John Outram Associate, Sphinx Hill House (detail)

5 of the best uses of colour in art and culture

Published on 17 September 2024

We asked contributors to the RA Magazine about their favourite uses of colour in art and culture. Here's what they told us.

1. William John Leech’s parasol

"The viridian parasol in The Sunshade involves me completely. In the poet Andrew Marvell’s words:

‘Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade’"

Claire-Louise Bennet is a writer and critic.

William John Leech, The Sunshade — .
National Gallery of Ireland Collection, NGI.1246, Photo, National Gallery of Ireland. https://www.nationalgallery.ie/

2. A house fit for a postmodern Pharaoh

"Sphinx Hill, near Wallingford, is a unique, now Grade II-listed, polychromatic house built in 1999 for two Egyptologists by the architect John Outram."

Hugh Pearman is an architectural writer.

John Outram Associate, Sphinx Hill House — Image credit: Phil Sayer / C20 Society

3. Singer Sargent's blood red gown

"I have always admired his suggestive use of bright scarlet for the sweeping robe of a Parisian society gynaecologist in his 1881 painting Dr Pozzi at Home – brilliant deployment of the most vibrant and elemental of colours."

Anne Chisholm is a biographer and critic.

John Singer Sargent, Dr. Pozzi at Home — .
The Armand Hammer Collection, Gift of the Armand Hammer Foundation. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

4. A Florentine Fresco

"Forget the sizzle and explosion of primary colours. For me the delicate, dreamy pastels in Jacopo Pontormo’s Annunciation in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence, endow both the Virgin Mary and the archangel with a levitating lightness which simply takes my breath away."

Sarah Dunant is a novelist and journalist.