How did art get its colour?

Today, the artist's palette is arguably taken for granted, with more than a rainbow of colours available to the painter. And yet were it not for chemistry and the inventions enabled by the evolution of industry and technology, many of the colours that we know today may not have emerged.

In this lecture, one of a series hosted by the University of Bristol exploring some of the cornerstone ideas across the sciences, writer and Bristol Physics graduate Philip Ball talks about the intersection of art, science and creativity.

He shows how in order to truly understand the history of art, one must appreciate the origins of the artist's palette and the process followed by such greats as Van Gogh and Picasso in creating their masterpieces.

Philip Ball, Big Ideas in Science lecture, University of Bristol: The Invention of Colour – lecture on how chemistry created new colours for artists throughout the ages and what effect that had on their art.