Goethe’s colour theory differs in a number of respects to Newton’s writings on light. One such distinction lies in Goethe ascribing aesthetic values to the colours of the rainbow, thus: magenta (purpur) and red (rot) are seen as ‘beautiful’ (schön); orange (gelbrot) as ‘noble’ (edel); yellow (gelb) as ‘good’ (gut); green (grün) as ‘useful’ (nützlich); blue (blau) as ‘mean’ or ‘common’ (gemein); and purple (blaurot) or violet (violett) as ‘unnecessary’ (unnöthig). For a while now I have been curious as to why Goethe considered ‘violett’ and ‘blaurot’ to be ‘unnecessary’ and whether this choice of words itself had an effect on the subsequent development of artistic practice. Following some digging around, I ask you to consider the following:

The word ‘magenta’ didn’t exist as a colour term at the time of Goethe’s writing his ‘Theory of Colours’ (original German title’ Zur Farbenlehre’ published in 1810). Indeed the pigment was only invented in 1859 and so the word ‘magenta’ has only been used in more recent translations of the work, as the correct colour to be found next to red but before violet on the colour wheel. In his book the word Goethe used for this colour is ‘purpur’ looking, to English eyes, remarkably like purple. At the other end of the spectrum, Goethe’s words: ‘violett’ and ‘blaurot’ are both close approximations of, yes, purple. To labour the point, on modern colour wheels violet (or purple) and magenta are next to each other, but in Goethe’s wheel, ‘blaurot’ and ‘purpur’ are adjacent. It may be that, due to the quality of pigments available at the time, and lacking the differentiation provided by magenta as a pigment, Goethe saw these colours as actually being too similar, one therefore becoming to him unnecessary.

J M W Turner was heavily influenced by Goethe’s ‘Theory of Colours’, the ideas it promoted having such an effect on the artist that he made reference to the work in the titles of several of his paintings. Turner’s lectures on colour, being delivered around 1827, suggest that he might have been familiar with the book at that time, prior to its English translation in 1840. Interestingly, Turner ignored purple in his own colour wheels produced for these lectures, removing the hue completely from the diagrams and giving half of the spectrum over to yellow in compensation.

Furthermore, you never see purple in any of Turner’s paintings. According to some sources, this is because he simply hated the colour, but what if Turner’s reason for this act of chromicide was due to his incomplete understanding of a yet to be properly translated book, in which the word ‘unnecessary’ took on a greater significance than Goethe had intended? It should also be noted that Turner died seven years before Magenta was first produced.

Did a simple mistranslation affect the entire oeuvre of one of England’s greatest artists? Whatever the reason, thank heavens for that. I too detest purple, with a vehemence brought about by years of teaching art students who, whenever they want to be seen as ‘self-expressive’ use buckets of the stuff usually swirling around in shapes that, diplomatically, can only be described as mystical orifices. Can you imagine a roomful of purple, violet and magenta Turners? The thought makes me feel quite sick.