Decoding paintings through colour | Stories in Colour Podcast S2 Ep5 | National Gallery

Colour allows artists to express their individuality, evoke certain moods and portray positive or negative subliminal messages. And throughout history, the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But as something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant colour palettes can be and how much they can tell us. That is a quote from the summary of the book Colours of Art, the story of art in 80 palettes by Chloe Ashby. So welcome to Stories in Colour, a podcast from the National Gallery here in London, where we're uncovering the mysteries of colour in culture, art and history. Do make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any episodes. Today, we're looking at how we can read colour in paintings. How do the colours the artists choose and the way each of us see them help us to find a story? I'm Bex Leary from the Digital Department here at the Gallery. And to help us answer this question, I'm joined by Chloe Ashby. So can we think of colour as a kind of Yes, absolutely. I think colour is a language like any other. The way that artists have used it changes according to time and place. It's something that can be used to describe a scene, to describe what a person is doing in a scene. It can also, you know, in the same way that a narrative works, I think it can draw our eye around a canvas, for example, and sort of draw attention to certain moments, certain sections of a painting and highlight what's going on in that way. So there are obviously so many different ways we can read a painting, but in your experience, how do you go about reading a painting? And how does that involve colour? And we can start to look So I think, first of all, it's probably worth saying that I definitely don't have a set format when it comes to reading a painting. I think it really depends on my mood, how tired or upbeat I'm feeling on a particular day, whether I'm hungry. It depends if I'm reviewing an exhibition and I'm standing in front of an artwork and thinking about it critically, or whether I am zipping through a gallery with my son and thinking, right, I've got a few precious moments, what do I want to linger in front of? With the Manet, so before thinking about the colour, for example, the way that I approach this painting and the way that I have always approached it is I've always gone straight to the barmaid and her face. For anyone who isn't familiar with this painting, I'm sure very many of the listeners will be, it shows a young woman standing behind a bar and behind her is a vast gold-framed mirror. And in the mirror, you can see a crowd mingling in this brightly lit interior. On the bar in front of her, there are then all these sort of lush, still life items, you know, gold-topped champagne, there are oranges in a crystal bowl. But yes, the thing that has always got me is her face, her expression. She's sort of looking slightly down, she's not really meeting our gaze, her eyes are quite heavy, she's unsmiling, she's quite flushed. And it's always made me wonder, you know, what is she thinking, what's she feeling? Is she tired at the end of a long shift? Is she bored? Is she fed up with slippery clientele like the man we see in the mirror? As you're looking at the painting to the barmaid's right, you see her reflection and she is speaking to this slightly sinister-looking figure, I would say. He does sort of lurk in the corner, doesn't he, with his black top hat. Exactly. And he's holding a cane and he's got that moustache and he's sort of a shadowy figure. That's naturally the way I approach this particular painting. But if we think about it in terms of colour, it throws up a whole other quite exciting way of looking, I think. If you sort of vaguely squint while you're looking at the painting, the colour that will jump out most, I think, or at least for me, is the brilliant orange of these. They are so bright, aren't they? And you've got the little bright white highlights on them as well. Exactly. And they're kind of congregated in this crystal bowl. And for me, well, they're doing two things. One, it draws our attention to the item itself, so to the bowl, which completely sort of echoes the figure of the barmaid. And in my mind, then makes you think of her as another still life. You know, she's an object on display. So the orange is in the bowl of a still life. She is also. Exactly. She does look very still. She is. Taking that literally. Exactly. And she's sort of on display in the same way that all these other items are. Another favourite part, definitely, is if you sort of go up to the top left hand corner of the canvas, you'll spy these two pale legs and the feet. This is such a fun detail that can be so easy to miss. I know. And once you've seen it, you really can't avoid it. It really tells you a lot about the painting. But these legs are sort of, the feet are shod in these kind of minty green boots, slippers, and the owner of the legs and the feet is balancing on a trapeze. So again, it's this sort of zippy scrap of colour that draws the eye and then reminds you that the Folies Bergere, the place where the painting is set, is a cafe concert that has light entertainment. This night, probably gymnastics. You know, I mean, there's so much I could say about this painting. From there, you scoot back down to the bottom right hand corner and you have a similar shade of minty green in this creme de menthe bottle. And right in between then is the barmaid. So again, a lot of it for me is drawing the attention back to her. I won't go on and on. I can do if you'd like me to. No, I think it's so helpful because I think often our instinct with a painting is, I must read the label. I must know what the artist's intention was. Maybe I probably should know all about the artist's biography and every possible context to understand this painting. But actually, you're really helping us see that you can look at a painting and colour is so accessible, isn't it? It helps you see where the focus in the story is. