Violet
- HEX
- #8000FF
- RGB
- 128 0 255
- HSL
- 270° 100% 50%
- CMYK
- 50 100 0 0
Violet or Indigo?
A vivid blue-purple, far more vivid than indigo.
Named after the flower. In 1672 Newton called the far end of the spectrum 'violet-purple'; by Opticks (1704) it was simply violet.
Science
Violet is the real end of the rainbow: light of roughly 380 to 450 nanometers, the shortest waves we can see. Just past it lies ultraviolet, named for being beyond violet. Purple, by contrast, is a mix with no wavelength of its own (extra-spectral).
Philosophy
Newton named seven colors in the spectrum, ending with violet, partly to match the seven notes of the musical scale. That is why indigo sits in the rainbow at all.
Poetry
Rimbaud's sonnet Voyelles gives each vowel a color: A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue. The poem ends on O, the Omega, 'the violet ray of His Eyes'. See synesthesia.
Art
The Impressionists made violet a scandal. Critics complained that trees are not violet and that Renoir's violet and green touches made flesh look like a corpse. Some joked that the painters had damaged eyes, or saw ultraviolet; those were jibes, not findings. Monet and others mostly mixed their violets from blue and red lake.
Symbolism
Violet is the color of penance. Medieval liturgy grouped it with black for mourning and repentance, and in 1495, when the pope wanted white for a procession against a flood, his master of ceremonies objected that white meant joy, so violet was worn instead. Victorian widows moved from black into violets and mauves for half-mourning. See liturgical-colors.
Kin
- Purple: Violet is in the rainbow; purple has no wavelength
- Indigo: Newton's last two rainbow colors
- Amethyst: The violet gem the Greeks wore against drunkenness
Sources
- Wikipedia, 'Violet (color)'
- Newton, Opticks (1704)
- Rimbaud, 'Voyelles' (1871)
- Ball, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour (2001)
- Livingstone, Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing (2002)
- St Clair, The Secret Lives of Colour (2016)
- Gage, Colour and Culture (1993)
Hex values are screen approximations. Every page lists its sources.