CHROMOTOPE, the 19th century chromaticturn
The project 'CHROMOTOPE, the 19th century chromaticturn' explores what happened to colour in the 19th century, and notably how the ‘chromatic turn’ of the 1850s mapped out new ways of thinking about colour in literature, art, science and technology throughout Europe.
Building on a pioneering methodology, and a multi-institutional partnership between Sorbonne Université and Oxford University, with the support of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam), CHROMOTOPE was initiated in 2019 by Charlotte Ribeyrol, professor of 19th century British literature at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sorbonne University. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Members of the project
- Charlotte Ribeyrol, professor of 19th century British literature at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sorbonne University and principal investigator of project CHROMOTOPE
- Anne-Laure Carré, research engineer at the Musée des arts et métiers of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam)
- Kelly Domoney, conservation manager (Preventive, Science and Technical) at the Ashmolean Museum
- Christopher Doogue, Western Art administrator at the Ashmolean Museum
- Arnaud Dubois, professor of Art and Design History at the École nationale supérieure d’art of Limoges, research fellow at the "Histoire des technosciences en société" laboratory of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (HT2S-Cnam) and researcher for the "Art, design, société" platform of the "EnsadLab" laboratory attached to the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs
- Stefano Evangelista, professor of English and Comparative Literature at Oxford University/Trinity College
- Clotilde Ferroud, professor of Molecular Chemistry at the École d'ingénieur of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam)
- Colin Harrison, senior curator of European Art in the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum
- Julie Legangneux, European Projects manager at Sorbonne University
- Claire Masurel-Murray, professor of English Literature and Translation at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Sorbonne University
- Matthew Winterbottom, curator of 19th century Decorative Arts at the Ashmolean Museum
- Tea Ghigo, conservation research fellow at the Ashmolean Museum
- Sorbonne University
- Oxford University
- Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam)
About the project
Britain’s industrial supremacy during this period is often perceived through the darkening filter of coal pollution, and yet the industrial revolution transformed colour thanks to a number of innovations like the invention in 1856 of the first aniline dye. Colour thus became a major signifier of the modern, generating new discourses on its production and perception.
This Victorian ‘colour revolution’, which has never been approached from a cross-disciplinary perspective, came to prominence during the 1862 International Exhibition – a forgotten, and yet key, chromatic event which forced poets and artists like Ruskin, Morris and Burges to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, they invited their contemporaries to learn from the ‘sacred’ colours of the past – a ‘colour pedagogy’ which later shaped the European arts and crafts movement.
Building on a pioneering methodology, and a multi-institutional partnership (Sorbonne Université and Oxford University, with the support of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (Cnam), CHROMOTOPE therefore brings together literature, visual culture, the history of sciences and techniques and the chemistry of pigments and dyes, in order to offer new, invaluable insight into hitherto neglected aspects of 19th century European cultural history.
The project has three key objectives:
- To reveal the literary and artistic impact of new scientific approaches to chromatic materiality
- To highlight 19th-century International Exhibitions as the colourscapes of modernity
- To understand how industrial colours required new forms of ‘colour pedagogy’