Orange

by Leif Sohlman

Canvas Print

$47

Framed Print

$74

Art Print

$23

Poster

$23

Metal Print

$71

Acrylic Print

$79

Wood Print

$51

Throw Pillow

$27

Duvet Cover

$99

Tote Bag

$24

Greeting Card

$5.00

iPhone Case

$32

Coffee Mug

$14

Title

Orange

Artist

Leif Sohlman

Medium

Photograph - Photo

Description

Orange flower in daylight. Canon 5D mk III
The colour orange takes its name from the orange fruit. On the spectrum of light, and in the traditional colour wheel used by painters, it is located between red and yellow.

In Europe and America, orange is commonly associated with amusement, the unconventional, extroverts, fire, activity, danger, taste and aroma, the autumn season, and Protestantism. In Asia, it is an important symbolic colour of Buddhism and Hinduism
The colour orange is named after the appearance of the ripe orange fruit.[3]

The word comes from the Old French orenge, from the old term for the fruit, pomme d'orenge. That name comes from the Arabic naranj, through the Persian naranj, derived from the sanskrit naranga.[4]

Before this word was introduced to the English-speaking world, the colour was referred to as ġeolurēad (yellow-red).

The first recorded use of orange as a colour name in English was in 1512,[5][6] in a will now filed with the Public Record Office
In ancient Egypt, artists used an orange mineral pigment called realgar for tomb paintings and other uses. It was also used later by Medieval artists for the colouring of manuscripts. Pigments were also made in ancient times from a mineral known as orpiment. Orpiment was an important item of trade in the Roman Empire and was used as a medicine in China although it contains arsenic and is highly toxic. It was also used as a fly poison and to poison arrows. Because of its yellow-orange colour, it was also a favourite with alchemists searching for a way to make gold, both in China and the West.

Before the late 15th century, the colour orange existed in Europe, but without the name; it was simply called yellow-red. Spanish and Portuguese merchants brought the first orange trees to Europe from Asia in the late 15th and early 16th century, along with the sanskrit name "naranga," which gradually became "orange" in English. In parts of Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia, the orange fruit was and is still called the Chinese apple.
The House of Orange-Nassau was one of the most influential royal houses in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. It originated in 1163 the tiny Principality of Orange, a feudal state of 108 square miles north of Avignon in southern France. The principality of Orange took its name not from the fruit, but a Roman-Celtic settlement on the site which was founded in 36 or 35 BC and was named Arausio, after a Celtic water god.[7]

The family of the Prince of Orange eventually adopted the name and the colour orange. The colour came to be associated with Protestantism, due to participation by the House of Orange on the Protestant side in the French Wars of Religion. One member of the House, William I of Orange, organized the Dutch resistance against Spain, a war that lasted for eighty years, until the Netherlands won its independence. Another member, William III of Orange, became King of England in 1689, after the downfall of the Catholic Stuart dynasty.

Thanks to William III, orange became an important political colour in Britain and Europe. William was a Protestant, and as such he defended the Protestant minority of Ireland against the majority Roman Catholic population. As a result, the Protestants of Ireland were known as Orangemen. Orange eventually became one of the colours of the Irish flag, symbolizing the Protestant heritage.

When the Dutch settlers of South Africa rebelled against the British in the late 19th century, they organized what they called the Orange Free State. In the United States, the flag of the City of New York has an orange stripe, to remember the Dutch colonists who founded the city. William of Orange is also remembered as the founder of William and Mary College, and Nassau County in New York is named after the House of Orange-Nassau.