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11. The Hayters and the Controversy on Colour

Giulia Simonini(author)

Chapter of: Colour Matters: Exploring Chromatic Materialities in the Long Nineteenth Century (1798-1914)

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Title	11. The Hayters and the Controversy on Colour
Contributor	Giulia Simonini(author)
DOI	https://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0501.11
Landing page	http://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0501/chapters/10.11647/obp.0501.11
License	https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Copyright	Giulia Simonini
Publisher	Open Book Publishers
Published on	2026-05-11
Long abstract	This chapter provides the first attempt to contextualise the painting ‘Portraits of Hayter, Senior, and Three Young Artists’ (1823) by John Hayter in the scientific, philosophical, and artistic debate around colour mixing that took place in Great Britain and Europe from the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century. The painting, which represents Charles, John Hayter’s father, showing a colour-mixing diagram of his invention, was renamed ‘A Controversy on Colour’ in 1917. Nothing in the painting immediately suggests that there is a controversy going on. Yet, the objects displayed on the canvas point to the controversial colour theory of trichromacy, supported by Hayter senior, which was most popular in the 1820s but was later superseded thanks to experiments in optical physics.
Print length	24 pages
Language	English (Original)
THEMA	AGA PDX NHTB DSBF JHMC
BISAC	ART015260 HIS054000 SCI034000 LIT004130 DES003000 SOC002010
Keywords	Colour studies Material culture History of science Art history (long nineteenth century) Pigments and dyes Empire and identity

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Contributors

Giulia Simonini

(author)

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0188-0268

Giulia Simonini is a historian of science and art. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome, as part of the research group ‘Visualizing Science in Media Revolutions’ led by Sietske Fransen, where she works on iridescence in natural history drawings. Her research focuses on the intersection of art and science especially in the broad field of colour studies and in natural history image making. She has published widely on colour, including most recently her book Color Charts in 18th-century Europe: Natural, Pigmentary, and Trichromatic (arthistoricum.net, 2025) and the volume Insects and Colors Between Art and Natural History (Brill, 2025), co-edited with V.E. Mandrij.

References

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This chapter provides the first attempt to contextualise the painting ‘Portraits of Hayter, Senior, and Three Young Artists’ (1823) by John Hayter in the scientific, philosophical, and artistic debate around colour mixing that took place in Great Britain and Europe from the eighteenth century until the early twentieth century. The painting, which represents Charles, John Hayter’s father, showing a colour-mixing diagram of his invention, was renamed ‘A Controversy on Colour’ in 1917. Nothing in the painting immediately suggests that there is a controversy going on. Yet, the objects displayed on the canvas point to the controversial colour theory of trichromacy, supported by Hayter senior, which was most popular in the 1820s but was later superseded thanks to experiments in optical physics.