by Joshua Cohen
“Turnbull’s Blue—Antwerp Blue—Berlin Blue—Prussiate of Iron—Chinese Blue—Saxon Blue—Blau de Berlin”: Reading the world’s first artificial color.
Artists in the West had no reliable blue until the early eighteenth century. Ultramarine, extracted from the blue stone called lapis lazuli, was said to have once been more expensive than gold, and Renaissance artists had to negotiate with their patrons for individual drops of blue upon receiving their commissions (ultramarine means, literally, “over the sea,” because most lapis was imported from Afghanistan). Indigo, derived from plants of the Indigofera genus, tended to blacken, and was not lightfast, while azurite, derived from the mineral of the same name, turned green when mixed with water, and so was unusable for frescoes, which were painted affresco, translating to “fresh,” with the implication of “wet.” Smalt, a ground glass colored with cobalt, would fade, and the chemical properties of copper were not yet understood; there was no way to consistently create blue from that metal, as opposed to green, or a tint somewhere between. It is commonly agreed that “Prussian blue”—the painter’s first stable blue—was the palette's first synthesized color: Fe
What follows is a portrait of that color—or a “blueprint,” of its origins and use—through chemistry, painting, photography, industry, warfare, Holocaust, and nuclear terrorism.
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blue n. The hue of that portion of the visible spectrum lying between green and indigo, evoked in the human observer by radiant energy with wavelengths of approximately 420 to 490 nanometers; any of a group of colors that may vary in lightness and saturation, whose hue is that of a clear daytime sky; one of the additive or light primaries; one of the psychological primary hues.
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Prussian Blue: Turnbull’s Blue—Antwerp Blue—Berlin Blue—Prussiate of Iron—Chinese Blue—Saxon Blue—Bleu de Berlin—Pariser-blau
—Arthur Herbert Church, The Chemistry of Paints and Painting
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It has been alleged, that the ancients were acquainted with Prussian blue, which they employed in painting; but Landriani has shown, in his dissertation on this substance, from the evidence of Theophrastus and Pliny, and from the analysis of an Egyptian mummy, that the ancients employed ultramarine blue and the smalt or azure of cobalt; and that Prussian blue, which is readily acted on by the substances to which it must have been exposed in these countries, could not have resisted their influence for so many ages, and retain the beautiful colours, which are admired in the paintings of Herculaneum.
—Encyclopedia Britannica, sixth edition |
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The earliest painting on which De Wilde reports [Prussian blue] is one by J. E. La Farque, dated 1770.
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The pigment was accepted by artists much earlier than previously assumed, as can be proven on the basis of a number of examples. To date, the painting Entombment of Christ (Picture Gallery, Sanssouci, Potsdam, dated 1709) by Pieter van der Werff is the oldest known painting that makes use of Prussian blue. Around 1710, painters at the Prussian court such as Pesne, Gericke, Manyóki, and Weidemann were already using the pigment to a surprisingly large extent. At around the same time, Prussian blue arrived in Paris, where Watteau and later his successors Lancret and Pater used it in their paintings.
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Dippel’s Animal Oil: Johann Konrad Dippel (1673-1734) was born at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, the son of a Lutheran pastor. He became a master theologian, publishing under the name Christianus Democritus, but succumbed to the lure of alchemy, signing himself Frankensteinensis. Having failed to make gold, he launched his elixir vitae—a medicinal “animal oil”—upon an unsuspecting public in 1700. Dippel’s oil was a malodorous distillate of the unconsidered residues of animal carcasses—blood, bones and offal. His predilection for body parts may have later inspired Mary Shelley, when she visited Castle Frankenstein in 1814, on her elopement with Percy. We now know Dippel’s oil to consist of a mixture of nitrogenous organic bases such as pyrrole, and several alkyl cyanides. At the time it was hailed as a panacea—presumably sustained by the widely-held belief that anything so obnoxious must be beneficial. In 1704 Dippel supplied the artists’ colourmaker, Heinrich Diesbach of Berlin, with an impure sample of alkali that was contaminated with his oil. By chance, this provided the essential ingredient—cyanide—to enable Diesbach’s serendipitous discovery of the first synthetic pigment, Prussian blue or Turnbull’s blue. All painters thereafter have reason to be grateful to this unscrupulous alchemist, who, after numerous scrapes with European royalty, died at Castle Wittgenstein, possibly a victim of his own elixir.
