Examining How the Materiality of Blue Pigments Has Influenced Paintings in Western European Art

Throughout history, colour has always played a crucial role in art. Today’s art works are no exception. They can be made from a vast variety of colours that vary in hue, brightness and saturation levels. The almost unlimited number of colours is reflected in the palette of pixels for computer screens, the dyes for clothing and the pigments for fine art. Given the availability and low cost of today’s colours, it is easy to forget that for most of history, the substances that provided these colours played a significant role in society and influenced how art was created. The materials behind the colours mattered.

This essay explores the topic of colour’s materiality, which is ‘… the way in which it was produced, exchanged, and used by artisans, artists, and craftspersons [1].’ It describes how the physical properties of colourants, their supply chain, and their manufacture have influenced art. The literature related to the materiality of colour is vast, so the coverage of the topic has been limited in multiple ways.

This essay covers just blue. Each major colour has its own rich story of development, but within the context of supply and demand of colour and colourants, blue holds special value. Multiple polls taken over decades in different countries have indicated that blue is the favourite colour of most people. Its use has become ubiquitous, yet in Western European art, blue became popular only beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries [2].

This essay also emphasises pigments rather than dyes. These two kinds of colourants are often assumed to be the same; however, they are, in fact, different. Pigments tend to have large particles that are suspended in a medium that dries as a surface layer, whereas dyes have very small particles that bond with textile fibres at a molecular level [3]. Dyes are mentioned here to emphasise the growing popularity of blue and its increasing multiple uses as a colourant. An increase in popularity and multiple usages led to an increased demand for blue pigments.

The discussion of blue pigments is limited to ultramarine, Prussian blue, synthetic ultramarine and Phthalocyanine blue. These four were selected as they are the varieties of blue that are most representative of blue’s use over the time period covered for this study. Other pigments, such as azurite, smalt and Cobalt blue are mentioned to provide a context of comparisons with the selected pigments.

Finally, this essay is further limited to Western European paintings and focuses mainly on the period beginning from the twelfth century, when both the use of blue colour and records of blue pigments become more prolific.

Bearing in mind the constraints placed on its discussion, this essay supports a general aim to answer how the materiality of colourants has influenced art. Its goals for achieving that aim involve showing examples of how the materiality of ultramarine, Prussian blue, synthetic ultramarine and Phthalocyanine blue influenced paintings in Western European art.

Ultramarine: A Prestigious Blue That Set the Bar of Expectation in Art

Ultramarine is the most expensive pigment that ever achieved widespread use. Its optical qualities would remain unmatched throughout most of history [4]. Its visual qualities and great expense meant the precious pigment’s use was carefully prescribed and often limited to iconographic subjects in religious painting. For centuries, ultramarine set the bar of expectations for all other blue pigments and created a demand for a cheaper alternative. Even when its synthetic successor was discovered in the nineteenth century, some critics seemed nostalgic for qualities of the natural variety [5].

Ultramarine is derived from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli (Figure 1), which is a rock comprising multiple impurities that gave it a heavenly quality. Pliny the Elder described it as a ‘fragment from the starry vault of heaven [6].’ The calcite impurity gave the rock clouds, the pyrite impurity gave the twinkling stars and likely either the mineral lazurite or haüyne gave the bright blue sky [7]. It was the constituent mineral components responsible for the blue sky colour which were purified to become ultramarine.

Figure 1. A specimen of lapis lazuli, the mineral from which ultramarine is derived [8].

Ultramarine’s earliest use in Western European paintings appears in works made during the eighth century on the walls of the Church of San Saba in Rome [9]. From that period onwards, ultramarine shared the medieval palette of blue painting pigments with the mineral azurite. Ultramarine exhibited greater brilliance and permanence than azurite, which tended to turn green when it was exposed to air. Often they were used in combination, with the more common azurite serving as underpaint for the rarer ultramarine [4].

Ultramarine’s great cost arose from an expensive supply chain and a difficult manufacturing process. Most of the lapis lazuli brought to Europe from ancient times until the eighteenth century came from one place: Sar-e-Sang, a settlement with a few mineshafts located in a mountainous area found along part of the modern border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan [5]. The mines are located in a remote region whose harsh weather meant that they were only open about four months a year [10].

