Bene vive, Saepe ride, Multo ama

Michel Eugene Chevreul

was a FRENCH CHEMIST.

Born in Angers (“the Black City”) France at the 20th hour on August 31, 1786

His birth certificate is kept in the registry book in Angers and has the signatures of his father, grandfather, and great uncle whom were all surgeons
.

The house, rue des Deux-Haies n°13, where Michel Eugène Chevreul was born

His intial work dealt with fatty acids... and his most predominate discoveries included the development of MARGARINE and a SOAP made of primarily salt and animal fat

Although he did not only discover delicious buttery substitutes and a respect for hygiene ...

He was a theorist of color

The Wonder Years

When Chevreul was 17, he moved to the City of Lights
where he entered L.N. Vauquelin's chemical laboratory, afterwards he became his assistant at the natural history museum Jardin des Plantes later on......

TIMELINE !
Michel Eugene grew up in Angers during the French Revolution and the Terror.
1793 he witnessed the execution of two young girls. Several bloody souvenirs of his childhood remained with him, leaving a permanent aversion for politics.

Our man Chevreul was appointed professor of chemistry at the Lycee Charlemagne and undertook dictorship at Gobelins tapestry works where he carried out his researches in colour contrasts(see Big Ideas Blog) 1813

1826 Became a member of the Academy of Sciences and was elected a foreign member into the Royal Society of London

He succeeded his master, Vauquelin, as professor of organic chemistry at the natural history museum 1830

1857 The Royal Society of London awarded him the Copley Medal.

A gold medal was minted for the occasion of Chevreul’s 100th birthday and was celebrated as a national event. 1886

1890 Assumed the dictatorship at the Royal Society of London

Chevreul received letters of commendation from many heads of states and monarchs, including Queen Victoria.

He had a series of meetings with Felix Nader, and with Nadar’s son Paul taking photograph’s making up the first photo-interview in history.

Photo of Chevreul taken by Nadar

Nadar

Overall it was a fitting tribute to a man who lived through the entire French Revolution and lived to see the unveiling of the Eiffel tower
Eiffel tower being connstructed in1878

Picture of the Eiffel tower in 1909 (finished in 1879)

Chevreul began to study the effects of aging on the human body shortly before his death at the ripe old age of 102 which occurred in Paris on 9 April 1889
He was honored with a public funeral
1901 a statue was erected in his memory in the natural history museum with which he was associated with for many years.

Big Ideas

"In order to change a color it is enough to change the color of its background"
-Michel Eugene Chevreul

Chevreul worked as the dye master at the tapestry-weaving studio Gobelins. While working here he became very intreged with color and reactions of color. Here is where he developed the concept of Simulatenous Contrast and published his findings in The Principles of Harmoney and Contrast of colors.
Here is what he discovered…

The eye requires the complementary hue of any color …” the imposition and enhancement of color onto an adjacent area of color is know as simultaneous contrast”

Example of perception in which the perceived color of a foreground tends to take on the complementary hue of the background
A gray square on a red background will take on a greenish tint.

Simultaneous contrast can also affect shading

There is 2 types of simultaneous contrast……

Chromatic and Achromatic

Chromatic simultaneous contrast concerns itself with hue changes that occur due to the influence of the surrounding hues.
A hue or color can be manipulated by placing it within another color.

The separate areas should not be placed close together and should be rather small in order for the effect to be seen clearly.

If put orange on yellow background and a red background it will appear redder on the yellow background and more yellow on the red.

The yellow is subtracting the yellow from the orange resulting in a reddish orange in the second the red subtracting the red from the orange resulting in a yellowish orange

It is also possible for two different colors to appear to be the same color by placing them on two different specifically chosen backgrounds. Using the same yellow and red backgrounds it is possible to have a yellow-orange on the yellow ground and a red-orange on the red background appear the same color when there is the right combination. The mixtures depend on but hue and value.

Achromatic simultaneous contrast deals with black, white and gray. When gray is place on black or white the gray undergoes a change. A middle tone value of gray is darker on a light background and lighter on a dark background.

Light values will appear lighter a dark ground. Dark values will appear darkers on a light background. When white is a on black, the white area appears larger because white spread and back contracts due to contrast.

Click the pictures below....
This illustrares the effect of a surrounding color can have on the vividness of the color of the circles.

Chevreul's Illusion

Chevreul also developed what is called Chevreul’s Illusion, he suggest that bright edges that seem to exist between adjacent strips of identical colors having different intensities.

This new idea had huge impact on the art world because it directly led to the development of Pointillism (a technique of painting with tiny dots of pure colors that would blend in the viewer's eye) by the Neo-Impressionists Seurat and Paul Signac. These artist found the basic needs for the division of tones in Chevreul’s principles and limited their palette of colors to Chevreul’s circle of fundamental colors.

Chevreul’s work was aimed at replicating nature by separating effects of light and chiaroscuro,(a monochrome picture made by using several different shades of the same color) using color contrast.

---monochrome --- painting done in a range of tones of one color.