Yellow

Jean-Honore Fragonard, "Young Girl Reading," oil, 1776

Having written about three other primary colors--green, blue, and red--it seemed time to investigate more about yellow. Searching online showed that yellow is only ranked seventh or eighth in popularity when people are surveyed. Despite commenting on the positive aspects of the color yellow, people tend to rank it lower. In one study, only 5 or 6 percent of respondents rated yellow as their favorite color. And yet, yellow is a color we see constantly in nature, and it's a color associated with happiness and cheer, mostly. Perhaps the negatives of yellow colors are also important, including jealousy, waning strength, cowardice, and emergencies in the Western cultural tradition. In contrast yellow is the color of happiness and wisdom and is the celestial color symbolic of China itself. In our tradition, yellows were not often featured in oil paintings until the 19th century.

Yellow falls between green and orange on the traditional color wheel, and it's complement is violet. In this color wheel, the primary colors are red, blue, and yellow and the secondary colors are green, orange, and violet. The range of hues from yellow to red-orange on the color wheel are warm in temperature and high in chroma, particularly yellow, whereas their complementary range of blue-green through violet are all considerably cooler and lower in chroma.

Henri Regnault, "Salome," oil, 1870

Yellow is an ancient color. Yellow ochres in various tones and values have been in use since prehistory in various ways, including burials and cave art. Yellows in ancient Egyptian art were bright and commonly used as they were in ancient Greek art, particularly in polychromed sculpture. But yellows gradually faded from use in art.

Until relatively recently in human history, most yellows were dull, though the ancient pigment called orpiment (arsenic trisulfide) is a bright yellow and was used as far back as ancient Egypt. Orpiment was replaced, gradually, by lead-tin yellow (in the middle ages) and Naples yellow (another lead-based paint) in subsequent centuries. Other yellows available in the past have included Indian yellow, once said to have been made from the urine of cows fed only mango leaves but now made as synthetic pigment. None of those produced the high chroma yellows we have now. It was the introduction of chrome yellow and cadmium yellows and newer organic molecules that gave us the brilliant yellow colors in the late 19th century that became associated with vanGogh and the post-Impressionists.

Vincent van Gogh, "Three Sunfowers," oil on canvas 1888

Vincent van Gogh was a lover of yellow, particularly in his series of sunflowers, painted in Arles in early 1888. He also painted glorious glowing fields of wheat, bright yellow night cafes, and even a self-portrait in a brilliant yellow straw hat. Many believe that his devotion to the color was actually more than aesthetics though. Some cite yellowing of his vision as being a result of digitalis poisoning, or perhaps addiction to absinthe, either of which could have caused the condition. Regardless, thoughts of van Gogh commonly are coupled with warm, bright yellows.

Hoff, "Two Bottles," oil on panel, 6x8

Hoff, "Winter Light," oil on panel, 6x8

My own practice hasn't featured much yellow, and when it has it's often been offset by an complement. For example in one of a series of "windowsill works," small quick sketches intended as studies of color, composition and many more ideas, I painted two bottles filled with colored liquids refracting morning light in my studio. One of the bottles was a pale blue one a deeper yellow. I was interested in how the bottles seemed to imprison lights and darks as the early sun slanted through. Later on I put the same bottle of yellow liquid amid a stack of similar shapes and painted them in a muted, mostly warm and dark color scheme. To make the yellow bottle stand out, I raised the chroma and value to contrst with the more shadowed bottles. Reflections on the glass and metal were particularly interesting.


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Previous similar posts:
Red
Green
Blue