Green is the color of life returning. As the earth’s annual cosmic orbit once again swings our northern climes into the direct and warming rays of the sun, nature’s life-blood, chlorophyll, begins to flow through the budding leaves and plants around us. We associate this awakening with physical and emotional viability—our own and that of the other living things that we share space with in our world.
Green is easy on the eyes. Its place on the light spectrum is smack-dab in the middle and the many shades of green, from yellow-green to forest, register primally on the brain in ways that conveys calm and the certitude of life-renewed. As a result, green is used worldwide to represent safety.

The word green comes from the Old English word gr?ne, or, in its older form, grœni. This adjective is closely related to the Old English verb gr?wan (“to grow, turn green”), which in its wonted usage referred primarily to plants, and goes back into Western Germanic and Scandinavian languages. Cognates in other languages include West Frisian grien, Dutch groen, German grün, and Danish grøn. The first recorded use of green as a color name in English was in 700.

Because of our close connection to the natural world—both land and sea—green appears in a wide range of symbolic, ritualistic and nationalistic practices. Green is the color of the Heart Chakra, also known as Anahata. This chakra is located at the center of the chest area and is linked to the heart, lungs and circulatory system, bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds. Opening the Heart Chakra allows a person to love more, empathize, and feel compassion.

Michael Pacher, St Wolfgang and the Devil (15th c.)

In several religions, green is the color associated with resurrection and regeneration. Accordingly, green is the color associated with Sunday in the Catholic Church and the altar cloth is usually green for Sunday services. In Ghardaia and other parts of M’zab, houses painted in green indicate that the inhabitants have made a pilgrimage to Mecca. Green, blue-green, and blue are sacred colors in Iran, where they symbolize paradise. As the emblematic color of Ireland, green represents the vast green hillsides, as well as Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick. In Japan, green is regarded as the color of eternal life. In Aztec culture, green was considered to be royal because it was the color of the quetzal plumes used by the Aztec chieftains. In China, jade stones represent virtue and beauty. In the highlands of Scotland, people used to wear green as a mark of honor. Green is associated with Indian mysticism, Persian poems and Buddhist paintings. Italian Renaissance paintings often portrayed the devil as a ghoulish green figure, symbolizing death and putrefaction.

Edgar Degas, Absinthe (1876), Muesee d’Orsay, Paris

The prophet Mohammed wore a green cloak and turban. As a result, the color green carries deep religious and political meaning for Muslims. Many flags of the Islamic world are green, as the color is considered sacred in Islam. The flag of Hamas, as well as the flag of Iran, is green, symbolizing their Islamist ideology. The flag of Libya consists of a simple green field with no other characteristics. It is the only national flag in the world with just one color and no design, insignia, or other details (and the revolutionary pronouncements of Muammar Gaddafi are contained in The Green Book, much reviled or coveted, depending on your stance on the country’s future right now). In the run-up to Iran’s 2009 presidential election, the reformist candidate Mir-Hussein Mousavi chose green as his campaign color, and it became pervasive among his supporters during the campaign and the post-election protests. Green is the lowest of the three bands on the flag of India. There, green stands for fertility and prosperity. Earlier Indian flags had contained a similar green band representing Islam, the second-most predominant religion in India.

Serving as an occasional subject for Impressionist painters, modern absinthe, the liquor, dates from 1792, when Dr. Pierre Ordinaire commercialized it as a cure-all. Then, Henri-Louis Pernod founded the Pernod Fils absinthe company in 1805, seeing its aperitif potential. Absinthe’s moment came with the 1840’s Algerian wars, when French soldiers drank it as a prophylactic against disease. They brought it home, and by the 1860s, Parisian cafes had established 5pm as l’heure verte – “the green hour.”

Fragment 19th c. wallpaper, with arsenic green paint

But, for all its abundance in nature and the man-made world, green has remained an elusive color for artists. Referring to it in an aptly metaphorical way, expert call it ‘vagrant’, in that it readily fades over time and—due to its chemical instability—can transform itself into sullen shades of brown, and even black. Europe’s late 17th century encounter with the color green emerged just as two important events were occurring on the art and design scene: first, painters moved beyond the darkened confines of their studios and the strict thematic confines of religious iconography and portraiture, to include the broad sweep of nature’s realm—newly realized as a result of Enlightenment thought and enquiry into the sublime beauty of God’s domain and man’s privileged place in it; secondly, there was an expansion of China trade and the arrival in Western Europe of exotic goods from the Orient (jade, pale celadon green dishes and vases, silks and boldly-patterned green wallpaper, picturing exotic birds, tropical foliage and strangely-dressed figures).

