"British "gosling green"?" Topic

Can anyone explain what type of green this should be? Light? Dark? Bright? Blue-y? Yellow-y?

The alternative name is goose green, if that gives you an idea.

Think more olive, or medium green with a bit of ochre.

There was a lively and informative discussion about this and other quirky colors found as British facings in the past year or so on TMP -- search for Lincoln Green and you may find it.

That said, enfant perdus has probably nailed it, from paintings I've seen of units like the 5th Foot/Northumberland Fusiliers.

It was more of a khaki than a green. One of the Colonels hated it so much that he dressed his drummers in white…

no – it is not that bad, see an old TMP threat on this – with photos – otherwise go to the website of Markus Stein -

napoleon-online.de

and check this link

link

The closest, least unsatisfactory, match is Americana Arbor Green.

This colour chart from kronoskaf is quite useful
link

It gives an RGB – (138 154 91) (or 0, .0253, .424, .38 in CMYK), from which data you can try working out how to mix it! Looks like a sort of deep olive – mix yellow and black.

Matthew

Thanks, guys. I feel bad for not doing a search and finding the previous thread.

For the purposes of completeness and comparison, does anyone have any insight into the other Hamilton-Smith greens:

1. "Green"
2. "Deep green"
3. "Grass green"
4. "Pea green"
5. "Bottle green"
6. "Dark green" ???

the kronsakof sheet is very misleading and no substitude for contempoary paictures I wouldn't agree at all with their interpretation of Gossling Green

All those greens (other than generic green and dark green) are on the kronoskaf chart – Suggests that bottle greeen and dark green are the same. But bear in mind von Winterfeldt's health warning. He knows much more about this than I do. It's somewhere to start though.

Shame really, as the RGB (or equivalent) is a very useful way of analysing colour given that colour reproduction on monitor screens etc. are unreliable.

Not that this is a precise matter in this era!

The Kronsakov colour chart is pretty much useless and gives maybe modern interpretation of how colours may look like (and even then Indigo is a completly different colour compared to that what they show) – but it doesn't give at all how the contemporaries 200 years ago did describe their colours then, I am afraid there is no other way than to look at conemporary prints to learn more about colours, and those are available in plenty, just go to Markus Stein's

Napoleon-online.de

and check the contemporary uniform plates series

I'm not sure how colour faithful even contemporary prints are vW! Artists are notoriously bad at colour representation – their eye being driven by contextual issues to create an overall effect that is more than the sum of parts. Though one should expect uniform plates to be of a higher standard, I don't find that of modern plates; contemporary artists may well have been trying harder though.

How is indigo different? My understanding that in the then dye technology it usually came out quite dark and midway in the red-green range, lightening up over time. Actually not very different from Prussian blue at the start. That's how it looks on this chart, unless my monitor is badly adjusted.

Mind you a lot of the kronsokov sources don't inspire confidence, and many colours look unachievable in early 19th century dyes.

I'm too practical to worry about getting the exact right shade*. Now I just buy the regiment's flag from GMB and try to get a paint that matches its color for the facings.

* – hint: there almost certainly isn't one.

Recreating period uniform colour is a tricky area. Dyestuffs varied, batches were prepared on relatively small scales, and most vegetable dyes fade anyway.
The representation of those uniform colours in expensive paintings( as in officer portraits) can be taken as fairly reliable, if the painting itself is in good condition, but prints can be another matter, since they were hand coloured. Those colours used depended on what was economic and available in the way of pigments ( much more restricted than today ), and whether the print has since been exposed to light.
But having said all that , I think we have a reasonable idea of what these uniforms looked like, if only from boiling up the multiple sources and coming out with a reasonable compromise. There are also quite a lot of uniforms surviving in museums, and if you look inside ,the original colour often survives quite well.

As far as painting models is concerned,the commonest fault I see is making indigo blue uniforms ( that's all the blue uniforms !) far too light. Real fresh indigo makes an inky , purplish blue , which appears black at a distance. Faded, it goes purplish , not pale blue.
The same goes for Russian green ; it was dyed using indigo and ( presumably ) weld , and comes out very dark indeed .
Same with Rifle Green : they actually used black dye for that at times…. but then black dye was a mixture already.

So best not to get too animated about it.

Gosling green : an ochreish green. The 18c print has probably got it right.

