THE PRIMARY COLOURS

Yellow
An Entertainment

. . . all at once I saw

A host of golden daffodils.
William Wordsworth “Daffodils”

Yellow matter custard

Dripping from a dead dog’s eye.
John Lennon “I Am The Walrus”

Follow the yellow brick road.

Follow the yellow brick road.
Harold Arlen “The Munchkin Refrain”

The first time I saw a host of golden daffodils was at Fountains Abbey. It was early
1976 and I was 25, a graduate student at the University of Leeds. I rented a room in the
attic of a Victorian stone house near the university. On Sundays, the family who owned
the house, the Redshaws, would often go for drives in the dales and would frequently
invite me along.

On one of these excursions, we came over the brow of a hill near the village of
Aldfield in North Yorkshire and there, suddenly and without warning, lay an entire
field of golden daffodils. Never had I seen anything as bright and as vivid as that scene.
We had beds of daffodils back home, some of them fairly large, but they were like a
corsage compared to this mantle of yellow. There were thousands of them, bedazzling
the field. It was as if the sun itself had settled down on the soft grass for a post-prandial
snooze. This brilliant welcome (the field lay near the abbey’s entrance) may be why I
think of Fountains Abbey as a magical place, my version of Wordsworth’s Tintern.
 Fountains lies in an enclosed, wooded valley along the River Skell in Nidderdale. It
owes its founding, in 1132, to a slight difference of opinion on ecclesiastical practice at
St Mary’s Abbey in York that ended with 13 Benedictine monks standing outside the
abbey without their front door key. The riot probably didn't help.

The monks had been arguing for a return to the order’s earlier, austere practices of
daily life. But the idea didn’t gain much altitude within the abbey, so there they were,
thirteen of them, bristling with defiance, in the rain with no Plan B. At this point,
Thurstan, Archbishop of York, entered the frame. Like all good Christian pastors he felt
compassion for these lost sheep. And it just so happened that he owned a piece of land.
It was a marriage made in heaven: they wanted austerity, he had just the place for it.
“Where is this Eden of which you have spoken, Master? Where? Where?” “You've heard
of the ends of the Earth?” “Yes, yes, Master!!!” “Well, this land is just…a little bit beyond
that.”

And so off they went, a caravanserai of picks and shovels and brave words and
proud boasts of manifold skills and roistering slaps on the back and jabs in the ribs; and
then later, as the light of that first day seeped away, perhaps the quiet harmony of an
austere hymn whispered from their lips to give them courage on entering the darkness.
But their initial enthusiasm did not last long. They spent a miserable year or so, hacking
about in the underbrush, nearly freezing to death in winter and generally making little
progress towards a new abbey. Finally, in desperation, they reached out to the
Cistercian order—which knew a thing or two about austerity in benighted places. And
so it was that Bernard of Clairvaux, the head of the order, sent out an abbot, who
brought with him the secret of a ‘To-Do’ list, and, surprise, the community thrived.
Fountains was to become one of the wealthiest abbeys in England and continued so
until its dissolution over 400 years later under Henry VIII.

************
 Yellow is one of three primary colours, the other two are red and blue. Everything
else is a mixture of these three, along with some white and black. The definition of a
primary colour is one that cannot be produced by any mixture of different colours.
Interestingly though, while yellow is considered a primary colour, the human eye does
not have a receptor for yellow. Of the seven million or so colour receptors or cones on
our retinas, about 64 per cent are sensitive to red, another two percent to blue, and the
rest, about a third of all cones, to green. So why is yellow considered a primary colour?
The answer lies in the distinction between light that is emitted, for example from a
computer monitor or TV screen, and light that is reflected, from a painting or printed
page. The primary components of the former are red/green/blue and of the latter,
red/yellow/blue. Scientists refer to these two as additive and subtractive colour systems.
But if we do not have a yellow receptor on our retinas, how do we see the colour
yellow? The answer to this is a fascinating example of the extraordinary complexity and
ingenuity of the human organism.

Long (red) and medium (green) lightwaves dominate much of our visual spectrum
as you would expect given the distribution of visual cones on the retina. To distinguish
colours, these cones, upon being stimulated by light waves, transmit their excitement to
the brain’s visual cortex for interpretation. In order to see either red or green, the brain
must calculate the difference between the level of excitement emanating from the red
and the green cones. Alternatively, the brain can combine the excitement generated by
the long and medium lightwaves to produce brightness or luminance, which is white
and black. At this point the short lightwaves, whose minor role in the spectacle so far
reflects the minuscule presence of blue receptor cones on the retina, step forward. When
the brain distinguishes the difference between the luminance channel and the signal
coming from the blue cones, two colours emerge: blue, as you would expect, and
yellow!