Lapis lazuli mined at Sar-e-Sang was transported across Asia through a network of intermediate merchants who would add a markup cost [10]. The blue rocks would eventually come to Syria and then be loaded onto boats bound for Venice. There, pigment merchants would compete with jewelers and physicians to acquire it [11].

The impurities that made lapis lazuli resemble a starry night also made it very difficult to process into ultramarine. The rock would be repeatedly pulverized and sifted into powder. The powder would be made into a dough of waxes and kneaded in vats of lye solution. The process could take several months to complete [7].

The expense of ultramarine was the result of a scarce source material, a laborious laborious manufacturing process, and further markup costs as it spread westward from Venice. The pigment would become even more valuable in Europe when the Christian Church created a new demand for a brilliant blue colour.

Pastoreau observes that in Europe, the colour blue had marginal importance in art until the Early Middle Ages. However, demand began to surge by the twelfth century, when the Church adopted the convention that blue would be the colour to show the Virgin Mary’s robes [2].

Figure 2. The Wilton Diptych, made between 1395–1399. The painting shows the use of ultramarine in the blue robes of the Virgin Mary and the surrounding angels [12].

The popularity of ultramarine’s vivid blue hue extended from the Church to aristocrats who aspired to the same level of importance. France’s King Louis VII adopted blue to represent his dynasty. Other nobles followed his lead in a trend that is reflected in the increased use of blue in heraldry signs between the mid-twelfth and early fifteenth centuries [2]. The popularity of the hue across high society impacted the pigment’s cost.

Although this essay focuses mainly on blue pigments used in painting, it is important to acknowledge how the colour blue was being popularised in other areas of art and fashion. Blue had become a featured colour in stained-glass, such as windows at the Chartres Cathedral [2]. As the sun shone through the glass, a luminous blue would enter the daily lives of worshippers.

In fashion, sumptuary laws that sought to restrict who could wear what colour did not put emphasis on blue [2]. The lack of restrictions on blue helped enable the colour to become more popular. In the textile markets that supported fashion, blue displaced red as the most popular colour in European society. The market power of merchants selling red dye made from the madder plant would be displaced by that of merchants selling blue dye made from the woad plant. By the seventeenth century, locally grown woad used in dying would be replaced by foreign grown indigo. The favouring of blue pigment shown in religious paintings was reinforced by the favouring of blue dyes shown in clothing [2].

The preferred pigment used to paint the Virgin Mary’s robes was ultramarine. Whereas the alternative choice azurite produced a blue with an indelible green undertone, ultramarine created a blue with a purple undertone and provided a hue that was associated with divinity [7]. Although ultramarine was associated with great status, its precious nature came with drawbacks.

Ultramarine was so expensive that its use was often specified in artist contracts. Some of Michelangelo’s works such as ‘The Entombment of Christ’ may have remained unfinished because he was waiting for his patron to obtain a batch of it [13]. Artists such as Dürer bitterly complained about the cost of ultramarine. Artemesia Gentileschi was once threatened with a freeze on her possessions to compel her to pay for a batch of the pigment she had acquired [4]. Vermeer spent so much money acquiring ultramarine that he drove his family into debt [11].

The scarce supply of blue pigment and its great demand made the art community receptive to acquiring a much cheaper alternative to either ultramarine or azurite. That demand would be partly satisfied with the arrival of Prussian blue.

Prussian Blue: Democratising Access to a Strong Cheap Blue Pigment

Prussian blue influenced Western European art mainly because it provided a blue pigment that was stable, inexpensive and abundantly available. It was the first modern synthetic pigment, and it relied more on manufacturing expertise than it did on rare, distant natural resources. Once knowledge of its making had been published, an emerging community of manufacturers would strive for product consistency. In turn, artists who were seeking a more affordable blue pigment could now avail themselves of pigments such as azurite.

Prussian blue’s widespread availability democratised the use of blue in paintings beyond religious themes. It would establish a template for the innovation of future pigments. As its prolific use spread to applications beyond art paintings, it made the transition from being a painting pigment valued by artists to being a chemical substance valued by industrial and national interests [14].

In the early eighteenth century, the demand for alternative sources of blue pigment would be met by the outcome of an accidental discovery that occurred in the making of a red pigment. The story of Prussian blue’s origin carries a certain mystique in art history. It was told decades after it happened and scholars have had to guess at this pigment’s exact date of discovery. Estimates for the precise date are between 1704 and 1708 [15].

