Grey
- HEX
- #8C9096
- RGB
- 140 144 150
- HSL
- 216° 5% 57%
- CMYK
- 7 4 0 41
Language
Grey or gray? Both. Britain mostly writes grey and America gray, and both come from Old English græg.
Art
Whistler didn't call it Whistler's Mother. He called it Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (painting-whistlers-mother) and wanted it seen as a study of tones. Painting entirely in greys has its own name, grisaille, and was often used to imitate carved stone.
Science
A grey has no fixed look. On red it leans green; on blue it leans orange. Chevreul described this simultaneous contrast in 1839. In Edward Adelson's checker-shadow illusion, a square that looks dark and one that looks light are the identical grey. See color-constancy.
Poetry
In Goethe's Faust, the devil Mephistopheles tells a student: 'Grey, dear friend, is all theory, and green the golden tree of life.' Grey stands for dry learning, green for life itself.
History
Grey was long the color of the poor: Charlemagne told peasants to dress in black and grey, and in the Renaissance grey and beige still marked the humblest. Then, in the 1400s, new dyeing methods made a clear, even grey, and it became a princely color of hope. Charles d'Orléans, held prisoner in England after Agincourt, asked friends to wear grey, not black.
Kin
- Green: Goethe's Faust: grey is theory, green the golden tree of life
- Black: Whistler's 'Arrangement in Grey and Black', the famous mother portrait
- Silver: Grey with a shine; heraldry's argent is white or silver
- Lavender: With grey and mauve, a color of Victorian half-mourning
In paintings
- The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai
- The Japanese Footbridge, Claude Monet
- Girl with a Pearl Earring, Johannes Vermeer
- The Fighting Temeraire, J. M. W. Turner
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich
- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich
- Water Lilies, Claude Monet
- Woman with a Parasol, Claude Monet
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay / Britannica, 'Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. 1' (1871)
- Chevreul, De la loi du contraste simultané des couleurs (1839); Adelson, checker-shadow illusion (1995)
- Goethe, Faust, Part One (1808)
- Greenfield, A Perfect Red (2005)
- Pastoureau, Black: The History of a Color (2008)
- Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color (2001)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.