Comments on: Was Van Gogh Colorblind?

By: Zoe

Zoe — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 05:43:05 +0000

Am both a protanope and a painter. All throughout my career, I have been complimented on my colour sense. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Van Gogh is a protanope, and assume Matisse could be as well. I use red in my paintings quite a bit– but much like Van Gogh here. Some brush strokes on top, some dots, or some area. I have one early experimentation in impressionism, where I painted red hued dots first (could see them) and then painted the others (making red disappear).

What I would not do typically is have a very large area of bright red with hue changes or have a mossy forest scene with brownish treetrunks and greenish moss. And am naturally attracted to blue/orange, blue/yellow combinations like the starry sky— or van gogh´s sunflowers in a vase. Another very typically protanope painting.

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:40:44 +0000

Fair enough. This of course was Dr. Kolb’s point in describing an anomalous trichromat.

By the way, thanks for coming back to Webvision over the years. Your presence is much appreciated.

By: DR

DR — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 04:45:34 +0000

Bryan, I’ve been an appreciator of webvision for many years.
One comment on this: Asada’s blog indicates his filter was geared toward protanomal simulation rather than protanopia simulation…

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 21:05:51 +0000

Hey Brayden,

Thanks for the link. There is currently no online resource for Dr. Marc’s color talk, but the next time he gives it, I’ll try and record it and post it here. Its a wonderful talk. Perhaps I should propose it for a TED talk?….

By: Brayden Lundquist

Brayden Lundquist — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:42:24 +0000

Is there a way to learn more about Robert Marc’s lecture on color?

By: Helga Kolb

Helga Kolb — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 16:33:03 +0000

In regard to Van Gogh’s color vision, I have this to say. If he were a dichromat with only two cone types, he would only distinguish yellow and blue, white and black and brown and gray. Reds and greens could not be distinguished as colors. If he were intent on capturing reality, and this is not certain, he would use his palette of perceived colors accordingly but he would make occasional glaring errors like painting red objects, like a rose, as brown or yellow or even black. He would similarly fail with greens. Since I have not seen such errors I suspect he had trichromatic color vision. If he were an anomalous trichromat, it would be much harder to detect. Peter Gouras

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 05:54:11 +0000

Indeed. Thanks for commenting. I’ve been reading through some of his letters and you are absolutely correct. He was incredibly specific, even with reds and greens.

By: Alexander Barnett

Alexander Barnett — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 01:49:50 +0000

A major problem with the suggestion of color-blindness is that it ignores van Gogh’s incredibly specific written description of his paintings.

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:26:39 +0000

That is absolutely one of the possibilities which may explain his shift to green in his later works…

By: Adam Orbit

Adam Orbit — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:12:14 +0000

I’ve read in a few Van Gogh biographies that foxglove plant, which was used as a ‘treatment’ for epilepsy and an antidepressant. One of the well-known side effects of digoxin toxicity is color distortion and light halos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digoxin_toxicity

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:23:10 +0000

Hey Robyn! Good to hear from you.

This is absolutely true. When one reads about the care and time Van Gogh spent composing images before and during the painting process and how careful he was in selecting colors, you’d have to wonder why. Could it have been because he was carefully trying to pick colors because he was colorblind? I doubt it. If you read his letters http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let783/letter.html as was mentioned by @PucksRecordings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pucksrecordings/status/240823678521208832 Van Gogh mentions pinks and greens and intense yellows.

By: Bryan William Jones

Bryan William Jones — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:16:11 +0000

Peter, this is indeed true and in fact… one of the ways that the retina actually processes information with edge detection and center surrounds to enhance detail. The funny thing is that some artists understood more than they knew, just how to “see”. Its pretty cool to reverse engineer how various artists worked.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 17:04:00 +0000

Van Gogh at least read the labels on the pigments he was using: “red”… “green”. To achieve whatever look he was going for, he knew he was using a few different saturated colors rather then one dull color. He’d go to great lengths to combine those colors to give an some impression. Why would he go to all this trouble, with multiple and sometimes very expensive bright pigments, if he was color blind? It makes no sense.

By: peter

peter — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:10:55 +0000

In that time often false colors where used by painting artist most of them refused using black, or to darken with black and took contrast colors instead, which seams strange at first, but a true artist knows how to fool the eyes, and make often use, of how we tend see something. Colors or shapes, they work with in new ways in contrast to the daily world around us.

By: Things You’ll Find Interesting August 29, 2012 | Chuq Von Rospach, Photographer and Author

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 14:30:37 +0000

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