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The core of the problem confrontinganyone who desires to paint withstrong or heightened colour, or touse colour in an emotionally expressiveand non-literal way, is that colour is asfinely pitched and as elusive as a musicalnote. Just like music, it has to be deployedin such a way that the individual hues donot compete but actually relate to eachother and harmonise like chords in a

musical key. Too many opposing andunrelated colours in a confined spacetend to create a visual din, clamouring forthe viewer’s attention. My own journey asa painter, from devotee of a strictly earthpalette to someone who uses colour in anessentially interpretative manner (see StillLife at Limiona, above) has neither beeneasy, nor, as I began to abandon theCamden Town palette 15 years ago, did I

avoid the pitfalls of which I write.Eventually, after a decade ofexperimenting in practice, and lookingagain and again at the work of theMasters, I began to develop a new theoryabout how colour could be used mosteffectively, not just in an aesthetic sense,but how best to communicate a painter’sinner response to a subject (theexpression of feeling) which now forms

C O L O U R M I X I N G

A theory of colourIn the first of two articles, Hugo Grenville explains his theory that a painting,

like a piece of music, should be conceived in a particular key

Still Life at Limiona, oil on canvas, 34�36in (86.5�91.5cm)

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the basis of both my own practice and thecore of my teaching.

History of colourBefore explaining how the theory works, itis worth considering how previousgenerations understood colour. There hasnever been a widely accepted singlecoherent theory to which we all subscribe:the history of colour is a history of verydifferent groups of people havingconflicting ideas about colour at varioustimes. Take blue, for example: in Britain,2,000 years ago, a blue dye called wodewas applied to the faces of tribesmenbefore commencing battle. They believedthat the colour enhanced the appearanceof power and ferocity, whereas in therather more refined society of late 18th-century Germany, blue was associatedwith gentleness and feminine qualities,while orange was considered the moremasculine colour. A hundred years laterKandinsky and Franz Mark entitled theirExpressionist almanac Der Blaue Reite (TheBlue Rider), evoking images of blue assomething spiritual, pure and robustlymasculine. The Romans associated all palecolours with femininity and saturatedcolours with manliness. DuringRenaissance times the perception of aparticular colour, apart from its aestheticappeal, was largely dictated by the cost ofthe pigment. Since the patron paid for the

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PracticalStill Life with Flowers and Coffee Pot, oil oncanvas, 42�42in (105.5�105.5cm).There is no primary yellow within this palette.The theme is all about the relationshipbetween blues and greens, punctuated by thealmost cool pink-reds of the flowers, and thewarmer earth colours and degraded oranges ofsome of the leaves. The primary (or saturated)yellow has been replaced by yellow ochre, andthe muted greens created by mixing yellowochre with exotic blues like cobalt, turquoiseand cerulean. The guest complementary iscadmium orange; its intensity has beenreduced by adding touches of turquoise so thatthe resulting degraded orange hues complywith the contemplative, wistful mood of thepainting

The Canal du Midi,Evening Light, oil ongessoed board,15�18in(38�45.5cm).A complementarypalette can beaccompanied by aguest primary andselected neutralpigments. Here theblue has been addedto a complementarypalette of orange,violet and green

ʻThere are no absolutes

in colourʼ

pigments, and not the artist, the depictionof exotic colours like ultramarine blue,made from lapis lazuli, revealed thewealth and power of the patron. In the19th century the French theorist CharlesBlanc maintained that all colour wasfeminine and that only drawing wasmasculine, but Matisse felt that drawingwas essentially a feminine activity.

It was not until the 18th century thatserious attempts were made to classifycolour, to rationalise and explain it.Scientists and painters like Isaac Newton,

Robert Darwin, Charles Hayter and PhillipOtto Runge all wrote about colour theory,but it was Goethe who suggested thatour understanding of the world isinfluenced by our perception of itscoloured surfaces, and that theappearance of these surfaces changesaccording to both the nature of, and thequantity of, ambient light. In other words,a surface that looks mid-tone blue atmidday may look almost pink in thefading evening light or almost white atdawn. Philosophically, there are no

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C O L O U R M I X I N G

absolutes in colour; it is not a sciencesince it cannot be evaluated empirically,but rather a poetic language of feelingand sensibility. Even the 18th-centurywestern concept of the primacy anddominance of the three primary colours,blue yellow and red, was not accepted atthe time by theorists in Persia, India orRussia, where the primary colours wereconsidered to be black, red and white. Sowhen Sickert told his students that the‘colour in the shadow must be the sisterof the colour in the light,’ he was notbeing literal or prescriptive, but askingthem to absorb and contemplate acomplex idea, to observe the surfaces ofan object as intensely as a musician mightlisten to a phrase of an unfamiliar melody,

essence lies in the idea of only allowingtwo primaries to co-exist within the samepalette, accompanied by a principle guestcomplementary, and specific groups ofearth pigments. The absent primary isrepresented by an earth (or neutral)pigment, which does the job of a primary,but in such a way that it creates gentleharmonies that support the dominantmajor theme, as in Still Life with Flowersand Coffee Pot (page 39).

