900-Page 1692 Color Manual by A. Boogert Digitized at Bibliothèque Méjanes

A 900-page manuscript on watercolor paint mixing, created in 1692 by the artist A. Boogert, has been fully digitized and made available online by the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France. Titled Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau in French and Klaer Lightende Spiegel der Verfkonst in Dutch, the manual contains over 700 pages of handwritten instructions and color swatches. It predates the modern understanding of the color spectrum, relying instead on Aristotle’s system of color. Boogert produced only one copy, which likely had little influence on his contemporaries, as most Dutch masters had died by 1692 and those still active would have been unaware of the single volume. The book was intended to educate watercolorists, explaining how to mix colors and adjust tones by adding one, two, or three portions of water. Medieval historian Erik Kwakkel discovered it in a French database, noting it offers an unusual glimpse into the workshop of 17th-century painters and illustrators. The high-resolution scans allow users to zoom in on each page, which resemble Pantone color chips. The manual appeared on the threshold of modern color theory, a decade before Newton’s Opticks, and a century before a wave of practical color books by Goethe (1810) and Werner (1814), leading eventually to the Pantone company in 1963. The digital scan is accessible via the Bibliothèque Méjanes’ online portal. This article was originally published in 2019 and is republished here.