Abstract
FOR the Thomas Young Oration delivered before the Physical Society on October 6, Dr. Herbert Ives chose for his subject “Thomas Young and the Simplification of the Artist's Palette”. The experimentally well established fact enunciated by Thomas Young that all colours may be matched by the mixture of three properly selected primaries, has been extensively used in colour photography and typographic printing. It has not, however, been heretofore successfully used in painting. The simplification indicated by the three-colour principle has been retarded in realisation largely owing to the mistaken, but widely held, belief that the primary pigment colours are red, yellow and blue. Actually the pigment primaries, which act by subtraction or absorption of light from white, should be complementary in hue to the red, green and blue, which are the primaries for mixing light by addition. Those colours are minus red (spectrum minus red) or turquoise, a minus green or crimson, a minus blue or yellow, each having wide overlapping spectral reflection bands. Pigments of these colours, of proper spectral characteristics, are capable of mixing in pairs to make red, green and blue, and all three together to make black. When mixed with white all variations of saturation and hue are obtained. The practical problem consists in procuring pigments possessing the indicated spectral reflectivities, and having satisfactory chemical properties, such as freedom from reaction with the oil or other medium, and satisfactory permanence. Due to the very great advances which have been made in the dye industry to meet recent demands for permanent colours for automobiles and outdoor signs, it is now possible to select pigments nearly enough meeting the scientific requirements to test the practicability of the principle. This has been done with success, and pictures so painted were exhibited in connexion at the meeting. The great advantage of a three-colour palette is its simplicity and freedom from ambiguity.
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Thomas Young and Colour Mixtures. Nature 132, 541 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132541a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132541a0