COLOUR THEORY
values. He chose white and black as
important colours at the extreme ends
of this simple scale and palette. His
colour choices each match a value on
the greyscale in a general sense.
The value of colours and their
component value gradations in
creating form and space were
extremely important to da Vinci and
set the stage for the strongly tonal,
and value-oriented paintings of Titian,
Caravaggio and the Baroque painters.
For these painters, value, or the overall
tonal quality of a painting, created the
dramatic visual message and poetry
of the work for the viewer. This was
accomplished through the creation ofpolarisations of lights and darks,
closer to the two ends of the greyscale,
with a minimum of middle tones.
Conversely early Italian Renaissance
paintings presented a gradual scale of
values with much more emphasis on
subtle, middle-tone gradations with
extreme lights and darks as fi nishing
elements to add strength and clarity.
The 18th and 19th century in
Europe saw a great proliferation of
theories of optics, and value in colour.
The practical applications of these
discussions bore fruit in the paintings
of the period, especially the growing
interest in painting from nature
en plein air.
Landscape painters from John
Constable in England to Camille Corot
in France examined the values of
colours in landscape as they
objectively observed them in each
location in their plein air studies.
Impressionist painters used unifying
light and middle values of colours to
create a sense of atmosphere andshimmering light and humidity in their
paintings. Tonal painters of the 19th
century were deeply interested in the
poetic and expressive nature of values
in their compositions. In America, the
painters Thomas Eakins and George
Inness created strong value
constructions for emotional effect.
Even though Eakins was more factual
in his observations and Inness was
more concerned with the visual poetry
of colour tones, they both employed
value for creative purposes.A NEW WAY WITH COLOUR
In 1905, Albert Munsell, an American
educator and colour theorist, wrote
his fi rst book, A Colour Notation. This
introduced one of the fi rst cohesive
systems for the understanding of
colour in a practical manner.
He postulated that every colour was
a hue (part of a primary or secondary
colour family), a value (each colour
having a designation on a value scale)
and a chromatic intensity (a range
from grey to very bright).
This “colour space”, as he called
it, allowed for a student or painter to
evaluate each colour for these three
properties. Munsell built and
illustrated a construct, known as the
Munsell Colour System, that could
position each colour as to its
properties of hue, value and chroma.
In the teaching of modern colour
theory, Munsell has been one of the
giants in presenting a practical
understanding of each colour,
especially for painters. In the industry
of colour manufacturing today, many
tube colours of oil paints and
watercolours have designations on
the label relating to Munsell’s system.Albert Munsell
introduced one of
the first systems for
understanding colour
The Munsell Colour System
This three-dimensional model
illustrates the nature of each colour as
a hue, a value and a chromatic intensity
relative to a greyscale. An infi nite
number of colourscouldbeinserted.