| What is a colour?
Go to the museum where the original artwork is. Buy the catalogue from the bookshop outside. Then compare the colours. Or take a picture with your camera of a painting on your own wall right now. Print it out. You will find that any artwork which has been printed onto a flat, 2 dimensional page will change colour. These colours are NOT comparable to the ones of the original. If you visit a museum where they have natural daylight coming in – you will also find that your own perception of the colours changes with the different lighting at different times of the day. Furthermore, what seems to be a “bluish green” to you might seem to be a “greenish blue” to me. Since our artists can not sit next to the original artwork and study the colours in daylight, we have to rely on what prints can offer us. This, combined with our knowledge of the colour schemes used by the original artists, enables us to get as close to the original as possible. However, this is also the reason why you may find that the colours in a given artbook are not exactly the same as those of the reproduction – just as they may not compare to the colours in a different artbook.
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