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Werners colour classifications
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Message
Posted
Someone has recently given me Nature's Palette (a Thames & Hudson book) which I can highly recommend. Until I received this I was completely unaware of this old colour classification system. It is so useful as an artists guide too. However, many of the colours on the system do not appear to be replicated in any of the artists paints I've researched (no doubt names have been changed) although Farrow and Ball seem to be doing a good job in decorators paint! Can anyone shed any light on this?
Posted
Not really Heather, I know some colour names of oil paints have changed over the years if that’s what you’re getting at, I can think of a few, but there’s equivalent colours available in their place.
What specific colours are you referring to…
As for Farrow & Ball, they have a fabulous range of decorators colours, and their own unique colour names including the wonderful Elephants Breath!
Posted
I've just looked at as much of the book as can be pieced together on the internet: it has been re-published, at fearsome cost - it was a massive endeavour in the eighteenth century - but either references some colours that are no longer available or colours derived from mixing. There's one called Arterial Blood Red - which could be any modern scarlet, perhaps with a drop of crimson.
It's a fascinating work, and I'd like to have it - but its practical use is compromised by changes in manufacturers' ranges: but not all of it - where you can identify a colour, there is a precise indication in the book of where it would be most useful to employ it, and that still has value.
Posted
Thanks for responding. Yes, the Werners book itself is available. The one I've been given is Nature's Palette, not cheap but the cover price on the book says £35. Amazon is expensive(don't know why) but you get it on other booksites for around the cover price (might be worth checking EBay). What is particularly good about this book is that it shows his colour palette in the context of nature - botanical and animal/ornithological/ geology etc. It is a beauty of a book. On Amazon you can take a peek inside the book as you can on Thames & Hudson's website to give a better idea. Anyway, picking at random some colours:- .skimmed milk, berlin blue, ash grey, greyish white, yellowish grey etc etc. For example what he classifies as Celandine Green is composed of vedrigris green and ash grey. Or Oil Green is emerald green mixed with lemon yellow, chestnut brown and yellowish grey.
Posted
You'd have some trouble finding some of those colours now, but all could be obtained by mixing (if one knew how!).. Skimmed milk - lawks a mercy! I would presume a mix of yellow ochre or raw sienna with Flake White, all of which would have been available to Werner; Berlin blue - I'd say Prussian, but he mentions Prussian Blue elsewhere - perhaps Blue Bice? Ash grey - probably Davey's grey might get near to it; not a colour I like at all in any medium. Or could just as easily be a whited-down black. Chestnut brown - Venetian Red? Emerald Green, as Werner would have known it, was highly poisonous - there are modern alternatives called Emerald Green, but all vary so much between makers that I don't see any reliable mix coming out of them: would be interesting to experiment, though, if one had the time. Verdigris green might be Viridian, or possibly Terre Verte... I don't think I'll buy the book, because I could get completely lost in it, trapped in its intricate by-ways, and frankly I'm too old to be spending that much time on what could turn into an obsession!
Even so: I might yet weaken .... and if I get sucked into a worm-hole, I shall know whom to blame.
Posted
The oldest palette I know of at the moment by the way is that of Sir Alfred East, and dates from around 80 years after Werner's - much more familiar to us today: I wonder if the Werner guide was actually of much practical use to artists, since East used a hugely reduced palette from this one; but whether it was or whether it wasn't, Werner's book is hugely impressive as a work of painstaking study.