************

The use of yellow in art reached its apogee in the 19th century, first in the work of
the English painter J.M.W. Turner around the beginning of the century, for which he
was initially criticized, and subsequently in the sunflower-filled canvases of Vincent
Van Gogh in the 1880s. This is not to say that yellow had not appeared in earlier
artworks. On the cave wall at Lascaux there is a yellow horse that dates back 17,000
years. Both the Ancient Egyptians and the Romans used yellow to depict gold and to
capture flesh tones. Medieval Christians, imbuing colours with symbolic values, used
yellow to represent hope, light and purity: yellow and white, the colours of Easter,
symbolized the resurrection and ascension of Christ. The Renaissance brought newly
discovered sources of yellow pigment to the palettes of Dutch artists like Johannes
Vermeer.

Other cultures also used yellow extensively in their art. Yellow was a favoured
colour in Indian art as can be seen, for example, in miniature paintings from the Mughal
period. In China, yellow is a prestigious colour and signifies good luck. It has been used
in artworks since antiquity. During the Han Dynasty yellow represented Earth, the
centre of the universe and one of the five elements—the others being Fire (red/south),
Wood (green/east), Water (black/north) and Metal (white/west). During the Ming and
Qing Dynasties yellow was the exclusive colour of the Imperial Emperors. Only they
could wear yellow clothing and the path on which they trod in this world was known as
the ‘yellow path’.

And yet yellow has always been an elusive pigment, difficult for artists to use owing
to its instability, its toxicity and, at times, its expensiveness.

The yellow pigment that all early artists employed was called Yellow Ochre, which
is a clay soil rich in iron oxide. Specifically, yellow ochre comes from a mixture of iron-
containing minerals known as limonite, the chief component of which is a mineral
known as goethite, which was named after the German writer, natural philosopher,
diplomat and all-round übermensch Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Yellow Ochre has
been used since pre-historic times. It is very stable and provides good covering ability.
It does, however, produce darker hues towards orange and brown.
 A mineral called Orpiment was used by artists from antiquity until the beginning of
the 19th century. The name means ‘gold pigment’, more obvious in the German word
auripigment. It produced a brighter hue, but could darken considerably over time. It was
also not stable, decomposing slowly in contact with water, and was not compatible with
lead and copper based pigments. More importantly, while it is distributed widely, it
occurs in relatively small deposits and is hard to grind into a useable powder, which
made it an expensive pigment for artists to rely on. Worst of all, it contains arsenic,
hence its Ancient Greek name, arsenikon. Despite its toxicity, a very high grade of the
pigment, called King’s Yellow, continued to be used until it was replaced by Cadmium
Yellow in about 1840.

Possibly the most unusual source of yellow pigment was that of Gamboge, which is
produced from the poisonous resin of Garcinia hanburyi evergreen trees that grow in
Cambodia and Thailand. The source of the name gamboge or sometimes camboge is like a
Möbius strip of foreign intervention. Gamboge derives from the name assigned by
European explorers to the country known, in Khmer, as Kampuchea: Cambodia in
English and Cambodge en français, both of which, in turn, derive from the Late or
Modern Latin term gambaugium, which refers to the very royal jelly we are talking
about. And just to add a few ornamental twists, the pigment is also known by the
names Rattan Yellow, Wisteria Yellow, Ivy Yellow, Gummi Gutta and Drop Gum. And
while the name Cambodia has percolated, with local adjustments, through European
languages, only the British seem to use the name gamboge for the pigment itself
(gummigutti in German, gomme-gutte in French, gomma gutta in Italian, and gomaguta or
gutagamba in Spanish).

Harvesting the resin is almost as complicated as the name itself. To begin, the
Garcinia trees have to be at least 10 years old to produce the resin. The trees are then
tapped in much the same way that rubber trees are tapped for their latex or maple trees
for their sap. An incision is make into the tree and a hollow bamboo shoot is then
attached to the tree to collect the resin. Unlike latex or sap collection, however, which
take a matter of hours, the bamboo vessel is left attached to the tree for a year to collect
the resin. The bamboo shoots are then roasted over a fire to evaporate moisture and
finally broken open to reveal a dull yellow residue or resin rod as it is called. And only
when this resinous deposit is pulverized, does the brilliant yellow colour emerge. As
with many things in this world, one wonders how, outside of divine intervention,
anyone could have come up with this concept.

