The REVIGO project investigated how unstable red lakes faded in Van Gogh’s French work. He mixed those lakes with blue and white to make purple, lilac, violet and pink. As the red sank away, the other component took over. Blue where there was lilac. Drab white where there was pink. That is not a wall that was once entirely red. It is a mixed colour whose composition has changed. The digital reconstruction of The Bedroom makes this visible: walls and doors that now look strikingly blue were conceived as purple; the floor a harder red. According to the research report, many people had to get used to the vivid colours of the reconstruction.
A photograph or a screen adds its own contrast to that. Even so, the difference between canvas and reproduction is more than a choice made when the picture was taken. The report on the paintings shows which component has shifted in the paint itself. If you read today’s blue simply as calm, you miss the fact that the calm here is partly a remnant.
Look at a wall in The Bedroom and ask which part of the old mix is still there. Not: where is the red patch? But: which blue was once half of a purple?
