About colour and colour theory
Ideas about colour and light have fascinated thinkers of each generation throughout history, beginning—inauspiciously perhaps—with Aristotle’s (384–322 BC) preference for clear outlines while admitting colour only limited significance. Against this was an opposing view developed by the 3rd-century Neo-Platonist Plotinus, who asserted the divine nature of colour and brightness. Then Leon Battista Alberti’s (1404–72) De picture (1435) addressed the topic of colour under the heading ‘reception of light’, considering colour purely as a visual phenomenon. Interestingly, he devised a concept of colour chords based on harmonising complementaries that would re-remerge centuries later in Michel Eugène Chevreul’s (1786–1889) study of ‘simultaneous contrast’. He identified two types of colour from a circle of 64 hues—‘a harmony of analogy and a harmony of contrast’—with complementary colours capable of producing the greatest harmony. His theories were influential and became widespread, with his ideas about the behaviour of complementary colours and the phenomenon of ‘after vision’ remaining confirmed to this day and often fully exploited by those working with colour.