Keywords: Gamboge, primary yellow, early modern pharmacopoeia, watercolour painting
Compared to other well-studied pigments, not much is known about the European history of the exotic resin called gamboge. Gamboge seemingly arrived in Europe at the dawn of the seventeenth century and thanks to the accounts of European explorers, merchants and sailors who travelled to the East Indies it was adopted rather quickly as a cathartic (Dodinet 2013). European physicians were amazed by its golden-like colour, that – at least in one instance – earned gamboge the name of chrysopos (golden juice, Castelli 1638). Today, this hue is classified as "Natural Yellow 24" in the Colour Index (1971).
While gamboge was long appreciated in Asia not only as a purgative but also as a pigment, it took some time before European painters added it to their palette. Gamboge found use in various painting techniques, but it was in watercolour painting that it became most popular from the second half of the seventeenth century onwards. Notably, Rembrand Hermensz. van Rijn and William Turner used in their artworks (Kühn 1977; Townsend 1993). Gamboge is a fugitive yellow, which however lasts rather unaltered in book illustrations and in well-preserved watercolour paintings (Winter 1997, Eastaugh 2008).
Interestingly, its characteristic yellow hue made this pigment particularly beloved by trichromatists, namely supporters of the colour-mixing theory known as trichromacy, which was illustrated through coloured diagrams from the early eighteenth century. Most trichromatists elected gamboge as their primary yellow and had the trichromatic illustrations in their books washed with it. Gamboge was selected for the first time as the primary yellow for the colour pyramid of the Swiss astronomer Johann Heinrich Lambert (Lambert 1772) but also used by the English naturalist James Sowerby to wash his "chromatometre" (Sowerby 1809).
This paper aims to present the European history of gamboge and will discuss how physicians and painters named it. Among the historical names are listed for instanc gummi laxativum, gummi peruvianum, ghittajemeu, cattagauma, gambogium, and many others. The paper will also examine the European debate about the origin and nature of gamboge. Physicians, apothecaries and painters were rather unsure if gamboge was a resin, a gum, a latex or else. They did not know if it came from Asia, South America, or both. This paper will illustrate how gamboge was produced in Asia and imported in Europe (cakes, pipes, sausages), where gamboge came from precisely, and where it initially circulated in Europe. With this paper I will also investigate how it was implemented in European art (metal gilding, oil painting, watercolour painting), and, finally, I will try to explain why it became the primary yellow of trichromacy.
Castelli, Pietro. 1638. Petri Castelli Romani philosophi, ac medici Chrysopos. Cuius nomina, essentia, vsus, & dosis facili methodo traduntur. Quem sequitur problema de lacte in virginibus experimentis, auctoritatibus, & rationibus explanatum. Messina: Typis reur. camerae archiep. apud viduam Iannis Francisci Bianco.
Colour index : international. 1971. Publ. by the Society of Dyers and Colourists with acknowledgement to the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists. Additions and amendments (third ed.).
Dodinet, Elisabeth. 2013. "A note on the colorant gamboge, its introduction in Europe and use in coloured glazes". In Lüsterfassungen des Barock und Rokoko / Coloured Glazes on Metal Leaf from the Baroque and Rococo period, edited by Ewan Emmerling, Michael Kühlenthal, and Mark Richter, p. 655-664. Munich: Anton Siegl.
Eastaugh, Nicholas. 2008. Pigment compendium, a dictionary and optical microscopy of historical pigments, p. 170-171. Amsterdam: Elsevier, Butterworth-Heinemann.
Kühn, Hermann. 1977. "Untersuchungen zu den Pigmenten und Malgründen Rembrandts, durchgeführt an den Gemälden der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen Dresden". In Maltechnik - Restauro 83, p. 223-233.
Lambert, Johann Heinrich. 1772. Beschreibung einer mit dem Calauschen Wachse ausgemalten Farbenpyramide wo die Mischung jeder Farben aus Weiß und drey Grundfarben angeordnet, dargelegt und derselben Berechnung und vielfacher Gebrauch gewiesen wird ... mit einer ausgemahlten Kupfertafel. Berlin: Haude und Spener.
Sowerby, James. 1809. A new elucidation of colours, original, prismatic, and material : showing their concordance in three primitives, yellow, red, and blue, and the means of producing, measuring, and mixing them : with some observations on the accuracy of Sir Isaac Newton. London: Printed by Richard Taylor and Co.
Townsedn, Joyce H. 1993. "The Materials of J. M. W. Turner: Pigments". In Studies in conservation 38 (4), p. 231–254.
Winter, John. 1997. "Gamboge". In Artists' Pigments: A Handbook of Their History and Characteristics, Vol. 3, edited by Elisabeth West Fitzhugh, p. 143-156. London: Archetype Publications.
Giulia Simonini, PhD, is a graduate conservator, art historian, and historian of science. She wrote a thesis on 18th-century European colour charts and their development and applications.
Since 2015 she is a research fellow at the Technische Universität Berlin. She currently works as a post-doc in the research project Dimensions of techne in the fine arts at the Technische Universität Berlin and teaches since 2022 at the Konstanz University.
https://techne.hypotheses.org/100
https://www.tu.berlin/wg/ueber-uns/team/dr-giulia-simonini
She authored (selection):
"Calau’s Punic Wax, "Lambert’s Farbenpyramide (1772), and Prefabricated Watercolour Cakes", in Ordering Colours in 18th and early 19th century Europe, edited by Tanja Kleinwächter, Sarah Lowengar, and Friedrich Steinle. Cham: Springer, in print.
"Antoine Quémizet’s Colour Catalogues and Louis Bertrand Castel’s Clavecin oculaire", in Aux sources de la couleur. L’atelier de teinture des Gobelins, edited by Muriel Barbier, Hélène Cavalié und Marie-Anne Sarda. Paris: Mobilier National, in print.
"James David Forbes’ Mayerian Triangle (1848-49) and the Enamels at the Studio del Mosaico Vaticano", in Colors & Cultures. Interdisciplinary Explorations/ Couleurs & Cultures. Explorations interdisciplinaires, edited by Sämi Ludwig, Astrid Starck-Adler and André Karliczek. Salana: Berkeley, Mulhouse, Jena, 2022, p. 248-267
with Friedrich Steinle: "Pure Red. The Evolution of a Colour Idea in Trichromacy", in Kritische Berichte 1 - Phänomen "Farbe". Ästhetik - Epistemologie – Politik (2022), p. 12-21 https://doi.org/10.11588/kb.2022.1
"Organising Colours. Patrick Syme’s Colour Chart and Nomenclature for Scientific Purposes", in XVII-XVIII. Revue de la Société d’études anglo-américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles 75 (2018), http://journals.openedition.org/1718/1327
"Daniel Weiman (1621–1661) and Libri Picturati A 16–31", in Archives of Natural History 45.1 (2018), p. 40-53
Not much is known about the importance of gamboge in European history, an exotic resin with a characteristic yellow hue that arrived in Europe by 1603. Soon recognized as a purgative, this fugitive yellow became popular in watercolour painting from the 1650s. This paper examines how European physicians and painters named it, how they debated its geographical origin and material nature, and how gamboge was implemented in European art. This paper, finally, attempts to explain why this pigment was used for colouring eighteenth-century trichromatic diagrams, including Lambert’s Farbenpyramide (1772) and Sowerby’s “chromatometre” (1809), thus becoming the primary yellow of trichromacy.