The Curious Past of the Color Blue, plus Berry Wines

Interesting what we take for granted, isn’t it? For instance, when was the last time any of us stopped to think about the color blue? When one asks about it, what comes to mind most frequently is that the sky is blue. There! It is all around us, so everybody knows about blue. Not really. Blue is a color with a past. The ancient descriptions of the sky say it was colorless or white or just neutral. Little children often do not see the sky as having a color, or they use blue for a strip at the top of their drawings, with a brown strip at the bottom for earth, and a great white space in between (air?).

Part Vision by Norman Lewis, 1971. Hover over image to magnify.

Blue is a mysterious creature, perfect for expressing a vision, or at least part of one, as abstract expressionist Norman Lewis conceived of it. The painting above has us perhaps submerged in the “deep blue sea.” Or perhaps we are wandering about in a blue dream. There seem to be some objects, a tower, some shrubs, a hill. However, nothing is distinct in this shades-of-blue netherworld, which makes the painting all the more haunting.

Blue is not a naturally occuring color, and really very little on earth is actually blue, not the grasses, not most flowers, not animals or humans. Even the “blue of the sky” has nothing to do with any tactile material, but is simply a colorful trick of the eye produced when the length of the sun’s rays are long. When the rays are short, we see reds and oranges. We think of blue in modern times as being a cool color, but as Michel Pastoureau in Bleu, Histoire d’une couleur, states “…hot and cold colors are purely conventional and function differently according to the epoque (in the Middle Ages, for example, blue was a hot color)…”(p.7). The color has often been associated with green, a color much more familiar and commented upon by the Greeks and Romans, who by the way referred to the sea as “wine-dark waters.” Some tribal people when shown a series of green squares and one blue one, see the blue one as just another green square, a bit different, but green (“The Color Blue: History, Science, Facts” dunnedwards.com) While turquoise and lapis lazuli existed in certain areas on earth, it seems that people began to “see” blue when they started making the color, and that started 5500 years ago. Where? Egypt, of course.

The Ancient Egyptians were known for their love of faience. Although other civilizations, such as those in Mesopotamia knew of faience, it was the Ancient Egyptians that were most famous for their fabulous blue faience. It ranged in color from deep blue to sky blue to green. It was the first syntheically made color as it did not come from ground turquoise or lapis.The Egyptians would super heat a combination of quartz sand crystals with sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and copper oxide (itself a way to produce blue), so that the substance could be used to form objects or to coat the inside or the outside of other objects. Faience itself is a type of glass, so its surface is shiney. That shine reminded the Ancient Egyptians of the sun, and the permanent glimmer of the objects was looked upon as magical and as a sign of rebirth in the afterlife.

Burial Necklace of Wah, 12th Dynasty worker in the time of Amenemhat I, 1981-1975 BCE

The necklace above shows the fine work that even a humble person might acquire in order to add to his burial goods. The tomb of Wah is a simple one, and seemingly none of the archeologists expected to find any treasures to speak of when they discovered it. However, when the mummy was unwrapped in 1940, a number of beautiful faience jewelry items were found along with the necklace above, which adorned the chest of the mummy. This indicates how popular and accessible blue faience was in that ancient culture. (For a better picture and an article see metmuseum.org.)

Blue faience was also often used to make Ushabtis, the little figures who were assigned to work in the afterlife on behalf of their mummified owner. The alabaster sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I had figures cut into it that were colored with blue infill and the interior was treated with a blue made from copper. In 1817, Giovanni Belzoni, who uncovered the tomb (sadly, robbed in ancient times), found the bottom of the sarcophagus to be pure translucent white with the blue lining still apparent. The transfer of the sarcophagus to London and almost 200 years of humidity and air pollution has turned it a buff color with the blue lining gone. Even the blue infill on the figures is now a dirty gray because of failed attempts to recreate the ancient color in the 1800s. collections.soanes.org

The history of blue runs deep among the Ancient Egyptians, as lapis lazuli was another of their favorites. Imported from Afghanistan, its long journey and the beauty of the stone made it an expensive prize. Legend has it that pharaohs made their top advisors wear necklaces of lapis lazuli, because it was believed that he who wore lapis lazuli could not lie. Though blue flowers are rare, the Ancient Egyptians even had that in the blue lotus. Often depicted on the walls of their tombs with both men and women sniffing the fragrance of the flower, it supposedly produced a feeling of well-being and aroused sexual desire.

