The Color that Changed the World

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

The Great Wave off Kanagawa ca. 1829-1833
Color Woodblock Katsushika Hokusai

“And that is how I caught Cézanne off guard, coming along bent over in thought. His face like a potter’s, sun-burned, looked startled as the shadow of nearby leaves played over it. He had a small, bony head with rosy skin, lively eyes, and a white mustache, carelessly smeared with prussian blue.”

Jules Borély, Conversations with Cézanne

It is hard for artists, spoiled as we are by the easy availability of all the colors of the rainbow, to imagine a world wherein one of our important and necessary colors costs more than gold. But that was the world before 1703. The strongest and most useful permanent blue at that time was ultramarine, from the words “oltre marino”—referring to it being brought from “over the sea”. So expensive was it that artists had to rely on their wealthy clients to buy it …