In the story, Diesbach, a colour-maker, had discovered he had no potash for a batch of Florence Lake pigment he was making. He acquired additional potash from the alchemist Dippel, but did not realise the potash had been mixed with ox blood. The red mix unexpectedly turned blue. Diesbach and Dippel were able to reproduce the same result without knowing exactly how it worked [16]. The underlying chemistry responsible for making Prussian blue, a substance also known by the chemical formula iron(III) hexacyanoferrate(II), would not be fully understood until 1977 [10].

Initially developed as an artistic painting pigment, the use of Prussian blue spread across Europe quickly. The first reference to Prussian blue occurred in 1708. Further records show that by 1716, it had become available in Switzerland, France, Austria, Italy, Russia and Armenia [15]. Its spread across Europe was reflected in its spread across the painter’s canvas. The earliest trace of the pigment in painting was in the Virgin Mary’s veil and parts of the sky of Pieter van der Werff’s 1709 painting ‘Entombment of Christ’. By approximately 1710, Prussian court artists such as Pesne, Gericke, and Weidemann were using it in their works. During the same time, French artists Fragonard and Perroneau were also using it. In works dated between 1719 and 1723, Italian artist Canaletto was using it to create blue skies [17].

Empowered by a cheap and abundant blue pigment, artists could experiment using blue beyond religious themes. They could go beyond the blue veil of the Virgin Mary and give the colour broader meanings. However, the quality and price of batches of Prussian blue varied considerably. A lack of a consistent product may have been partly hindered by the secretive nature of its making.

Shortly after the discovery of Prussian blue, Dippel moved to Amsterdam while Diesbach remained in Berlin. Each inventor had his own secretive understanding of a process he could repeat but not understand. The recipe for making Prussian blue remained a secret until 1723, when the apothecary Caspar Neumann reverse-engineered the process. He shared that knowledge with the English naturalist John Woodward, who then published the recipe in 1724 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

With the trade secret of Prussian blue production disclosed, multiple colour manufacturers could then innovate and compete from the same baseline process [18]. Through various trial-and-error efforts of making new batches and testing them in art, the pigment quality improved. Its desirable characteristics were harnessed and its drawbacks were diminished.

Prussian blue’s main desirable properties were its intense blue colour and its ability to enhance other pigments. It was non-toxic, which appealed to artists who found themselves licking the ends of their paint brushes to mould them into the most useful shape [16]. However, it reacted poorly with alkalis and was not suitable for frescos. It also faded in light, resulting in undesirable effects.

The evolving manufacture of Prussian blue encouraged a separation of concerns between those who made the pigment and those who applied it in art works. The methods of producing Prussian blue were complicated, had many factors to consider apart from the artist’s palette, and encouraged specialisation of skills. As Guichard notes: ‘Methods of preparing Prussian blue differed, but in general it was a lengthy process comprising around forty separate operations, conducted over two days, and requiring several ingredients, utensils, and large quantities of boiling water’ [14]. Manufacturers tried to substitute ingredients to lower environmental pollution and other costs. For example, they tried to substitute ox blood gathered from abattoirs with what they thought was a cleaner source of animal ingredients such as deer antlers [14]. Within the mind of a single artist, there would likely have been many business and engineering concerns to compete for their attention with the concerns of making a new art work.

Many artists of the time were involved with producing their own colourants and applying them to the canvas. However, as both the production refinements of Prussian blue and the techniques of its application in paintings became more sophisticated and nuanced, it helped encourage a dialogue amongst specialist groups such as chemists, colour-makers and artists. Guichard suggests that fluid dialogue between chemists and artists may have happened because groups of both worked in the Louvre, with only a door separating the library used by the scientists from the artists’ rooms [14].

Guichard describes how the influences may have been expressed by interactions between the producers and consumers of the pigment. For example, the French chemist Claude-Joseph Geoffroy had concluded that the tendency for Prussian blue to turn yellow over time was due to acids. He therefore advised painters not to use acids on their paintings and to protect the pigment with varnish [14]. This is an example of how manufacturers could help the artists just as the materiality of the pigment could influence the outcome of the art works.

