The Value of Color — Kyra Wells Creative

Within the walls of the Harvard Art Museum, the world's pigments are collected, cataloged, and guarded by scientists and historians studying the history of our world through color.

The collection was assembled by the late Edward Waldo Forbes, former Director of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and is overseen by Narayn Khandekar, senior conservation scientist and director of the Straus Center.

“People love color. Even the earliest people making cave paintings chose not to use just charcoal; they used red ochres, yellow ochres. So color has been important to people right from the start—and still is today.”

— Narayan Khandekar

The collection is far greater than your standard reds or blues, consisting of around 2,700 rare and unusual colors that date back over several decades. Pigments with names such as Dragon’s Blood (no dragons included), Pink Earth, Maple Soot, and Mars Yellow line the shelves. Many of them are toxic and require great care in handling. One such example is a traditional Emerald Green, which has an arsenic center! Certain other pigments are so reactive, that artists had to plan their compositions around which colors wouldn’t ruin the piece if they interacted with each other.

The rarest pigment on hand may be an original ball of Indian yellow. While you may have heard that name before in your paint pallet; the first version was made from the dried urine from cows fed only mango leaves.

The strangest example is mummy. Not an ivory, like you might expect, but an earthy brown powder made from mummies and used for medicinal purposes. It was applied topically or mixed into drinks and it seems there was nothing it couldn’t cure; epilepsy, bruises, blood clots, and it was even used as toothpaste. Since apothecaries at the time also dealt with pigments, the powder found its way onto artist’s pallets. Also known as Egyptian Brown or Caput Mortum (dead man’s head), the pigment was not used for long since both mummies and the pigment lacked permanence.

A handful of brown pigments on display | Photo: Caitlin Cunningham Photography

Today, with neon paint tubes lining your local Michaels, it may seem strange that in the early days of paint and dyes, color was reserved for the upper class. Metal paint tubes only came into the picture in 1841. Before ready-made paint was available, most pigments were made by hand by the artist or procured, often for exorbitant prices. Peasant classes had access to earth tones while the bright blues and purples were harder to come by and therefore reserved for the wealthy. If you’ve ever wondered why the Virgin Mary is always painted a striking blue, the answer is simple: Lapis Lazuli was the most expensive pigment, and she deserved it!

While some pigments were obvious, others were created entirely by accident. For example, in 1856 William Perkin, an 18-year-old scientist in London, spent his free time attempting to synthesize quinine from coal tar to create a cure for malaria, which he unfortunately never accomplished. Instead, however, he accidentally happened upon a particular shade of purple. His chemical experiments created what we know now as mauve. While most scientists would have thrown away the muddy failure, Perkins was a creative at heart. He dipped a piece of silk into the former tar and realized he’d created a washproof dye.

(If you’re been reading all of this wondering what on earth coal tar is, you can find it in many modern advances such as hair dyes, chemotherapy, fragrances, and artificial sweeteners.)

Mauve was slow to catch on at first due to the high cost to create it. It took 100 pounds of coal to produce 10 ounces of coal tar, which yielded only a quarter ounce of mauve. That changed when Napoleon III’s extravagant wife decided that the color perfectly matched her eyes. Over in England, Queen Victoria took note and soon all of the most fashionable women were wearing mauve. As with all trends, the color peaked then declined, and soon even Oscar Wilde stated in The Portrait of Dorian Gray, “Never trust a woman who wears mauve.”

Not only can the history of pigments date a painting, but it can also help uncover forgeries.

Up until the 20th century, lead white had been the dominant white pigment, beloved by artists such as Vermeer and Van Gogh. It was the perfect white– resilient, bright, warm, and deadly. While nothing truly compares to lead white, the less toxic zinc white was introduced in the 18th century and Titanium white became the norm in the 1920s.

It’s that very Titanium White that uncovered the most notorious art forger of the 20th century, Wolfgang Beltrachi. He painted countless paintings in the style of les Fauves (think Matisse). Beltrachi and his wife then sold them off as the undocumented work of various European artists. It was a brilliant plan until he ran out of his favorite zinc white while forging a Heinrich Campendonk. In a pinch, he bought a new tube that unknowingly contained traces of titanium dioxide, the base for Titanium White. When the painting sold for 2.8 million euros in 2006, it underwent a chemical analysis that revealed the titanium, which would have been impossible for a painting created in 1914. So, no matter how good your forgeries are, your pigments can give you away.

One of the younger colors in the collection is Vantablack. which is one of the darkest man-made materials that absorbs virtually all light. This means when it is applied to an object, the human eye can’t fully perceive its surface. A sphere will look like a two-dimensional circle, and a crumpled piece of foil will look like a flat piece of paper. It’s mind-bending, frustrating, and fascinating all at the same time!

There are so many hidden stories behind our favorite shades, dyes, and hues. Each pigment within the Forbes Collection paints its own unique picture and comes alive, providing vivid context to our past and future. Through the ever-growing catalog, we can piece together the history of our world in full color.

You can learn more about the pigments at https://harvardartmuseums.org/article/pigment-collection-colors-all-aspects-of-the-museums, take an audio tour of the collection, or see it from afar in person at the Harvard Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Recommended Reading

The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair

An Atlas of Rare & Familiar Color, The Harvard Art Museums Forbes Pigment Collection

Werner's Nomenclature of Colours by Abraham Gottlob Werner and Patrick Syme

Field Notes