This truly is a brilliant book--lovely to look at and full of scads of fascinating, colorful facts. Having only taken one formal Art Appreciation class during my undergrad, I had so much fun learning more about the history of various colors and the progression of art on the whole. Absolutely recommended for a short and sweet trip into the lively world of color.

***

This fulfills the microhistory component of the 2015 Read Harder Challenge. ( )

The Brilliant History of Color in Art by Victoria Finlay disappointed me.

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked it up. I wanted a history of the development and use of color in art. It's a fascinating topic. I ran across a brief mention of Ms. Finlay's work in an article online and thought that this book might satisfy my curiosity. I didn't really know that much about it before I checked it out from my local library.

The Brilliant History of Color in Art is a coffee table book. It's a well-written and well-produced coffee table book but it's not any kind of comprehensive history of the subject.

Like any well-made coffee table art book, the images are beautiful. This work is worth it just for the collection of art it features.

The stories about color—the history, development, science, and legends of certain shades—are interesting. But these stories are anecdotes only, there's no real depth to them. None of the entries are more substantial than what you'd find in an encyclopedia.

The organization of the book as a whole is somewhat haphazard. There's no meaningful thematic structure to it. I'm not sure why Ms. Finlay chose to present these anecdotes in the order that she does.

Given the amount of research that Ms. Finlay did for this book, and given the subject knowledge she has acquired in her career, she could have presented far more substance than this.

I did learn some new things from this book. Despite the lack of depth, these stories are interesting. Looking at the history of art through the lens of the evolution of the colors that artists used serves to highlight some connections that I hadn't considered before. For example, I hadn't realized that the growing popularity of photography contributed to the development of Impressionism (with photography taking over the realm of portraiture and realistic still-life, painters were freed to explore other aspects of their art in new ways). There are several similarly fascinating perspectives throughout this book.

And so I'm stuck with a conundrum—I'm disappointed with The Brilliant History of Color in Art because it isn't the kind of exhaustive history that I wanted. But it's a very well done coffee table book that contains numerous little nuggets of interest.

Rated on its own merits, I should give this book four stars. But my subjective reaction is to give it only two.

Thus, I split the difference and assign it three stars. ( )

Short read- more vignette than how other topics were covered in her previous books, but enhanced by pictures of the different subjects (thanks, Getty!) ( )

This book, although written for the American market, would make an essential teaching aid in U.K. schools also!
The style of writing is skewed to U.S. children, but the amount of imported films and T.V. programmes that are available over here, that should not be a problem.
It sets out in a very straightforward way, without talking down to children, how the various colours used by artists both in the past and in modern times came about.
The illustrations used for each colour are well chosen and just might inspire budding artists to persue their future goals!
This digital copy was given to me by the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest, unbiased review. ( )

Gorgeous! I love this stuff – the origins of pigments, how they're used in paint and dyes, all the background one might expect and the bits that are rather mind-blowing. I received this as an epub from Netgalley for review – I would love to have it in hardcover, to sit and pore over the – yes, brilliant pages. ( )