Artists could influence the manufacturers as well. Jacques-Louis David produced many works that used Prussian blue, such as ‘The Portrait of Jacobus Blauw’ (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Jacques-Louis David’s ‘Portrait of Jacob Blauw’, from 1795. The painting features Prussian blue [19].

Some of David’s supplies were provided by the pastel-maker Jean-Nicolas Vernezobre. Years after the painting was made, Vernezobre’s son, who also became a pastel-maker, would contact the government and ask it to support his efforts to improve manufacturing pigments. In a letter written to the Minister of the Interior, Victor-Noël Vernezobre asks for money to create ‘new colours, beautiful enough to replace those that come to us from the Indies and abroad at excessive prices’. In that letter, he tries to show the credibility of his request by drawing on his father’s reputation for supplying artists such as David [14]. This provides an example of not just how the materiality of a pigment influenced the artists but how the reputation of the artists could influence the reputation of pigment manufacturers.

Letters such as Vernezobre’s caught the attention of France, which was dealing with its losses in the Revolutionary Wars and the loss of some of its colonies. The country was becoming aware of its dependence on fragile foreign supply chains for important imports, so it began providing incentives to scientists to create alternative products [14]. France regarded local industrial innovation as a national priority.

In 1803, the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale hosted a competition amongst manufacturers to produce the best French-made Prussian blue. The Parisian brothers Michel and Pierre Gohin placed first and won both a medal and prize money. Their nephew Louis-Julien Gohin grew increasingly wealthy from making Prussian blue. He commissioned the artist Louis-Léopold Boilly to paint at least two portraits of the Gohin family. In Boilly’s ‘Madame Louis-Julien Gohin, Her Son, and Her Stepdaughters’ (Figure 4), Guichard observes how so much of the background and clothes are painted blue — the colour that partly gave the family their wealth. She speculates that future chemical analysis could reveal that the blue paint was from Gohin’s Prussian blue factory [14].

Figure 4. Louis-Léopold Boilly’s ‘Madame Louis-Julien Gohin, Her Son and Her Stepdaughters’, made between 1800–1802 [20].

This example shows how the directions of influence between the materiality of a pigment and the communities it serves can blur. Diesbach’s discovery would one day motivate its adoption by artists such as David. Reputations of artists like him would be used to promote improvements to manufacturing. Industrialists who grew rich from producing Prussian blue would commission artists to capture their fame and status with references to the kinds of colourants that made it happen.

The story of Prussian blue is often over-simplified as to how a new synthetic pigment suddenly became widely produced by manufacturers and accepted by the art community. Guichard describes events involving the chemist Geoffroy, the pastel-maker Vernezobre, the industrialists Gohins and the artist Boilly to show more nuanced relationships beyond just sellers and buyers of colourants [14].

With the manufacture of Prussian blue becoming an increasingly specialised activity, the focus shifted from it being merely a painting pigment to being a more widely important chemical compound. In the early 1800s, the Government of France was concerned about a shortage of indigo. Consequently, it offered a reward of 25,000 francs to manufacturers who could instead adapt Prussian Blue from a pigment to a dye. Subsequent innovations would lead to the colourant being used as a dye for silk and wool [15].

Other scientific innovations occurred which turned some of Prussian blue’s weaknesses into strengths. The English chemist Sir John Herschel took advantage of Prussian blue’s light-fading properties to make what would become cyanotype photography: objects set on light sensitive paper containing the pigment would remain white while the rest of the image would appear blue. Cyanotype paper would eventually evolve into blueprints that captured technical designs [15].

Viewing Prussian blue as a chemical rather than as a pigment invited manufacturers to imagine the material’s broader use. Incentives such as France’s national contests encouraged competition and scientific innovation. As the pigment’s uses widened, the research costs which would have once been borne by artists seeking a cheaper blue could be borne by a wider pool of stakeholders concerned with making other products.

The optical properties of Prussian blue, its cost and widespread availability eventually led to the declining use of azurite. Yet the vaunted qualities of the other main mineral pigment used at that time, ultramarine, would persist despite the development of Prussian blue and later Cobalt blue [5]. This last major ancient source of blue would diminish in common use with the advent of synthetic ultramarine.

Synthetic Ultramarine: The Challenger for a Regal Pigment

Whereas the arrival of Prussian blue democratised the artists’ use of blues in general, the arrival of synthetic ultramarine democratised their use of a specific hue of blue that had long been associated with wealth and luxury. Many would embrace the new pigment, but others were more reluctant to acknowledge the comparable qualities of synthetic ultramarine over the natural variety.

