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Forgotten pioneers of color order. Part II: Matthias Klotz (1748–1821)
Author(s) -
Kuehni Rolf G.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
color research and application
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.393
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1520-6378
pISSN - 0361-2317
DOI - 10.1002/col.20430
Subject(s) - gray (unit) , painting , art history , art , order (exchange) , chart , philosophy , mathematics , statistics , medicine , finance , economics , radiology
The painter Matthias Klotz began to investigate the subject of color beginning circa 1780 and thereby during the same general time period as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Philipp Otto Runge, and Gaspard Grégoire. Like the others, he was an adherent of the theory of three fundamental colors, yellow, red, and blue. With Grégoire he had in common three perceptual color attributes and an implicit cylindrical ordering system that presaged the system of Munsell, developed nearly a century later. With Runge and Grégoire he had in common a balanced color chart in which opposites were presumed to neutralize each other in a common medium gray. Klotz's so‐called color canon is the most carefully executed in the early 19th century. He was unique in proposing a nine‐grade, geometrically stepped gray scale that would require a logarithmic mathematical model. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 33, 341–345, 2008