Colour-Blind Artists

By Paul Dunwell, writing for EasyFrame
© Copyright EasyFrame 2018

What this article is about

This article isn't about Van Gogh, because it seems he wasn't colour-blind. It is about other notable artists who were: such luminaries as Monet, Turner, Méryon, Degas, Cassat, Pugh and Blake.

A self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh — Vincent Van Gogh. This article’s not about him. Because he was, according to current thinking, not colour-blind.

Two of those seven are profiled in rather excellent framing articles on this site, 'Turner Corner' and 'Blake's Heaven', at www.easyframe.co.uk/NewsArticle/turner-corner and www.easyframe.co.uk/NewsArticle/blakes-heaven.

A photograph of Claude Monet, a Monet self-portrait and his painting 'Impression' — Oscar-Claude Monet, as he was and as he saw himself, together with his 1872 painting ‘Impression’, an interpretation of his hometown Le Havre. This painting kicked off the impressionist era, with everybody else pretending that they were colour-blind too.

What this article does is explain the advantages of colour-blindness and ask the question you must be pondering: why would a seemingly disproportionate number of colour-blind men be recognised as great artists by audiences who, for the most part, should be able to spot something amiss with the hues, shades, tints and tones?

Paintings by Edgar Degas, William Blake and Mary Cassat — Works by Frenchman Edgar Degas, Englishman William Blake and American Mary Stevenson Cassat. All were colour-blind.

Just what is colour-blindness?

If you're colour-blind, you're one of the 8% of men or 0.5% of women who are affected. I say this not as an ophthalmologist but as somebody for whom 'colour vision deficiency' is an understatement, and who knows it has advantages.

An Ishihara colour test plate of coloured dots — A typical Ishihara colour test-plate, part of a diagnostic test used around the world. If you see a ‘74’ your colour-vision should be normal. If you are pretty colour-blind you’ll see a ‘21’. If you see no number then you’re reassuringly as useless as me.

We tend to think of red-green colour-blindness (deuteranopia) because it is the most common form. Some people have a blue-yellow problem (tritanopia; imagine being attacked by wasps coming out of a blue sky). A tiny minority have no colour vision at all (achromatopsia). Whatever the variety, the problem is duff cones. The rods are fine.

The cause is usually hereditary. The gene is on the X chromosome, of which men have one and women two, which is why so few women are affected. It is inherited from the grandfather and passed through his daughter to her sons in 50% of cases. But it can also result from shaken baby syndrome, accidents or trauma to the eye or brain, diabetes, vitamin A deficiency, solvent abuse, or drugs used to treat TB and malaria. Colour vision deteriorates with age anyway because of macular degeneration, though it usually improves if you have new lenses fitted.

A Clifton Pugh painting shown as a colour-blind viewer sees it and as others see it — Expressionist painter Clifton Pugh won Australia’s Archibald Prize three times. Yet he was a ‘protanope’, lacking the long-wavelength retinal cones that distinguish greens, reds and yellows. It was enough to keep him out of the Australian Navy (and stopped my maternal grandfather getting into the Royal Navy during WW2, though the Merchant Navy took him on thinking he was a cook, which he’d become before his ruse was exposed). The picture on the left is what Pugh would see when looking at the picture on the right, which is what those with normal colour vision see. For me there is no difference at all. I am trusting Dr Skoyles, author of the excellent article at https://www.human-existence.com/blog/?p=488, on this one.

What's it like to be colour-blind?

Odd. For anyone who cannot imagine it, here are a few examples I've noted, though we seem to be affected in slightly different ways:

Groups of colours are easily confused. Purple and blue. Light green, pink and grey. Green and brown. Some reds and some greens.
That can be dangerous. In around 1980 I was given a very old washing machine with a red, green and brown power cable. Those colours are indistinguishable to me. My attempt to fix it left the casing live and humming, and gave me a shock good enough to hurl me across the kitchen.
Modern devices pose problems too. One of my first mobile phones had a charger that was (if memory serves) red, orange and green in different modes. To me the colour never changed.
We make assumptions. Grass is green, surely? So if it turns brown, many of us won't notice. I once watched an episode of 'My Hero' in which the alien literally turned green with envy. Only when he asked 'Is everyone laughing because I'm green?' did I realise he wasn't pink. He still looked pink to me.
Proximity changes everything. Most people spot bright red rose hips among greenery from a distance. People like me cannot. But once we get close enough to resolve the outline of each fruit, the difference in colour becomes so blindingly obvious that it seems odd we didn't notice before.
Light is different from flat colour. Green traffic lights can be confused with white lights, and red and amber ones with yellow sodium street lights. Light is made of red, blue and green, which together make white. The three basic colours in paint are red, blue and yellow, and mixed with only a little yellow they make something close to black.
There are advantages. Colour-blind people are better at seeing through camouflage, so we're useful in military intelligence roles that involve examining aerial photography. We are also said to have better night vision. (Not in my case, but that may be coincidental.)