By the early nineteenth century, France’s interest in developing new products for the nation included finding an alternative for natural ultramarine. In 1824, the Societé pour l’Encouragement d’Industrie held a contest to reward an inventor who could produce synthetic ultramarine [21]. Jean Baptiste Guimet and Christian Gmelin were candidates who created a controversy as to which of them developed the product first. Ultimately, Guimet was awarded the prize in 1828 but kept his process for making ultramarine confidential. Gmelin decided to publish his technique, which helped seed the ultramarine industry [21]. Synthetic ultramarine soon cost a tenth the price of natural ultramarine.

The synthetic pigment proved popular amongst generations of artists. Ingres, Monet, Cézanne, van Gogh, Renoir, Bracques, Seurat, and Mondrain all used it on their palettes [21]. van Gogh’s ‘A Wheat Field with Cypresses’ illustrates its use in the blue areas (Figure 5) [21].

Figure 5. Vincent van Gogh’s ‘A Wheatfield with Cypresses’ from 1889. The painting contains synthetic ultramarine [22].

Synthetic ultramarine provided a product with consistent qualities, a product comprised mainly of blue-bearing grains rather than one with mineral impurities derived from pulverised lapis lazuli. The French painter Jean Francois Leonor Mérimée claimed that synthetic ultramarine was ‘…identical in appearance and all other qualities as those manufactured from lapis lazuli’ [5].

Yet synthetic ultramarine also had drawbacks. Its production caused vast amounts of sulphur dioxide to be expelled through tall chimneys and create ultramarine tinting by factory vents. Some critics were sceptical about whether the new pigment could remain permanent.

Some sceptics, such as the colour-manufacturer George Field in 1835 and the chemist H.C. Standage in 1887, believed that synthetic ultramarine was unstable and would lose its hue as it aged. Other critics were more indirect in their criticism by holding to the superlatives of the natural variety. In 1883, the artist and author Laughton Osborn indicated that no other pigment matched natural ultramarine’s beauty and durability [5].

For some critics in the twentieth century, synthetic ultramarine was inferior to natural ultramarine precisely because the former lacked impurities that gave it character. In his book series ‘The Primary Colors’, author Alexander Theroux laments the loss of impurities found in natural ultramarine: ‘Old-fashioned blue, which had a dash of yellow in it … now seems often incongruous against newer, staring, overly luminous eye-killing shades’ [23].

Another artist from the twentieth century, Yves Klein, had the opposite concern about the brightness of the new pigment. According to Simpson, Klein thought synthetic ultramarine was ‘…dull and dark, lacking the luminosity of its organic predecessor’ [24].

Klein wanted to remedy this problem and recapture the magic of natural ultramarine as part of a homage to blue, a colour that to him represented a sense of freedom and infinite spaces [11]. His concerns were not so much about synthetic ultramarine itself but about the way its luminosity was dulled by paint medium fluids that bound the pigment particles together.

Klein researched and patented a new kind of blue paint with Edouard Adam, a colour-merchant who supplied artists such as Picasso, Braque and Matisse. Called International Klein Blue (IKB), the paint was made of synthetic ultramarine and a synthetic binder that retained the pigment’s radiance. Fox describes the effect of Klein’s paint as producing optical vibrations and an out-of-body experience [25].

The responses of critics such as Field, Standage, Osborn and artists such as Klein often show that subsequent synthetic pigments had to achieve advantages beyond just the low cost of acquiring them. For some artists, one quality that may have shone beyond a pigment’s brilliance was its associated nostalgia.

Appreciating how the materiality of blue pigments influenced art involves appreciating qualities of predecessor and successor products. Much as how Prussian blue displaced azurite and synthetic ultramarine displaced natural ultramarine, Phthalocyanine blue would come to displace Prussian blue.

Phthalocyanine Blue: Striving for Better Physical Properties

The advent of Phthalocyanine blue in 1928 has been regarded as one of the most significant advances in the development of artist pigments since the discovery of Prussian blue [26]. Prior to its synthesis, the main important blue pigments were synthetic ultramarine and Prussian blue [27]. In the current century, Phthalocyanine blue is the most important blue pigment for artist paints [28]. Currently more than five thousand variants of phthalocyanine pigment compounds have been synthesized [29].