The pigment has been described as having a warm golden hue. Unfortunately, the
colour is not very stable, turning to orange when in contact with alkali pigment and
fading when exposed to light, which makes its use in older paintings hard to detect.

Gamboge was used in watercolours in Japan and China from the 8th century. It was
also found in a Khoi scroll of The Tale of Genji done in Thailand in the 12th century. It
was brought to Europe in 1603, a product of the age of exploration, colonisation and
mercantilism. Rembrandt is known to have used it, and it was later used by Turner,
who used it initially as an oil paint before discovering that it worked better as a
watercolour.

When it first arrived in Europe, the resin was prescribed as a cure for rheumatism
and high blood pressure and as a purgative cleanser. However, the poisonous nature of
gamboge meant that the treatment did not capture the market’s attention for long.
Interestingly though, the Garcinia hanburyi tree belongs to the same botanical family as
St John’s Wort, a yellow-flowered plant that has been consumed for many years in
Europe, with questionable efficacy, as a treatment for depression. A long and twisting
tale indeed.

Lead-tin Yellow was used from the 13th to the 18th century, most commonly
between the 15th and 17th century, alongside Indian Yellow. The Germanic cadence of
the name in English is probably owing to its being a direct literal translation of the
German term Blei-Zinn-Gelb. The pigment is produced from a mixture of three parts
lead oxide and one part tin oxide that is placed in a crucible and heated at a
temperature of 700 to 800 degrees for 30 minutes. It is chemically stable and has a very
high level of steadfastness to light. It is also highly toxic and carries warnings to be
handled only by those trained to do so and inveighs against inadvertently breathing in
any dust during its preparation, which gives added meaning to the daily grind. The
colour also tends to blacken when in contact with self-identifying or gaseous hydrogen
sulfide. It was used notably in paintings by Giotto, Veronese, Tintoretto and Rembrandt.

Naples Yellow was used from antiquity till the 19th century and was particularly
prominent from 1700 to 1850, largely replacing Lead-tin Yellow in the 18th century. The
name, (giallo di Napoli in Italian) probably came from the presence of lead antimoniate,
its original source material, in the volcanic soil of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples.
Owing to the toxicity of lead, the pigment was made synthetically using the non-toxic
inorganic chromium titanate pigment from the 15th century. The pigment offered a
wide spectrum of shades from greenish-yellow to pinkish/orangish yellow. It had good
lightfastness and was compatible with other pigments. However, it was darkened by
hydrogen sulfide in the air, forming black lead sulfide.

Indian Yellow, so the story goes, came from the urine of cows fed on an exclusive
diet of mango leaves and water. The practice of harvesting bovine fluid began in the
15th century in the impoverished state of Bihar, which lies along the Ganges in
northeast India, next to Nepal. The urine was apparently gathered in small pots, a skill
likely not widely distributed, and left to evaporate, leaving behind solid deposits or
stones, known as piuri or puree. These were further dried over fire or in the sun,
reportedly giving off a less than alluring fragrance in the process. The pigment made
from the piuri was used initially in miniatures painted during the reigns of the Moghal
Emperors Hamayun and Akbar, and possibly under Babur’s reign before that.

It is worth noting that the belief that urine was an original source for other materials
had precedent in ancient speculation. Pliny the Elder in his Natural History, in
dismissing the “frivolities and falsehoods of the Greeks”, mentions a belief held by
Demonstratus that amber was the solidified byproduct of lynx piss. According to this
theory, the urine voided by the male lynx produced a “red and fiery substance”, while
that of the female, “amber of a white and less pronounced colour”. This substance,
Demonstratus claimed, was called langurium. This myth outlived Pliny’s denunciation,
persisting into the Renaissance period as witnessed by illustrations in Bestiaries held in
the Bodleian Library.

It is likely that the Dutch were the first to bring Indian Yellow pigment to Europe. In
the early 17th century, while England, France and Spain were busy colonizing the
Americas, the Dutch East India Company (the Verenigde Oostindische Companie or VOC)
was sending two or three fleets of East Indiamen out each year to comb eastern seas in
search of goods to buy and sell within Asia or to haul back to Amsterdam for sale in the
Netherlands and throughout Europe.

