This document provides a history of color theory from ancient Greek philosophers to modern theorists. Some key points covered include Newton splitting white light into a spectrum using a prism in the 16th century, Goethe rejecting Newton's light-based theory of color in the 18th century, Munsell developing his 3-dimensional color model in the 19th century, and Bauhaus artists like Itten and Albers bringing color theory studies to the forefront and emphasizing practical exercises over rigid systems in the early 20th century. Theorists debated the nature and perception of color over centuries and numerous systems were developed to describe and order colors.

1. Understanding Color
Chapter 7 Color Theory: A Brief History

2. Questions and ideas about color
have a long history. This search
has produced an enormous library
of writing known as color theory .

3. The earliest known
writers on color were
the Greek
philosophers who
were intrigued by the
elusive nature of
color.

4. In ancient philosophy, all meaning in the larger universe
was related somehow to mathematical order.

5. This idea that beauty and harmony are the natural result
of mathematical order is a premise that is still very much
in place today.

6. Pythagorus (c. 569–
490 BC) is credited
with originating the
concept of the
“harmony of the
spheres.”
Raphael, 1509

7. This theory
postulated that the
planets are
separated from each
other by intervals
that correspond to
the musical scale.

8. Aristotle (c. 384-322
BC) was the most
influential of the
earliest writers on
color and addressed
the subject both
philosophically and
scientifically.

9. Aristotle thought that all
colors derive from black
and white, or darkness
and light, and this idea
was accepted as fact
until the 18th century.
Raphael, 1509

10. During the
Renaissance,
writers like Leonard
da Vinci and others
wrote about
everything from the
practicalities of
mixing pigments to
the philosophical
and moral
meanings of colors.

11. But it was overall
a rather obscure
subject until the
18th century and
the studies of
Isaac Newton .

12. Newton was a
product of the
Enlightenment
during the 18th
century. This “Age
of Reason” sought
to give rational
explanations for
natural phenomena
to replace the old
mystical beliefs.

13. However, this
search for
absolutes
determined by
science was as
rigid and
uncompromising in
its way as the
demands of
absolute faith that
preceded it.

14. Only the source of
authority had
changed, from God
and his earthly
representatives, the
clergy, to reason
and its earthly
representatives,
men.

15. The intellectual world
of the 18th century was
quite fluid. People
didn’t think of
themselves as writers,
biologists, or
mathematicians but as
“natural philosophers,”
and wrote about all
sorts of scientific and
philosophical topics.

16. Two themes dominated 18th, 19th, and
early 20th century color study:
the search for a comprehensive color-order
system, including an appropriate format for
visualizing it. AND...
the laws of color harmony

17. Two towering and and very different figures
dominate the beginnings of color theory:

18. Isaac Newton
(1642–1727)

19. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

20. Newton, working at Cambridge in the late 1690’s, first
split sunlight into its component wavelengths by passing
it through a prism.

21. He observed that as each wavelength enters a
prism it bends or refracts .

22. Because the glass of a prism slows each wavelength down at
a slightly different rate, each emerges as a separate beam of
light.

23. Newton was able to recombine the separated
beams with a lens and reconstituted white light.

24. From this he hypothesized the nature of light and
the origins of perceived color.

25. He published his
results in a treatise
called Opticks, in
1703.

26. Newton’s
conclusion that
light alone
generates color
remains a basis of
modern physics.

27. Newton separated
the spectral hues
into seven colors:
red, orange yellow,
green blue, indigo,
and violet.

28. Most people cannot
detect the blue-
violet that Newton
calls “indigo.”

29. Perhaps he was influenced by 17th century thinking that
gave mystical importance to the number 7, or he may have
had unusual visual acuity in the blue-violet range.

30. Although the spectrum of light is linear...

31. ...Newton originated the concept of colors a a continuous
experience. He diagramed the seven hues as a circle,
linking spectral red and violet.

32. This first known illustration of
colors as a closed circle made
of arcs of individual color
appeared in Opticks.

33. Newton’s contemporaries viewed Opticks as a work on
the nature of color , not on the nature of light . The
ideas in it generated tremendous controversy all over
Europe.

34. At the same time,
the natural
philosophers were
considering light,
more pragmatic
people were trying
to discover how to
predictably
produce colors by
mixing paints or
dyes.

35. Jacques Christophe
Le Blon (1667–1741)
was a French
printmaker who
identified the primary
nature of red, yellow
and blue while mixing
pigments for printing.

36. Le Blon’s treatise,
Coloritto (c. 1730)
offers the first
concept of three
subtractive
primary colors.

37. His work attracted a great
deal of attention and
acceptance because it
addressed the practical
aspects of using color.
Jacques Christophe Le Blon, Van Dyck Self Portrait. Three-color
mezzotint, 61.2 x 36.0 cm., c. 1720s. Yale Center for British Art,
Paul Mellon Collection.

