Impressionists' Palettes of Light

Railing Patricia

The French Impressionist painters discovered new means for painting light – they used a "solar palette", the pigments matched to the colours the eyes see. They are the colours of a ray of light. This little book reproduces palettes by 8 of the plein-air painters – Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, Signac, and Van Gogh. It describes the pigments they used, and includes short excerpts by the scientists whose work was the foundation of the new painting – complementary colours, optical mixing, and the pigment-colour correspondences.

About the Author

Patricia Railing (PhD, University of Paris, Sorbonne, Philosophy of Art) is an art historian specialising in both the Russian Avant-Garde and the history of artists' pigments. She has compiled this collection, Colour Palettes, from treatises, 1st century B.C. to the 19th century, which culminates in the Documentary Dictionary of Historical Pigments.

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