Although the color violet is now used in a wide variety of everyday products, ranging from toys to clothing to cars, and although it now appears commonly in artistic works, violet was rarely used in fine art before the early 1860s. The color violet only became an integral part of modern culture and life with the rise of the French Impressionists. I investigated the use of violet in over 130,000 artworks prior to 1863 and found that it appeared in about .06 percent of the paintings. Violet was used substantially more frequently in Impressionist works, and remains popular in fine art and in popular culture today. I examine several explanations for the explosion of the use of violet in the art world during the Impressionist era, and conclude that a cognitive-perceptual explanation, based on the heightened sensitivity of the Impressionists to short wavelengths, may account for it. The findings fit with a new understanding about evolutionary changes in planetary light and human adaptation to light.

中文翻译：

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为什么在1860年代之前艺术家很少使用“彩色紫罗兰”？

尽管现在紫罗兰色已广泛用于从玩具，服装到汽车的各种日常用品中，并且虽然现在已普遍出现在艺术作品中，但紫罗兰色在1860年代初之前很少用于美术。随着法国印象派的兴起，紫色变成现代文化和生活中不可或缺的一部分。我调查了1863年之前紫罗兰色在130,000多种艺术品中的使用情况，发现紫罗兰色出现在约0.06％的绘画中。紫罗兰在印象派作品中的使用频率更高，并且在当今的美术和流行文化中仍然很受欢迎。我考察了印象派时代在艺术界使用紫罗兰的爆炸式增长的几种解释，得出的结论是，认知-感知的解释，基于印象派对短波长的敏感性提高，这可能是造成这种情况的原因。这些发现与对行星光的进化变化和人类对光的适应性有了新的认识。