38. The CMYK color
space used in
printing today is
derived from his
work.

39. Moses Harris
(1731–1785) was an
entomologist and
engraver who was
fascinated by the
color of the insects
he studied.

40. He published the
first known color
circle in 1766.

41. Harris believed that
red, yellow, and
blue were the most
different from each
other and should be
placed at the
greatest possible
distances apart on
the circle.

42. To accomplish this,
he discarded
Newton’s indigo and
created an
expanded color
circle based on
equal intervals of
color and multiples
of three.

43. Goethe later
adopted Harris’
organization of
color.

44. Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe was
fascinated by color.

45. Goethe spent a
great deal of energy
trying to prove that
Newton’s color
theories were
wrong.

46. He rejected
Newton’s assertion
that color comes
from light and
insisted it was an
experienced reality.
Goethe’s Color Wheel

47. He also proposed
notions about the
association of color
and beauty with
morality. He even
said that there were
sinful and chaste
colors.
Goethe’s Color Wheel

48. Goethe was first to recognize the importance of the
interaction between complementary colors. He called
them “completing colors.”

49. Goethe also reported
extensively on
simultaneous contrast
and afterimage.

50. Otto Philip Runge
(1770–1840) shared
Goethe’s belief in
the importance of
complementary
colors.

51. Runge was a
painter and
developed the first
three dimensional
model for color, the
Color Sphere.

52. It was published in a book he wrote
called Farken Kugel.

53. Goethe’s observations were so wide-ranging and
fundamental that almost every concept in modern color
study can be found in his writing.

54. Goethe’s most familiar contribution to color study is
the six-hue color circle.

55. Even though he first believed that the only primaries
were blue and yellow!!!

56. Goethe’s French
contemporary was
Michel Eugene
Chevreul (1786–1889).

57. Chevreul was Master of the Gobelin Tapestry Works
and was mostly concerned with the practical difficulties
with producing consistent dyes.

58. He accepted the three primary colors theory and also
observed the phenomenon of simultaneous contrast.
Chevreul at age 100 in his studio-laboratory.

59. His 1839
treatise had a
profound
influence on
the
Impressionist
movement in
painting.

60. The battle between Goethe’s six-hue
spectrum and Newton’s seven-color
model was unnecessary because
both are valid but describe different
reality:

61. Newton was looking at causes .

62. Goethe was looking at effects .

63. In the past, science students and art
students were not usually the same
students, so the difference in the two
ideas rarely came into conflict.

64. Today’s designers and students of design must
understand both cause and effect and be able to
work within–and between–both realities.

65. Ostwald Munsell
After Goethe and Chevreul, most of the late 19th and
early 20th century color theorists worked in rigidly
formal scientific systems.

66. Ostwald Munsell
The stress was on rules, control and order: the goal
was to create a comprehensive color-order system
and to find within it immutable laws of color harmony.

67. Albert Munsell
(1858–1918)
developed his
3-dimensional
color model in
1921.

68. Published in A Grammar
of Color, Munsell
proposed a “color tree”
with infinite room for
expansion.

69. Munsell’s color space is constructed as progressive
intervals of hue that rotate around a vertical axis of value
from black to white.

70. In Munsell’s theory
every possible color
cannot be shown but
each has an
assigned place on an
alphanumeric scale.

71. Chroma is Munsell’s
word for saturation.

72. The problem with this system is that it does not take into
account the tertiaries . Nowhere on the color tree can you
find colors mixed with their complements to reduce saturation.

73. In the Munsell System, reduction of saturation is achieved
by mixing the hues with gray in graduated steps.

74. Color numbering
systems have great
value when they are
used to communicate
color information
between individuals
who have reference to
the same set of
standards.

75. But these systems are
meaningless as an
aid to
understanding
color.

76. Munsell was not
immune to the
moralizing
associations of his
predecessors
asserting that certain
colors implied good
taste and others poor
taste.

77. His system is still in
use today, but
without the original
commentary.

78. A hypothetical color
solid (or color
displayed in 3-
dimensions) is a
frequent theme in
scholarly color-order
systems.

79. German chemist
Wilhelm Ostwald
(1853–1932) brought
the conceptual color
solid to full-blown
theory in Color
Science.

80. The Color Primer with
its eight-hue spectrum
became mandatory
for color study in
German schools and
in many English ones.

81. It was a strong
influence on artists of
the Bauhaus
movement.

82. Wilhelm von Bezold
(1837–1932)
contributed scientific
fact to the growing
body of color writing.

83. Bezold is best known for the “Bezold Effect” which
says that forms enclosed by light lines appear lighter
and vice versa.

84. Ludwig Von
Helmholtz (1821–
1894) also
contributed to color
studies.

85. He is known for his
mathematics of the
eye, the
ories of vision, ideas
on the visual
perception of
space, and his color
vision research.

