Abstract
The best scientifically informed accounts of colour perception may yet fail to give practical guidance to the visual artist. Michel-Eugène Chevreul’s 1839 treatise on simultaneous contrast is seen as an early empirical study of perceptual interaction that does provide such guidance. Despite its fame and its reputation the treatise has never been subjected to close critical attention. It proves not to be a work of empirical science by any reasonable standard. The famous problem with dyestuffs at the Gobelins that initiated Chevreul’s investigations was, indeed, due to a deficiency in dyestuffs and not a visual illusion. The distinction between simultaneous and successive contrast that Chevreul was first to draw is not effectively demonstrated by any experiment he is known to have performed. The law of simultaneous contrast that is central to his treatise can be seen to have been modelled directly and inappropriately on the electromagnetic force law of his colleague André-Marie Ampère. Despite its many failings, however, the story of the treatise and its influence is worth telling. Its untroubled reputation is a lacuna in the literature and a striking illustration of the distance between “the two cultures” of the arts and sciences.