Editing Complementary colors (section)

===In art===
In 1872, [[Claude Monet]] painted ''[[Impression, Sunrise]]'', a tiny orange sun and some orange light reflected on the clouds and water in the center of a hazy blue landscape. This painting, with its striking use of the complementary colors orange and blue, gave its name to the [[impressionist]] movement. Monet was familiar with the science of complementary colors, and used them with enthusiasm. He wrote in 1888, "color makes its impact from contrasts rather than from its inherent qualities....the primary colors seem more brilliant when they are in contrast with their complementary colors".<ref>Philip Ball, Histoire vivante des couleurs, p. 260.</ref>

Orange and blue became an important combination for all the impressionist painters. They all had studied the recent books on color theory, and they knew that orange placed next to blue made both colors much brighter. [[Auguste Renoir]] painted boats with stripes of chrome orange paint straight from the tube. [[Paul Cézanne]] used orange made of touches of yellow, red and ochre against a blue background.

[[Vincent van Gogh]] was especially known for using this technique; he created his own oranges with mixtures of yellow, ochre and red, and placed them next to slashes of sienna red and bottle-green, and below a sky of turbulent blue and violet. He also put an orange moon and stars in a cobalt blue sky. He wrote to his brother Theo of "searching for oppositions of blue with orange, of red with green, of yellow with purple, searching for broken colors and neutral colors to harmonize the brutality of extremes, trying to make the colors intense, and not a harmony of greys".<ref>Vincent van Gogh, ''Lettres à Theo'', p. 184.</ref>

Describing his painting, ''[[The Night Café]]'', to his brother Theo in 1888, Van Gogh wrote: "I sought to express with red and green the terrible human passions. The hall is blood-red and pale yellow, with a green billiard table in the center, and four lamps of lemon yellow, with rays of orange and green. Everywhere it is a battle and antithesis of the most different reds and greens."<ref>Vincent van Gogh, ''Corréspondénce general'', number 533, cited by John Gage, ''Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction''.</ref>

<gallery>
File:Claude Monet, Impression, soleil levant.jpg|''[[Impression, Sunrise]]'' by [[Claude Monet]] (1872) featured a tiny but vivid orange sun against a blue background. The painting gave its name to the Impressionist movement.
File:Renoir12.jpg|''[[Oarsmen at Chatou]]'' by [[Pierre-Auguste Renoir]] (1879). Renoir knew that orange and blue brightened each other when put side by side.
File:SelbstPortrait VG2.jpg|In this self-portrait (1889), [[Vincent van Gogh]] made the most of the contrast between the orange of his hair and the blue background.
File:VanGogh-starry night ballance1.jpg|''[[The Starry Night|Starry Night]]'' by Vincent van Gogh (1889) features yellow stars and a yellow moon.
File:Vincent Willem van Gogh 076.jpg|''The Night Café'' by Vincent van Gogh (1888) used red and green to express what van Gogh called "the terrible human passions".
</gallery>