INSpiREzine Colours of the World | Page 48

1839

1841

As the director of dyeing for Gobelin Tapestry Works , french chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul received complaints about the lack of vibrancy in their tapestry colours . He found that the problem was not chemical in nature but rather , optical . He discovered that juxtaposed colours could either enhance or diminish each other ’ s intensity . This led to his development of the “ rule of simultaneous contrast ” which maintains that if two colours are close together in proximity , each will take on the hue of the complement of the adjacent colour . Chevreul is considered by many to be the inventor of the modern colour wheel .
George Field ’ s , Chromatography . At this point in colour wheel history , the scientists and artists started to diverge in thinking , each considering colour from their own perspectives . It had been nearly 40 years since Thomas Young defined the RGB colour model and so colour theorists had started differentiating between how colour mixes when talking about light ( additive mixing ) versus pigment ( subtractive mixing ).