The rise in popularity of Phthalocyanine blue is not so much about it having provided a cheap alternative to more expensive blues or a comparable alternative to an existing famous hue of blue. Instead, its popularity owes its appeal to other physical properties.

Whereas the origin of Prussian blue lies in an accidental discovery and the origin of synthetic ultramarine lies in an incentivized discovery, the origin of Phthalocyanine blue should perhaps be viewed as an incidental discovery. The general class of organic compounds known today as phthalocyanines was discovered in 1907, but its significance as a colourant was not appreciated at that time [30]. Years later, a Swiss pair of chemists discovered a copper-based phthalocyanine but did not have enough time to investigate it further. However, in 1928, Dunworth and Drescher accidentally discovered another copper-based phthalocyanine and patented it in 1929 [31].

The compound was marketed under different brand names: first as Monastral blue in 1936, Winsor blue in 1937, Hortensia blue in 1938 and Rembrandt blue in 1940. It became more popular after World War 2 and by 1960, the chemical compound ‘phthalocyanine’ was being used to label the product on artist paint tubes [28]. By 1970, its popularity exceeded that of Prussian blue, leading to the declining use of the first modern synthetic painting pigment [32]. Recent production estimates indicate that at least 60,000 tonnes of Phthalocyanine blue are produced each year [33].

Like Prussian blue, Phthalocyanine blue’s main use began as a painting pigment, but its application expanded as a chemical compound. Phthalocyanine blue’s properties have given it application in cancer therapies, photovoltaic cells and optical information storage systems [27].

Defeyt’s examination of artworks that contain PB15 (another term for Phthalocyanine blue) include artists such as: Magritte, Picasso, Newman, Le Corbusier, Lichtenstein, Pollock, Newman and Mondrian [28]. The Phthalocyanine blue stripe in Newman’s work (Figure 6) shows its use in abstract art, and the more recent Hall work shows its use in a landscape painting (Figure 7).

Figure 6. Barnett Newman’s Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, made in 1967. The painting contains a strip that contains Phthalocyanine blue pigment [34].

Figure 7. Artist Jo Hall’s ‘The Ceno near Bardi in November’ features Phthalocyanine blue [35].

Phthalocyanine blue’s success as a pigment has been due to its physical properties. It is non-toxic, resists oxidation, is stable at high temperatures, and is insoluble in water and most inorganic solvents. It produces an intense, fade-resistant colour that reflects light in the blue-green part of the spectrum [27]. Compared to other pigments, Phthalocyanine blue has twice the tinting strength of Prussian blue [36].

Discussion

This essay has profiled specific blue pigments in Western European fine art painting from the twelfth century to the present day. The evolving aspects of their physical properties, supply chain, and manufacturing have been responses to changing demands which have in turn been reflected in art works since the High Middle Ages.

The materiality of ultramarine was appreciated both on its own and in relation to very few alternative sources of blue that were available to painters. It provides a brilliant permanent colour, has the ability to tint other colours and is reasonably resistant to acids. Throughout most of history its brilliance and permanence were unequalled by other pigments such as azurite, smalt or synthetic pigments. Some of ultramarine’s value was derived from its parent rock lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone whose impurities seemed to be a metaphor for heavenly skies.

It is unclear whether the use of ultramarine drove or was driven by the emerging convention of depicting the robes of the Virgin Mary with its hue. Either way, the strong association helped make the already scarce commodity of ultramarine the most expensive pigment ever used across a range of artists. The pigment’s great cost conferred an element of status and luxury about it and was used in both iconographic and aristocratic painting projects.

Ultramarine’s impact on Western European paintings was that it was used sparingly on the top layers of paintings to signpost figures having religious significance. Its use broadened to include seas and skies in elite art projects. It also helped create an art community eager for blue alternatives.

Growing demand for more sources of blue pigment was addressed through the accidental discovery of Prussian blue between 1704 and 1708. It provided a cheap, non-toxic, permanent source of intense blue pigment. Its ubiquitous use was made possible by several factors: a supply chain of easily obtainable materials in Europe; a manufacturing method that was widely shared and used to seed a competitive market of manufacturers; government incentives to encourage innovation; and an emphasis on its role as a chemical compound that could be improved for multiple applications by scientific innovations.

