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Kinds of Green

Staff Picks

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Green can mean many things: hope, jealousy, fertility, harmony, and illness.

It can also signify rebirth, calm, money, balance, and good luck. As a color, it is rich with meaning and lush with complexity, and if Kermit the Frog is to be believed, green is not an easy thing to be. Here are a few interesting facts:

  • The English word for green, first recorded around 700 CE, comes from the word for a living plant.
  • The Chinese character for green covers both blue and green, which are considered shades of the same color.
  • The majority of the light coming from the sun is green.
  • The largest source of green in nature is from chlorophyll in the leaves of plants, though it actually absorbs more blue and red light and reflects the green, which is what makes leaves look green.
  • Green eyes do not contain green—it’s a trick of the pigment and light.

A green light means go. So let’s see where we go when six staff members pick artworks that contain a stimulating shade of green.

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way…. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.

—William Blake, artist and poet

Patinated Verdancy

This life-size statue of Dionysos is one of only a few bronze sculptures to survive antiquity.


Ancient Roman

This statue was not revered, nor worshiped, as a green figure—its once glistening metallic bronze now has a dark forest green patina with chartreuse leopard-like spotting. The alchemical symbolism of green notates growth, renewal, and the process of transformation. More generally, green can represent rebirth and immortality—ironically, a fitting “new” color for this twice-born, exultant, joy-bringing deity whose other attributes also include a resurrected god, eternally self-creating and self-destroying. 

Dionysos tells us that all tradition and order must be shattered. He is a “mad god,” making his worshipers go insane, a god who tames mankind with the whip of madness, and his rationale is usually incomprehensible to mortal minds. But it’s important to note that a god who is mad can only be made by a world that is mad. So, when we attempt to comprehend the madness of the world we live in, we glance at the visage of his divinity—now earthy and verdant.

Statueofyoungdionysosdetail

Ancient Roman

The Dionysian world is frenzied and dangerous, like nature herself, where life and death meet in an embrace of ecstasy; where growth, renewal, fecundity, and joy gleam from the same green eyes as that of decay, destruction, fear, terror, and rot.

I’ve held this deity near to my heart ever since college, and now every workday I have the privilege to salute this green-skinned god of wine and frenzy.

—Ryan M. Pfeiffer, technician, Collections and Loans

Green is the fresh emblem of well founded hopes. In blue the spirit can wander, but in green it can rest.

—Mary Webb, novelist

viridian serenity

Green has long been the color associated with military uniforms, especially for the US army. Often referred to as olive drab, this brownish green was used for the purposes of camouflage.


Vincent van Gogh

My husband is a retired Army veteran with a passion for fishing, and I’m reminded of his service through a connection to green, particularly in Van Gogh’s painting, Fishing in Spring, the Pont de Clichy, which he painted in a suburb north of Paris. While there are dots of what appear to be olive drab, the color that draws my eye is a blend of green and blue that I would call viridian green. It creates a tranquil, peaceful atmosphere, shutting out the noise of the world and capturing the serenity of nature (and fishing) and the quiet strength of those who serve. 

—Sharon Cobbins, Human Resources specialist, Human Resources

They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like; but that particular green, never.

—Pablo Picasso, artist

venerable verdigris

A beautiful antique bronze often has distinctive green, yellow, and orange patches, due to the affects of the passage of time. This might be your first impression when you see this bust by the French artist Camille Claudel.

But this portrait of her brother, the poet and scholar Paul Claudel, is actually a plaster sculpture. Originally a homogeneous white color, its surface was painted by the artist to evoke the oxidized surfaces of ancient Greek or Roman bronzes. When the copper alloy bronze is exposed to the outdoor environment, it develops a green surface, like the iconic lions in front of the museum. This green is composed of copper carbonates (a family of minerals including the semi-precious stone malachite) and copper salts.

When we analyzed Claudel’s sculpture in our laboratory, we identified another copper compound, verdigris, which is a byproduct of bronze. Manufactured in the past by placing copper plates over vats of fermenting grape skins, it has been used as green pigment since ancient times, especially in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. What fascinates me, as a conservation scientist, is wondering if the artist intentionally used this byproduct of bronze as a pigment to fully imitate ancient bronze. Verdigris is subject to discoloration, so what a surprise to see an even more vibrant green on the underside of the hollow bust.

