Wilhelm Ostwald’s color theory
April 30th, 2008 by thapke
Wilhelm Ostwald’s color theory
Ostwald’s Color Primer – Snip through a double-cone
Expressed in our modern technical language, we can say that Ostwald attempted to construct a perceptual colour-system using non-empirical methods. In place of Munsell’s three parameters, he selected an alternative group of variables: namely, colour-content, white-content and black-content. […] We can thus formulate the guiding principle behind Ostwald’s theory of colour in the following way: the most universal mixture is the mixture of full colours, white and black. Each pigmented colour can be characterised by specifying the colour-content (at a certain colour-hue), white-content and black-content.
