Colour in art - as in life - is both inspiring and uplifting, but where does it come from? How have artists found new hues, and how have these influenced their work? Beginning with the ancients - when just a handful of pigments made up the artist's palette - and charting the discoveries and developments that have led to the many splendoured rainbow of modern paints,Bright Earthbrings the story of colour spectacularly alive. Packed with anecdotes about lucky accidents and hapless misfortunes in the quests for new colours, it provides an entertaining and fascinating new perspective on the science of art.

Philip Ballwrites regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences atNature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and includeCritical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another(winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books),The Music Instinct,Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything,Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under HitlerandInvisible: The history of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.

A timely reissue of a brilliant exploration of the science of art and of colour