Ardal O'Hanlon as Thermoman in the TV series My Hero — Thermoman, aka mild-mannered health-store owner George Sunday, played by Ardal O’Hanlon in the British TV series ‘My Hero’. Being from the planet Ultron he literally turns green with envy in one episode. Even then I couldn’t see him as anything other than pink. I have no wish to spread paranoia, but this flags up the very real risk that we are already surrounded by Martians.

Coping mechanisms

Most colour-blind people adopt coping mechanisms. One is knowing that the red light is always at the top of a traffic light and the green at the bottom, so the one in the middle is amber. Simples! Since traffic lights can 'disappear' among other lights, it makes sense to look for lights on big sticks at junctions. This falls over when driving overseas, where traffic lights are strung up on wires.

Artists have their own strategies. Charles Méryon, the 19th-century French artist, simply avoided colour.

Etchings of Paris by Charles Méryon — Charles Méryon realised as a child that colour-blindness might be an insuperable obstacle to being an artist. So he largely stuck to monochrome work, mostly etchings, and is famous for his many views of Paris. Working in that field also meant he could more easily produce prints, which have been good investments and compare favourably with those by Durer, Rembrandt and Whistler.

Many artists have stuck to etching, or become sculptors: anything to avoid colour. The American painter Peter Milton was unaware for years, as a painter and even a lecturer, that he was botching the colours. When he realised, he did away with the lot and went monochrome. There is a super article on that at www.npr.org/2014/11/16/364092778/for-one-artist-colorblindness-opened-up-a-world-of-black-and-white't=1541684018402 and, below, an example of his work. Yes, it's all in black and white.

A black and white work by Peter Milton — It is not known whether Peter Milton was aware, when he made this piece, of commentator Ted Lowe’s famous remark on ‘Pot Black’: “Steve is going for the pink ball – and for those of you who are watching in black and white, the pink is next to the green”.

Not all great artists have avoided colour. JMW Turner's 'The Fighting Temeraire', voted 'The Greatest Painting in Britain', is a blaze of colour that presumably approximated to what Turner saw. (In all fairness, the vessel's masts and rigging had been removed by the time of the journey he was supposedly documenting, it was pulled by two tugs not one, and the sun should have been in front of it not behind. But let's not split hairs.) Monet was the same.

You could brand these people 'impressionists' because, for most onlookers, what ends up on the canvas is not an accurate depiction of what they see. Yet there is a suspicion that the artist is seeing more than the audience sees, not less. That perceptual gap is enough to provoke genuine envy.

A Turner landscape said to show his colour-blindness — Apparently this work is said to demonstrate Turner’s colour-blindness. Since I have the same affliction I have no idea what’s odd about it.

Famous or not, colour-blind artists can resort to obvious coping strategies, including asking a woman. This comes in handy when paints are not clearly labelled, especially when they're being mixed on the palette. My brother (see below) used to ask our mum.

A painting of Bridlington harbour in mist by Mark Dunwell — He’s not famous. Yet. But my brother Mark Dunwell, who trained as an architectural technician, was selling his paintings overseas in his mid-teens. He painted this one at just 16. Using discounted car-spray, with convenient labels naming vehicles that must now be classics, he sprayed through card templates he’d cut, adding only the masts and other final details with a brush. The scene is Bridlington harbour in an autumn mist. Anyone who’s been there will recognise its accuracy.

I should add that I won a design competition with 1,800 entries simply by limiting my colours. I could tell black, white, maroon and silver apart with some confidence, so I stuck with those. And I got A level Art by drawing. So if colour-blindness has put you off art, take heart and give it a go. You may not be a great artist, but colour-blindness shouldn't limit what you produce. Nor, when you're buying or hanging art, should it stop you choosing work by colour-blind artists.

And Van Gogh?

According to the Van Gogh Museum, whose staff ought to know, the latest theory is that he wasn't colour-blind but that his reds have faded more than other colours over the years. His work also shows knowledge of the colour theories of his day, which he could never have applied had he been colour-blind. Read about it at www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/125-questions/questions-and-answers/question-52-of-125

Conclusion

Who cares if these guys (and Ms Cassat; remember that 1 in 17 people with colour-blindness is female) were colour-blind? They were great, and their work would enhance any home, public building or office.

You'll need it framing first. EasyFrame is an obvious and affordable supplier, whether you want everything you'd need to do the job yourself or would rather they did it for you. Any good framer will show you a range of solutions and advise on what suits the work and where it will hang.

EasyFrame is on 01234 856 501 and sales@easyframe.co.uk, and they'll always chat even if you don't want to buy!

Article Posted: 14/11/2018 08:23:23