Not unlike the secret of how to make Egyptian Blue which was lost for a while (one of the discoverers of the formula was Dr. George Washington Carver, who studied a lot more than how to rotate cotton crops with those of peanuts), another fabulous blue that was also lost is Mayan Blue. Its rediscovery in 1931 came about because of scientific advances that allowed researchers to discover the key ingredient, a rare type of clay found in southern Mexico called “polygorskite.” This blue was developed between the 6th and 8th centuries CE, though there is evidence that it existed as early as 300 CE. It is not affected by erosion, the passage of time, biodegradation or even modern solvents! (“Origins of Maya Blue in Mexico” sciencedaily.com.) The famous 8th century murals of Bonampak on the Yucatan peninsula (see OfArtandWine.com “Bonampak’s Temple of the Murals”) were also known for the sparkle in the heavenly blue paint. Scientists have found that it comes from the use of azurite, a stone imported to the Maya lands from Arizona, which just shows that the desire for blue can reach to products from far distant lands. (For more on Mayan Blue and the meaning of the color for the Maya, see Production of Maya Blue youtube.com)

While the Chinese favored red as the color of good luck, they were known for making their fine porcelain in blue and white. Blue and white Chinese porcelain first appeared in the Tang dynasty (7th to early 10th centuries). However, some of the most famous blue and white Chinese porcelain appears in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).(For more see “Chinese Blue and White Porcelain,” Victoria and Albert Museum, London vam.ac.uk.) It was this porcelain that was imported into the royal art collection of Persia, modern Iran, and caught the eye of the Dutch traders, who brought it to Europe. Though the national color of the Dutch is orange, so popular was this blue in Holland that they decided to begin to make their own, called Delft Blue.

When it comes to paintings in Occidental art, blue takes on a whole new life, moving from hot to cool and from a detail to being the subject of the painting itself (see the Lewis painting at the top of the page). Paintings of the Virgin Mary in the middle ages normally show her wearing what was then a hot color, blue, while Mary Magdalene was most often pictured wearing red, a cool color. Perhaps the Virgin Mary was thought to be closer to divinity, so she was dressed in a hot color, while Mary Magdalene was a former sinner (or so they say) and thus farther from god and dressed in a cool color. At any rate over the years things began to change and blue cooled off quite a bit. Next time we will take a look at some famous blue paintings.

Images used in this post are either in Public Domain or used in accordance with Fair Use Policy.

Resources used for this post are linked in the text of the article. However, two other sources were used:

Seithy the First, King of Egypt: Life and Afterlife by Aiden Dodson

Bleu: Histoire d’une coulour by Michel Pastoureau

For more on Marjorie Vernelle, see the author page at amazon.com/author/marjorievernelle or go to the Art Blog at vernellestudio.com. For my original art goods see etsy.com/shop/VernelleArtStudio.

The Sweeter the Berry: Berry Wines

Elderberries for the classic fruit wine favorite, Elderberry wine.

Berry wines have a rather mixed reputation. Since they are by nature sweet – very sweet, they have often been used to flavor that favorite of the 1980s, wine coolers. Elderberry wine, a supposed favorite of old ladies of a certain era, was of course, the poisoning method used in Arsenic and Old Lace. (Of Art and Wine does not recommend trying this.) Berry wines, though often do bring to mind great-grandma in her kitchen making use of an overflow harvest of berries. What couldn’t be eaten outright went into pies, canning jars, and wine bottles. In fact, making berry wines is often done in just such a low key manner that it may be one of the most accessible forms of alcoholic beverages around the world, as it can be made from bananas, pineapples, lichee fruit, oranges, and a variety of other sweet fruits not normally associated with wine. While we venerate “real wine,” i.e. that which is made from grapes, we do have to remember that grapes are a fruit, too. So let’s take our noses out of the air and really look at what is going on with berry wines.

