ESSAYS

Filling in the Blanks

A Prehistory of the Adult Coloring Craze
By Melissa N. Morris and Zach Carmichael

Its dizzy heights may have passed, but the fad for adult coloring books is far from over. Many trace
the origins of such publications to a wave of satirical colouring books published in the 1960s, but
as Melissa N. Morris and Zach Carmichael explore, the existence of such books, and the urge to
colour the printed image, goes back centuries.
PUBLISHED
February 6, 2019

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 Uncolored portraits of the artists involved in the production of Leonhart Fuchs’ De historia stirpium
commentarii insignes — Source.

For many publishers around the world 2015 was, scally speaking, an excellent year — a
welcome boost in an otherwise uncertain decade. But this upturn had a perhaps surprising
source: coloring books for grown-ups. What strange winds conspired to suddenly urge adults
in their droves to take up colored pencils again? Whatever the reasons, sales rocketed: Nielsen
logged sales of 12 million for the category in 2015, up from a measly 1 million the year before.
In February 2016, with the craze still going strong, New York Academy of Medicine Library
gave birth to a new initiative called Color Our Collections Week, a scholarly take on the
coloring trend. Now in its third year, the campaign sees, on the rst week of February,
archives, special collections, and libraries take to social media with individual images and
even entire books compiled from their holdings for the public to color. While these chosen
works are all in the public domain, and so can technically include (in the US at least) works
published up until 1924, the images in these coloring books more typically hail from the
teenth through eighteenth centuries. And it is in these images — published in the centuries
prior to the advent of color printing — that we can see a precedent for this seemingly modern
fad. While it may seem like simply jumping on the adult coloring bandwagon, Color Our
Collections Week, with its naturally historical focus, is actually tapping into (and shedding
light on) a tradition much older.

Last year, the New York Academy of Medicine Library chose an image from Leonhart Fuchs’ /
 y , y y g
monumental 1542 botanical work, De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (“Notable
Commentaries on the History of Plants”), to promote the event. An archivist from the History
of Science Collections at the University of Oklahoma chimed in on Twitter to say their own
copy of this book had already been colored in.

/
The page from the University of Oklahoma’s colored version of Leonhart Fuchs’ De historia stirpium
commentarii insignes — Source

/
 Another colored edition of Leonhart Fuchs’ De historia stirpium commentarii insignes — Source
(Wellcome Library)

Should we be surprised by this? Color Our Collections Week might give the impression that

these images, from the era before colored printing, are at last being colored — rescued from
their hitherto drab monochrome existence. Yet printed images from the early modern period
were regularly colored by hand.

e practice goes back to the earliest days of print in the teenth century. Artists, printers,
booksellers, consumers, and readers all applied color to originally black-and-white images.
Before Gutenberg’s innovation of the moveable-type press, both woodblock and engraved
prints, single sheets with printed images, were popular in Germany and parts of Central
Europe. ey were used in various ways, and many people did what we might do with them --
hung them on the walls of their home.

With the emergence of the printed book the coloring trend continued. Colored illustrations
were common in medieval manuscript books, most notably in the intricately illuminated
manuscripts produced by monastic institutions. e early printed books from the teenth
century and a ter o ten imitated the textual design and illustrations of these medieval
manuscript books. Indeed, illuminated manuscripts and printed books were not mutually
exclusive: some printed books contain illumination, while some manuscripts have painted
prints pasted into them. It would seem that at least some early printers and readers attempted
to create color illustrations for these works the only way they knew how: by coloring the /
 y y y y g
pictures themselves.

