"The Austrian 4th line Regt. Faceing colors" Topic

I have several different uniform books that differ on the facing color of the 4th Hoch und Deutschmeister Regiment. I have seen both sky blue and mid blue listed. Can anyone help me out with this ?

Runicus

W.J. Rawkins in the Austro-Hungarian Army 1798-1814 lists them as Sky Blue, as does Digby Smith in Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars. However, there is an article here by Dave Hollins and Terry Webb where they suggest that 'Deep Sky Blue' is the correct Vallejo colour to use for Austrian Sky Blue, which may explain why some people regard the colour as being mid-blue?

link

All my sources say Sky Blue. I have a colour chart that converts Austrian facing colours to Vallejo paint colours. I dont recall where I sourced it but it lists that colour as Deep Sky Blue, Vallejo Paint number 844.

I always thought the Hoch and Deutschmeister had "saphir-blau" facings – a dark blue as for the gem sapphire.

Might that have been for the 18th century?

My refs say the same – sky blue in the Napoleonic Wars

Which is interesting, because it is pretty clear that Hoch und Deutschmeister had dark blue facings in the Seven Years War

According to Lilian and Fred Funcken's "The Lace Wars Part 2", the facing colors for Austrian infantry didn't remain steady throughout the eighteenth century. And if I'm not mistaken, a few Austrian infantry facing colors also changed from the time of the French Revolution to end of the Napoleonic Wars.

so what does "sky blue" mean to you Runicus? might that be synonymous with "mid-blue"? What does mid-blue mean to you?

they could be descriptions for the exact same thing. without an image or color description like sRGB = (r, g, b)(135, 206, 235); or CMYK = (c, m, y, k)-(43, 12, 0, 8) it could be a wide variety of blues.

"blue" is in the eye of the beholder; sky- mid- midnight- cornflower- etc etc is even more so.

Keep in mind that color names didn't necessarily mean what what they did then…and many colors we know weren't even created at that time.

For instance, what color is "Pink"? A 18th Century Soldier would have identified a solid red. Forrest green? It was a new color in @1800 and was more an apple green.

It is an interesting question. What did they think was 'Sky-Blue'? light or a darker blue?

The Schematismus of 1810 says

Himmelblau (as for regiment nr. 3) – I would translate it as sky blue :-).

The Schematisus of 1806 says
sky blue as well

I have only photocopies but in some originals I did see – the colour was painted in water colour in the Schmatismus.

Now McLaddie is absolutly right that today we have differnet conceptions of colour descriptions, looking at an Artaria print of 1792 and seeing Hoch und Deutschmeister the sky blue is more like mid blue or dark light blue – colour is confirmed by an anonymous print in Bruxelles – now what the Austrians did then understand of a quite light blue, they called bleumorant.

Now to complicate this matter a bit, a print showing German Regiments of 1780 – giving Teutschmeister – Saphir blue – which is darker than that of the Hungarian Regiment Leopold Palfi Forgacz which is then in 1780 described as Himel Blau (sic).

Isn't that all good fun.

Of course I have to admit – that I have only photos of those original plates – and that can show different colours as to the originals.

other nice facing colours to discuss are

Gris de Lin
Pompadour
Violet

There are three ways of getting a lighter blue in terms of classic colour mixing. One is to increase the chroma (brightness) by using purer pigment. Speaking of modern artist's pigment Prussian Blue is a low chroma mid-hue blue, while Cobalt blue is a higher chroma version of roughly the same hue. his will only take you so far, though, so the second is to take the hue towards the green end, or, more correctly, towards cyan. This is what the classic artist's idea of sky blue, Cerulean blue, does. And the third method is reduce the saturation, adding in some white.

Now for a bit of speculation. For a facing colour it is unlikely a reduced saturation is going to be the thing. This would give the colour a faded or dull look. I'm not sure that dyeing technology in 1800 would have been up to it. It may be what happens to the colour after exposure to the elements, but not what a uniform designer has in mind for a high prestige regiment.

So for sky blue facings, it is likely to be some combination of brighter colour and cyan hue. I'm no expert on Vallejo colours (I use artist's colours) but looking at their colour chart I would concur with Deep Sky Blue 884. Ordinary sky blue looks to have a bit of white in it.