Interesting Anthony! I am rather less confident than you on the colour accuracy of fine portraits, but you can't get better evidence than a surviving uniform!

Indigo is off topic, but I can't trace the source which suggested that it was a mid-range blue rather than a purplish hue – just one that says that the dye is different than the standard colour definition (which is indeed near purple), and something else in an artist's colour chart saying it is not far off Prussian Blue. Jeans are often held out as a modern example. Hence the idea that it goes blue rather than purplish as it fades.

I also think there were complaints that French uniforms often came out a rather pale blue – and surely sky blue, also a popular colour, must have been made with indigo dyes? I would be most surprised if it faded purple.

There's good evidence that green uniforms often looked black though – including references to "black" riflemen in the Peninsular.

"So best not to get too animated about it."

Yes, indeed, but one has to aquire a sort of "trend" and in my view contemporary pictures and sources are much better for that than modern computer generated colour charts.

I did see Austrian Rang listen (originals) where the facing colours were painted with artist water colours into the facing blocks, then there exist facing colour diagrams, then there exist complete series of uniform prints through various years and one can see how colours like brick red even change during the times.

The of course one has to adapt this to the figures – scale, usually a lighter hue.

Indigo – is a "warm" (redish) blue whereas Prussian blue is rather "cold" (greenish)

About fading I have mixed feelings, at least my re – enactment coats (though admittingly dyed by modern colour agents) rather became darker due to the exposure to dirt and camp fire smoke and I was always surprised when after two years I brought the coat to a very special coat cleaner how vivid the colours became again.

Fading might be due to more instable colours, like some greens (for that reasons the Austrians regulated it should be dyed using a blue cloth – so in case it faded, the coat would be blue which was prefered to a grayish green).

The Russians on the other hand seemingly produced a better more stable green.

In the end, in case I would have to paint goosling green I would look at the 1792 plate and not Koronsakof

Yes best not to be too animated about it. As I mix my own colours using artists paints I think about it a bit more than some. But artists don't obsess about nuances of colour except to suggest mood, etc (as opposed to any notion of accuracy). I should learn from them!

I know that indigo is supposed to be warmer than Prussian blue – but I think that when using indigo dye it often wasn't. Whether it usually wasn't as some sources seem to suggest, is much harder to establish. The technology of indigo dying changed over the centuries and it often wasn't feasible to replicate the intense reddish indigo of the pure dye onto clothing, as I understand it. Natural indigo (the synthetic stuff wasn't available until the end of the 19th century) contains variable amount of impurity, which affected the final colour.

Perhaps worth starting a new thread on this one, rather than crashing one on Gosling Green. Not until 2015 though.

I would heartily agree that contemporary sources are the only ones : everything else in the way of modern sources is derived from them , or should be.
Indigo was also used as a pigment for painting (I've used it : comes out almost black ) , as well as dyeing things, and was effectively the only viable blue dye until synthetic dyes appear after 1850.The colour that emerges after dyeing depends on how strong the dye, and how much was used, thus it's perfectly possible to create mid-blues and sky blues. And French Line uniforms doubtless faded fast if they were made from badly or cheaply dyed cloth .
Indigo came from two sources : woad ( grown in Europe) and Indigo (grown in India) , which the British had something of a hold over. The two plants produce the same chemical.

I think there is some real confusion about
" Prussian Blue ". There was no distinct dyestuff called Prussian Blue : they used indigo like everyone else.
Prussian Blue is a synthetic pigment (NOT a dyestuff ) , invented in the 18century , and is nothing whatever to do with uniforms. It's an incredibly vivid kingfisher blue , almost painful to look at when used neat.Again , I have worked with it.
So please drop the notion that there was something called "Prussian Blue" used for dyeing uniforms.

I agree absolutly about Prussian blue, it is a modern definition of a dark blue mostly for artistical use ( I wonder if ever the Prussian army had uniforms in Prussian blue)- and they did not only use indigo but woad again which would give different hues.

I agree also with matthew green that we should aim for the suggested mood of the colour, its saturation etc, than for the exact shade – but modern colour interpretations, even in worthwhile publications fail abysmally to give us the mood or hue, look for example at Bavarain light green for Chevaulegers in modern works and like on the portrait of Kronprinz Ludwig 1807 – which Steve Smith graciously put up on napoleon-series.org