Daltonism in painting

This paper is an historical overview of the influence of colour blindness i n painting. The first part is a study of the ways of painting of daltonic s ubjects, which may be monochromatic, bicoloured, or polychromatic. The seco nd part is an inquiry into colour blindness in art before Dalton, with nece ssarily hypothetical results, and after Dalton, when diagnoses were more ea sily made. The number of colour-blind artists in the history of art is prob ably larger than usually assumed, bur it is not possible to demonstrate dal tonism simply by looking at an artist's pictures. The necessity of historic al study is emphasized. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons; Inc. Col Res Appl, 26, S12-S16, 2001.