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 National Gallery host Beks Leary to get emotional about colour. Along the way, we talk about Pablo Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ and Derek Jarman’s final film ‘Blue’, the calming green of John Constable’s ‘The Cornfield’, and Mark Rothko’s colour field abstractions. And we’ll see just how cultural our perception of colour really is.

Zeynep is an artist, colour consultant, and founder of The Colour Club. She holds a Master’s degree from Central Saint Martins and spent two years researching colour psychology. Since graduating, she has gone on to become a certified colour consultant and colour therapist. Through The Colour Club, Zeynep runs workshops, hosts events, and offers consultancy, as well as publishing articles and interviews.

Find out more about The Colour Club on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecolourclub/

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: youtu.be/WK1GSvP6VYs

You can email us with any questions via podcast@nationalgallery.org.uk

Find out more about the podcast on our website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast

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To take our short survey about the podcast please visit: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast

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Paintings mentioned:

John Constable, ‘The Cornfield’, 1826. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/john-constable-the-cornfield

Derek Jarman, ‘Blue’, 1993. Tate https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/jarman-blue-t14555

Vincent van Gogh, ‘Van Gogh’s Chair’, 1888. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-van-gogh-s-chair

Vincent van Gogh, ‘Gauguin's Chair’, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0048V1962

Further reading:

Find out more about The Colour Club here: https://www.thecolourclub.co.uk/

Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963

To find out more about research conducted during the 2004 Olympic Games in...

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 exported without a license, and built empires. But today you might find it in your strawberry yoghurt.

This is the story of how bugs turned the world red with historian and writer Amy Butler Greenfield and National Gallery host Beks Leary.

Amy is the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of dyers, and her award-winning history of cochineal, 'A Perfect Red', has been published in eight languages. A popular speaker on radio and television programs, Amy was born in Philadelphia, studied history at Oxford, and now lives with her family in Oxfordshire.

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z2jEf3QH_ho

You can email us with any questions via podcast@nationalgallery.org.uk

Find out more about the podcast on our website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast

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Paintings mentioned:

Workshop of Albrecht Dürer with Hans Baldung Grien, ‘The Virgin and Child ('The Madonna with the Iris')’, about 1500-10. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/workshop-of-albrecht-durer-with-hans-baldung-grien-the-virgin-and-child-the-madonna-with-the-iris

Titian, ‘The Holy Family with a Shepherd’, about 1510. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-the-holy-family-with-a-shepherd

Titian, 'Diana and Callisto’, 1556-9. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-diana-and-callisto

Further reading:

Amy Butler Greenfield, ‘A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire’, 2005

For more information on ‘The Virgin and Child ('The Madonna with the Iris')’ by Workshop of Albrecht Dürer with Hans Baldung Grien, please see the following volumes of the National Gallery’s Technical Bulletin:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/research-resources/technical-bulletin/technical-bulletin-volume-21

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 Frankenstein, a characterful trio of Johanns, and a renowned Botticelli forgery.

This pigment came to be known as Prussian blue or Berlin blue. Before its discovery, a range of blue pigments existed but each had a significant flaw: natural ultramarine was prohibitively expensive, smalt discoloured, azurite turned green and indigo faded.

Join colour specialist Evie Hatch and National Gallery host Beks Leary for a conversation about the pigment most famously seen in the blue revolution of Japanese woodblock printing, which inspired the Impressionists, as well as in earlier Rococo painting.

Evie Hatch is an art historian specialising in the history and characteristics of artist pigments. She is the writer and presenter of Jackson's Art Pigment Stories series.

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: youtu.be/WK1GSvP6VYs

You can email us with any questions via podcast@nationalgallery.org.uk

Find out more about the podcast on our website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast

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Paintings mentioned:

Paolo Veronese’s Four Allegories of Love series, about 1575: https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/search-the-collection?q=Four+Allegories+of+Love&tpf=&tpt=&acf=&act=

Probably by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau, A Girl with a Kitten, 1743. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/probably-by-jean-baptiste-perronneau-a-girl-with-a-kitten

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), about 1830-32. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/45434

Claude Monet, Impression, Soleil Levant, 1872. Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris https://www.marmottan.fr/en/notice/4014/

Claude Monet, Bathers at La Grenouillère, 1869. The National Gallery, London

Welcome to Stories in Colour! We're starting at the very beginning to ask an age-old question: are the colours you see, the same as the colours I see?

Join Professor Anya Hurlbert from Newcastle University and National Gallery host Beks Leary as they ask whether colour is real and how exactly we see it, stopping off to look at paintings from the National Gallery along the way. We go back to the viral dress that divided the internet in 2015 – was it blue and black, or was it white and gold? This was the moment so many of us discovered that colour is our own – in Anya’s words – personal possession.

Anya is a Professor of Visual Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on human visual perception: how and why we see what we see. As Scientist Trustee at the National Gallery from 2010-2018, she worked with us on our 2014 ‘Making Colour’ exhibition – bringing together art and science to explain how artists overcame the technical challenges involved in creating colour.

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Watch the full episode on YouTube: youtu.be/gYTWp_iLRh4

You can email us with any questions via podcast@nationalgallery.org.uk

Find out more about the podcast on our website: www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast

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Paintings mentioned:

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire, 1839. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-fighting-temeraire

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, The Skiff (La Yole), 1875. The National Gallery, London https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pierre-auguste-renoir-the-skiff-la-yole

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer), 1890–91. The Art Institute of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/artworks/64818/stacks-of-wheat-end-of-summer

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (Sunset, Snow Effect), 1890–91. The Art Institute of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/artworks/81545/stacks-of-wheat-sunset-snow-effect

Claude Monet, Stacks of Wheat (End of Day, Autumn), 1890–91. The Art Institute of Chicago

How has colour changed the world? A vibrant new podcast from the National Gallery, Stories in Colour launches with our first two episodes on Wednesday 28 May 2025.

The Times ★★★★ ‘There’s lots to enjoy here.’

In each episode, we uncover the hidden mysteries woven into colour from antiquity to the present day.

Along the way, you'll hear from curators, scientists, historians, artists, and more experts, looking at humanity’s efforts to make colour and make meaning with it.

And amongst these stories, you will see - and hear - the National Gallery’s paintings in a whole new spectrum of light.