Bluet, a sparkling wine made from Maine blueberries, Obsidean Wine Company, Bluet (see the article on vinepair.com).

Sometimes when one is dealing with a well-established idea of what a product must be, rather than compare the new creation to that which is established, it is better to start a new category. That is what Michael Terrien did when he decided to take advantage of the blueberry growing industry in Maine. Basically he decided to make a blueberry wine without adding anything extra, which meant that he had to use champagne making techniques or “bubble it.” By doing so he sought to create a special category of wine rather than have his sparkling blueberry wine compared to the sparkling grape wines. He also sought to help the blueberry industry in Maine as the natural Maine blueberry is the source of all the hybrid blueberries grown around the world. The fact that the fruit is high in antioxidents could also be a helping factor in creating a wider market for the wine. It is now sold on the East Coast and Southern California, as well as on the website, where you can find out more and meet the Bluet team (bluet.me)

Black Currants. Photo credit to Anton on Unsplash.com

Talk about great-granny in the kitchen, black current wine seems to be quite popular as a homemade wine, judging by the number of websites with recipes for making your own homebrew. I’ll let you do the research on that one; the recipes are easy to find. However, I did find that Southern Homebrew offers a black currant wine base to help get you started should you decide to go pioneer and make your own black currant wine (southernhomebrew.com).

Bottled berry wines are easier to find, with Stella Rosa Blackberry being made from Italian red grape varieties and vine-ripened blackberry purée. Cara Mello makes both an interesting blueberry wine (Cara Mello Blueberry), which is a sweet treat to serve with nuts and cheeses or with a dessert. The best is over ice, but you can mix it with your favorite cocktail. Also interesting is Cara Mello Peach, which comes in a delicate pale pink color and works fabulously well over ice. It is full of flavorful juicy peaches with a hint of the peach blossom, as well. Arbor Mist makes a blackberry and merlot wine that combines the best of both worlds in an unexpected way described as “ripe and delicious.”

While Apothic Wines, Modesto, California, makes red wine blends from grapes, there is one of their wines that draws attention, Apothic Brew. Its tasting notes are “Bold, Blackberry, Mocha,” but the really interesting part is that the wine is infused with cold brew coffee. It is full bodied blend of reds with concentrated blackberry notes with subtle chocolate and mocha traits of cold brew. apothic.com.

Homemade Berry Spritzer from cookthestory.com

Of course, we have the spritzers, with fruit. The one above is made from dry white wine, soda, and a squeeze of lemon or lime. Christine at cookthestory.com shares a neat trick to not water the spritzer down with melting ice. She uses frozen berries, which add to the taste. Berries are also a nice companion to sparkling wines, especially a nice rosé sparkler with a strawberry or two to add both flavor and flair. I shall end where we began with the bottled wine cooler. Yes. they are with us, and Seagram’s leads the pack with its Seagram’s Escapes: Jamaican Me Happy! Lemons, strawberries, watermelon and guava. Get one ready for a trip (if even imaginary) to the Caribbean. Bon voyage!

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and   CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2022

Coming Soon: Painting’s Curious Color – Blue (continued), and Wines of Noble Rot.

The Blue Boy by Gainesborough, 1770.

Well, there he is The Blue Boy, the painting that became the most famous of its day and one that set out to prove that blue could hold its own by itself. Of course, other painters found out the value of a blue palette. Of Art and Wine looks at Vermeer, Van Gogh, Picasso and Matisse as well and offers a bit of insight into the term Noble Rot.