The VOC was established in Amsterdam on March 20, 1602, the first publicly-traded
company or corporation to be formally listed on a stock exchange. The VOC was set up
to conduct trade in the east, which had hitherto been the (disputed) preserve of the
Portuguese after Pope Alexander VI issued bulls in 1494 establishing a pole-to-pole line
of demarcation located 100 leagues (roughly 320 miles) west of Cape Verde: everything
west of the line was reserved exclusively for the Spanish, everything east for the
Portuguese (the line was adjusted later to take account of the Portuguese colony of
Brazil). The rest of the world, the Dutch included, was not impressed. Increasingly,
ships from other nations began probing these unknown lands and seas. In addition to
being a trading company, the VOC also became a shipping company, a shipbuilder, a
producer and trader (of East Indian spices, sugarcane from Formosa and South African
wine), a transcontinental employer and a pioneer of foreign direct investment.

The VOC also became an early purveyor of globalization, bringing back shiploads of
marvels from fantastical, faraway lands. Pepper, the king of spices (which made
merchants and investors fabulously wealthy), salt, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, tea,
tobacco, opium, silk, cotton, indigo, gold, silver, copper, saltpetre and porcelain allowed
Amsterdam to supplant Venice as the leading trading city in the world and made the
Netherlands, in the words of Sir William Temple “…the great Magazine of all the
Commodities of those Eastern Regions.” Or as René Descartes, who lived for 20 years in
exile in Holland, declared in a 1631 letter to Honoré de Balzac: “Quel autre lieu pourrait-
on choisir au reste du monde, où toutes les commodités de la vie, et toutes les curiosités qui
peuvent être souhaitées, soient si faciles à trouver qu’en celui-ci?”

It is probably impossible now to understand the true wonder that bedazzled the
minds of earlier populations. As you approach Chartres today, you first glimpse its
magnificent cathedral shimmering in the mid-summer heat that rises from the high
wheatfields that lie between. And when you finally enter its cool interior, you are
literally dumbstruck by the majestic space that soars above your head and by the
stunning stained glass windows that tint the angled shafts of sun passing through them.
But what must it have been like for a person in the 12th century to walk into this same
space, a person who had never seen a structure taller than a squat two-storey house, a
person who could not even conceive how it was possible to construct such a towering
edifice? What could their wonder have felt like? On a less transcendant, but still remote,
level, what was the reaction of early-17th century Dutch people at seeing a cornucopia
of strange objects unloaded from ships in the port of Amsterdam? Clearly, not the mild
curiosity, if that, of a modern day shopper seeing an ugli fruit or a dragon fruit for the
first time in the supermarket. Sadly, outside of early childhood, our sense of wonder
and enchantment at the world around us has been blunted by television, the internet
and bucket list travel to the point that we now must resort to pornographically-
stimulating our imaginations with virtual reality goggles, computer-generated imagery
and extreme sports.

The Dutch adventure in the east usually conjures up images of the Spice Islands and
it is true that the VOC’s headquarters in the east was established at Batavia (modern day
Jakarta). But it also exercised trading control over a much larger geographical area. In
1604, the VOC began trading in India and set up a vast network of warehouses and
factories that stretched around the coast of India from Surat in the west to Calcutta in
the east (including the island of Sri Lanka). In 1656, a Dutch factory was set up at
Chinsurah on the Hooghly River, 35 kilometres upriver from Calcutta. And it was here
that the first package of malodorous puree was probably loaded on a homebound VOC
East Indiaman for the voyage to Amsterdam.

On arrival, the new colour created a sensation in the European painting world and
was eagerly taken up by the Dutch painters of the time, including Rembrandt and
Vermeer, and quickly spread to painters in other parts of Europe. While other yellow
pigments came onto the market over the intervening years, Indian Yellow continued to
be used until late in the 19th century by painters such as Van Gogh and Seurat.

In its solid state the pigment looked dark, not unlike yellow ochre. But in a binder
like water or oil, it produced a rich translucent hue, which was fairly stable, although
when used with oil it took a very long time to dry. But the pigment had its downsides
too. Over time it did not react well with light, losing its initial brilliance. And the cows
(presumably excluded all this while from official sacred designation) lasted only a short
time because mango leaves did not provide adequate nutrients to sustain them and the
leaves are poisonous, containing the toxin urushiol, which is the also found in poison
ivy. In 1908, Indian Yellow was banned from the market on the grounds of cruelty to
animals.