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Dry thoroughly in an iron vessel and powder grossly, any quantity of fresh blood. Dry thoroughly and powder also a quantity of pearl ash equal to the powdered blood. Mix them, and calcine them in a low red heat in a crucible with a loose cover until all smoke and flame ceases: then make the cover fit close, and calcine in a full red or nearly white heat for half an hour. The crucible should not be more than two thirds full, as the mixture is apt to swell. Empty the contents of the crucible into warm water in the proportion of a quart to four oz. of the mixture. Pour on again as much warm water: mix and filter the solutions. Dissolve of sulphat of iron (green vitriol) and of alum, of each a quantity equal to one half of the pearl ash employed. Pour the solution of alum and green vitriol mixt together, gradually into the solution of blood and alkali: both solutions are better for being warm, but not boiling hot. Stir it well. Let the sediment settle. It will be of a dirty greenish colour: wash it. Then digest it for 2 or 3 days in diluted muriatic acid (spirit of salt one part, water two parts). The colour by this means gradually becomes blue, because the muriatic acid dissolves the yellow oxyd of iron which is not combined with the prussic acid. Wash it repeatedly. Dry it on chalk stones, paper, linen, or any other mode of draining off the water. Spread it thin to expose it to the air. I have kept the lixivium of blood and alkali (prussiat of potash) for a year and a half in bottles, and used it to make prussian blue with equal success as at first. Chippings of hoofs answer equally well with blood. —John Redman Coxe and Thomas Cooper, The Emporium of Arts and Sciences |
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The colours which approach the dark side, and consequently, blue in particular, can be made to approximate to black; in fact, a very perfect Prussian blue, or an indigo acted on by vitriolic acid appears almost as a black. |
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Shall the names of so many of our colors continue to be derived from those of obscure foreign localities, as Naples yellow, Prussian blue, raw Sienna, burnt Umber, Gamboge? (surely the Tyrian purple must have faded by this time), or from comparatively trivial articles of commerce,—chocolate, lemon, coffee, cinnamon, claret? (shall we compare our hickory to a lemon, or a lemon to a hickory?) or from ores and oxides which few ever see? —Henry David Thoreau, Autumnal Tints |
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As a manufactured color, Prussian blue, like Naples yellow, Turner’s yellow, and Scheele’s green, involved materials and production methods that crossed the traditional boundaries of several groups: colormakers, apothecaries, drysalters, and manufacturing chemists. Production rights were frequently in dispute. In France, sale of painters’ materials was a responsibility of the painters’ guild (the Académie de St-Luc). Manufactured colors, when they did not use traditional coloring materials or did not use them in traditional ways, threatened this closely guarded right. In 1764, masters from the Académie de St-Luc seized the Prussian blue factory of sieurs Gly and d’Heure. The owners turned to the Paris Academy of Sciences, asking for a determination of the nature of Prussian blue. Gly and d’Heure argued that theirs was a chemical factory with no connection to the art of painting, even though painters used their product. Jean Hellot examined the problem on behalf of the Academy, and agreed with the manufacturers. Prussian blue is a product of chemistry and should not be controlled by the painters’ guild. The factory in the faubourg Saint-Marcel was allowed to reopen and continued to make Prussian blue through the next four decades; theirs was often considered the best that was made in Paris. —Sarah Lowengard, The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe |
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Prooshan Blue. A term of great endearment. After the battle of Waterloo the Prussians were immensely popular in England, and in connection with the Loyal True Blue Club gave rise to the toasts, “The True Blue” and the “Prussian Blue.” Sam Weller [Dickens’s Pickwick Papers] addresses his father with “Vell, my Prooshan Blue.” —Brewer’s Dictionary Rossetti walked round Ruskin’s class-room one evening, when the latter was absent. “How’s this?” he said; “nothing but blue studies—can’t any of you see any colour but blue?” “It was by Mr. Ruskin’s directions,” one of the students answered. “Well, where do you get all this Prussian blue from?” asked Rossetti; and then, opening a cupboard, “Well, I declare, here’s a packet with several dozen cakes of this fearful colour. Oh, I can’t allow it; Mr. Ruskin will spoil everybody’s eye for colour—I shall confiscate the whole lot; I must do it, in the interests of his and my pupils. You must tell him that I’ve taken them all away.” When a few evenings later Ruskin was told what had happened, he “burst into one of those boisterous laughs in which he indulged whenever anything very much amused him.” —Edward Cook, The Life of John Ruskin |
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A simple blue sky: Prussian Blue, Antwerp Blue or Cobalt Blue.
—Cyclopedia of Drawing, ed. Alfred E. Zapf |
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This Prussian blue is the most subtle and invading color on the palette. It is like those articles marked “made in Germany,” which go everywhere. It was the cause of the ruder manifestations of French esprit being abandoned in the Atelier Picot. This is the tradition: A new student one day was stripped, tied to a ladder, painted all over with Prussian blue, and then set out in the street, leaning against a wall. One can easily imagine how the police went into the matter, and one acquainted with Prussian blue can imagine how they came out. The whole quarter must have been tinged with blue. —Elihu Vedder, Reminiscences of an American Painter |
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And that is how I caught Cézanne off guard, coming along bent over in thought. His face like a potter’s, sun-burned, looked startled as the shadow of nearby leaves played over it. He had a small, bony head with rosy skin, lively eyes, and a white mustache, carelessly smeared with prussian blue.