I found this by one Enrico Acerbi on Napoleon series. link Scroll to the bottom; he gives versions of facing colours, drawing a distinction between Napoleonic and after 1860. He would go for the ordinary sky blue.

in 1815 however – the facing colour is quite light, according to a tableau of Tranquillo Mollo ;-))

Though I admire Enrico Acerbis work – I don't agree with his conclusions about the hues of the facing colours and prefer contemporary pictures

That's a great image, von WInterfeldt. Thank you for sharing it with us!

Would you happen to know if there is anywhere on the Internet where this chart could be viewed in better resolution?

Another thing to keep in mind, in my opinion, is that dyes used in cloth was not uniform in those days. I have read that the color could vary from one end of a bolt of cloth to the other.

Tom

the tableau must be around somewhere – I got it from the net as well.

Remember that during the Napoleonic wars there was no 'cobalt blue' or 'cerulean blue'. Those types of paints, the cobalt and cadmium paints didn't get invented until several decades later…one of the things that inspired the Impressionists and post-impressionists.

Thank you von Winterfeldt. Would also love to find a scaled up version of this tableau – though s few google searches did not get me very far.

To put the record straight, in this case Enrico Acerbi is suggesting a pale (unsaturated) shade for sky blue – which fits well with the tableau. What doesn't work is Dave Hollins and Terry Webb's suggestion of deep sky blue – which my own speculations also supported. These modern speculations are trumped by the contemporary evidence.

That leaves a question mark over bleumorant, which Hollins/Webb match to Vellejo 961 sky blue, which looks a better match to sky blue. Acerbi's interpretation of violet-blue-grey mid shade is close to the modern understanding (so far as I can make out). That would correspond to Vallejo 943 (grey blue) or 901 (pastel blue) to judge from the colour chart. I can't the tableau for IR 29 or 55, which used this colour.

Incidentally Acerbi also supports the grey rather than blue-grey understanding for pike grey for this era. I expect there are a few TMP postings about that one.

the pale blue fits well with the 1814 tableau – but not with earlier contemporary prints.
maybe this link works better

link

Good point McLaddie!

I would like to understand more about how contemporary dyes worked, as I suspect it would give useful pointers for colours of the era, especially for mas-produced uniforms.

My very crude understanding is that there were two main blue pigments: indigo, and Prussian blue, one of the first chemical dyes. Indigo is associated with more violet shades (a duller ultramarine I suppose in modern artist's understanding). Prussian blue we associate with a dull mid-hue. I am sure both dyes could be manipulated to give a range of hues. And they could be mixed (or rather one colour would be dyed on top of another).

The classic deep sky blue is at the cyan end of the range. This was probably rather difficult to get to with standard dyes. Cyan is a primary, so you can only get to it by mixing at the cost chroma, which makes it darker. So to get a sky blue in bulk maybe you had to take a mid blue and mix it with white (due onto bleached cloth a lower strength, I guess). That would explain by 1800s sky blue was a pale shade, while after the 1860s they were able to achieve a much deeper shade with modern pigments.

Which means to achieve a reasonably realistic Napoleonic sky blue you should mix a bit of white in some Prussian blue.

Idle speculation…

Thanks vW. That's better, though I still can't make out the writing – but just about clear enough to identify the regiments. I do get the feeling that there might be some discolouration of some of the pigments, though probably not the sky blue.

We'll never know for sure, I guess!

Here some more immages

from about 1780

German Regiments

and Hungarians

Deutschmeister 1792 by Artaria

and here from Markus Stein Websseite

Napoleon-online.de

a usufull colour chart of 1820

for a full view

link

Otherwise there should be full series of like O Reilly available on the net.

Again bear in mind, this is a trend only, but some colours are pretty confirmed, like pompadour – really dark, as dark blue or dark brown.

To everyone who supplied information, Thank you so very much. I have found a mid light blue in my paint collection that will work real good ,or at least to my old eyes it will. I am working on what will one day be an Austrian Division with supporting troops and the 4th will be a key regiment in this command.

Runicus

The larger image of the 1815 facings can be found at:
link

1807-1808 colour scheme is at link

in the de Ridder Collection at Gallica there is an obviously hand coloured book about the facings of 1780

link

@Prince of Essling
thank you for the links, the 1807 – 1808 colour schema – one has to be carefull, there in some instances some colours, like pompadour are much too faded.