But is a palette with the least saturation costs the one we want ?
Striving to created a palette that produces only hues at their maximum saturation is not always a good idea. It’s not sour grapes to say that there is a problem with a painting (and, of course, a palette) that strives for only colors at maximum saturation. Color Intensity tends to obscure the value structure of a painting and a sense of recognizable light. (This is why squinting is recommend to have a clearer idea of values. It reduces the saturation of the colors in the scene by lowering the overall illumination –as when night falls — and by so doing makes the hues less intense and the values clearer. This could also be done by looking at a scene through a darkly colored piece of plastic) When the value structure is obscured, the placement of things in space is confusing. By the way, you don’t have to squint which is tiring. You just have to close your eyes almost completely and raise your head a bit to see straight ahead.
The Claude Mirror (named after Claude Lorraine) was a way of looking at a landscape in a mirror that was dark. This softened the entire image and clarified the value structure. It was quite popular with tourists and artists during the Romantic Period in art, particularly in England. You used it by turning your back on the scene. This is a webcam viewing Tinturn Abbey (one of the prime romantic spots to paint) and more information about Claude Mirrors here. And here is a rather neat site which has one image seen with varying filters like Claude mirrors by Darryl Baird. The later site in particular will give you some idea of what muting the saturation of the image will do.
There is also the problem with just focusing on using saturated paints that hues will be distorted (see the problem that the Gobelin tapestry factory was having below.)
some background on the history of desaturating colors
In the early Renaissance (and in Byzantine icons) artists strived for jewel-like sparkle in their paints, “bellezza di colore ” (which, of course, is maximum saturation). it made sense because these paints had to compete against a gold background . Since the artists were generally representing other worldly events, they could very well be totally saturated in color. Who knows? To tell if a hue is at it’s maximum saturation by eye, you look for “jewel-like sparkle.”
However, with the adoption of perspective and realistic depictions of space, an interest in populating that space with realistic, volumetric objects and people developed. To solve this and other problems it was necessary to desaturate some of the colors. For example, a man wearing purple next to a man wearing yellow, if painted with saturated paints, leads to the yellow coming forward and the purple receding, and this is spatially confusing. But more importantly, rounding the form requires shadows, and shadows are desaturated.
In the early renaissance the shadow was sometimes painted in another darker-valued hue but at that hues’ maximum saturation (cangiantismo). There was a prohibition against “breaking” or “corrupting” the color by darkening it with another paint. The patron paid for Ultramarine Blue more than its weight in gold (it came then and still comes from mines in what is now Afghanistan–”Ultramarine” means literally “over the sea” or “imported”). Fortunately the French found a way to synthesize it.) But during the renaissance to let the painter kill it’s color with another paint seemed like a poor idea. Incidentally Cezanne did the same thing (changing hues rather than desaturating and darkening the hue for the shadow.)
Michelangelo Sistine Chapel Achim-Eliud
Above is an example of Michelangelo’s modeling using different colors.
- Michelangelo was considered during his lifetime to be a brilliant draftsman and a magical genius when it came to sculpture. But he was not particularly interested in the newer developments in painting and, as a result, was not considered much of a painter. The New York Times reports that the public has finally caught up with Renaissance opinion, and that Caravaggio has finally out shown Michelangelo as a painter here. Although Caravaggio was criticized during his lifetime as lacking in imagination and being too dependent on his models (some of his angels look like somewhat nervous men hung by ropes from the ceiling), his paint handling was recognized as brilliant.
If not painted in another darker hue, the shadow was painted with the most saturated paint and the modeling was up from there with white. Cennini wrote about this in 1390. Michelangelo did this to the point that the ”light”, no matter what the hue was, was basically white. The same coloring scheme can frequently be seen in tapestries. Note that painters at this time thought that the most saturated hue on a one-hued form was in the shadow.
Alberti (1435/6), departing from Cennini, suggested literally drawing a line down the middle of a form and up modeling in white on the light side and down modeling in black on the other. (With the advent of oils, glazing with other paints replaced black.) But the advice to draw a line and up model on the light side and down model on the dark side persisted. The often overlook innovation is that Alberti’s advice placed the most saturated color on the line drawn down the center, at the transition from light to dark (where it is usually placed today).
The problem with Vasari advice, just changing where the most saturated color is to be put, is that there is a difference in value between different paints at their most saturated, so a guy in blue next to a guy in yellow, no matter how you modeled their individual forms, didn’t look like they were standing next to each.
