Sepia
- HEX
- #8A6A4F
- RGB
- 138 106 79
- HSL
- 27° 27% 43%
- CMYK
- 0 23 43 46
Sepia or Taupe?
Warmer and browner than taupe.
Originally ink from the cuttlefish, whose Latin name is sepia.
History
Sepia is cuttlefish ink: sepia is the Greek and Latin word for cuttlefish. It was a writing ink in Greco-Roman times, and in the late 1700s a Dresden professor, Jakob Seydelmann, refined it into a concentrated paint for artists.
Science
Old brown photographs owe nothing to cuttlefish. Sepia toning converts the silver of a black-and-white print into silver sulfide, which stands up to air pollution far better, so toned prints last longer. The warm brown was a side effect of preservation.
Kin
- Silver: Sepia photos are silver images turned to silver sulfide
- Umber: Painters' brown from the earth, as sepia was brown from the sea
- Charcoal: Two classic drawing materials that named colors
In paintings
- Houses of Parliament, Sunset, Claude Monet
- Houses of Parliament, Sunset, Claude Monet
- Impression, Sunrise, Claude Monet
- The Fighting Temeraire, J. M. W. Turner
- The Kiss, Gustav Klimt
- The Scream, Edvard Munch
- The Scream, Edvard Munch
- The Scream, Edvard Munch
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Sepia (color)' (cuttlefish; Seydelmann)
- Wikipedia, 'Sepia toning' (silver sulfide; archival stability)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.