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think it can be very tempting to go straight to the label. It can almost be a bit of a crutch. And it's not wrong. That's not wrong. There's no right or wrong. We spend a long time writing them. Exactly, we do. In the gallery. I mean, not me, but the curators. But, you know, and there's so much to be gained from them. But I do think, you know, if you're willing to sort of sit with your own thoughts and look first, another really fruitful exercise can be to look for yourself, then to go and read the caption, learn about the context and who and what you're seeing, and then come back and look again, see how that informs your way of looking. I suppose with colour, it can seem, you know, as well as being this sort of essential thing that we all understand, it could also be seen as slippery in the sense that it doesn't provide a concrete answer. And I think some people, you know, sometimes when we are standing in front of a work, that's what we want. We want someone to tell us exactly what it means. Yeah, which is very human and natural, I think. But colour gives you a lot of freedom, I think. It does. We have talked a lot on the podcast, I think, before about the kind of cultural relativity of colour and emotion and how, you know, each of us brings our own personal, even scientifically, we bring our own personal perception of colour. And so there is, I guess, a freedom in looking at the colour and finding your own way into the painting. I think so. Yeah, completely. I'm going to go back to the blurb, the quote I read at the start, because I think this helps us understand all this as well from your book. Colour allows artists to express their individuality, evoke certain moods and portray positive or negative messages. And throughout history, the greatest of artists have experimented with new pigments and new technologies to lead movements and deliver masterpieces. But as something so cardinal, we sometimes forget how poignant colour palettes can be and how much they can tell us, which is exactly what we've been saying, isn't it? Yeah. Of course, because you wrote it. But it's that poignancy of the colour palette and how that helps us to understand what, even actually what the artist is wanting us to be drawn to. So, yeah, we've looked at the very wonderful Edouard Manet's Folies d'Azur from 1882, and now would be a good time for us to take a break. But we will dive in after the break into some other paintings. Actually, we're going to go into the National Gallery's collection and have another look at different ways in which colour might help us understand. So welcome back from the break. As I said, we're going to dive into some more paintings, ones you can see at the National Gallery and look at how we might understand them through colour. So the first that we're going to look at is The Supper at Amis by Caravaggio. He painted this in 1601. And I will describe it so you can get a sense of it, but I'm not going to name who's who or anything yet until we've started looking at the colours. But so that you listening can imagine it, we see a little room. We see four men gathered around a table, which is covered in a white tablecloth. Three of the men have their chests facing out towards us, and the position of their bodies creates an almost triangle shape across the painting. The two outer men turn inwards to face the figure who is seated in the centre, who is dressed in red robes with white fabric draped over his left shoulder. And the background of the painting is really quite dark, browns almost going deep into blacks. And the shadows from the figures are cast on the wall where it's sort of a lighter brown. So, Chloe, what's going on here? But what can light and colour tell us about this scene that Caravaggio has painted? Well, Caravaggio, as I'm sure very many listeners are aware of, was a master of chiaroscuro. And here, I think this painting is such a fabulous example of how he's harnessed contrasts in light and dark and colour to create a moment of tension. There's such high drama. And that's what we mean by chiaroscuro. Exactly. Is that contrast of light and dark. Yes. Creating that drama. Yeah, which is, you know, when you think about it, as you've described the painting so beautifully, it's a scene, a supper scene, again, as the title tells us. And yet the amount of drama that he packs in there is quite remarkable. You know, you described the background. It's sort of a very dimly lit space. The