“A poet can survive anything but a misprint,” wrote Oscar Wilde.

Break a painter’s heart with a bad photograph of his work.

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Two photographs of Goya’s Naked Maja

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Look at any of the photos on the Web of famous paintings and compare their colors. There are never two alike. Sometimes they vary so much that you would think the painter made several versions of his work (a good one, a so-so one, and a bad one!).

The abundance of all these photos with unfaithful colors shows that people in general do not pay much attention to color. The artist worried himself sick (and maybe her husband or his wife) trying to get just the right one but most viewers scan a picture only for its subject and the layout of the lines and shapes.

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Here is a page from Google with photos of Van Gogh’s famous chair. Guess which is like the original.

(It has to be said that the camera’s or the computer’s color inventions sometimes IMPROVE the original, too!)