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As we launch our new paint shade, Saddle, author and colour expert Kassia St Clair roams free on the chameleon qualities of shades of brown.

‘A good painting, like a good fiddle, should be brown.� Thus opined Sir George Beaumont, a nineteenth-century amateur artist, bastion of conservative taste, and key figure in the creation of the National Gallery.

Culturally speaking, shades of brown are chameleons, making them rather difficult to pin down. For Beaumont, for example, brown was about good judgement. It represented something solid rather than showy, a depth acquired with age, an appeal to hand-crafted traditions. Several decades later, during the 1890s, deep browns were linked with refinement and luxury � an association that lives on in the livery of UPS, which was founded around this time. When this colour was once more the talk of the town during the 1970s, its meaning had shifted again. Those who decorated in shades of tortoiseshell, burnt orange and mustard were signalling their connection with nature, a certain kind of spirituality, even respect for the earth itself.

Style, of course, is cyclical. So it’s hardly surprising that, after a lean few years when people were content to merely dip their toes into tan, fawn, beige, camel, and � at a push� café au lait, richer, deeper hues are once again in the ascendant. Now, however, how we feel about deep browns has further evolved. For one thing, those resonances that attracted previous generations � brown’s solidity, connection to the earth, and artisanal savour � have an added depth and meaning when transferred to a digital age. For another, it’s clear that this time our relationship with browns will be a deeply sensual affair. It’s no accident, for example, that so many popular shades are named for life’s luxuries: walnut, chocolate, mocha, coffee, cinnamon, mahogany. Shades that call to our senses.

The new Saddle brown is beautiful to look at: deep and rich, without being tawny, with enough softness to give it an air of calm. But it also has an added sensory pull, recalling the sweet, musky aroma of leather. For some, this might mean stables, with their fug of hay and horses; for others, it might conjure the warm nuzzle of a beloved leather jacket; or that particular smell you get when walking into a shop selling shoes and bags. It’s a colour that quietly seduces. That evokes heritage without being stuffy. And, of course, one that calls to the senses. We can safely say that Sir George Beaumont would
have loved it.