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| + Cerulean as a quaternary color on the RYB color wheel | |
The color cerulean (American English) or caerulean (British English, Commonwealth English), is a variety of blue that may range from a light azure blue to a more intense sky blue. Cerulean may also be mixed with the hue of green. The first recorded use of cerulean as a color name in English language was in 1590. The word is derived from the Latin word (), "dark blue, blue, or blue-green", which in turn probably derives from caerulum, diminutive of caelum, "heaven, sky".
"Cerulean blue" is the name of a blue-green pigment consisting of cobalt stannate (). The pigment was first synthesized in the late eighteenth century by Albrecht Höpfner, a Swiss chemist, and it was known as Höpfner blue during the first half of the nineteenth century. Art suppliers began referring to cobalt stannate as cerulean in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was not widely used by artists until the 1870s when it became available in oil paint.
Today, cobalt Monochromate is sometimes marketed under the cerulean blue name but is darker and greener than the cobalt stannate version. The chromate makes excellent turquoise colors and is identified by Rex Art and some other manufacturers as "cobalt turquoise".
Cerulean is inert with good light resistance, and it exhibits a high degree of stability in both watercolor and Acrylic paint paint.Patterson, Steven. 2020. "The history of blue pigments in the Fine Arts — painting, from the perspective of a paint maker". Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales
. 172.
In the late 1850s, art suppliers begin referring to the pigment as "ceruleum" blue. The Times of 28 December 1859 had an advertisement for "Caeruleum, a new permanent color prepared for the use of artists." Ure's Dictionary of Arts from 1875 describes the pigment as "Caeruleum ... consisting of stannate of protoxide of cobalt, mixed with stannic acid and sulphate of lime." Cerulean was also referred to as coeurleum, cerulium, bleu céleste (celestial blue). Other nineteenth century English pigment names included "ceruleum blue" and "corruleum blue". By 1935, Max Doerner referred to the pigment as cerulean, as do most modern sources, though ceruleum is still used.
Some sources claim that cerulean blue was first marketed in the United Kingdom by colourman George Rowney, as "coeruleum" in the early 1860s. However, the British firm of Roberson was buying "Blue No. 58 (Cerulium)" from a German firm of Frauenknecht and Stotz prior to Rowney. Cerulean blue was only available as a watercolor in the 1860s and was not widely adopted until the 1870s when it was used in oil paint. It was popular with artists including Claude Monet, Paul Signac, and Pablo Picasso. Van Gogh created his own approximation of cerulean blue using a mixture of cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and white.
Berthe Morisot painted the blue coat of the woman in her Summer's Day, 1879 in cerulean blue in conjunction with artificial ultramarine and cobalt blue.
When the United Nations was formed at the end of World War II, they adopted cerulean blue for their emblem. The designer Oliver Lundquist stated that he chose the color because it was "the opposite of red, the color of war".
In the Catholic Church, cerulean vestments are permitted on certain Marian feast days, primarily the Immaculate Conception in diocese currently or formerly under the Spanish Crown.
The source of this color is the "Pantone Textile Paper eXtended (TPX)" color list, color #15-4020 TPX—Cerulean.
Cerulean frost is one of the colors in the special set of metallic colored Crayola crayons called Silver Swirls, the colors of which were formulated by Crayola in 1990.
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