David Briggs - The Theory of Colour

Lecture 1: The Nature of Colour

AGNSW Domain Theatre, November 8, 2014

The traditional view of colour

The traditional notion of three primary colours arose from the observation that a full
range of colours can be mixed from paints or dyes of just a reddish, a yellowish and a
bluish hue, together with black and white [1-02 left, 1-03]. It is a small and slippery
step from the observation that many colours can be made from paints of three hues,
to the interpretation that these colours are made of those three hues. This step is
bridged by the seemingly “common sense” assumptions (1) that colours are
properties residing in objects and in lights, and (2) that these properties themselves
intermix when we mix coloured paints and lights. By this view, what we call “colour
mixing” with paints and lights is literally mixing colours. We get green paint when we
mix yellow paint and blue paint because the colour green contains the colours yellow
and blue. Green is thus considered a compound or secondary colour. We cannot mix
bright yellow paint, and so yellow is considered a simple/ primary colour that can't
be compounded from other colours.

This notion of three primaries emerged in the early 17th century, most influentially in
the Opticorum Libri Sex (1613) of Francois D'Aguilon [1-04], a friend of the painter
Rubens. D'Aguilon distinguished three types of intermixture (compositio): “real",
"intentional", and "notional" [1-05]. By the eighteenth century white and black were
usually considered compound colours, leaving just three painter’s primaries [1-06].

Newton
Sir Isaac Newton showed that when a beam of white light passes through a glass
prism, it divides into rays refracted by different amounts, and appearing different
colours, and that these rays can be recombined to make white light [1-07]. In modern
terminology, these “rays” consist of different wavelengths of light [1-08]. Newton
defended his theory against contemporary arguments that the prism created the
colours by mixing light and darkness [1-09, 10]. Although these modificationist
theories were later revived by Castel in 1740 and most famously by Goethe in 1810 [1-
11], they had already been decisively dismissed by Newton’s own experiments, which
showed that the rays become more cleanly separated far from the prism, instead of
overlapping more and more, as Goethe’s explanation wrongly predicts [1-12].

Newton’s experiments showed that colours of lights result physically from the
various rays (wavelengths) being present in unequal amounts [1-13], and that colours
of objects result from the disposition of coloured objects to reflect the various rays
unequally [1-14]. (In Newton’s view, however, colour itself did not exist in light or
objects, but was a sensation created in the observer, just as sound is a sensation
created by physical vibrations of the air [1-15]). These conclusions conflicted with the
view that the colours red, yellow and blue are physically simple and other colours are
compound, because light of almost all hues (except purple) could be either simple or
compound physically [1-16]. Since all colour stimuli result from various
combinations of the same spectral rays, Newton called the colours of these rays
“primary” [1-17].

So how do blue and yellow “make green”? Newton did not investigate the mixing of
liquid paints, but he did discuss the situation of a blue paint illuminated by a yellow
light, which D’Aguilon had given as an example of “intentional” mixing of the colour
green, and gave a correct explanation in terms of what would later be called
subtractive mixing: we get green because the compound yellow light and the
reflectance of the blue paint have the green part of the spectrum in common [1-18].

Red, yellow and blue rays

Newton advanced our understanding of colour immeasurably, but he left some
important questions unanswered [1-19]. What is the origin of the seven spectral
colours? And why do colours form a circle when the spectrum is a linear sequence?
And most pressingly, how could we reconcile the painters’ three primary colours with
the continuous spectrum? Why should three colours be special? One solution was to
conclude that Newton was wrong about the spectrum, and that the apparently
continuous spectrum was actually made up of red, yellow and blue rays that overlap
to produce the intermediate hues [1-20].

Although proven wrong in the long run, many important 18th and 19th century
innovations in the field of colour were made on this assumption. The Swedish
astronomer Tobias Mayer described the first three dimensional classification of
object colours on the assumption that all object colours can be represented by
proportional mixtures of red, yellow, blue, white and black [1-21]. The (correct)
suggestion that colour vision involves three types of receptors in the eye was first
made on the (incorrect) assumption that light consists of red, yellow and blue rays [1-
22]. The inventor of the first colour photographic prints, Louis Ducos du Hauron,
gave his initial description of the process in terms of the same assumption [1-23].
And when Christian Ernst Wünsch discovered in 1792 that there are three additive
primary hues for mixing coloured lights, he concluded that instead of red, yellow and
blue rays, the spectrum is made up of red, green and violet rays that overlap to form
yellow and blue [1-24].

