Red. The colour of passion, anger, post-boxes and ripe tomatoes. Red pigments have been used since the earliest cave paintings, but the colour is often problematic. Reds have often been poisonous or fade far too easily. The colour itself can overwhelm our senses and become too dominant if not used with care.
The colour 'Scarlet Red' from the book Nature's Palette, is given the references of oriental poppy, scarlet ibis and light red cinnabar, cinnabar being the toxic mineral that was used to make the pigments 'vermillion' and 'Chinese red'. Join me as I find out more about this colour and its associated references.
According to the book 'Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox' by Victoria Finlay, the colour red has long been associated with the issue of fading. Post boxes in the UK used to be painted green, however there were complaints from the public about people not being able to find them and sometimes even walking into them, so between 1874 and 1884, the Post Office painted them red. Unfortunately the red paint they used tended to fade and turned the post boxes a pinky-white colour. The Post Office again received complaints and suggestions that they try a different pigment, but there wasn't an obvious option for a bright red that could also withstand frost and bright sunshine until more modern, synthetic paints were developed in the twentieth century.
Artists have had similar woes over time, although they are often able to protect their artwork from the rigours of outdoor weathering. Bright reds, such as 'Scarlet Red' have long been valued, especially if they have some staying power.
Vegetable Reference: Oriental Poppy (Papaver orientale)
The oriental poppy is a perennial flowering plant that's native to north-eastern Turkey and northern Iran. These plants grow to about 90cm high and have bristly stems and leaves that are covered in silvery hairs. They flower in early to mid summer to form orange-red flowers with dark purple splotches at the base of the petals.
Georgia O'Keefe painted two of these striking flowers in her 1928 piece 'Oriental Poppies', which measured 40 x 30 inches. The flowers fill the canvas, as the artist wanted to surprise people into looking at it and appreciating what she appreciated in the flowers. I felt inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's work to complete my own mixed media sketch based on a close-up of a poppy flower:
Animal Reference: Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber)
The Scarlet Ibis is the national bird of Trinidad and features on the coat of arms of Trinidad and Tobago. These birds live in the swamps and mudflats of South America and eat crustaceans such as crabs and crayfish which give them their beautiful scarlet colouration. Without the carotenoid pigments that these birds obtain from their diet, they would become very pale or even white. Males and females of this species are a similar size (around 65 cm from tip of tail to tip of beak with a wingspan of around 55cm) although the males are slightly larger. Their long, curved bill and long neck help them to make probing head movements when hunting in shallow water and when preening.
Most birds, including the Scarlet Ibis, have a uropygial gland on their back near their tail that produces preen oil. This oil is distributed by the bird over their feathers when preening and is thought to help maintain the structural integrity of the feathers and aid waterproofing. It may also actually contribute to the colouration of the Scarlet Ibis. The preen oil of the similarly coloured flamingo, contains carotenoids and they spread this over the feathers more regularly during breeding season when their colour becomes more pronounced. If you'd like to read more about the possible functions of the uropygial gland then take a look at the Wikipedia entry. There's a concise, but thorough, pdf about the Scarlet Ibis at the University of the West Indies website that's also a good read.
Mineral Reference: Light Red Cinnabar
Cinnabar is a toxic mineral consisting of mercury and sulphur that had great importance within the field of alchemy, in which it may have even been considered the 'Philosopher's Stone'.
To alchemists, the process of transforming matter could be conveyed as a transition of colours, described as black to white to yellow to red. The formation of cinnabar was viewed as achieving this sequence as the silver mercury and yellow sulphur combined to form the red mineral, and was therefore seen as something special. I'd always thought that alchemy was merely a quest to transform base metals into gold, but after a bit of research on cinnabar, I found that it was actually more of a spiritual quest for perfection. There's a mine of information about alchemy on The Alchemy Website.
Cinnabar forms in volcanic regions, so people from such areas in ancient times independently found the mineral and began using it as a pigment. This is quite unusual and shows how alluring its colour must have been. To read more about its composition and origins take a look at the 'Cinnabar' page at geology.com.
The pigment vermillion (PR106) is formed when cinnabar is ground down into a powder. Until the discovery of cadmium red in the earliest 20th century, vermillion was one of the most widely used pigments around the globe. It was known as 'Chinese red' in China, where it was used extensively in creating lacquerware and other forms of artwork.
European artists such as Vermeer often used the pigment under glazes, but it was also seen in its more pure form in paintings such as Titian's 'The Assumption of the Virgin' (1516 - 1518) in which two of the apostles' gowns, along with those of the Virgin Mary and of God, are coloured in vermillion. According to 'The Art of Colour' by Kelly Grovier, these figures were coloured in the same way to suggest that we are all, whether mortal or divine, in a state of fiery flux.
With the development of cadmium red (itself toxic but not to the degree of vermillion) in 1892 the use of vermillion declined. Cadmium red was less expensive and more stable as well as being less of a hazard. Today, several pigments are used to create a vermillion hue, with napthol red (PR188), benzimidazole orange (PO36) and pyrrole red (PR255) being among the most frequent. To see read an account of the history of vermillion and a comparison of the pigments used to imitate it, see the Jackson's Art blog post ' The Story of Vermillion Red'.
Comments