The prominence of chiaroscuro in late eighteenth-century French oil painting posed significant challenges for tapestry weavers, which led artisans and chemists to seek chemical solutions for replicating in textiles the style’s high contrast between light and dark. Textile manufacturers struggled to reproduce the intense gradations of painters like Jacques-Louis David, and innovations in dye technology were driven by the need to match the naturalism and Enlightenment symbolism of contemporary paintings. Napoleon’s investment in dye chemistry and the establishment of a dyeing school aimed to standardize colorants and rebrand traditional arts with political imagery. The integration of scientific expertise in the decorative arts led to advancements that laid the groundwork for future developments in synthetic colorants.