Literary notes about indian red (AI summary)
Indian red has long been celebrated in literature both as a practical pigment and as a vivid descriptive hue. Many technical texts provide detailed recipes for mixing Indian red with white lead, ultramarine blue, or other pigments to achieve precise tints—demonstrating its importance in the craft of painting ([1], [2], [3], [4]). At the same time, literary descriptions evoke its rich, dramatic character in nature and art; for example, authors depict stormy horizons lit by bands of Indian red that lend an almost otherworldly intensity to the scene ([5], [6]), while delicate mentions of a faint tint on a character’s cheek or the deep color of a silk kerchief attest to its aesthetic appeal ([7], [8], [9], [10]). This dual legacy in technical treatises and evocative prose underscores Indian red’s enduring symbol of both artistic mastery and emotional depth.
- The paler Indian red is, the greater is its tinting strength and the rosier is the tint obtained from it by mixing it with white.
— from Paint & Colour Mixing A practical handbook for painters, decorators and all who have to mix colours, containing 72 samples of paint of various colours, including the principal graining grounds by Arthur Seymour Jennings - —Mix with equal parts of white lead, Indian red and ultramarine blue in the proportion of two parts of lead to one of each of other colours.
— from Paint & Colour Mixing A practical handbook for painters, decorators and all who have to mix colours, containing 72 samples of paint of various colours, including the principal graining grounds by Arthur Seymour Jennings - 1. Melt beeswax, 4 oz.; then add Indian red, 1 oz., and enough yellow ochre to produce the required tint.
— from Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I by Richard Vine Tuson - Or a mixture of three parts of Indian red with seventeen parts of white is sometimes used.
— from Paint & Colour Mixing A practical handbook for painters, decorators and all who have to mix colours, containing 72 samples of paint of various colours, including the principal graining grounds by Arthur Seymour Jennings - The sky above them was an intense velvety-black, changing to bands of Indian red on the horizon, where the great stars burned like street lamps.
— from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling - Rain When the clouds are of a dark Indian red.
— from Weather Warnings for Watchers by Anonymous - Mrs. Price laughed her usual frank laugh, albeit her brown cheek took upon it a faint tint of Indian red.
— from Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation by Bret Harte - She produced an Indian red silk kerchief, which she flung over her shoulders and knotted under her chin.
— from Mehalah: A Story of the Salt Marshes by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould - The gable of the cot was stained Indian red down to the eaves, and a stone chimney was embedded irregularly in its log side.
— from The Young SeigneurOr, Nation-Making by W. D. (William Douw) Lighthall - Upon one of the divans, wearing a long tea-gown of Indian red, Mimi Addington was lounging.
— from The Angel by Guy Thorne
