Alexandra Loske: Curator + Colour Historian
Dr Alexandra Loske is a curator and colour historian whose work has been vital in bringing attention to the lesser-known colour women in the history of colour theory. Through her research and writing, she has not only revived the stories of these figures but also established herself as a leading voice in the field, advancing our understanding of the power and significance of colour.
Her publications, including Tate: Colour: A Visual History, The Artist's Palette: The Palettes Behind the Paintings of 50 Great Artists, The Book of Colour Concepts, and her latest book, The Royal Pavilion Brighton: A Regency Palace of Colour and Sensation, explore various dimensions of colour, from its role in art and science to its cultural and historical significance.
As curator at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, she has created The Colour exhibition, where visitors can explore a diverse range of colours, pigments, their historical contexts, as well as the works of contemporary artists. The exhibition is open from 21st March until 19th October 2025.
Dr Alexandra Loske at at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton
Photographed by Richard Sturges
What inspired your fascination with colour and led you to explore its history?
It was gifted to me. The subject of colour, or more specifically colour theory and colour history, was suggested to me by Meaghan Clarke, who supervised my M.A. in Art History at the University of Sussex. She suggested I should apply for a doctoral scholarship based at the Royal Pavilion, and the research focus was going to be colour in George IV’s time. I had to attend an interview, like a job interview, and prove that I had a clear vision of how to approach the research. I used my knowledge of German to link the Royal Pavilion to colour literature beyond English publications and suggested that there may have been significant cultural exchange, or at least similarities in late 18th and early 19th century Europe. To be honest, as is often the case with doctoral research projects, you have many more questions than answers at the beginning, but I clearly had enough possible answers to secure the scholarship. That was the beginning of a wonderful colour journey that branched out into several unexpected directions.
What was your process for researching and writing your book on Mary Gartside?
I came across Gartside by chance. I had noticed that most of the names I came across in my research were men’s, and wondered whether any women had written about colour, or played a part in colour history before the 20th century. On one of my first visits to the Colour Reference Library the librarian Neil Parkinson pointed out An Essay of Light and Shade by Mary Gartside to me. I was fascinated, but also frustrated, as there was so little biographical material on Gartside, and researching a women with a name like Mary is fiendishly difficult, especially before the age of census records. The little book on her was a commission. The art bookseller Thomas Heneage in London had a very special copy of the book and wanted to invest in it by offering an extended essay alongside it that gathered much of the available information on Gartside. This is why I was able to create this lovely little book on Gartside.
How did Gartside’s approach to colour theory differ from her contemporaries, and what do you find most inspiring about her work?
It is of course the hand-painted blots, which immediately struck me as early abstract works of art. I was delighted to find out that this was Gartside’s intention: to reduce a pictorial composition (in this case flower still lifes) to their chromatic structure. I related to this, because I was extremely short-sighted, from a very young age, and often experienced the world around without seeing contours or detail. When I took my glasses off as a child, all I could see was fuzzy-bordered patches of colour and light, until I had major surgery in my thirties. There are other aspects of Gartside’s books that are pioneering and impressive, but the idea to simplify compositions in this way (for instructional purposes) is fascinating, and accidentally also utterly beautiful and timeless.
Could you share some lesser-known women who have made significant contributions to colour theory/history? If you had the opportunity to speak with one of them, who would it be, and what would you most like to ask her?
I have a lot of questions for Mary Gartside, obviously, but a lot of these relate to her biography. How was she able to publish, to work, to be independent, to travel and move around England? When did she have the idea to move away from colour diagrams and create these amorphous blots to be included in a book? But there are other women in colour history I would like to have a conversation with, usually along similar lines, for example the little-known Martha Bernstein, Carry van Biema, or Bonnie Snow.
Women are often underrepresented in art and design education, especially when it comes to the history of colour theory. What can be done to bring more attention to the contributions of "colour women"?
The history of colour is just one of many areas where the historical gender imbalance is prevalent. I have been trying to do something about this imbalance in my own, admittedly limited, way. From early on in my research and work, I decided to include women in everything I write, every talk or lecture I give, and everything I curate. We cannot change history: it is a fact that fewer women than men were able to write, publish, and research colour in history, but that shouldn’t stop us talking and writing about the ones who did, and explain why there is an imbalance and how some women were able to succeed nevertheless. There is also a great opportunity here: women often operated in areas often not considered worthy of recording or noting in critical literature, such as children’s books, school primers, or handbooks on dying, embroidery and weaving, there is much rich and little-researched material. I love finding small publications by women that no one has ever included in academic papers.
In The Artist’s Palette, did you gain new insights into how artists approached colour and composition? How did you curate the book and research their colour palettes?
The Artist’s Palette was very much a team effort. The idea for the concept of it came from my wonderful publisher Thames & Hudson, and together we searched for palettes, figured out a way of structuring the book, sourced images of the palettes and ancillary materials, and decided on the way to tell each palette’s story. Quite a few palettes were by French artists, and literature about them was often only available in French, so I was lucky that one of the picture researchers was French. Research in general for this book was hampered by the cyber attack on the British Library in October 2023. I ended up flitting around between several other libraries and writing many, many emails. One of the most exciting exchanges was with descendants of Winifred Nicholson, about which paints and colours she preferred in the last years of her life. What all palettes have in common is that they are like mirrors of the artists the belonged to. They reflect aspects of their personality.
In The Book of Colour Concepts, is there a particular historical colour system that you find especially fascinating?
I find all of them fascinating, but don’t claim to fully understand all of them. Some are very technical and mathematical, others are deliberately personal and idiosyncratic, especially when they were not necessarily meant for publication in book form. I do have a special fondness for colour circles or wheel that make an attempt at representing a three-dimensional spherical model. It is like a globe trying to rise from a printed page.
The exhibition you curated, COLOUR: A Chromatic Promenade through the Royal Pavilion will be open soon. Can you tell us more about it? Which part are you most excited for people to see?
I can’t take the credit for curating the entire exhibition, but I did come up with the idea for it and was responsible for much of the historical content and objects. My lovely colleagues in Marketing and Education added other elements, such as interactive stations and play areas and coloured lighting, and commissioned several artists to create interventions and responses to the Royal Pavilion’s colourful interiors. There is even a ‘sonic sculpture’, appropriately enough in the Music Room. Naturally, I am most invested in a display of some of the most beautiful early books on colour, including Mary Gartside’s Essay on Light and Shade, George Field’s 1817 Chromatics, and an 1821 copy of Patrick Syme’s Werner’s Nomenclature. But I am also excited about showing a large private collection of vintage pigments, lent by the artist Peter Messer. We have displayed most of the jars (which come in all shapes and sizes) on the dining table in the Pavilion’s Banqueting Room, to celebrate colour in general, and allow visitors to marvel at this feast of colour(s). Other pigment jars are placed in the display cabinets where the stories of individual colours are told.
What’s your favourite colour and what makes it special to you?