Masters of the Flowers, plus Napa Valley Vineyards in Spring.

Spring is here or at least mostly here, and the idea of flowers everywhere to herald the return of good weather, sunshine, and happiness comes naturally with the season. With that in mind, Of Art and Wine takes a look at some of the more famous painters of flowers, along with a short tour of springtime as celebrated in the vineyards of the Napa Valley. Let’s go, shall we?

Master Painters and Their Flowers

Nympheas by Claude Monet, 1916. Hover over the image to magnify.

Behind his back, the six local gardeners whom Claude Monet hired to keep his gardens at Giverney called him “le marquis.” If he didn’t in fact have a royal title, he most certainly became art world royalty as leader of the French Impressionists and the creator of the national treasure of his gardens filled with waterlily ponds. In fact, Monet said, “My finest masterpiece is my garden.”

Monet was already quite rich and successful by the time he started working on the gardens and painting the waterlilies. He developed those paintings over the last 30 years of his life, roughly 1896-1926. He displayed some of them in 1900 and again in 1908 at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris; however, their reception was not well taken, with some wondering about the old artist’s perception of things. Not wanting to deal with misguided commentary, Monet withheld the paintings and just continued to work. It wasn’t until 1927, a year after his death, that the paintings appeared in the especially made setting of the Orangerie. They were the artist’s gift of peace to the nation after the Great War (1914-1918), the canons of which he often heard from his peaceful gardens at Giverney.

Waterlilies by Claude Monet, 1906. Art Institute of Chicago artic.edu Hover over the image to magnify.

Everything about the gardens and their ponds of lilies was a fantasy. The waters of a nearby river had been diverted to create the ponds. The lilies were not native to France, but imports from South America and Egypt. Ross King in his book Mad Enchantment, represents Monet’s gardens this way. “In short, the fabled waterlily location at Giverny, far from being a natural outcrop of rural France, was a laboratory in which Monet carefully assembled the colours and shapes to which he required access at a moment’s notice.”

Monet was not just interested in the beauty of the specific mixes of color, which he had crafted in his orders to the gardeners about what to plant and where, but in reforming the whole idea of landscape painting. His work in the latter days of his career moved towards decentralizing the standard imagery of landscape, taking away the normal boundaries that mark a scene and just putting the viewer somewhere out there among the lilies. Some have wanted to say that it was a process related to the slow development of cataracts, but if one looks at his work, one can see this removal of boundaries happening before his eye troubles. Of Art and Wine looks at this aspect of Monet’s work with the lily ponds in “Monet’s Lily Pond and the Last of the Summer Wine,” where art critic Stephane Lambert’s theories in Adieu a la Paysage (Goodbye to the Landscape) are examined (August 30, 2019 post). Above and beyond the beauty of the flowers in their watery existence were the theories of painting light and light reflected off of water, which the artist wanted to address, and in doing so open our eyes to a new reality.

Bouquet of Violets by Edouard Manet, 1872. Hover over image to magnify.

The previous post on Of Art and Wine dealt with the whether or not of an affair between Berthe Morisot and Edouard Manet. Violets seemed to be the flower that he most associated with her. Manet famously said, “It is not enough to know your craft; you have to have feeling.” This painting is often seen as a private love message in what was on the surface a very proper relationship between the married artist, Manet, and one of his favorite models, Berthe Morisot, who ultimately became his sister-in-law. The red fan is something she carries in his portrait of her in The Balcony. The letter only shows it was addressed to Mlle Morisot and signed by Edouard Manet; however, the combination of the three symbols of romance from the Victorian Era, violets, a fan, and a letter, would possibly indicate a hidden love message.

Here we see Manet’s skill with a simple vase of Tulips and Roses (1882). Toward the end of his life, illness limited Manet’s mobility. He was only able to paint the flowers that people brought to him. However, his skill came to the fore with dramatic but simple settings like we have here. The stark whitish table with the abstract patterns of the bouquet’s shadows has a background of deep brownish black, which serves to highlight the color of the flowers. The real magic happens inside the crystal vase where a wild tangle of stems, leaves, and water play with our imaginations.

