🎨 The Woman Who Theorised Colour

Five years before Goethe's Theory of Colours, the English watercolourist Mary Gartside published her own challenge to Newton — modestly framed as a guidebook 'for the ladies I have been called upon to instruct in painting,' one of the few outlets where women's critical thought was tolerated. Her study reveals 'extraordinary creative genius,' accompanied by strikingly abstract colour blots unlike anything produced before, by a writer or artist of any gender. Little is known of her today; her work deserves to be.