265059 Icr2022 50

I imagine Claudel with a brush, painting the sculpture in her studio, and wonder how much more vivid and green the bust might have looked to her eyes at the time of its creation.

—Clara Granzotto, associate conservation scientist, Conservation and Science

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.

—Martin Luther, priest and theologian

magnolia memories

The magnolia tree outside my childhood home stood as a constant companion, greeting me with its lush green leaves and large, fragrant blooms.


Martin Johnson Heade

Its flowers heralded warmer days, while the resilient greenery was always the first sign of life returning. Each morning, the tree sent me off on my daily adventures, and each evening, it welcomed me back, embodying a sense of home that wasn’t perfect, but deeply meaningful. This green can be found in Magnolias on Light Blue Velvet Cloth by Martin Johnson Heade (1819–1904), an American painter known for his luminous landscapes, intricate flower studies, and vivid paintings of tropical birds. For me, the greens in this piece symbolize more than nature’s vitality; they echo memories of joy, health, and luck. As a Celtic soul born on St. Patrick’s Day, that connection feels profound. The magnolia, an ancient tree, endures, thriving through time and challenge—a testament to how beauty, strength, and memories intertwine in the quiet corners of our lives.

—Dail Williams, facilitator, Ryan Learning Center

Green is the prime color of the world and that from which its loveliness arises.

—Pedro Calderon de la Barca, dramatist

elusive celadon

To make the color green, my primary educators taught me to combine yellow and blue paints on a paper plate with a plastic paint brush. Inside of a kiln, however, creating green is a bit more complex. One of the most coveted glazes in ceramics history is celadon: a green, reduction-fired glaze typically seen on porcelain or stoneware objects with slight variations in finish and hue depending on the country of production (traditionally China, Japan, Korea, and Thailand, among others).


Korea

Celadon has been revered for centuries because of its resemblance to the valuable mineral jade, but also because its formulation requires extreme prowess. In its chemical form, celadon has a fairly uncomplicated formula consisting mainly of silica, kaolin, feldspar, and a fluxing agent such as limestone. However, its illustrious green hue is elusive, achieved only by using a precise amount of iron oxide in a deoxygenated atmosphere at a temperature of roughly 2300°F. Too much iron in the glaze, and the green will darken to black. Too much oxygen in the kiln, and the result will be a pale grey, yellow, or lack any color at all. Firing a celadon glaze always requires a delicate balance.  

Celadon

This oil bottle with peonies, a symbol of nobility and wealth, exemplifies the expertise—and green—radiating from celadon vessels.

—Christina Warzecha, specialist, Modern and Contemporary Art

PS: In researching this brief post, I learned that my cat’s name, Seiji, also carries the word for “celadon” in Japanese. As a ceramicist myself, this was a lovely accident to discover.

If you take blue paint and yellow paint and you mix them, you get green paint. But if you take blue light and yellow light and mix them, you get white light. This is a shock to most people.

—James Turrell, artist

Green contradictions

As I look at Nighthawks, it’s obvious to me that Hopper’s admiration for Rembrandt’s realism influenced his work. Their connection reminded of what the writer Hélène Cixous said about Rembrandt: “He paints thoughtfulness, this absence in the body, this leave-taking by the soul that leaves the body deserted like a living tomb. We think: we’re parting.”

The same could be said of Hopper, whose paintings evoke a universal feeling of isolation and distance. 


Edward Hopper

Every brushstroke of green in Nighthawks feels melancholic, detached, isolating. We’re parting with our bodies. Though side by side with others, we are separate, between bodies and thoughts, between exterior and interior. There is a vacancy within Hopper’s green that communicates loneliness. While green can mean hopefulness, futility, life, abundance—here, it does not. To me, it does not.

A painting looking in the window an old-fashioned diner at night where three customers sit at the counter and a soda jerk bends behind the counter working.

Edward Hopper

Wait—disregard! On my visit of Nighthawks this morning, the green was brimming with hope. The loneliness and vacancy in the brushwork, suddenly transformed, radiated buoyancy from those inside instead. Each in their own worlds but together, open to possibility of connection; why else would they be in a diner, so close?”

—Veronica Cajigas, assistant manager, Retail Operations

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