With the green dyes used to make these imported fabrics and paper came an invisible and deadly threat—arsenic. Royalty’s love affair with China’s green object d’art incented a number of European paint makers to produce a viridian hue that would compete in brilliance and permanence with their Eastern counterparts. A Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, found that the proper combination of copper, arsenic and other materials would produce a brilliant green dye—arsenite. Under the name, Scheele’s Green, it was marketed to architects, manufacturers and painters, alike. His concerns about the poisonous nature of the paint were clearly documented; but, he ignored these concerns in order to sell paint!

Before long, arsenic-laden paints and dyes had found their way into every corner of European life: carpets, wall paint, clothing, nursery furniture, curtains, artificial flowers and, of course, innumerable paintings and murals that bedecked the average well-to-do mid-19th home. It was not until the 1880s that scientists attributed the high number of arsenic-related illnesses and deaths to its ubiquity in everyday life. A researcher at the time, Henry Carr, estimated that a mere 2-3 grains “will destroy the life of a healthy man,” he went on to say in typically-understated English style that, [it must be] borne in mind that an output of 4,809 tons…in one year, does seem a large quantity to be dealt with” (It was another 100 years [1980]before it was revealed that, upon his death in 1815, Napoleon had trace amounts of arsenic in hair samples taken from him at that time. His ‘prison’ room on St Helena’s was lined with green wallpaper, rich with the poisonous chemical, when tested by modern chromatography).

Remodeled colonial Chinese parlor with once-favored green highlights

Recognizing the unstable nature of Scheele’s green (though not its toxicity), which turned black when mixed with another deadly paint, lead white, the search continued for other greens for use in painting and design throughout the 18th and 19th century. The fashion tastes of Europe were now being imitated in Colonial America, and demand was higher than ever. The corrosion of copper was the most reliable and affordable source of a natural green color—verdigris; made by putting copper sheets in contact with vinegar. It could be readily mixed as a powder to create a bright green but, it too, was vagrant and turned black when in contact with lead-based whites. Verdigris came from everywhere and nowhere in particular. So, in English it means Greek green, the Germans called it Spanish green, the French made it with wine vinegar, the English with apples. George Washington loved the effect in his Palladian-windowed study, looking out onto his gardens for a double-green, indoor-outdoor feel. But, as it lost its colorful edge, an unenthused future president opted for Scheele’s Green and the brilliance only it could provide.

Auguste Renoir, Monet Painting in his Garden, Argenteuil (1873), Wadsworth Atheneum, CT

But, because of its modest performance, the market for verdigris was never strong enough to kill off the demand for brilliant Scheele’s Green (although a few patrons certainly must have succumbed to its effects). It was only well into the middle of the 19th century that scientists were dispatched to Asia, in search of the perfect green pigment. The Chinese introduced them to a lowly root of the buckthorn tree, known in both the east and West for a thousand years as Lo Kao; but the question was, could it be brought up to speed by newer processing methods, to produce something other than the dull ‘sap green’ or ‘bladder green’ (named for the improvised pig’s bladder that paints were stored in, in pre-tube days), when combined with alum and boiled, or ‘walloped’ for several hours. Highly reduced by this evaporation method, these greens would command exorbitant prices once they reached European markets (think: maple syrup production!)

On the eve of these efforts, science back home in England had finally caught up with the quest for the perfect, stable green in the 1870s. The discovery of coal-tar, or aniline dyes meant that most colors could be reproduced artificially and at more reasonable costs. They also had the advantage of being permanent! Iodine green, methyl green and synthetic ‘malachite’ green flooded the market in the last quarter of the 19th century, giving artists a flexible, stable and convenient ways to capture nature on canvas. The irony was that solutions no longer had to be found in nature, as artists struggled to portray nature in all its splendor. The invention of the paint tube at the same time opened the door for easy transport and the Impressionist era of plein air painting, a celebration of pure color, was born.