86. By the early
20th century,
color study had
become an
enormous and
wide-ranging
topic, positioned
uncomfortably
with one foot in
the sciences
and other in the
arts.

87. It remained for the artists and designers of the
Bauhaus to end this ambiguity.

88. The Bauhaus was a
design group
founded in 1919 by
German architect
Walter Gropius
(1883–1969).

89. The Bauhaus
group brought
the study of
color to a level
of attention not
seen since
Goethe’s
challenge to
Newton.

90. These Bauhaus
master students
of color and
color theory
approached
color from new
directions with
intelligence, wit,
and energy...

91. Lyonel Feininger

92. Paul Klee

93. Wassily Kandinsky

94. Johannes Itten

95. Josef Albers

96. Oskar Schlemmer

97. These artists and writers made the definitive break
between the study of color as science and the study of
color as art and aesthetics.

98. Johannes Itten
(1888–1967)
followed Goethe in
exploring color as a
series of contrast
systems and opposing
forces.

99. He theorized
seven
contrasts of
color based
on
perceptions
alone:

100. Contrast of:
saturation
hue
value
warm & cool contrast
complementary contrast
simultaneous contrast
extension (area)

101. Itten codified color harmonies as a series of chords based
on the complementary relationship and diagramed them as
geometric forms.

102. Itten’s approach,
although
mathematically based,
is much less rigid than
many that preceded it.

103. Itten’s focus was as
much on individual
perception as on
mathematical
relationships.

104. His major work is entitled, The Art of Color

105. Color-order systems were the first concern of theorists
because a formal system establishes a structured field in which
to search for laws of color harmony.

106. The primary focus of that search was on the relationship
between hues. Value and saturation took a back seat to hue.

107. Among all the major figures in color study, there was
agreement that balance between complementary colors
was the first principle of color harmony.

108. The ancient ideal
of mathematical
balance was so
much a part of the
search for laws of
harmony that hues
were frequently
associated with
numbers or
geometric forms.

109. Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788–1860) theorized
that equal light-
reflectance in spectrum
colors is inherently
harmonious.

110. Schopenhauer’s Circle of Color Harmony is made up of
unequal arcs. Each complementary pair is meant to be
equal in light-reflectance to each of the other two pairs.

111. Every color is assigned a number representing its
light-reflectance (or value) in relation to the others.

112. The total of all the numbers added together
is 36, or 360 degrees, a full circle.

113. Schopenhauer’s theory can be deceptive;
a large area of violet does not necessarily reflect
the same amount of light as a smaller area of
yellow.

114. But we do sense value differences between pure
colors.

115. Schopenhauer’s theory can be illustrated as striped tee
shirts. In order for each shirt to be harmonious, the
complementary pairs must have different ratios: 1 to 1,
1 to 2, and 1 to 3.

116. In Itten’s quest for
color harmony, he
superimposed
geometric forms
(squares, rectangles,
triangles, and
hexagons) over the
artists’ spectrum to
demonstrate what he
called “harmonious
chords.”

117. Each color chord
illustrates
complementary colors
in some measurable
proportion.

118. The geometric points
are called the “notes”
and no “chord” strays
from the
complementary
relationship.

119. The person who made
the final break with the
color-order tradition
was Josef Albers
(1888–1976), a
colleague of Itten’s
who also taught at the
Bauhaus school.

120. Albers fled Nazi
Germany in the early
1930’s with his wife,
the weaver Anni
Albers.

121. They taught first at the Black Mountain
School in North Carolina and later at Yale.

122. Albers
became the
most
influential
name in color
theory in the
United States.

123. However, his
1963 book
Interaction of
Colors contained
nothing like the
usual charts or
systems.

124. Albers taught that
true
understanding of
color comes from
an intuitive
approach to studio
exercises.

125. He stressed the instability and relativity of perceived
colors and the power of visual training.

126. At the same time, he taught that even within this unstable
field, there are effects that can be predicted and controlled.

127. In Interaction of Colors, Albers casually discounts the
generations of theory that preceded him.

128. “This
book...reverses
this order and
places practice
before theory,
which is, after all,
the conclusion of
practice,” he wrote.

129. Albers was not the
first to recognize
that the visual
experience, more
than conscious
choice, determines
how we perceive
colors, but he was
the first to assert
the primacy of the
visual experience
over structure or
intellectual
considerations.

130. For Albers, the
visual experience,
not theory, was
paramount.

131. The late 20th century saw the focus of color study
move from philosophical inquiry to a greater interest in
psychological and motivational effects of colors.

132. There is an entire industry, for example, that is devoted
to determining current and future consumer preferences
in colors and color combinations.

133. At the same time, color theorists continue to search
for absolutes.

134. There is an enduring
assumption–or perhaps, a
hope–that those elusive,
timeless, and absolute laws
for pleasing combinations of
colors really do exist and
simply await discovery.