Judging from the variations on its name, Chrome Yellow seems to have sparked as
much intercity rivalry as the modern Olympics. It is also known by the names Paris
Yellow, Leipzig Yellow and Cologne Yellow. In addition, it has been labelled Lemon
Yellow and King’s Yellow, although this last designation is usually reserved for
Orpiment. The pigment was introduced in the early 19th century and eagerly taken up
by painters, including Renoir, Cézanne, Manet, Matisse, Modigliani, Monet, Morisot,
Munch, Picasso, Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, Sisley and Van Gogh. The colour, although not
the specific pigment, is also familiar to everyone as the colour of school buses.

The pigment occurs naturally as lead chromate and can also be created by
combining lead chromate and lead sulfate. A naturally vivid hue, it reacts to acid by
turning orange and to alkali by turning pale yellow. It is also not very lightfast and
darkens with age. This has led to concern in the art restoration world about preserving
the appearance of many very famous modern paintings.

As with many other pigment, Chrome Yellow is toxic and requires careful handling
by trained people. Lead is well known as being toxic and chromate can cause lung
cancer.

Cadmium Yellow was introduced in 1840. It can be produced in the laboratory, but
occurs naturally as the mineral greenockite. Greenockite was discovered while digging
the Bishopton Tunnel during construction of the Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock
Railway, which was built to carry cargo from ships docked at Greenock on the lower
River Clyde to Glasgow, which at the time was inaccessible by large water transport.
The mineral itself was named after Lord Greenock, on whose land it was discovered.

Charles Murray Cathcart (known by the courtesy title of Lord Greenock) was born
in Walton-on-the-Naze (from Old English naess meaning a ness, promontory or
headland) in Essex, son of the 10th Lord Cathcart (subsequently the 1st Earl Cathcart).
He served in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars, including under Wellington
at Waterloo, and was decorated several times. He later moved to Edinburgh where, in
addition to claiming discovery of a rock, he became Commander-in-Chief for Scotland
and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. In 1845, he moved to Canada where he became
Governor General of the Province of Canada, which united Upper and Lower Canada
following the rebellions of the 1830s there, and commander-in-chief in British North
America. More interested in mineral deposits than administrative tasks, he retired to
England in 1847 and was succeeded as Governor General by Lord Elgin.

Cadmium Yellow is lightfast and chemically stable, but is not compatible with lead
and copper containing pigments. And it is very toxic. Cadmium is on the World Health
Organization’s list of of most hazardous heavy metals. In 2012, Sweden petitioned the
EU to ban the use of cadmium because of concerns that brushes cleaned in a sink were
introducing the chemical into the water system. After careful consideration, the EU
decided to ban the use of cadmium in electrical and electronic equipment as of October
2019. Fortunately for artists, the pigment Cadmium Yellow was not included in the ban.
Given difficulties with previous pigments, Cadmium Yellow is highly prized by
painters, both for it hues and for its characteristics. Monet was an earlier adopter, but
artist continue to use the pigment in their work.

Hansa Yellow is a synthethetic pigment that was developed in Germany in 1909 and
became commercially available around 1925. Also known as Arylide Yellow, Helio
Yellow and Permanent Yellow, the pigment became popular after the 1950s as a
replacement for the more hazardous Cadmium Yellow. Hansa Yellow displays good
lightfastness and is chemically fairly stable.

************

Yellow is conflicted. Or, more accurately, we, the observers, are conflicted about
yellow. On the one hand, it is the colour of hope and joy and happiness; on the other, of
decay and illness and danger. Yellow flowers begin the growing season, yellow leaves
end it.

Daffodils are the harbinger of spring, season of hope and falling in love. Yellow and
white and myriad shades of green dominate gardens and meadows and woodlands
from spring through midsummer before giving way to cooler blues and purples later in
the year. Birds and insects return in spring to begin their annual labour, pollinating
flowers and gathering sweet nectar.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I:

In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.     
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Ariel, celebrating impending freedom at the end of The Tempest.

Plants have naturally adapted to attract nature’s agricultural workers, including

through colour. But how do birds and insects perceive these attractions?

