ATLAS of colours · Turner

The second volume of the atlas. Fifty paintings by J. M. W. Turner in the public domain, and from each one the sixteen colours that hold it up: measured on the canvas, not picked by eye.

Turner paints light, and it shows when you measure him: where Sorolla gives earths and midday whites, here you get ochres that catch fire, greys that lean into violet, and a yellow that runs through everything. Both volumes share one alphabet, so their colours can be set against each other.

Every colour is published with its full values —HEX, RGB, CMYK, Lab— and with the exact spot on the artwork it came from. The CMYK values in print are the ones that went to press, not an approximate conversion.

Next to every plate there is a code. That code leads to the colour record in the digital atlas, and it will never change: it is the same address for good.

Every plate and its colours are in the digital atlas, searchable by code, by HEX and by colour name.