Stories in Colour

Pink is for girls, blue is for boys

Have you ever wondered whether pink really is for girls and blue for boys? In our final episode of series two, Beks is joined by Dr Vien Cheung, Associate Professor at th

The hunt for the blackest black

Today we're on a hunt with artists through time, searching for the blackest black. We’re after the deepest blacks, the most accurate blacks and the most atmospheric black

Rediscovering history’s women colour theorists

You might have heard of men like Isaac Newton or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but who were the pioneering women writing on colour theory? To answer that question, we’re j

Decoding paintings through colour

How do the colours artists choose – and the ways each of us experience them – help us find a story? Join Beks and author Chloë Ashby as they take a closer look at how to

The mauve measles: when purple went viral

A teenage chemist’s accidental discovery didn’t just revolutionise colour history – it sparked a viral Victorian colour craze! Cultural historian Kassia St Clair joins B

Deadly chemical cousins: oranges and yellows

What makes two volcano-born pigments so dangerous? Hint: they weren’t scorching hot when artists used them. Orpiment and realgar both contain arsenic, a foe we’ve previou

A blue more expensive than gold − ultramarine

Travel with us beyond the sea to look at ultramarine, a pigment that was once even more precious than gold. In this episode, writer Victoria Finlay joins Beks for a disc

What is synaesthesia? Can you hear colour?

Welcome back to a new series of 'Stories in Colour'. To kick off, we’re tackling one of the topics we received the most questions about − synaesthesia. Join Beks and thi

Stories in Colour Returns – Series 2 Trailer

What does colour sound like? Why was mauve the brat green of the Victorian era? And is pink really just for girls? Welcome back to another series of 'Stories in Colour',

The story of gold: modern imaginations (part three)

When the artist Louise Nevelson immigrated to America as a child, she was told that ‘the streets... would be paved in gold’. Obviously, they weren’t, but that hasn’t stop

The story of gold: devotion and design (part two)

When did gold become a colour? In this episode we journey from the majestic mosaics of the Byzantine era to the brilliantly burnished panel paintings of the early Renaiss

The story of gold: ancient origins (part one)

Welcome back to Stories in Colour! And welcome to the first episode of our new miniseries in which we'll be telling the story of a rare, sparkling and glistening colour –

The Story of Gold - Miniseries Trailer

Welcome to a new miniseries of ‘Stories in Colour’. The National Gallery’s vibrant podcast returns to tell the story of a rare, sparkling and glistening colour – or shoul

Painting the rainbow

What exactly is a rainbow and how is it formed? Why does it have seven colours? And what have rainbows symbolised in mythologies and art? Join colour expert Dr Alexandr

How snails made purple a royal colour

Why do we see purple as the colour of royalty? It all starts on the Mediterranean coast with some unassuming, and eventually very unfortunate, seasnails. Travel back to

The fear of colour: chromophobia

Where did all the colour go? And how might Western culture have feared it, or deemed it superficial, in art and philosophy? We celebrate the 25th anniversary of seminal b

Don’t eat your deadly greens

Why does the colour green remind you of poison and radioactivity? We're telling the story of two toxic green pigments to find out. Their stories interact with artists lik

Why we feel what we feel about colour

We're asking how we feel about colour – or more accurately how colours make us feel – and whether that's the same for all of us. Join colour specialist Zeynep Sagir and

How bugs turned the world red

We're on the search for the 'perfect red' with a pigment and dye that was so prized that it inspired international espionage and piracy, carried the death penalty if expo

The first modern synthetic pigment

Meet an enigmatic pigment discovered entirely by accident at the start of the 18th century. Its story involves a rogue inventor with an unlikely connection to Doctor Fran