It was long thought that animals and birds and insects could not see colours, but
more recent research has shown that this is not true. To understand this, we need to go
back to the structure of the eye and specifically to the photoreceptor cells in the retina,
the cones of ‘rods and cones’ fame. The presence of the three types of cones we
discussed earlier (long:red, medium:green and short:blue) varies from species to species
resulting in three types of vision: monochromatic, dichromatic and trichromatic. There
is also a rarer, fourth level, tetrachromatic, which we will come back to in a minute.

Most mammals are now thought to be dichromatic (L and S cones), which means
that they can see some colours. Dogs and cats, for instance, see mostly greys, but can
also distinguishing some blues and yellows. There are some exceptions. Raccoons, owl
monkeys and a few rodents are monochromats, as are seals, sea lions, walruses, sloths,
anteaters, armadillos, dolphins and whales.

When we get to our pollinating workforce, however, the chromatic capability is

different. Birds and most insects are trichromatic, meaning they can see colours very
well, which comes in handy from the flower’s perspective. Bees and butterflies are in a
class of their own: they are tetrachomats, possessing an expanded wavelength range
that includes ultraviolet, although this is often at the expense of long wavelengths (red).
In practice, this means that bees and butterflies are not attracted to red flowers by their
colour (the unseen red flowers are amply serviced though by hummingbirds), although
other factors like scent could still entice them (bees and butterflies have an exceptional
sensitivity to smell and their antennae can detect traces of scent in flight—butterflies can
also ‘taste’ sugar in nectar with their feet!). Not only are both attracted to yellow
flowers, but they can also also see patterns on flower petals that are only visible in
ultraviolet light.

By way of comparison, most humans are trichromatic. Some men are dichromatic, in
other words ´colour blind’, usually within the red-green section of the spectrum. There
are rare reports of some women with tetrachromatic vision, which allows them to see a
greater variety of colours than trichromats. They cannot see patterns on flower petals
and the wings of butterflies, however, because the structure of the human lens blocks
very short (ultraviolet) wavelengths.

Just as brilliant yellow in nature can attract various species, it can also repel them by
issuing a warning that ‘here be danger’. This is known as aposematism, a word which
comes from the Greek apo meaning ‘away’ and sema meaning ‘sign’. The small poison
dart frog, which is found in Central and South America is a good example of this
signalling mechanism. The tiny poison dart frog may be the most poisonous animal in
the world, packing enough toxin in it to kill 10 people with death being instantaneous.
Its name derives from the Amerindian practice of dipping the ends of darts in its
secretion for use in blowguns. The frog’s body exudes toxins owing to its diet of ants
and termites. In order to advertise this hazard, since the frog is active during the day
and therefore vulnerable to predators, it has developed vivid colour bands. The range
offers a number of colour variations, the most dramatic of which is yellow and black.
These same colours are used in the bands of bees and wasps to discourage birds from
viewing them as snacks.

Nature’s ingenuity in developing defensive coloration like this is matched by the

equally mysterious phenomenon of potential predators’ reaction to seeing these colours.
How do they know to avoid certain sources of food based on colour patterns? In the
unlikely event that a predator survived a meal of poison dart frog, it would clearly be
loath to go back for seconds, but how does word get around to others? Health circulars
and word of mouth don't apply, and it's unlikely victims suddenly expire face-in-the-
dinner-plate in front of the entire family as a warning that the poison dart frog might be
a little off. So how is this knowledge transmitted? And just to complicate matters, nature
contains a number of knock-off, aposematic animals that contain no toxins at all, like
Louis Vuitton handbags with no money in them.

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As in the animal kingdom, the reaction of humans to colour is complex and, at

times, mysterious. Yellow is usually a child’s first favourite colour, probably because it
is the brightest colour he or she first sees. Yellow’s brightness is also why
announcements and warnings are often in yellow. Magazine racks, grocery shelves,
police tape, sales signs, fast food arches, all scream at you in yellow—as, for that matter,
does Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Research has shown that, as one ages, yellow
becomes less and less popular, until it virtually disappears from our appreciation as we
enter our seventh decade.

Several myths about the colour yellow have spread over the years: that babies cry
more in yellow nurseries, and that husbands and wives fight more often in yellow
rooms. On this latter canard, I have a kitchen painted in a lovely shade called Lancaster
Yellow and can attest that the colour of this room has never been the cause of arguments
between my wife and me.

The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin claimed that the key of D major was
yellow (he assigned colours to all 12 keys). It is not known on what basis he made this
assignment. He was not a synthesthete; neither, for that matter, was Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov, who while agreeing on the colour of D Major, disagreed on the colour of C
Major, which he said was white: Scriabin insisted it was red.

