex, which should be a feast for the eyes.

John Piper in Kent & Sussex

2 July – 25 September 2011

Masterpieces and hidden treasures tell story of John Piper’s love of the local landscape.

On my tour of historic country houses I didn't get to see much 20th century and contemporary art, but two small John Piper drawings at Chatsworth were one of the highlights on the trip for me. I love the way Piper interprets architectural colour in his collages and paintings. His palette is strong, with stark contrasts, and more often than not juxtaposed with a dark, threatening sky or background. His depictions of bombed out building during and after the war are particularly moving, with bright primary colours oozing out of darkness and destruction.



John Piper's baptistry window at Coventry Cathedral

He was later chosen by Sir Basil Spence (architect of my Alma Mater the University of Sussex) to design the large stained glass Baptistry window in Spence's new Coventry Cathedral.



Here at Sussex University he made a long rectangular tapestry for Spence's Meeting House (a particular interest of mine). His love for abstract colour design doesn't work quite as well in this particular tapestry (a much better example can be found at Chichester Cathedral) but he nicely mirrored the colour scheme of the surrounding glass in this circular building.

Interior of Basil Spence's Meeting House chapel at the University of Sussex, 1966 

The tapestry is currently being cleaned, while the Meeting House is undergoing major restoration.