The availability of this cheap and abundant pigment made blue more available to more artists. No longer constrained by the relatively higher prices of ultramarine and azurite, artists could expand their application of blue colour on the canvas beyond limited prescriptions set by elite ecclesiastical and aristocratic patrons. Not only could artists use the pigment to provide the colour blue, they could also afford to use more of it to help tint the colours of other pigments. From Canaletto’s Venetian sky backgrounds to the soft foliage of Fragonard’s works, blue would be applied by artists in new ways [37].

Prussian blue perhaps provided the most dramatic impact due to a price drop from its predecessor alternatives. Its pattern of development guided the development of future pigments in the laboratory. Newer synthetic pigments would need to demonstrate other qualities.

The advent of synthetic ultramarine in 1828 was about providing a substitute for a specific hue that was also associated with luxury, status and tradition. Its reception by critics were couched in comparisons between natural and synthetic varieties of the same substance. Its reception also suggested a nostalgia about what a regal shade of blue should provide.

The materiality of synthetic ultramarine allowed artists who coveted the hue of its expensive natural version to use it more widely in art. Its greater availability allowed artists such as Yves Klein to better celebrate the luminosity of a pigment in its purest form.

The development of Phthalocyanine blue a hundred years later was about creating an advantage through practical improvements in other physical properties. It reflected an almost pure range of blue light waves. It would not fade in light or discolour from acid as did Prussian blue. It had twice the tinting strength as synthetic ultramarine and it was stable at high temperatures. Its insolubility in water and most organic solvents made it more permanent than other pigments. By the twentieth century, industrial chemistry had matured and found new uses for the pigment.

Considered as a whole, the development of ultramarine, Prussian blue, synthetic ultramarine and Phthalocyanine blue shows how the material aspects of one pigment could displace another. Prussian blue replaced azurite and was itself in turn replaced by Phthalocyanine blue while ultramarine was replaced with synthetic ultramarine. As new pigments evolve, they will continue to shape and be shaped by art.

References

This article was adapted from an essay I wrote as part of an Art History project I did at Birkbeck, University of London. I’ve included references I used for it here.

[1] Feeser, Andrea, Daly Goggin, Maureen and Fowkes Tobin, Beth, “Introduction: The Value of Color”, The Materiality of Color: The Production, Circulation and Application of Dyes and Pigments, 1400–1800 (2012), p. 2

[2] Pastoureau, Michel. Blue: The history of a color. (Oxford: Princeton University Press), 2023, pp. 14, 49–64, 93

[3] MacDonald, Laurence E., In pursuit of color. Atelier Éditions, 2023, p.8

[4] The History of Art in Color, Chrysler Museum of Art, <https://chrysler.org/the-history-of-art-in-color-blue/>, accessed 31 October 2024

[5] Woodcock, Sally and Emma Jansson, ‘The most ‘azure blue’: the youth and old age of ultramarine’, Hamilton Kerr Institute, 8 (2018), pp. 111–120.

[6] Pujazon Patron, Ernesto Carlos, Jose Domingo Elias, ‘The conspicuous colour blue-‘Lapis Lazuli’-in the history of art.’, Idealogy Journal 9.1 (2024), p. 116

[7] LeCroy, Britni, “Gems on canvas: Pigments historically sourced from gem materials.” Gems & Gemology 58.3 (2022), pp. 318–337.

[8] Hannes Grobe, ‘Lapis lazuli with pyrite, Afghanistan’, Wikipedia, < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_lazuli#/media/File:Lapis-lazuli_hg.jpg>, accessed 31 October 2024

[9] González-Cabrera, M., et al. “Natural or synthetic? Simultaneous Raman/luminescence hyperspectral microimaging for the fast distinction of ultramarine pigments.” Dyes and Pigments 178 (2020), p. 108349.

