Closer Look: Colour

This is a national gallery classic which is reborn with a new format and updated information. "A Closer Look" is the new series title for the updated and refreshed National Gallery Pocket Guide range. The series has been enhanced with a stronger format, new information, attractive design and new photography. "Colour", a bestselling title in this series, is beautifully illustrated and accessibly written. The series "A Closer Look" examines in straightforward terms different themes and subjects in painting. Color is such a fundamental part of the natural world that we tend to take it for granted. This is equally true of color in paintings, where its function - as well as being descriptive - may be symbolic, emotional, a purely formal element in the design, or all of these. Yet when looking at paintings which appear to be representations of the 'real world', we may be quite unaware of the materials that make up color, and how artists manipulate these to convey form and substance. "A Closer Look: Color" explores the ways in which artists have used color, and describes the pigments characteristic of a particular period, the effect of the chosen medium on color, and how the development of new pigments dramatically extended the palette. Optics, and the comparative merits of color and drawing, have preoccupied painters for centuries, and the authors outline the major theories expounded in artists' treatises. Detailed studies of paintings from across the National Gallery's Collection provide vivid illustrations of the extraordinary variety of color in the history of European painting.