background is quite nondescript. It's these dark shades. And then offsetting that, you've got this real bright white tablecloth. There are various elements that are sort of popping against the background. One of my favourites is on the seated figure who has his back to us, who looks as if he's about to push himself up out of the chair. You see a tiny little pocket of bright white on his elbow that draws the eye. And if you look closer, you can see that his jacket has torn. Now, he may have torn his jacket a long time ago. But it's tempting to think that, you know, the force of this moment, this moment of realisation, which we'll talk a bit more about, and that has caused him to leap out of his chair. It's tempting to think that he's torn his jacket in the moment. Yes, I really like that. So the figure in the centre who is facing us, he is bathed in light. And we're sort of veering slightly away from colour here. But briefly, I'll come back to it. Unlike the two men seated either side of them, he has this sort of youthful looking face. He doesn't have any facial hair. And he's wearing, like you said, this bright red robe and has this sort of white fabric thrown over his shoulder. He also, if you look behind him on the wall, those shadows you mentioned, the shadow directly behind him is almost sort of curving around the top of his head in a bit of an arc. So maybe at this point, it's helpful to say who he is. This is the figure of Christ. The moment that's being painted here is the moment where these two seated men, who are two disciples, realise who he is. They've been travelling with him. They met him, I think I'm right in saying, three days after the crucifixion. Yes, on the third day after the crucifixion, exactly. Great. They weren't aware of who he was. They have just realised. So it's this moment of high drama. I think, as well as these sort of pockets of light and dark, it's also worth drawing people's attention to the earthy tones in general, which this is something that Caravaggio did again and again with his paintings, his altarpieces. He took a story that was divine, a biblical story, and kind of made it palpably real by painting it in these real earthy tones. There is a lot of brown. Brown and black. There's a lot of brown on that cooked chicken. You know, on the basket, the basket of fruit, which kind of teeters really tantalisingly on the edge of that table. You know, you feel as if you could reach out and grab it. I don't think it's a coincidence that there are lots of earthy tones there. And there's the bright white of the shell on one of the disciples as well, isn't there? That kind of draws your eye. All of the white kind of playing to draw our attention into this central figure of Christ, whose hand then is reaching out towards us. Yes. Yeah, it's very cleverly done. It's a seemingly simple scene, but one that's been kind of carefully curated. It's staged almost, isn't it? It's staged. Exactly. It's a piece of, sort of a piece of drama. And it's as if they have, you know, if they were here today, if he was doing it today, you could imagine lights shining down on them, creating these perfect moments of light and dark. I don't think you need to know the story to recognise, for example, that the figure of Christ is dressed quite differently in terms of the colours of clothing he's wearing. And again, thinking about the light shining down on his face. So it's an interesting one, going back to what we were saying before about, you know, what you know, what you don't know coming to a work. Thinking about how looking at art through the lens of colour can be a sort of… A way in. Absolutely. Shall we look at another example now? Another very famous painting in the National Gallery's collection, which is the Toilet of by Spanish artist Diego Velazquez, painted 1647 to 51. And Velazquez was born in the very end of the 16th century in Sevilla in southern Spain, which at the time was an important city with a thriving artistic community. And he was the kind of preeminent Spanish artist of the 17th century, leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal. And I'll describe the painting for those of you who might not know it or might need a reminder. So we have a central reclined female figure with very pale skin. This is Venus, the goddess of love in Roman mythology. And she's laid out on what looks like a bed, but sort of looks like a chaise longue perhaps. And she is naked. She's not clothed. On her right side with her back to us so that we see the back of her head and her brown hair, which is tied up in a sort of low updo. And she's propped up on her right arm and rests her head on her right hand. The bed on which she's lying is covered in this very sumptuous satin fabrics in different colours, which we'll come to. And the curve of her body almost echoes the sweep of the fabrics beneath her. And a curtain backdrops also in this sweep, which is a very rich pinkish red colour. And then there is another figure in the painting, which is her son Cupid. He's a figure, a little small figure with little wings and short brown hair. And he kneels on the bed and props up a rectangular mirror, which has a heavy black thick frame. And she's looking into the mirror and her face is a little hazy in the mirror. Can't quite