[10] Orna, Mary Virginia, March of the Pigments: Color History, Science and Impact, Royal Society of Chemistry, 2022, pp. 235–238, 484

[11] Colour story: Ultramarine, Winsor and Newton, <https://www.winsornewton.com/na/articles/colours/colour-story-ultramarine/>, accessed 31 October 2024

[12] The Wilton Diptych, National Gallery, <https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/english-or-french-the-wilton-diptych>, accessed 31 October 2024

[13] The Entombment (or Christ being carried to his Tomb), The National Gallery, <https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/michelangelo-the-entombment-or-christ-being-carried-to-his-tomb>, accessed 31 October 2024

[14] Guichard, Charlotte, Le Hô, Anne-Solenn, and Williams, Hannah. “Prussian Blue: Chemistry, Commerce, and Colour in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” Art History 46.1 (2023), pp. 157–174

[15] Loscalzo, Anita B., “Prussian Blue: Its Development as a Colorant and Use in Textiles.” Uncoverings 31 (2010), pp. 4–12

[16] Harley, Rosamond D., ‘Artists’ pigments, c. 1600–1835: A study in English documentary sources,’ (1982), pp. 71–73

[17] Bartoll, Jens, ‘The early use of Prussian blue in paintings.’ Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on NDT of Art. 2008, pp. 6–7

[18] Grovier, Kelly, The art of colour: the history of art in 39 pigments. Thames & Hudson, 2023, p. 125.

[19] Portrait of Jacobus Blauw, National Gallery, < https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/jacques-louis-david-portrait-of-jacobus-blauw>, accessed 31 October 2024

[20] Louis-Léopold Boilly: Madame Louis-Julien Gohin, Her Son and Her Stepdaughters, PubHist, < https://www.pubhist.com/w48265>, accessed 31 October 2024

[21] O’Hanlon, George, ‘Ultramarine Blue Pigment And Oil Paint: A Comprehensive Guide for Artists’. (Natural Pigments, 2024)) <https://www.naturalpigments.com/artist-materials/ultramarine-blue-color-notes>, accessed 31 October 2024

[22] A Wheatfield, with Cypresses, National Gallery, <https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-a-wheatfield-with-cypresses>, accessed 31 October 2024

[23] Mangla, Ravi, ‘True Blue’, The Paris Review (2015), <https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/06/08/true-blue/>, accessed 31 October 2024

[24] Simpson, Paul, The Colour Code (London : Profile Books), p. 129

[25] Fox, James, The world according to colour: a cultural history, (UK: Penguin), 2021, p. 117, pp. 135–136.

[26] Hatch, Evie, Pigment Colour Index: Blue Pigments, Jackson’s, <https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2021/10/15/pigment-colour-index-blue-pigments/>, accessed 31 October 2024

[27] Thomas, William Gregor, New syntheses of the pigments copper phthalocyanine and cerium sulphide. Diss. University of St Andrews, 1999, pp. 24–30.

[28] Defeyt, Catherine and Strivay, David, ‘PB15 as 20th and 21st artists’ pigments: Conservation concerns.’ E‐Preservation Science 11 (2014), pp. 6–8

[29] Li, Dapeng and others, ‘A green route to prepare metal-free phthalocyanine crystals with controllable structures by a simple solvothermal method.’ RSC advances 11.50 (2021), p. 31226

[30] Stothers, J.B, Development of synthetic dyes, Britannica, <https://www.britannica.com/technology/dye/Development-of-synthetic-dyes>, accessed 31 October 2024

[31] Farronato, Mattia, Structure and reactivity of Lutetium bis-Phthalocyanine Thin Films. Diss. Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI, 2017, p. 13

[32] Sharma, Anjali, ‘Prussian blue pigment: Bridging the historical palette to modern innovations.’ History of science and technology 14.1 (2024), p. 214

[33] Staniford, Mark C, Lezhnina, Marina M., and Kynast, Ulrich H., ‘Phthalocyanine blue in aqueous solutions.’ RSC advances 5.6 (2015), p 3974

[34] Barnett Newman, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, and Blue III, WikiArt, < https://www.wikiart.org/en/barnett-newman/whos-afraid-of-red-yellow-and-blue-iii-1970>, accessed 31 October 2024

[35] Jo Hall, ‘Almost Monochrome Week 4’, Jo Hall, September 21, 2022, < https://www.jo-hall.co.uk/2022/09/21/almost-monochrome-week-4/#MNav>, accessed 31 October 2024

[36] Blue pigments, International Academic Projects, <https://academicprojects.co.uk/blue-pigments/>, accessed 31 October 2024

[37] Paul, Stella, ‘Chromaphilia: the story of color in art.’ (No Title) (2017), p. 84