1724 CHEVREUL -man of colour contrasts -Gautam Shah
Michel Eugène Chevreul (1786-1889) was a French chemist, academic and colour-consultant for the famous carpet producer the Gobelins. He worked on many branches of organic chemistry including, fatty oils, etc.
Chevreul worked on perception of Colours, was a result of the study of black dye colourants at the Gobelins. He found that the strength of the blacks was not due to the quality or contents of the dyes but a visual phenomenon related to the juxtaposition of the blacks and black or with the contextual ground. The issue was not of chemistry, but of psychophysiology. It was later hypothesized as the law of simultaneous contrasts of colours.
When eyes see colours there are some effects of contiguity (adjesceny), involving nearness, extent, strength of the colours, level of illumination and the nature of complementary or contrasting colours.
In case, when the eye observes two areas of same colours, they appear as dissimilar, more so at the edge. ‘When blacks were juxtaposed to blue, they appeared slightly tinted with the complementary colour of blue, which is orange. And when blacks are juxtaposed to violet, they seemed yellowish’.
Work of Chevreul was revolutionary, for the tapestries, carpets, furniture, mosaics, sets, maps, typography, graphics, stained glass, fashion clothing, and military camouflage. He brought is sanity to the world of art like impressionism, pointillism and realism in plein air art with portrayal of contrast, shadow shading, atmospherics and scenic illumination.
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