GEORGE FIELDChemist & Color Theorist

WHO

English chemist born in 1777 in England.

Experimented with pigments and dyes and their “harmonious relationship.”

Expansion in the art world in London. Allowed for financial security.

Famous For…

“Chromatics” - analogies and harmonies of colors.

In Chromatics, he used the three subtractive primary colors red, yellow and blue, and was concerned with the arrangement of a color harmony as an “aesthetic analogy” of the musical harmony system.

“Chromatography” - years of experimenting with colors, stability of pigments, and how to manufacture pigments and dyes.

Helped alter the course of British painting aesthetically and practically.

Founded and directed the British School.

HIS WORK

Started experimented with pigments and dyes because of artists’ concerns about the durably of paints.

Bought pigments from artists, studied them, and supplied them with better ones.

Altered the way paints were manufactured (factories and machinery).

All about quality and durability.

Recognized by London painters as London’s most important color-maker and supplier.

FIELD ON COLOR

Anti-Newtonian views.

Colors emerge from the polar opposites of black and white (blue = max darkness; yellow = max light strongest; red = balance of dark and light).

Primary colors were a manifestation of Divine Trinity.

Influenced by history of light and colors.

Sacred Colors

Madders, lemon yellow, and ultramarine.

Favored pure colors and attended closely to how pigments reflect light.

“The more pigments are mixed, the more they are deteriorated in color, attenuated, and chemically set at variance.”

COLOR WHEEL

Six primary colors, from which the secondary and tertiary colors are created through change.

Orange, violet, and green considered primaries.

Different meanings or connotations marked along the circumference of the circle are assigned to the colors: hot and cold stand opposite one another, likewise advancing and retiring, and a high mean and a low mean value.

COLOR & SOUND

First system for color music was presented by the Frenchman Louis-Bertrand Castel.

C: blue

C-sharp: blue-green

D: green

D-sharp: yellow-green

E: yellow

F: yellow-orange

F-sharp: orange

G: red

B: indigo

COLOR & MUSIC

Castel: From the triad, blue (keynote C) — yellow (third E) — red (fifth G), he arrived at a twelve-step chromatic color-music scale via different intermediate levels.

Field: D=purple; E=red; F=orange; G=yellow; A=yellow-green; B=green.

Analogous Scale of Sounds and Colors was based on the triad blue-red-yellow.