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 This 1493 herbal shows how early printed works imitated manuscripts — Source (Wellcome Library)

e images below further demonstrate this transition from medieval to early modern book
production, and the role colored illustrations played. Both are from De Claris Mulieribus, a

fourteenth-century book by Giovanni Boccaccio (author of the Decameron). is work was a

compilation of biographies of women, real and mythical, famous and infamous. It was rst
circulated as a manuscript, and surviving examples are richly illustrated with images of the
women they discuss. e book was among the rst to make the leap from manuscript to print,
and the illustrations came with it. In order to recreate the feel of previous versions of the
work, it needed colored illustrations. e images below are, ttingly enough, of the painter
and sculptor (and apparently proli c creator of self-portraits) Iaia of Cyzicus (also known as
Marcia). e rst two are from manuscript versions of the work, showing Marcia sculpting
and painting.

/
/
Marcia sculpting, image from a 15-16th century version of Giovanni Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus —
Source.

/
 Maria painting, detail of page from a 1403 version of Giovanni Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus—
Source.

ese next two are from printed editions of the work. e Latin edition has some illumination
of the letters, while the German book’s image is fully colored.

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Image of Marcia, uncolored, from a 1473 Latin version of Giovanni Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus —
Source.

/
 Image of Marcia, colored, from a ca. 1474 German version of Giovanni Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus
— Source.

Most illustrations found in books from the early days of print are in the form of woodcuts and
etchings. Woodcuts were most compatible with moveable type because both used relief
printing, and early printers could easily print a page with both text and illustrations.

Because of the carving and printing process, woodcuts have simpler designs with less shading.
ey therefore make for excellent coloring pages, and Color Our Collections participants
frequently choose woodcuts for their images. Moreover, art historian Susan Dackerman
argues that they were meant to be colored. Many of these color prints were created in a

workshop setting, with an engraver, printer, and colorist working together. e “vast majority”
of surviving teenth-century woodcuts are hand colored, and they were produced in the tens
of thousands in the teenth century. 1

Some images, like this teenth-century German woodcut of Christ on the cross, are only
complete once colored. In this case, angels hold cups to catch blood that needs to be added
with paint. e National Gallery of Art owns a number of examples of this woodcut, each
di ferently colored. Some have been le t uncolored, and a couple have only the requisite blood
added to complete the image. Among those more fully colored, we can see that quite a bit of
artistic license was taken.

/
/
"Christ on the Cross with Angels" (1481) minimally colored — Source

/
A slightly later version of the image (ca. 1490), more fully colored, with clouds and other details —
Source

/
 Another woodcut on the same theme, 1483 — Source

According to Dackerman, twentieth-century art historians and collectors denigrated color,

seeing it as nothing more than a way to hide the laws of poorly-executed engravings and

woodcuts. Well-executed prints, they argued, needed no color at all. is disdain for colored
prints helped to obscure their place in art history. is line of argument harkened back to the
debates that emerged during the Italian Renaissance over whether design or color were most
important (disegno/colore).

In many of these images, the paint seems hastily applied. is haphazard coloring was o ten a
result of the artist having many prints to paint rather than a lack of skill. Artists applied paint
freehand, using a brush, but they sometimes employed stencils made from extra impressions
of the images in order to paint more quickly.

Many works were colored not by professionals, but by readers. A lot of the examples we have
found of hand-colored illustrations come from botanical works and herbals. For example, a
copy of John Gerard's Herball (1636), with selective images colored in, suggests it was the
reader who painted it, perhaps as a way to record plants he or she had seen in person. Botany
and painting were favored pursuits of genteel men and women in this period, so it’s not
surprising that the same people would share both hobbies.

/
/
 Carnations from John Gerard's The herball, or, generall historie of plants (1636) — Source

While publishers may have informally expected these monochrome images to be colored by
some readers, it wasn't until the eighteenth century that the practice was formalised in the

rst purpose-made coloring books. And in these the link between botany and painting
persisted. Robert Sayer’s e Florist, published in London in 1760, was one of the rst books
where the author explicitly intended readers to color in the images. Comprised of pictures of
various lowers, the author gives his (presumably) adult readers detailed instructions for paint
mixing and color choice (including the delightful sounding "gall-stone brown").