make out her expression. Maybe we'll talk about that. And she's sort of resting, gazing into the mirror. So a classic toilet scene, as it were. But help us to have a look at this. You know, if we don't know who Venus is, we don't know who Cupid is. What can the colours tell us about this painting, Chloe? Well, I think if we're thinking about maybe the mood of the painting to begin with, it's quite a sensual palette. Sensual, I think, was the word you just used in your description. And it is that. The pinks and the creams, immediately there is this intimacy, I think, as well. For me, the way that the colours work in this painting is also they definitely draw the eye to Venus. In a way, she doesn't need any help. She takes up the majority of the canvas. She is reclining. She is naked. But there's definitely this colour contrast going on where she's lying, as you said, on this really sumptuous satin fabric. I think it used to be purple, am I right in saying? Yeah. And now it's sort of a... Navy, almost. Yes, bluish grey, exactly. The red pigment has faded over time. Yeah, yeah. And so really kind of drawing attention to her fleshliness, in a way. The same sort of is happening with the backdrop, I think, which is, again, is done in quite muted colours. I mean, similar to the Caravaggio, this kind of brownish blacks. The curtain, for me, is a very important part of this painting. And that sort of beautiful blush rose. Yeah, rich, rosy, pale red, I guess. Yes, yeah. I mean, it really draws your eye. And again, I think, is just a reminder that we're glimpsing a private scene here. And adding to this sense of intimacy again. What else can we talk about? So there's the ribbons that Cupid is holding. Which are sort of flecks of white and pink in them. I guess it's reminding, well, this is actually his blindfold. Cupid's blindfold, I think, am I right in saying? But ties him to the curtain and also to the very crisp white sheet beneath Venus. And these ribbons are sort of, they're around his wrists and then also draped over the mirror. Yes, yeah. And they do create quite a contrast, don't they, with the black frame of the mirror. Yeah, they do. They sort of soften it in a way. And tie in quite nicely, actually, with that hazy reflection that you mentioned. Venus's face in the mirror, which is, yeah, it's slightly obscured. But one thing you really can make out is the rosiness of her cheeks. Yes, the flush. Yeah, it's almost the thing that stands out the most, I think. I agree. And you can see that on her real face as well, not the reflection. You can. It's that real, you know, I don't know what I'm now thinking of, when it was very sort of cool and fashionable to have a lot of blusher. When was that? I don't know. The various points in history, but this moment was perhaps one of those. But also is evoking, I think, again, this sense of we're possibly seeing something we shouldn't. Also just the fact that she is naked and she has her back to us and we are seeing her. Is she aware of our presence? Yes, you don't quite know where her eye contact is in the mirror because it's hazy. And you wouldn't immediately know that she is a goddess, I don't think. No. If you hadn't read the title or didn't have the context. And I think that is intentional. Yes. Yeah, I think so. I think what we have here is a very human portrayal of Venus. Really, the only thing I think that might alert viewers to the fact that what we're seeing isn't an entirely human domestic scene is the presence of those little wings you described on Cupid. Because seeing her, I totally agree, we could be looking at any young woman, really, which I suppose, you know, then in having her face obscured, there is no, yeah, the idea I think there is that there is no one ideal of beauty. You know, we could project whatever we like onto that face and onto that reflection. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one. Having started off with the Manet and there's that hazy reflection in the mirror. Yes. Moving on to this one. Again, both paintings really throwing up questions about women being on display. Yes. You know, who's looking at who? And where are we looking? Yes. And who is the we that is looking or the artist is painting for? Yeah, I actually would really encourage people to have a look around the National Gallery or any other painting gallery and try and spot women in mirrors. Yes. Because it is very interesting. And I think you can see differences in how perhaps men have painted women in mirrors and how women have painted women in mirrors. And yeah, you might be able to find some stories there as well, which is off of the topic of colours. Yes, we'll save that for another series. So yes, this was Velázquez's Roque Vivenus, which is his only surviving nude painting. And we will take a little break now. And then we will come to a painting in which colour is not perhaps just a more naturalistic tool in the painter's toolbox. It's almost the subject of the painting itself. And I will leave you guessing what painting in our collection that might be. We'll see you after the break. So I teased before the break that we were going to look at a painting in which colour was almost the subject. And that painting is Combing the Hair by Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, painted