Colour and light have only in the last century become fully understood. Centuries of experimentation by educated men has brought our understanding of light and colour to its current level starting with Newton. Although not an artist he started the trend of polymaths who tended to paint to investigate colour, our perceptions of it and the role of light. Chevreul also not an artist was the first to theorise that the mind and the eyes perception play a big part in what we see as colour and theorised the laws of simultaneous contrast. Goethe agreed with Chevreul in that colour is decided and perceived in the brain and eye. He argued that Newton’s view on colour was too mathematical and that colour was subjective to the individual. Runge was the first artist to theorise the psychology behind colours and their symbolism. He was the first to understand the interaction of light shadow and colour and produced the colour sphere, an updated version of the wheel created by Newton. Turner agreed with Runge and due to his longer life span he was able to further develop the idea behind the symbolism in colours and quantified colour and its relative terms into two poles separating mainly by negative and positive connotations. Impressionists used these new tools and understandings of colour to work with colour merging and optical tricks. Post impressionists worked further in symbolism and moods of colours and their combinations leading to our current psychological and physiological understanding of colour.
Gage, John. (1993). Colours of the Mind in Colour and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction
New York: Thames and Hudson, 12 (August 2011), 191-212. Retrieved from http://dev.schoolofdesign.ac.nz/mod/folder/view.php?id=135