Irises by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889 J. Paul Getty Museum, California. Hover over image to magnify.

To say that Vincent Van Gogh had a special relationship with irises is putting it mildly. While, yes, he also painted sunflowers and those lovely spring almond blossoms gifted to his brother upon the birth of Theo’s son, Van Gogh’s irises are amazements to behold. The ones above were done within a week of his entry into the asylum in Saint Remy de Provence from flowers in the gardens of the asylum. He referred to them as the “lightening conductor for my illness,” a type of inspirational subject that let him hold on to sanity. Painting and perhaps in particular these rather close up paintings, as opposed to larger landscapes, seemed to focus his attention in ways that calmed his nerves (Van Gogh Close-up, catalog edited by Cornelia Homburg, Yale University Press, 2012).

Van Gogh’s irises are noted for their magnificent blues; however, there are some paintings in which the blues are just the remains of vibrant purples that have faded away. Somehow in his first weeks within the asylum, he focused intensely on the flowers’ rich purples, as it is a mix of peaceful blue and deep blood red. That volatile mix presents a color long associated with royalty, power, and wealth. Van Gogh suffered from poverty his whole life, with his paintings not selling until after his death. Irises are associated with death, as they were often used to decorate graves to help with that passage across the bridge made of rainbows represented by the Greek goddess Iris. This may also have been on his mind, especially since his own death, supposedly of suicide, happened the very next year, 1890.

Irises by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889. From his stay in the asylum at St. Remy de Provence.

The painting above was one that Van Gogh focused on in those early days at the asylum as he tried to regain health and mental stability while being surrounded with the mentally unstable. He focused on the color (originally deep purple but here faded to the blues) as a way to hold on to his own sanity. This painting was purchased after the artist’s death by an art critic who noted how well Van Gogh “understood the exquisite nature of flowers” (Octave Mirbeau).

Amaryllis by Piet Mondrian, 1910. wikiart.org

Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), a Dutch artist, lived by a rather repressive theology which informed his philosophy of painting. It dealt with a purity of vision that only allowed for red, yellow, blue, and white and black, as well as straight or perpendicular joined lines (no diagonals, please).Yet, he also painted flowers. The watercolor above keeps to a lot of that basic philosophy about what the pure colors are, though he hedges a bit with the shadings of blue and white to create the bottle and the stamen of the flowers. Mondrian’s world of the abstract, represented by his more commonly known geometric works (see below) was the art to which the flowers were a counterpoint. He sometimes indicated that he did not like doing flowers because they were just the way he paid his bills when his “real art” was not being purchased. However, it does seem that he did flowers even after his artistic philosophy based on Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy was fully entrenched. Perhaps in order to keep the more messy details of life arranged, he re-dated many of those flowers to an earlier period in his career before his ideas on art cemented themselves.

The beauty of his flowers with sometimes their starkly shocking colors or even unnatural colors were obviously items he may have enjoyed the painting of, even if he did not like the financial reasons for which he had to paint them. Often representing just one stem of flowers, like in Japanese painting, the spareness in the representation allows for the color to have greater impact. For more on Mondrian’s work look at this article “Piet Mondrian Did What? Flowers!” in the Art Blog at vernellestudio.com

Perhaps when looking at the duality represented in Mondrian’s geometric abstractions and the nature shown in his floral paintings, it is best just to enjoy them rather than fathom the dualities and conflicts in the complexity of the artist’s personality. However, just to really tickle our minds’ fancy, I will leave you with one of his trees.

Tree Study by Piet Mondrian, 1908

Paintings used in this article are in Public Domain

Reference works used are as follows:

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King

“Life as Myth: A Bouquet of Violets” lifeasmyth.com

Van Gogh Close Up, the catalog for the art exhibition, Philadelphia Museum of Art, edited by Cornelia Homberg, 2012.