Leonardo took the next step and matched the value of all these high tone passages so that there was tonal unity in the whole painting. To do so, he had to desaturate and neutralize some of the colors to create a realistic sense of color and light. His overall lighting could be rather dark. This attempt at “tonal unity” has been considered Leonardo’s most innovative and and historically important contribution to the history of coloring (John Shearman, an art history professor at Harvard, who happened to have an interest in materials and technique because his father was a painter, wrote about this.) For some reason Leonardo’s modeling is often known for its “smoky” quality. That is, his forms are not linear, not contained with lines, as you can see in the above fresco by Michelangelo. To do this he had soft edges, and from the modern studies of his brushwork, he use an amazing number of brush stokes on each passage. But the point I am making is that was not a big innovation, just his style. What was important was the effort at tonal unity in the whole painting.
The next step was taken by Carravaggio. His colors look saturated but they often aren’t. He only used pure white for highlights, for example. His other whites just look bright. He juxtaposed colors to make them look brighter. Just that much of what he did is what is called “simultaneous contrast” (see below for more detail.) I don’t know what Carravaggio called it, but it was well known. Alberti spoke of certain “friendships” between colors that imparted “handsomeness and grace” to each other. But Carravaggio did something else as well, to increase the perceived simultaneous contrast he made the juxaposition very abrupt between colors, something that is related to the “Cornsweet illusion.” Because there was no gradual transition in the color as he came up to an edge, there were no clues to values and this made the contrast seem stronger. For more about the Cornsweet illusion see here. Carravaggio is known for his strong contrast of light and dark, but the really difficult thing to accomplish is way of making colors look more saturated than they are.
The world has mostly desaturated colors
A world with all saturated colors is not typical of the environment in which we live. It has happened to me that spending time at an impressionist exhibit resulted in a depressing shock when I stepped outside into the predominately unsaturated world. On the other hand, for Jurick’s (mentioned in the previous chapter) small, simple (and quite beautiful) paintings a saturated palette works extremely well.
Watercolorists tend to prefer saturated and transparent paints, not all, but quite a few. It was against this trend that Homer played. In Scribner’s, as I mentioned in the first post at the beginning of this blog, Homer’s watercolors were described as ” direct, simple, crude sometimes –never “pretty”–they [have] the unmistakable look of nature . . . such drawings as these are a judgement upon the easily discerned tendencies of some other artists –toward the sentimental, the gorgeous, and the inanely pretty.” (quoted in Helen A. Cooper “Winslow Homer Watercolors” Yale, 1986). Strange to be critical of “gorgeous” and “pretty” watercolors, but it might be more appropriate to describe what this critic was complaining about as a palette with fully saturated paints. Clearly when the critic writes that Homer’s work “has the unmistakable look of nature”, that means desaturated color.
taking control of saturation
The balance in a painting between saturated colors, usually a few, and the rest grayer, subtler colors, and the interaction between them (simultaneous contrast) is where the color skill of the painter is to be found.
In choosing paints you have to think of saturation losses but also of realistic colors in the real world which are desaturated. You also have to consider the rest of the palette, of the remediation of these losses by simultaneous contrast, that is the color context where you are going to place them. For example dull orange can look more saturated in a blue context; and a dull violet more saturated, in a yellow setting. Then there is the monotony of saturated colors. Desaturated colors make the “eye candy” of saturated colors pop out.
Degas is reported to have said that it is the business of the painter is to use Venetian red (that is a dull, desaturated earth tone) but to make it look like vermillion (a bright strong red.) Making the same point Delacroix once said, “Give me mud, let me surround it as I think fit, and it shall be the radiant flesh of Venus.” Winslow Homer was given a copy of the translation of Michel Eugene Chevreul’s work on the interaction, simultaneous contrast, of colors by his brother, when it’s English translation came out, and is said to have kept it with him at all times. One would assume from this that there is more sophistication in his “simple”, “crude” work than appears obvious.
Chevreul started off as a soap chemist but was somehow called in to help the Gobelin tapestry factory which was having complaints about it colors. I think one of the complaints was that their black looked green. This was assumed to be because there was something wrong with the dyes. Fortunately Chevrel was neither a dye chemist or an artist. He figured out it was all about “simultaneous contrast” which he discovered. He lived to be 100 years old, into the era of photography and audio recording. See the photo below.
Chevruel being interview at 100 years of age
So the success of artists like Karin Jurick not withstanding (she paints mostly small jewel-like paintings where such a palette is very successful see her blog here), to paint most types of larger more complicated paintings, for convenience, for clear value structure, to stay within a reasonable paint budget, etc. it’s usually necessary to have a “limited palette”, the subject of the next chapter.
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