The same principle can also be appliedto the other primary pairings: blue andyellow, yellow and red. Similarly, acomplementary palette can beaccompanied by a guest primary andselected neutral pigments, as in The Canaldu Midi, Evening Light (page 39).

Matisse said ‘I am a Romanticpainter, but half of me is ascientist,’ and he was right:however passionately we maywish to express ourselves, weneed to acquire a cool andprofound understanding of thedifferent elements thatconstitute painting.Understanding colour is harder,and a little more elusive, thangrasping the elements ofperspective, or evaluating thebreadth of different tones in asubject, but it does succumb toinvestigation and sensibility.Before you select a specific groupof colours you have to considertheir effect upon the mood of

Still Life with Flowers and Equestrian Figure,42�42in (105.5�105.5cm).

The primary palette is yellow/red, with guestgreen. You can see the liquid black used onthe coffee pot on the table, and again in the

foreground, which creates the effect of makingthe mid-toned colours seem full of light. Here Ihave also used black as a blue, mixing it withblue-grey and ultramarine red-pink (and lots of

white) to suggest the violet hues of the distantparkland, and again in the foreground as a

contrast to the rich, warm reds and browns. Ifyou compare these degraded violets in the

picture to a patch of saturated violet (like OldHolland bright violet) you will see them recedeinto a hue that is more like a grey; but against

the contrasting yellows and oranges theyappear truly violet

Sleeping Nude with Chequered Pillow, oil oncanvas, 34�36in (86.5�91.5cm).Here I have used the degraded primary: blues–Old Holland king’s blue light, Old Holland blue– violet and Old Holland cobalt green turquoise;reds – Old Holland rose dore, Old Holland redpink and transparent oxide red; yellows –transparent oxide yellow, Indian yellow andcadmium yellow extra deep. I have added OldHolland Naples yellow reddish, Old HollandDavy’s grey and Old Holland ivory black asearth colours. The red flower on the stool,which is the most saturated patch of colour,was mixed from a small amount of Old HollandIndian yellow with rose dore, and it almostappears like a primary red. The yellow checkson the pillow seem very yellow in relation tothe pictorial space, but if you place a card ofprimary yellow against them they immediatelyrecede, having been made much less intenseby adding touches of violet and grey. The sameyellows exist and can be glimpsed underneaththe flesh tones of the sleeping nude, whichconnects the colours of the figure to thesurrounding fabric patterns

and then to invent a response that wasboth imaginative, and in harmony withthe ‘colour in the light.’

The theoryI have been using musical metaphors andanalogies because my theory of colourseems to work in a similar way (althoughmuch less complex) to aspects of musicaltheory. It has come about through trialand error, and through studying the workof the colourists from Veronese toGauguin and Turner to Matisse, and seemsto hold up when applied retrospectivelyto the Masters. The central idea is that apainting must be conceived in a colourkey, in the same way that a piece of musicis written in a particular musical key. The

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Practical

Dido and Aeneas, oil on canvas, 42�42in(105.5�105.5cm).The translucent yellows of the sky, mountainsand sea reappear in fragmented patchesthroughout the landscape, culminating in thecolour of the doomed Dido’s yellow dress(bottom right–hand corner). The slightlyincreased saturation in its hue helps theforeground come forward while emphasisingthe importance of the figures in the narrativeof the picture; once you identify them thebeguiling beauty of the landscape stands insharp contrast to the imminent tragedy of theirlove. The palette is again restricted, using theblue/yellow primary with guest violet. Tomagnify the sense of softness and diffusedlight I have used blues that are some way froma primary blue; Old Holland blue violet, king’sblue light and cobalt turquoise. The yellows areOld Holland golden green, Indian yellow-brown,Indian yellow-orange, cadmium yellow pale and

cadmium yellow extra deep. My guest violetsare ultramarine violet and geranium madder(which when mixed with lots of white make thecool pinks I have used for the roofs of thehouses); raw umber and burnt sienna providethe earth colours that help keep the hues onthe surface of the picture from clashing, andensure that there are areas of quiet restraintwhich will allow the more saturated colour tosing

Hugo Grenville teaches courses on visuallanguage and colour at his studios inLondon, and Majorca. See www.hugogrenville.com for details, or call LisaFreeman on 07764 500 397. Hugo hasrecently shown at Wally FindlayInternational in New York and Palm Beach.

Next Month: selecting a palette andputting the theory into practice.

the picture, and this weighing up of thepossibilities will help you focus yourvision of the finished painting. Perhapsthe easiest grouping to grasp, andtherefore a good one to start with, is thedegraded primary. Here, the palette isselected so that the colours acting asprimary colours are much less saturatedand therefore not actually primary coloursat all. This means that when you mix themtogether you will find it easier to integratethe harmonies, to create a sense of softness,subtlety and coherence, as in SleepingNude with Chequered Pillow (top left).

All the major keys include black as anex-officio colour. I often like to use black,unmixed with other pigments, dilutedand transparent, as accents of suddendarkness against the richness of warm,saturated colours, as in Still Life withFlowers and Equestrian Figure (left). TA

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