Yellow is said to be a difficult colour to wear well, although it apparently favours

darker skin tones. Regardless, the top colour for Spring 2019, according to New York
Fashion Week, is yellow. But even before this decree came down, Pantone had
announced that a marigold named Aspen Gold was the colour for the season.
 It is no accident that McDonald’s uses a yellow “M”, the famous “double arches”,
against a red background. Red and yellow are bright vibrant colours that, used
together, attract children. Yellow inspires feelings of hope and optimism, while red
creates a sense of urgency, increases heart rate, and has been proven to stimulate
appetite. A magical colour combination, as Barnum & Bailey, Denny’s restaurant, Lay’s
potato chips, Subway, Lipton tea, the Hard Rock Café, Chupa Chups and many others
know.

The use of yellow in product packaging gives marketers three powerful weapons in
the fight for your shopping money. First, because yellow is the brightest colour in the
spectrum, your eye will spot it first, drawing you in. Second, yellow gives a product
freshness and appeal, filling us with anticipation of fun and enjoyment, thereby
loosening our purse strings further. And third, it is associated with lower cost, which is
always welcome. Taken together, these three make yellow the quintessential cheap and
cheerful colour in the marketplace.

Outside of its attention-grabbing power, however, it is difficult to nail down the

psychological impact yellow has on us. Much of the way we think of yellow is culturally
driven and contextually varied within a culture. The yellow robes worn by Chinese
emperors sent a message of celestial power and authority, since only they could wear
this colour. The saffron robes of Buddhist monks, particularly in the Theravada
tradition, symbolize purity of thought and purpose, inspiring a feeling of veneration.

Running counter to this is Shakespeare’s use of yellow. The cultural significance of

Malvolio’s yellow stockings in Twelfth Night has set academic minds a twitter, but
within the context of the play it is a very visible sign of a foolish, gullible popinjay and
trades on the humorous power of embarrassment, which was much later to sustain the
comic brilliance of Basil Fawlty.

Yellow has long been associated with heresy and treachery. In early paintings, Judas
was often painted wearing a dingy yellow cloak. The Fourth Lateran Council, convened
in 1215 by Pope Innocent III to deal with heresy, amongst other threats to the Church,
laid down laws known as canons that were to govern the Catholic Church for over 400
years. Canon 68 ordered that “Jews and Muslims shall wear a special dress to enable them to
be distinguished from Christians so that no Christian shall come to marry them ignorant of who
they are.” All Jews were henceforth required to wear a yellow badge at all times,
anticipating by more than 700 years the Nazi edict that Jews wear a yellow Star of
David.

Those condemned by the Spanish Inquisition were forced to wear a yellow

penitential garment known as a Sambenito (from the Spanish word meaning a ‘stigma’)
as a sign of their heresy. Originally, the Sambenito was the most benign of three
costumes assigned to heretics. It was yellow with red saltires or X’s painted on it and
was given to penitent heretics whose punishment was to do penance. The Samarra,
decorated with dragons, devils and flames, was worn by impenitent heretics who were
to be burnt at the stake. The Fuego revolto, painted with downward pointing flames, was
given to heretics who, although destined to the fire, were granted the mercy of being
strangled before being burned.

Less apocalyptically, James Joyce's Ulysses opens thus: “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan
came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A
yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently by the mild morning air.” Mulligan’s
priestly introduction to us is soon gainsaid by Stephen Daedalus, whose jesuitical mind
associates Mulligan with heresy. Joyce’s decision to enrobe the boorish, irreverent
Mulligan in ungirdled yellow was clearly meant to mark him as heretical and
treacherous.

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The idea that the human body is sustained and informed by vital elements or fluids
has an ancient lineage, but it was first given cohesive medical application by the 5th
century B.C. Greek physician Hippocrates in his theory of the four humours. According
to this theory, we are constituted of four elements or humours: blood, phlegm, yellow
bile and black bile; and our health and behaviour are governed by the balancing of
these four elements. Further, our natures or temperaments are said to be the result of
built-in imbalances with which we are born: sanguine (blood), apathetic (phlegm),
choleric (yellow bile), melancholic (black bile). These were subsequently linked to the
four elements of earth, fire, water and air as well as the states of hot, cold, dry and wet.
This framework was taken up by Greek, Roman and Islamic physicians before being
toppled by more enlightened science in the 17th century, although treatments based on
humorism, such as blood letting, cupping and leeching, continued for some time
afterwards.

