1800's like Delacroix and Turner, it was about colourful skies and landscapes and atmosphere and using rich palettes. For Cezanne it was about truth to colour and painting what the eye sees and exaggerating the tones slightly to achieve pure colour. The Impressionists painted pleasant scenes of middle class urban life, landscapes and portraits, and they painted pure colour in the reflections of light. Followed by Matisse, he began to simplify the meaning of pure colour. Matisse's work consisted of brilliant intense colours such as reds and blues. Matisse found that he didn't need to fill in colour using paint but could cut straight into colour, making the creative process even simpler. And then onto Rothko, inspired by Matisse he took pure colour onto a whole new level. Blocks of colour stacked on top of each other, hovering on the canvas. Bright vivid colours contrasting with duller colours such a black and murky brown. Newman's work converted Rothko's paintings into something simpler and minimalist, and we can't go any further than this. The artists of the 20th century thought that to find to create an art of pure colour you needed to simplify the paintings down to just colour and no subject. In some ways I think this is true as the viewer is drawn to the colour and not distracted by any subject matter. Pure colour should be sensuous, truthful, emotive, and harmonious. Colour is one of the most important things in a painting, and shouldn't just complement the painting. As Throughout the 19th and 20th century many artists have been trying to create an art of pure colour. Eugene Delacroix was one of the first painters practicing the use of pure colour and inspired many other artists such as Cezanne, Monet and Matisse and Rothko to carry out this quest for an art of pure colour.
Eugene Delacroix (1798 - 1862):
"The work of a painter who is not a colourist is illumination rather than painting. …