“Piet Mondrian’s Flowers” on ideasurges ideasurges.tumblr.com

For more on Marjorie Vernelle, see the author page at amazon.com/author/marjorievernelle or go to the Art Blog at vernellestudio.com.

Springtime in the Valley – the Napa Valley, Of Course.

Vineyards in the Napa Valley. Photo from pixabay.com

Spring turns out to be one of the very best times to take a visit to the Napa Valley wine country. The weather is delightful, as the heavy heat of summer has not arrived. April is sparse when it comes to major holidays with vacations, as spring break has come and gone, and Easter does not create the traffic that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s do. That all means many fewer tourists. However, it does not mean that the valley is dead.

The arts are definitely alive in the valley. The Arts Council Napa Valley has a calendar of events that range from poetry, to theater, to music, to plein air painting. The downtown districts of towns like St. Helena, Calistoga, Yountville, and Napa all take part. The Arts Council presents abstract art at the Guild Studio in the city of Napa, April 25 through the 30th as part of their April in the Arts program.

The Nichelini Family Winery hosts a plein air event on the 23rd and 24th of April, starting around 10:00. Artists come to work on their plein air pieces out on the grounds of the winery, while those who have wine tasting appointments are able to enjoy the wine and the artistic ambience. Artists who participate receive their own snack pack and complimentary wine tasting. The artists must sign up in advance, but there is no fee. Those who want to taste wine must make a tasting appointment, with tastings from 11:00 a.m until 5:00 p.m. For more information contact mail@nicheliniwinery.com

For music lovers, there is SIP Napa Valley (Songwriters in Paradise), the creation of Patrick Davis, a song-writer from Nashville who first tried this idea in the Bahamas and has since added Cabo San Lucas and the Napa Valley to his list. SIP is happening this year between April 21st and 24th in a variety of venues, see sftourism.com. If jazz is your thing, then head to the Blue Note on the first floor of the Napa Valley Opera House, for music every night of the week and of course wine to taste and samples of food.

For food events, this was the 11th year for the Appellation St Helena Wine Tasting and Food Pairing Competition. Yes, this is a competitive event, which brings out the best of the Valley’s wines and gourmet food items. Normally held either in March or April, mark you calendars in advance by contacting https://appellationsthelena.com.

You can Hike in the Vineyards at Pine Ridge Vineyards or find out more about viticulture at Stag’s Leap. Attend a Rose Garden Party April 16th at Silverado Vineyards, which comes complete with tea sandwiches, scones, savory bites and lawn bowling. Celebrate Easter Sunday at the Silverado Resort. Activities cover both the 16th and the 17th, with events for everyone in the family, including decorating Easter eggs, and dining well either at a lunch buffet or a prix-fixe three course meal for dinner.

For those wanting romance, on April 16 at sunset one can take the Napa Valley Wine Train for a marvelous meal and a romantic ride through the valley. It’s huge vistadome provides marvelous views and a nighttime of beautiful moonlight and stars. For more on the Wine Train, contact winetrain.com and find out about their many other romantic packages.

Spring in the Napa Valley. pixabay.com

So, whether it is painting, wine tasting, musical entertainment, or just enjoying the scenery, it is all going on in the Napa Valley this spring, and it is still just April!

Of Art and Wine affiliates with Bluehost.com and     CellarsWineClub.com and may earn from qualifying purchases.

©marjorie vernelle 2022

Coming Soon: The Curious Past of the Color Blue, plus Berry Wines.

Part Vision by Norman Lewis, 1971.

We see it everyday, but have we really considered that Blue is a color with a past? In the Middle Ages it was a hot color; in our day it is cool calm and collected. Egyptian blue was used in ancient times, lost and rediscovered. The Maya blue found in the temples of Bonampak in the Yucatan has traces of azurite from Arizona! This color has had quite a life, so let’s explore it.

Exit mobile version