Ochre
- HEX
- #CC7722
- RGB
- 204 119 34
- HSL
- 30° 71% 47%
- CMYK
- 0 42 83 20
Ochre or Tangerine?
Duller, browner and darker than tangerine.
History
Ochre is the oldest paint there is. Evidence from Africa suggests people were processing it some 300,000 years ago. At Blombos Cave someone engraved a crosshatch on a piece of it about 75,000 years ago, and at Lascaux a horse was painted in yellow ochre about 17,300 years ago. See earth-pigments.
Science
Ochre is earth colored by iron. Yellow ochre owes its color to goethite. Heat it, the goethite turns to hematite, and the yellow becomes red, so early painters could get both colors from one earth.
Culture
Australia has over 400 recorded ochre pits and quarries, and prized red ochre traveled across the continent along the songlines, the Aboriginal routes of trade and story.
Language
The name comes from Greek ochra, from ochros, pale, a word for a pale yellow that could also mean whitish or greyish. Over time ochre drifted redder and browner. The best red ochre of antiquity came from Sinope on the Black Sea, and sinopia became a name for red ochre and for the red underdrawings hidden beneath frescoes.
Art
Ochre is the backbone of the old masters' palette. From Rembrandt to Anders Zorn, portrait painters often worked from little more than white, yellow ochre, a red earth and black. Ochre is cheap, non-toxic and lightfast, which is one reason those pictures have aged so well.
Kin
- Red: Red ochre was humanity's first red
- Sienna: Another iron earth; heat reddens both
- Umber: The earth pigment trio: ochre, sienna, umber
- Rust: Both are iron oxides
In paintings
- Houses of Parliament, Sunset, Claude Monet
- Sunflowers, Vincent van Gogh
- The Swing, Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Ochre' (Blombos c. 75,000 years; Lascaux 17,300 years; goethite to hematite)
- Henshilwood et al., 'Emergence of modern human behavior', Science 295 (2002)
- Finlay, Color: A Natural History of the Palette (2002)
- Pastoureau, Yellow: The History of a Color (2019)
- Gurney, Color and Light (2010)
- Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.