In the small Indian village of Mirzapur she searches for that elusive yellow lake - or lac, as in lacquer, a type of unstable pigment, and not, as I have always vaguely imagined, some far-off bountiful pool of colour - derived from the urine of cows. She climbs mountains in Afghanistan during the Taliban era, to see for herself the deposits of lapis lazuli used to make ultramarine blue. A dry creek-bed to which she was led in Arnhemland was "a giant paintbox" of iron oxides - red, lemon yellow, white and black, with dozens of variations in between. She endures the blistering heat of the Australian desert to find the ochres with which the Aboriginal people painted their bodies and implements 40,000 years ago. I was smitten."Ĭolour: Travels Through the PaintBox, the British traveller Finlay demonstrates an indefatigable zeal as she searches out the sources of the pigments and dyes that have caught her passionate interest.
She read: "INDIAN YELLOW: an obsolete lake of euxanthic acid made in India by heating the urine of cows fed on mango leaves." "My heart started beating," she says, "and I had a bizarre sensation that was rather like being in love." She read another entry, of which she says "Even the (arguably) more boring 'DUTCH PINK: a fugitive yellow lake made from buckthorn,' made me swoon with its paradox. Browsing in a university bookshop, Victoria Finlay came on an art book which she opened at random.
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