in about 1896. So Degas was a French impressionist artist famous for his pastel drawings and oil paintings who specialised in scenes of contemporary life, including dancers, entertainers and women at their toilettes. And yes, this is basically a study in red, isn't it? We can see two women in the painting. And the entire background really is this very vibrant, almost brick red. And there's one woman who's standing and a young girl who's seated in front of her, having her hair combed. The woman standing is a maid. She's wearing a servant's uniform. So we've got this pink blouse with really voluminous puffed sleeves. Great sleeves. Such good sleeves. I feel like they would be quite fashionable now. And a grey skirt, which is mostly covered by a large white apron that she's wearing. Which is tied around her waist. And her bright red hair is tied up in a bun on the top of her head. The young girl is sort of holding some of her hair back and the maid is brushing, combing through her hair. And her hair is also this deep red colour. And she's wearing a more plain dress, a red dress with a white collar and cuffs just above her elbows. It looks like it's a bit like a nightgown. It's also possible, but we're not sure, that she might be pregnant from the curve of her stomach. And she's been really pulled back, isn't she, by the force of having her hair brushed. And yes, she's sort of, that right hand that I mentioned, sort of holding her hair is almost there to sort of steady herself as she's being pulled back. And there is a table in the foreground as well with a few pieces on it in sort of mottled colours. So how might we understand this painting when there's so much red going on in it? Well, I think, I mean, for me, this is such a claustrophobic painting in the best possible way. I adore this painting. But just having so many variations of one colour, all these different shades of red, sort of reddish orange, pinkish red, it just, it really amps up the claustrophobia of the scene to me. I think, you know, you mentioned their different clothing, the colours of the clothes. It's one way of sort of identifying who we're seeing. The maid is very clearly a maid with this white, sort of greyish white apron. And yet I quite like the sort of how she's tied to, let's say her mistress, this woman whose hair she's brushing by the white cuffs and collar of what might be a nightgown. Not, this isn't specifically to do with colour, but another thing connecting them, besides the fact that the mistress is holding onto the hair, is their arms. If you look at the composition of the painting, their arms almost form this lovely figure of eight, which is a nice little aside. Yes, there's a flow around their arms, isn't there? There is. And the hair itself. I mean, so what Degas has done throughout this painting is there are moments where he has this very sort of harsh, dark outline. So you see it, for example, on the right hand side of the apron of the maid, and you see it along the sort of curve of her face, which I think sort of underscores the slight menace to the scene. But the hair itself of the mistress, you know, the focal point of the painting. Literally in the centre of it. Exactly, literally right in the centre, has no outline. And it's almost like the colour from the hair is spilling out unchecked and leaking over this canvas. Because it flares into the red background. Exactly, exactly. You can, it's quite hard actually to tell them apart. There's a sort of a slight hint of an outline. It's almost like when you see the sea and then the horizon of the sky, and you can't quite tell where the horizon line is. Exactly, exactly. And yeah, I mean, you described so well, having her hand pressed on her hair. It's the feeling that someone with long hair will know too well. But if you haven't had long hair, that sense that you must hold onto the top of your head when you are having it brushed. Otherwise, it will yank. Otherwise, it'd be really painful. There's also, again, as there was in the Velázquez that we spoke about before, there is here, it takes up less space, but there is a curtain again, and a hint of a curtain, which has this real jagged, rough, charcoal-y outline, hinting once again at the sort of intimacy of the scene. Now, something that you might not know before you do go and look at the label is that at the time when this was made, so around 1896, it was quite scandalous for a woman to brush her hair in public. So what we're seeing, although now to viewers today, it might seem very ordinary. Yeah, I would have no trouble putting a hairbrush in my handbag. Exactly, not at all a hooded subject, really. But at the time, it really was. And I think once you know that, there's an example of possibly looking for yourself, really getting a sense of the mood. The fact that this colour red, it throws up so many associations, doesn't it? Whether it's love and lust or shame, embarrassment. I just think of the way my face goes so red every time I'm embarrassed. But it's the colour of blood as well. It's the colour of blood. There's a violence there, as well as a vitality. But it's such a wonderful example of the way that an artist can really home in on one colour and squeeze every sort of ounce out of that colour. There are pockets of