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Payne’s Grey

Not much is known of the man who invented the color named for him, Payne’s Grey. (“Grey” is the way the English spell what Americans spell “gray,” and since Payne’s Grey is a proper name and its creator, English, I’m keeping it at that.)

William Payne was born in 1755 or in 1760, in Exeter or (175 miles away) in Westminster, England. He may have been the son of a successful hop and coal merchant. He may have received some drawing lessons. He may have been raised in Devon or (225 miles away) in Derbyshire before moving to London. He may have . . .

What is known for sure is that in 1776, he exhibited an untitled landscape at the Society of Artists, and in 1786, he showed five views of Plymouth at the Royal Academy.¹

It is believed that Payne moved to London in 1790, where he became a full-time painter and drawing master. He developed certain methods for capturing sunlight and atmosphere, which could be learned without much difficulty. This made him a popular instructor and he became one of the most fashionable drawing masters in London.² During his most successful period, he capitalized on the popularity of watercolor by teaching children of well-to-do parents how to paint landscapes of beaches, woodlands, and waterfalls. He was also a pioneer of a smudging technique he called “dragging,” which used bread or cloth to create a soft, watery cast of color across the paper.³

Payne was a watercolor artist famous for his quality of shadows. Many assume gray is created simply by mixing white and black, but most shades of gray are really a combination of colors. No one knows exactly when, but Payne created a mixture of crimson lake, yellow ochre, and iron blue that would become his namesake—a deep blue-gray, that at high concentrations was almost black, and at lesser concentrations, thinned to a dusky blue-gray. It was a mixture of colors that could be found in a classic watercolor palette at the turn of the nineteenth century. He encouraged his students to use this gray instead of black when mixing with other colors—it could desaturate a color with a lesser concentration or darken it with a higher concentration.⁴

This was revolutionary for painters because no black was used. Until Payne’s Grey, if artists wanted to desaturate (reduce the intensity of) a color, they added white to create a tint or black to create a tone. The use of Payne’s blue-gray produced a softer, more subtle spectrum.⁵ While blue on its own, when placed with other colors the contrast could range from gray to black. It is what helps artists create atmospheric perspective—like mountains fading into the distance.

Payne’s Grey became so popular that eventually it was created as a commercial paint. In 1835, there was a recorded issue of its use, and in 1912, it was placed in the official Color Standards and Color Nomenclature book. Payne’s Grey influenced many painters with their color mixing, such as Pablo Picasso, evidenced by his blue period’s Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto (also known as The Absinthe Drinker). William Payne died in 1830, without ever knowing how his simple and complex creation of a color gray became a lasting contribution to the art world.

Your leather furniture in beautiful Turncoat Payne’s Grey absolutely will not fade away into the distance.