Dear the Hawk
Watercolour shades can be misleading at the time of them produced. Facings being affected by the colour beneath. Sometimes it is difficult to determine the colour of the buttons. Often the brass button colour has gone black and the silver has disappeared.
The yellowing of the paper has a significant effect upon the blues and the greens of course.
You then have to consider that the dyes were natural dyes. Most of them are mordants. In that transition metals either naturally in the water or added would complex with the dye to make them an insoluble lake. This in effect transforms them to a pigment. There were no green dyes in the 18th used for cloth. Green was produced by dying with blue (mainly indigo) and yellow (mainly weld) dyes. The order of the dye, the time, the quality of the cloth, whether the cloth was previously bleached etc… would make considerable differences to the dye.
There was considerable batch to batch differences. This is the reason that every year, the Prussians would dye all their waistcoats, breeches etc… in an attempt to give a uniform appearance. This may have been moderately successful in peacetime but not in war. Clothes wore out at different rates and new recruits would have fresh uniforms.
Most natural dyes have a poor light fastness and fade. Natural dyes wash out of clothes. This and the shrinking of wool cloth is a reason why you avoid washing them. You brush them. So great caution is needed when looking at extent uniforms on display. The only way is to look at areas not exposed to light.
The best cloth had the highest dye content and the blues were almost black. White wool was often unbleached and referred to as Gris (grey) which is actually not grey but has a slight yellow tint.
My books are an attempt to give the wargamer an idea of the complexity in a rational manner. Most writers seem not to have considered any of the above let alone the date of the evidence.
Often we are talking over a 20-30 year period of time so we should not be surprised that things changed. When you start to put dates upon the evidence often you can see a trend. This is what I have done for the Austrian 7YW Infantry that I have completely re-illustrated. The uniforms are depicted in 1757, the transitional 1760 and 1762. In 1757, halt the Austrian Infantry had white metal buttons, colour waistcoats and turnbacks. In 1762, only 5 had white metal buttons and turnbacks. The colour waistcoat had disappeared.
If you have the fortune of having the first edition Bleckwenn, there are a number of colour reproduction errors in the small landscape 2nd edition produced a decade later. It is a wonderful and superb resource. Another book I would strongly recommend is Hohrath (2011) The Uniforms of the Prussian Army under Frederick the Great from 1740-1786, Verlag Militaria.
Stephen