almost calm here as well. I find when I'm looking at it that briefly, there are moments of relief, for example, that come from the comb that the maid is using to brush the mistress's hair. And also in the brush that's resting on the table in the foreground, there is sort of faded yellow. And they do, in a way, I think, provide relief from the heat. There's a fieriness to the red that overwhelms us almost. There is. And you're right, it does feel like moments of relief there. Yeah, and I mean, going back to what we said at the very beginning about storytelling being here since our beginnings, if you were to look at just the very left-hand side of this artwork and you see the curtain and that jagged line I described, you could be looking at a cave painting, right? Yes, I mean, if you just separated out that section, you've got the black underpaint and actually the cream white background coming through the paint. There's a sense of it maybe being unfinished, which I know art historians debate on with this painting. But yeah, it does feel quite primal, doesn't it? The way the colours are laid in, the brushstrokes there. And I suppose especially the table as well. There are almost sort of hazy sketches of other objects on the table that have been left that way, which you could take to sort of be another hint at this being this kind of ordinary fleeting moment in a woman's day. I think this really helps us because we're able to read the colours in the painting and you might not know that there's red earth pigments and vermilion pigments and red lead pigments in this painting, but you can look at it and anyone can say, oh, there are loads of shades of reds going on here, reds and oranges and pinks, all related. And you don't need any prior knowledge to know what feelings red evokes to you and in culture and those things we talked about just before. And I think we can look very quickly at another painting, which might tell us a lot about mood through colour as well, which is Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, in which I would say perhaps colour isn't the subject of the painting, perhaps as much as bodega, but the yellow tones of this painting give us so much in terms of mood. And there are three types of chrome yellow pigment in this painting. There's then the greens of the feathery backgrounds to the sunflowers, viridian there. And if you haven't seen the Sunflowers painting before, the version in the National Gallery by Vincent van Gogh painted in 1888, then you've got this vase on a little table, just the kind of yellowy ochery colour of the table with a blue line cutting it from the paler yellow background. And you've got sunflowers in various arrays of going to seed in the vase. And Vincent has signed his first name in blue along the edge of the vase. But perhaps you could talk to us a little bit about what the yellow makes you feel and the story that that might tell us. Yeah, I think this is one of several versions of his sunflower paintings that he made. And yes, I mean, in a way, it's a very different form of heat to the heat we're describing in the bodega, which is a sort of intense and claustrophobic heat. But there is that summery heat to the sunflowers. Some of the sunflowers, as you said, we're seeing them at different points in the life cycle, but some really almost stand in for the sun, I think. For me, looking at it, there's something upbeat about the painting. On a very basic level, it makes me feel happy looking at this painting of yellow flowers. I think that's a thing that yellow... I'm sure I've heard and read somewhere that, you know, when a house is being staged, if you put yellow cushions in, it makes people feel happy when they're wandering. But yeah, it's another really brilliant example of an artist, you know, really focusing on one colour. I think, and we see this again and again in art history, especially over time, as more and more pigments become available, not just available, but less costly, there are so many options out there. And I think there's something quite powerful about paring it back and, you know, making a really powerful statement just with one colour. Yeah, totally. It's really interesting that you find this really joyful because I think a lot of our visitors do as well. It's something that, when I've spoken to the staff who work on the floors in the galleries, they say that they can see the joy in visitors coming to see this painting. And yet I feel some people would read a kind of melancholy or sadness into the browns and yellows, perhaps because of what we know of the sadness at the end of Van Gogh's life, this being painted right at the end of his life. And I love that because I don't think either is right or wrong. I think both can be true. And as you were saying before, when you come into a gallery and your own emotions will be in different places every time you look at a picture or visit a gallery, and actually, yeah, you might read the colours differently on any given day, or you might read the colours differently because you've got different contexts for painting. But actually, you're gonna get the emotion and some sense of story from the colours, whether or not it's quite right or wrong. And to that extent, that doesn't really matter, I think, because you're