Yellow bile, which was claimed to cause outward aggression that, in turn, resulted in
an imbalance of the liver, was correctly said to be situated in the gallbladder. In fact,
yellow-green bile, which is produced by the liver is stored in the gallbladder, ready to
be excreted into the small intestine to help in the digestion of fats. It is this bile that
gives a dog’s vomit its distinctive yellow colour. That a new dog owner might be
alarmed by the sight of this harmless discharge of bile is owing to our psychological
predisposition to see yellow as a warning sign. Bright yellow urine will also often startle
us, although it may simply be the result of eating asparagus or other carotenoid foods
the night before. Similarly, jaundice will raise alarms even though the cause may also be
owing to excess carotenoids. It is because the body is slow at metabolizing the yellow
carotene found in vegetables that body fat, which is normally white, often looks yellow,
like schmaltz.

But, of course, jaundice can also indicate more serious medical conditions related to
diseases of the liver, the bile ducts and the gallbladder. Yellow fever, or yellow jack as it
is sometimes known, is associated in the popular mind with jack tars, adrift in tropic
seas, barely sustaining life on a diet of maggoty hardtack and brackish water. Yellow
fever is caused by bites from infected mosquitos and is endemic in tropical areas of
Africa and Central and South America. Symptoms of the disease include jaundice,
hence the name yellow fever. Traditionally, a ship flying a yellow flag (known as
“Quebec” or “Q” in international signal flag terms) indicated disease like cholera on
board and that the ship was in quarantine. For a similar reason, yellow was once used to
mark houses in which infection had been identified. In modern times, the meaning of a
yellow flag has been reversed and its appearance now indicates that the ship is free of
contagious disease and is requesting permission to enter a port, known as free pratique.
The flag now flown to indicate a quarantined ship features four squares, two yellow
and two black arranged in a checkerboard pattern (echoing the alternating black and
yellow bands of aposematic insects like bees and wasps). This flag (“Lima” or “L”) is
also known as Yellow Jack, hence the alternate name used for the disease yellow fever.

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Within popular expressions, yellow tends to be either a descriptor or a negative

connotation. There are a few positive usages of yellow. Golden handshakes and the
golden rule are positive. Golden showers may be well received, depending on your
taste for these things. The yellow jersey or gilet jaune awarded the leader and ultimate
victor in the Tour de France has long been prized, although the recent yellow vest
protests may have tarnished this expression somewhat.

Perhaps the most obvious characteristic associated with yellow is cowardice. People
accused of lacking courage are referred to as yellow bellied or as having a yellow streak
down their back, or just simple as ‘yellow’. Being shown a yellow card in football is a
bad sign. Yellow journalism or the yellow press refers to publications, common around
supermarket checkouts, that feature sensational stories of dubious authenticity. Yellow-
backs were cheap, sometimes lurid, novels published in Britain in the latter half of the
19th century. Distinguished by their yellow covers and sometimes called mustard-
plaster novels, they were intended to compete against “penny dreadfuls”. Yellow books
also referred to erotic literature that emanated from continental Europe. The racist term
Yellow Peril was first coined in the late 19th century by a Russian sociologist named
Jacques Novikow, but it was simply a recasting of the xenophobia than has festered
since earliest times. The term was used by Kaiser Wilhelm II to encourage the European
dismemberment of China at the time of the Boxer Rebellion in the late 1890s.

Pop culture is full of yellow things. Songs about yellow ribbons and yellow brick
roads and yellow submarines are just a small sampling. Movies like John Ford’s She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon and the 1967 Swedish erotic film I Am Curious (Yellow), yellow in
this case referring to the Swedish flag (its companion I Am Curious (Blue) followed in
1968) are two of many titles.

New York City is famous for its yellow taxi cabs, although the original Yellow Cab
Company was founded in Chicago in 1907. Now there are yellow cabs everywhere in
the world. At one time, there were thousands of yellow Volkswagen Beetle cabs in
Mexico City, their front passenger seat removed to make it easier for riders to get in and
out.

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All colours come with nuances and shades of meaning, but it is unlikely that any
other colour brings with it the dramatic implications, positive and negative, of yellow.
And no other colour has the ability to bring a simple smile of contentment to your face
like that of the yellow sunbeam that has just come through my window.