Brooding Hoar Ultramarine

The adjectival use of brood in the sense of to dwell on — a gerund-as-modifier that describes mood more than reflectance. Used as a color word principally in art criticism since the late nineteenth century: brooding sky, brooding portrait. In the engine's adjective grid, brooding sits in the dark-and-quiet end where the hue is present but reads as withholding rather than presenting itself.

Old English hār, grey-with-age-or-hoar-frost. As a color modifier, hoar implies a grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted quality, the visual register of English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar hand-grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar-and-frosted-pasture hoar-and-grey-aged-and-hoar-frosted surfaces under English-meadow-and-hedgerow-hoar-and-frosted-pasture Cotswold-and-Yorkshire-Dales-frost-pasture frosted-meadow-light. Sits at the modifier-and-weather end of the grid, parallel to rime and sleet in usage.

The pigment ground from lapis lazuli — the Afghan mineral imported through Venice in the late Middle Ages, more expensive by weight than gold during the Renaissance. The color refers to a freshly mixed ultramarine pigment in linseed oil: a saturated, slightly violet-shifted deep blue with the matte finish of micron-ground rock. Deeper than cobalt, cooler than royal, with the art-historical weight of the blue Vermeer reserved for Mary's robe.