PRIME:  THE CONTRIBUTION OF ARTISTS

        Since contributions were first made on cave walls, mankind has explored colour and light through the experimentation of trial and error.   The area is large with many personal contributions, I have therefore, narrowed my reference by necessity, to artists, following the work of Thomas Young, circa 1802.   Notably, the Impressionist movement which originated in France in the 1860s, dominated European and North American painting in the late nineteenth century.   The movement wanted to depict real-life, to paint straight from nature, and capture the changing effects of light.   Amongst this group of artists were Monet, Renior, Sisley, Cezanne, Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others who followed the lead.   Initially, their work aroused fierce opposition, and while their styles were diverse, all experimented with the effects of light, movement created with distinctive brushstrokes, and fragments of colour juxtaposed on the canvas, instead of being mixed on the palette.

Study for Les Poseuses, Model in Prožle, circa 1887, Georges Seurat, Musée d‘Orsay, Paris

Georges Seurat (1859-91), developed a technique called "optical painting" and was considered, innovative.   Whilst he had done much of his own research, from which many benefited; towards the end of his tragically short life, Seurat apparently gave reference to a notion of primary colour, previously established by Thomas Young, in a letter to Maurice Beaubourg, dated 28 August 1890 ( see Appendix II  also  footnote 12. ) .   Seurat‘s achievement however, was to establish that the eye and brain, was capable of synthesising new divergent colours with luminescent quality, from the merging of dots, of just a few "pure" colours.