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One should not work Prussian blue into one’s drawing of a face; for then it ceases to be flesh and becomes wood.
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Mr. Wordsworth loved all that was rich and picturesque, light and free, in clothing. A deep Prussian blue, or purple, was one of his favourite colours for a silk dress. —Memoirs of Sara Coleridge |
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Paper simply washed with a solution of this salt is highly sensitive to the action of light. Prussian blue is deposited (the base being necessarily supplied by the destruction of one portion of the acid, and the acid by decomposition of another). After half an hour or an hour’s exposure to sunshine, a very beautiful negative photograph is the result, to fix which, all that is necessary is to soak it in water in which a little sulphate of soda is dissolved, to insure the fixity of the Prussian blue deposited. While dry the impression is dove colour or lavender-blue, which has a curious and striking effect on the greenish-yellow ground of the paper, produced by the saline solution. After washing, the ground colour disappears, and the photograph becomes bright blue on a white ground. If too long exposed, it gets “over-sunned,” and the tint has a brownish or yellowish tendency, which however is removed in fixing; but no increase of intensity beyond a certain point is obtained by continuance of exposure.
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I find Prussian blue is the only blue that retains its exact color-cast under artificial light, and since a picture is so often seen in such light, I deem this worthy of consideration.
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“You only need three colours, you know. Very simple.” “Which colours are they?” I inquire ignorantly. “Why, you know of course,” he says surprised. “Burnt sienna, cadmium yellow, and—er—there! I can't think of it. I know it as well as I know my own face. So do you. Well, that's stupid of me.”
—ee cummings, The Enormous Room Your hair’s a mass of Prussian blue, The helmet of an amazon— No thought has ever broken through, No blush was ever seen upon That brow, encased in Prussian blue. —Charles Baudelaire, Rara Avis, or The Nymphomaniad Ah, yes—on the darkened parade square there was still a ring of torches and, surprisingly, the strains of military music. There was but one silence, the same for all the skies of prussian blue, and indeed for the plains as well. The dark is so uniquely uniform, so unifying in its uniformity! —Max Jacob, The Bouchaballe Property |
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National uniform color was simply tradition. At a distance, an army’s colors proved incomprehensible save for the Austrians who wore white and the British who wore red. At cannon shot, Prussian blue was much like French blue, and the Russian green was not distinguishable from either of them. Cavalry regiments were particularly difficult to distinguish at longer range, and friendly fire was a constant threat from enthusiastic gunners.
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You are a hundred thousand times welcome, old wort-sampler, hellbeit you’re just about as culpable as my woolfell merger would be. In effect I could engage in an energument over you till you were republicly royally toobally prussic blue in the shirt after. Trionfante di bestia!
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If, for instance, you were ordered to paint a particular shade of blue called “Prussian Blue,” you might have to use a table to lead you from the word “Prussian Blue,” to a sample of the color, which would serve you as your copy. —Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book If it is the middle of the day, however, discard the use of umber as a substitute for Prussian blue. —Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara, How to Proceed in the Arts Blue, Prussian (usually with black—with yellow for special greens) Avoid blue in mixtures because of its imbecile atmospheric tendency —Marcel Duchamp, The Bride’s Veil |
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Forensic samples were taken from the visited sites. A control sample was removed from delousing facility 1 at Birkenau. It was postulated that because of the high iron content of the building materials at these camps the presence of hydrogen cyanide gas [Zyklon-B] would result in a ferric-ferro-cyanide compound being formed, as evidenced by the Prussian Blue staining on the walls in the delousing facilities.
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Hydrogen cyanide (HCN), also known as hydrocyanic acid, prussic acid or Blausäure was the toxic agent in Zyklon-B. Strictly speaking, the term hydrogen cyanide should be used for the pure compound and the term hydrocyanic acid reserved for its aqueous solutions, but this convention has been ignored so much that it is pointless to insist upon it. HCN is a high vapor pressure liquid; the Merck index lists its boiling point as 25.6 degrees Celsius (78.8 degrees Fahrenheit), significantly less than human body temperature. At room temperature (25 d C, 77 d F) the equilibrium vapor pressure of HCN is 750 Torr (760 Torr = 1 atmosphere), corresponding to 987,000 ppm. At 0 C (32 F) it is 260 Torr corresponding to 342,000 ppm. The Merck index warns, “Exposure to 150 ppm for 1/2 to 1 hr may endanger life. Death may result from a few min exposure to 300 ppm.” Clearly, it is not necessary to reach equilibrium vapor pressure in order for the fumes of the liquid to be quite deadly.
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What has the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined about Prussian blue?
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Tragically, “Prussian Blue” was the first Crayola-brand crayon to be renamed by the company—becoming “Midnight Blue,” in 1958. This change was prompted by American schoolteachers who found that their students were unfamiliar with the history of Prussia.
