A Biography of Indian Yellow Essay

Indian discolour is a raw(a) key fruit which, as the name suggests, originated in India in the seventeenth century and was used until the early(a) twentieth century. Its source remained a mystery for many years. In 1786 the amateur painter, Roger Dewhurst recorded in letters to friends, that Indian icteric was an constitutional substance made from the urine of animals put up on turmeric (Myers, pg 1). Around this time, the English chemist George Field claimed it was made from camel urine.In 1839, J.F.L. Merimee, denied its association with urine in malignity of its odor, citing its origin was a shrub called memecylon tinctorium in his book The Art of Painting in fossil oil and Fresco, In 1886 the daybook of the Society of liberal arts in capital of the United Kingdom began a systematic inquiry of the pigment, revelation that Indian yellow was manucircumstanceured in rural India (in particular in Monghyr, a city in Bengal) from the urine of cows fed only on mango leaves and water (Finlay, pg 216-217). The collected urine was change in order to precipitate the yellow matter, then strained, pressed into lumps by baseball mitt and dried, producing stinky hard yellow balls of raw pigment, called purree (Mukharji, pg 16-17). European importers would then wash and bless the balls, separating greenish and yellow phases.It is the mango non the urine thats crucial to the falsify. The colorant is a atomic number 12 salt of an organic blistery released by the mango. Chemically it is magnesium euxanthate, the magnesium salt of euxanthic acid.See more My writing Process EssayNaturally, the cows that were apply by this process were extremely undernourished. In part because mango leaves did not supply the cattle with sufficient nutrients along with the position that these leaves contain the toxin urushiol, also found in poison ivy. In 1908, British faithfulness (which applied to colonized India) prohibited the occupation of Indian yellow, citing the t orture of sacred animals. The pigment is believed to have first been used in Europe by Dutch artists in the 17th century (the Dutch having all-embracing trading links with India by then) and by the end of the eighteenth century crosswise Europe in watercolor and anoint painting. For the first years of its introduction in the European market, this pigment was simply named aft(prenominal) its country of origin, Pure of India(Finlay, pg 209-211). This was further simplify to jaune indien (French), giallo indiano (Italian), Indischgelb (German) or Indian Yellow when translated into different languages (Myers, pg 1).Deep, clear and luminescent, it was favored for its great dust and depth of tone. It had a peculiar quality in its watercolor form of fade in artificial light and in the dark but being middling stable in direct sunlight. In its oil form, it requires one hundred portion for grinding, dries slowly, and the addition of varnish improves its drying, in fact its lightfastn ess is also improved when it is isolated betwixt layers of varnish.Dutch and Flemish painters of the 17th and 18th centuries favored it for its translucent qualities often victimization it to represent sunlight. Beautiful as the color is, the pigment was said to be foul-smelling in its raw form. In the fable Girl With the Pearl Earring Vermeers athletic supporter remarks that Vermeer used cow piss to paint his wife, the pigment referred to was Indian Yellow. By the early twentieth century the pigment was no longer available, although its modern substitutes are lifelessness sold under the name Indian yellow.Bibliography1. Baer, N.S., Indian Yellow in Artists Pigments, a Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, mass 1, R.L. Feller, Editor, Oxford University Press, New York (1986) 2. Finlay, Victoria, Color A pictorial History of the Palette (2003 edition), Random kinsfolk 3. Merimee, M.J.F.L., The Art of Painting in Oil and Fresco (2009 edition), Kessinger Publishing4. Mu kharji, T.N., Piuri or Indian Yellow, Journal of the Society of Arts (1883-84) 5. Myers, David, Indian Yellow, The Art communicate of David Myers (February 1, 2011) http//toxicgraphix.blogspot.com/2011/02/indian-yellow.html6. Indian Yellow, Pigments Through the Ages, webexhibits.orghttp//www.webexhibits.org/pigments/indiv/ archives/indianyellow.html