Color in the Age of Impressionism: Commerce, Technology, and Art by Laura Anne Kalba (review)

The physics of light and color have long been studied, and more recently neuroscience has advanced our understanding of how the brain processes color. In built environments, however, another complexity is present: color is frequently a product of specific technologies and shifting tastes, which have their own histories—histories easily taken for granted. Sensitivity to this issue is what makes Laura Anne Kalba's prize-winning Color in the Age of Impressionismso stimulating and valuable. Focusing on the Impressionist era in France and especially Paris, Kalba examines the social and cultural embrace of a novel range of bright and exuberant colors—on canvas, on paper, in women's fashions, in gardens, at flower stands, on kiosks and walls, and for a host of consumer products. Kalba's achievement is to identify not only the sources and manifestations of this "color revolution," but also the web of interrelationships among its constitutive elements. Indeed, the brilliant color palette of the Impressionists was far from universally welcomed at the outset. By interrogating changing color uses and preferences, Kalba shows just how historically and culturally contingent such phenomena can be.

Kalba introduces her project as a study of "the impact of new color technologies on French visual and material culture, from the early commercialization of synthetic dyes (ca. 1857) to the Lumière brothers' perfection of the autochrome color photography process (ca. 1907)." Her first substantive chapter begins with Michel-Eugène Chevreul, a chemist who served as director of dyeworks at the revered Gobelins tapestry factory in Paris. Chevreul had a lifelong interest in color theory, and he published a highly influential study in 1839 that examined the visual effects of viewing contrasting colors simultaneously. He also produced a color wheel for understanding color harmonies, which he hoped might provide rules to govern color choices. Chevreul's work, however, was overtaken by the introduction of synthetic dyes, starting with analine (coal tar) dyes in the middle and later 1850s, and then azo dyes. These new and comparatively inexpensive dyes made possible the widespread use of stunning new colors (notably fuchsia and brilliant purple) in areas ranging from fashion design to paints and consumer goods: magenta and purple fabrics were no longer the exclusive preserve of royalty or the very rich. Kalba next examines gardening, floriculture, and artificial-flower making. The first two activities stimulated Paris's fondness for flower stands, flower shops, and colorful public gardens; the third helped to reshape the millinery trades and fashion design. Scientific plant hybridization was a central technology behind the enthusiasm for unusually eye-catching flowers, whereas increasing use of synthetic dyes encouraged the production of artificial flowers often bearing scant resemblance to nature.

"Impressionism's Chemical Aesthetic" is Kalba's most sustained discussion of Impressionist art per se. Here she focuses largely on the bright color palettes employed by Degas, Renoir, and Monet, and she argues, among other things, for the increasing abstraction and autonomy of color—in contrast to realism, where color was typically subordinated to drawing skill. This chapter is followed by a novel discussion of fireworks—spectacles that grew increasingly colorful and elaborate, enabled by improvements in the chemical composition of the explosive materials. Although fireworks originated in public celebrations of state power and military exploits, later nineteenth-century French displays became more and more associated with consumer culture. Their brilliant colors were increasingly prized for their own sake, not as representations of anything beyond themselves.

Kalba focuses next on poster art and colored trade cards, both products of developments in chromolithography. She argues that whereas women were the primary consumers and collectors of trade cards, wealthy men became the primary collectors of printed art posters—posters initially made for advertising purposes and attached to walls and kiosks all over Paris. Kalba's final chapter is labeled an "Epilogue." This word was chosen quite deliberatively: she argues here that Autochrome color photographs and Neo...