/
/
Page from Robert Sayer’s The Florist (1760) — Source

/
 Ready to color: "Crown Imperial" from Robert Sayer’s The Florist (1760) — Source

Botanical works were particularly suitable for readers who wanted to engage directly with a
physical book, because they o fered images of things that could be observed in the natural

world. Although the images in this particular copy of e Florist were le t uncolored, the owner
used the book to press actual plants. Many botanical works were heavily annotated,
sometimes by several di ferent owners, and pressed plants are o ten found in their pages.

e Florist was produced “for the use & amusement of Gentlemen and Ladies”, but most
subsequent coloring books were created with children in mind. By the nineteenth century,
these books became increasingly popular. Although they helped children develop artistic skills,
creativity was not particularly prized. In e Young Artist's Coloring Guide, a series published in
the 1850s, a fully-colored version accompanied the uncolored image, ostensibly to imitate.

/
/
 Two pages from The Young Artist's Coloring Guide. No. 12 (ca. 1850) — Source.

In Walter Crane’s Painting Book, originally published in 1880, there's also color companions to
copy, though one could argue in this case, they being from the hand of one of the nineteenth

century's greatest illustrators, such an approach made for a signi cantly more beautiful object
and one likely enjoyed by adults as well as children.

/
 Two pages from Walter Crane’s Painting Book (1889 edition) — Source.

Crane wasn’t the only noted illustrator of the time to lend his name to such a book. A year
earlier came e "Little Folks" Painting Book, published by the McLoughlin Brothers, with
illustrations by noted artist Kate Greenaway. With no accompanying colored example to copy it
was a bit less didactic than Crane’s but it still cautioned children to use a “ tting choice of
colours”, and there was a pre-colored frontispiece which would have acted as a guide of sorts
to the color scheme.

/
/
 Two di erent colourings of the same image in The “Little Folks” Painting Book (1879) — Source

Of course, in the case of these Victorian examples, and earlier o ferings such as e Florist, the
coloring-in is the very raison d’etre of the book. e early modern examples less so. ough

that’s not to say a similar enjoyment was not taken by early modern readers wanting to
colorize their wooducts or etchings, that same thrill of bringing color to what was once blank.
It seems the therapeutic e fects were not unnoticed at the time either. In his 1622 work e
Compleat Gentleman Henry Peacham, in a chapter encouraging the practice of coloring-in
printed maps, talks of how “the practise of the hand, doth speedily instruct the mind, and
strongly con rme the memorie beyond any thing else.” 2

As for the modern trend in adult coloring books, critics have charged marker-wielding grown-
ups with being childish, and have alleged that the success of these books is a product of a
dumbed-down culture. It may indeed be a fad, but it also has a longer history. So, the next
time you buy an adult coloring book or get excited about Color Our Collections Week, know
that you are not being childish. Rather, you are taking part in a long tradition of printed
images that were meant to be colored.

Melissa N. Morris is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wyoming. She has a PhD in History from
Columbia University, where she wrote a dissertation on how plants mediated relationships between Europeans and
Indigenous peoples in the seventeenth century Americas. On Twitter here

Zach Carmichael is Local History and Genealogy Specialist II at the Carnegie Library, Muncie, IN. He has an MA in
/
history from Miami University (OH) where he studied colonial New England taverns and an MLIS from the University
history from Miami University (OH), where he studied colonial New England taverns, and an MLIS from the University
of Pittsburgh, where he specialized in archives. On Twitter here.

CATEGORIES Books Painting Art & Illustrations

TAGS

walter crane 5 botanical art 2

Notes Show Notes

Public Domain Works

TEXTS
e Florist
Robert Sayer 1760

Internet Archive

TEXTS
e Young Artist's Coloring Guide. No. 12.
ca. 1850

Internet Archive
TEXTS

e “Little Folks” Painting Book

Kate Greenaway 1811

Internet Archive

/
T
 TEXTS
Walter Crane's Painting Book
Walter Crane and Edmund Evans 1889

Internet Archive

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