still gonna get something really beautiful out of the painting. So we're coming to our final painting to look at now, which comes from a question that the listeners have asked us. We asked what painting comes to mind when we say the word colourful, and one of you selected The Judgement of Paris by Peter Paul Rubens, probably painted in 1632 to five. So Rubens was an enormously successful painter whose workshop produced an amazing number of works, but he was also a really important diplomat in 17th century European politics. And he painted a few versions of The Judgement of Paris, but this one that we have is seen as a really definitive piece of Flemish Baroque art. And so we're gonna have a quick look at it now with all of its colours, and I will describe it as I have the others so that you can imagine it at home. It's a very busy painting. It's very busy. So much going on. There are three goddesses who stand on the left-hand side of the painting who are in various states of undress. There's a shepherd who's facing the three goddesses who holds out an apple in his right hand. So he has been asked to make a choice and give the apple to the goddess who he deems to be the fairest, the most beautiful. Mercury, the messenger god, has brought the goddesses in front of Paris so that he may make his decision. Mercury stands just behind Paris on the right-hand side of the painting. And there's some animals as well in this painting. There's a little dog resting by Paris's feet. There are sheep grazing in a field in the background and a peacock stands at the foot of one of the goddesses. And an owl is also perching in a tree on the left-hand side of the painting. So there's lots of animals going on. And we're sort of in a kind of woodland field scene. There's quite a few trees in the background. And in the sky above, we see what looks like the torso of a figure emerging from a billowing cloud. So shall we have a look at the colours in this painting? And I think, yeah, maybe you were saying in one of the breaks about how we shouldn't have to know what the mythological story of a painting is. If we haven't read the classical Greek or Roman myths to get something really amazing from it. And so how might understanding or looking at the colour in this painting help us with that? Well, I think, I mean, first of all, like you said, this is a busy painting. I really just get the feeling that Rubens is having fun with colour. It almost, the colour seems to dance around the canvas. There is the sky you described. It's sort of, it's at once cloudy and the brightest blue. And that bright blue is echoed in the opposite corner of the canvas. So you've got the sky top right. You've got this little swatch of fabric that is the same sort of blue bottom left. Again, there are moments of sort of mirroring going on. So Mercury's cape, which is sort of flying in the wind quite dramatically. This rosy red, again, finds an echo. Mercury is on the right hand side of the canvas. It finds an echo on the left. I think, you know, there's no doubt in my mind about who is the focus of this scene. And for me, it's these three women who are bathed in light. Among the scenery, there are lots of earthy tones. There's a lot of greenery, sort of shrubbery there and earth itself, literal earth. And then we have these kind of creamy white women who are sort of spotlit and who are in various states of undress and sort of striking their very best poses. Yes. I think. They are being put on show, aren't they? They are. They're very much on show. I mean, there's definitely a theme that's emerging from the artworks we've looked at today. But yeah, I think, you know, that simple colour contrast between the flesh of these female figures and the trees and the natural landscape around them draws our eye towards the women. So one thing to note about this painting is that our conservation department have seen changes that were made after Rubens painted it. So the owner later made some decisions, we think, to make the women foregrounded look a bit more modest. So he decided to change exactly the kind of moment in the mythological story that was being depicted. If you would like to find out more about that, really fascinating, the changes that were made and how our conservators decide to restore the painting, you can watch the video on our YouTube channel about restoring this painting, which will give you another lens with which to view the story. But hopefully we have answered that audience question to look at colour in this painting. And so that brings us to an end of this episode on how we can read colour in paintings. If you've got more questions you want to ask us about the story of colour, you can email us. We're on podcast at nationalgallery.org.uk. Or you can send us in your questions via our social media channels. Just mention the podcast. So thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of Stories in Colour, with huge thanks to our guest, Chloe Ashby. Thank you for having me. And I've been your host, Bex Leary. Our producer was Harry Rosehill. Our researcher was Hannah Rogers. Our technicians were Ian Warren and Tom Gulliver. Our video producer was Alessandro Sorrenti. And with huge thanks to our scientific team here at the National Gallery. And thank you for listening.