The solution to the primary-colour dilemma was found by Thomas Young in 1801 [1-
25]. Young's view was that Newton was correct about the continuous spectrum, but
that the three "principal colours" might still be giving us a clue to the number of
receptor types in the eye, which after all would surely have to be finite. Nevertheless,
the idea of a physically three-part spectrum predominated in the early 19th century
through the efforts of the formidable Scottish physicist Sir David Brewster, who
convinced himself he could see the red, yellow and blue rays by viewing the solar
spectrum through coloured filters [1-27], and his dogmatic advocacy of this idea
became a roadblock that had to be demolished before progress in colour research
could proceed.

The colour revolution

This demolition was accomplished, elegantly and decisively, in 1852 by Hermann von
Helmholtz, who accounted for Brewster's observations in terms of a combination of
imperfect experimental conditions and visual contrast effects. Helmholtz revived
Young’s suggestion and postulated three "fundamental sensations", red, green and
violet, with peak responses in the parts of the spectrum appearing orange-red, green
and blue-violet [1-27,28]. Later, based on extensive testing of different types of
"colour-blind" subjects, his associate and former student Koenig concluded that the
peak responses are actually in the yellow-green, green and blue-violet parts of the
spectrum. These curves have been confirmed in recent decades by a variety of
inventive techniques for measuring the response of the individual receptor types
(cone cells) or their pigments. This trichromatic theory of colour vision is the basis
of all additive colour technologies (television, monitors and digital projectors) that
create a wide range of colours from red, green and blue lights [1-29 to 1-34].

Important as the trichromatic theory is, there was still one vital part of the puzzle
missing. As Ernst Mach and Ewald Hering pointed out, we do not experience yellow
as a compound of red and green "sensations", and we experience white as a simple
colour, not as a compound of three coloured sensations. The hues that are simple and
uncompounded in our experience are not red, green and blue-violet, but red, yellow,
green and blue, and all other hues are perceived as combinations of adjacent pairs of
these hues [1-35]. Hering therefore proposed an opponent theory of colour vision,
that receptors in the retina generate three opponent signals of redness vs greenness,
yellowness vs blueness and whiteness vs blackness. Hering's four opponent hues had
been foreshadowed in Goethe’s description of his modificationist theory of the origin
of colours, and especially in his proposal for colour nomenclature [1-36].

It was realized very early that both Helmholtz and Hering could be correct if they
were describing different stages of the process of colour vision. The trichromatic
theory is now combined with the opponent theory as the zone theory, which holds
that our colour vision involves trichromatic input from three cone cell types, and
opponent output consisting of yellow/blue and red/green opponent signals created
by the brain based indirectly on differences in cone responses [1-37 to 1-39].

Although some important details remain to be resolved, the zone theory is widely
accepted in principle today as an explanation of colour vision. Input to the visual
system consists of the response of the three cone cell types, L, M and S [1-40, 41].
Red, green and blue lights work as additive primaries because they each stimulate
one cone cell type more than the other two [1-42]. A light that contains a balance of
wavelengths throughout the spectrum stimulates all three cones equally, and is seen
as white [1-43]. Colours are experiences that our brains create when we detect
unequal amounts of the visible wavelengths, by means of an unequal response of our
cone cells [1-44]. Colour experiences are created as combinations of red or green and
yellow or blue opponent signals [1-45]. For example the experience “red” is created
when the L and/or S cones to respond more than the M cones [1-46]. Thus, red is not
something that exists outside us and is “detected” by our eyes; red is an experience
that our brain creates in response to two bands of wavelengths that have nothing in
common, apart from being at either end of the range of wavelengths we can see [1-
47]. The two opponent signals have four possible combinations, which create the
circle of possible hues [1-48 to 51].

We will look at the impact of the old and new views of colour on colour classification
in the second lecture, and on how colour theory has been taught to art students over
time in the third lecture. To foreshadow somewhat, many books explaining the
trichromatic theory for artists and art students appeared in the decades following
the mid-nineteenth century colour revolution, and judging by the number of editions
and printings, they appear to have been very widely read [1-52]. Nevertheless, the
theory of three physical primaries, which entered into artists’ instructional books in
the early 19th century, persisted in some texts [1-53] and in the minds of some artists
[1-54] well into the twentieth century. The traditional view staged a remarkable
comeback in art education in the 1970’s, in large part due to the impact of a single
book, The Art of Color (1961) by Johannes Itten [1-55].

Further reading
Briggs, D.J.C., 2012. Primary colours. http://www.huevaluechroma.com/062.php
Briggs, D.J.C., 2014. What is colour? http://www.huevaluechroma.com/036.php

Text copyright David Briggs, 2014 djcbriggs@gmail.com

Accompanying slides are available at https://sites.google.com/site/djcbriggs/classes