The history of colour is largely a history of what could be reliably produced and afforded: early pigments came from earth and minerals, expensive dyes marked status for millennia, and 19th-century synthetic chemistry rapidly made colour cheap, stable and universally available for the first time.
The earliest documented pigments — ochres and charcoal-based blacks — are tens of thousands of years old, found in prehistoric cave art on multiple continents.
Notable use · prehistory
For most of recorded history, the range of colours reliably available to painters and dyers was constrained by what natural minerals, plants and animals could produce — genuinely vivid, stable colours like blue and purple were often the rarest and most expensive.
Notable use · pre-industrial history generally
The mid-19th-century discovery of synthetic aniline dyes, starting with mauveine in 1856, triggered a rapid industrial expansion of affordable colour that fundamentally changed fashion, interiors and printing within a few decades.
Modern use · mid-19th century
Historical claims above are scoped to a specific period, region or culture where relevant — none are presented as a single universal fact. See methodology.