Magenta

Fuchsia and magenta

The web colors fuchsia and magenta are identical, made by mixing the same proportions of blue and red light. In design and printing, there is more variation. The French version of fuchsia in the RGB color model and in printing contains a higher proportion of red than the American version of fuchsia.

History

Fuchsine and magenta dye (1859)

The color magenta was the result of the industrial chemistry revolution of the mid-nineteenth century. It began with the invention of mauveine by William Perkin in 1856, the first synthetic aniline dye. The enormous commercial success of the dye and the new color it produced, mauve, inspired other chemists in Europe to develop new colors made from aniline dyes. In France, François-Emmanuel Verguin, the director of the chemical factory of Louis Rafard near Lyon, tried many different formulae before finally in late 1858 or early 1859, mixing aniline with carbon tetrachloride, producing a reddish-purple dye which he called "fuchsine", after the color of the flower of the fuchsia plant.

Verguin quit the Rafard factory and took his color to a firm of paint manufacturers, Francisque and Joseph Renard, who began to manufacture the dye in 1859. In the same year, two British chemists, Edward Chambers Nicholson and George Maule, working at the laboratory of the paint manufacturer George Simpson, located in Walworth, south of London, made another aniline dye with a similar red-purple color, which they began to manufacture in 1860 under the name "roseine". In 1860, they changed the name of the color to "magenta", in honor of the Battle of Magenta fought by the armies of France and Sardinia against Austrians at Magenta, Lombardy the year before, and the new color became a commercial success.

Starting in 1935, the family of quinacridone dyes was developed. These have colors ranging from red to violet, so nowadays a quinacridone dye is often used for magenta. Various tones of magenta—light, bright, brilliant, vivid, rich, or deep—may be formulated by adding varying amounts of white to quinacridone artist's paints. Another dye used for magenta is Lithol Rubine BK. One of its uses is as a food coloring.

Process magenta (pigment magenta; printer's magenta) (1890s)

In color printing, the color called process magenta, pigment magenta, or printer's magenta is one of the three primary pigment colors which, along with yellow and cyan, constitute the three subtractive primary colors of pigment. The secondary colors of pigment are blue, green, and red. As such, the hue magenta is the complement of green: magenta pigments absorb green light; thus magenta and green are opposite colors. The CMYK printing process was invented in the 1890s, when newspapers began to publish color comic strips. Process magenta is not an RGB color, and there is no fixed conversion from CMYK primaries to RGB. Different formulations are used for printer's ink, so there may be variations in the printed color that is pure magenta ink.

Web colors magenta and fuchsia

The web color magenta is one of the three secondary colors in the RGB color model. On the RGB color wheel, magenta is the color between rose and violet, and halfway between red and blue. This color is called magenta in X11 and fuchsia in HTML. In the RGB color model, it is created by combining equal intensities of red and blue light. The two web colors magenta and fuchsia are exactly the same color. Sometimes the web color magenta is called electric magenta or electronic magenta.

While the magenta used in printing and the web color have the same name, they have important differences. Process magenta (the color used for magenta printing ink—also called printer's or pigment magenta) is much less vivid than the color magenta achievable on a computer screen. CMYK printing technology cannot accurately reproduce on paper the color on the computer screen. When the web color magenta is reproduced on paper, it is called fuchsia and it is physically impossible for it to appear on paper as vivid as on a computer screen. Colored pencils and crayons called "magenta" are usually colored the color of process magenta (printer's magenta).

In science and culture

In art

• Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) used a shade of magenta in 1890 in his portrait of Marie Lagadu, and in some of his South Seas paintings.
• Henri Matisse and the members of the Fauvist movement used magenta and other non-traditional colors to surprise viewers, and to move their emotions through the use of bold colors.
• Since the mid-1960s, water based fluorescent magenta paint (fluorescent cerise, fluorescent chartreuse yellow, fluorescent blue, and fluorescent green) has been available to paint psychedelic black light paintings.

In literature

• The color plays a central role in Craig Laurance Gidney's novel A Spectral Hue.

In film

• The titular alien entity in the 2019 horror film Color Out of Space, an adaptation of the 1927 H. P. Lovecraft short story The Colour Out of Space, is depicted as being magenta due to the color's extra-spectral status.

In astronomy

• Astronomers have reported that spectral class T brown dwarfs (the ones with the coolest temperatures except for the recently discovered Y brown dwarfs) are colored magenta because of absorption by sodium and potassium atoms of light in the green portion of the spectrum.

In biology: magenta insects, birds, fish, and mammals

In botany

Magenta is a common color for flowers, particularly in the tropics and sub-tropics. Because magenta is the complementary color of green, magenta flowers have the highest contrast with the green foliage, and therefore are more visible to the animals needed for their pollination.

In business

The German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom uses a magenta logo. It has sought to prevent use of any similar color by other businesses, even those in unrelated fields, such as the insurance company Lemonade.

In public transport

Magenta was the English name of Tokyo's Oedo subway line color. It was later changed to ruby. It is also the color of the Metropolitan line of the London Underground.

In transportation

In aircraft autopilot systems, the path that pilot or plane should follow to its destination is usually indicated in cockpit displays using the color magenta.

In numismatics

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued a Magenta colored banknote of ₹2000 denomination on 8 November 2016 under Mahatma Gandhi New Series. This was one of the highest currency note printed by RBI in India but is now discontinued.

In vexillology and heraldry

Magenta is an extremely rare color to find on heraldic flags and coats of arms, since its adoption dates back to relatively recent times. However, there are some examples of its use:

In politics

• Throughout much of Europe, the color of magenta (or variants of such, such as pink or amaranth) is used to symbolise social liberalism or classical liberalism
• The color magenta is used to symbolize anti-racism by the Amsterdam-based anti-racism Magenta Foundation.
• In Danish politics, magenta is the color of Det Radikale Venstre, the Danish social-liberal party.
• In Austrian politics, it is used to represent NEOS – The New Austria and Liberal Forum, a social liberal party.
• In Belgium, it is used by DéFI, a social liberal party.
• In Germany, Magenta was, until 2026, one of the colors of the Free Democratic Party, or FDP, a classical liberal party.
• In US, Magenta is used for a JewBelong campaign.