Prussian Blue: Invented in Berlin in 1704, It Crossed the World to Make Hokusai's Great Wave Possible

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Prussian blue (chemical formula Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃, ferric ferrocyanide) is a deep, saturated, cool blue pigment that was the first synthetic colour pigment produced in the modern European tradition — the first pigment whose production method was deliberately engineered rather than accidentally discovered or derived directly from natural mineral sources. It was invented in Berlin in 1704, spread through European painting within two decades, travelled to Japan via Dutch trade routes by approximately 1820, transformed Japanese woodblock printing, made the Great Wave possible, influenced Van Gogh's palette in Arles and Saint-Rémy, and remains in use today as both an artist's pigment and a medical antidote to thallium and caesium poisoning. The DeckArts studio in Berlin produces Hokusai wall art using UV archival inks — in the city that invented the pigment Hokusai used. DeckArts reproduces the Hokusai Great Wave on Grade-A Canadian maple from approximately $140 (single) to $230 (diptych), shipping from Berlin.

The 1704 Accident: How Prussian Blue Was Discovered

The discovery of Prussian blue in Berlin in 1704 is documented in two primary sources: a letter from the chemist Wilhelm Homberg to the Paris Académie des Sciences (1709) and an account by the colour maker Johann Jacob Diesbach himself, transmitted through the pharmaceutical and alchemical literature of the early 18th century. The circumstances of the discovery are consistently described as an accident arising from contaminated raw materials.

Johann Jacob Diesbach was a colour maker — a craftsman who prepared pigments for sale to artists — working in Berlin in the early 1700s. He was attempting to produce a red lake pigment (a red colour derived from cochineal, a dried insect that produces a brilliant red dye when extracted and fixed to an aluminium substrate). The process required potash (potassium carbonate) to precipitate the red colour from the cochineal solution. On the occasion in question, Diesbach used potash that had been previously handled in the laboratory of Johann Conrad Dippel — an alchemist, physician, and early chemist who worked in the same Berlin laboratory space. Dippel's potash was contaminated with animal oil (specifically, a substance produced by destructive distillation of animal bones, now understood to contain cyanide compounds — potassium ferrocyanide being the critical contaminant).

When Diesbach added the contaminated potash to his cochineal solution, instead of producing the expected red precipitate, he obtained a deep, brilliant blue. The cyanide contaminant from Dippel's animal oil had reacted with the iron in the cochineal substrate to produce ferric ferrocyanide — Prussian blue. Diesbach recognized the commercial value of the new colour immediately and initially kept the production method secret, selling the pigment under the name Berliner Blau (Berlin Blue) at premium prices. The production method was published in 1724 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society by the chemist John Woodward — approximately 20 years after the discovery — after which Prussian blue became commercially available from multiple producers across Europe.

The specific date of the discovery is given as 1704 in the primary literature, though some historians place it as late as 1706 or 1707. The location — Berlin, specifically the laboratory of Johann Conrad Dippel — is documented consistently across all primary sources. The DeckArts studio in Berlin therefore operates in the city that was the site of this specific chemical discovery, 322 years ago, that eventually made possible the colour of Hokusai's Great Wave.

The Chemistry: Iron Cyanide and Why It Is Deep Blue

Prussian blue's chemical structure explains its optical behaviour. The compound is ferric ferrocyanide: a coordination complex in which iron atoms exist in two oxidation states (Fe²⁺ and Fe³⁺) connected by cyanide bridges (CN⁻ ligands) in a three-dimensional framework. The specific deep blue colour arises from an intervalence charge transfer (IVCT) — an electron transfer between the Fe²⁺ and Fe³⁺ centres across the cyanide bridges when the compound absorbs light. The absorption band peaks in the red-orange region of the visible spectrum (approximately 700 nm), causing the compound to reflect blue light strongly and absorb red, orange, and yellow light. The result is a deep, saturated blue that is cooler than ultramarine (which has a slight violet character) and deeper than cerulean (which is lighter and more sky-blue).

Prussian blue is stable in most environments: it does not react with dilute acids, does not fade in light (it is one of the most lightfast pigments available to artists, rated at the highest permanence level by the ASTM International standards), and maintains its colour under most atmospheric conditions. The one significant instability is alkaline sensitivity: Prussian blue reacts with alkaline solutions (strong bases, lime plaster) and converts to ferric oxide (rust-coloured), which is why it cannot be used in fresco painting on lime plaster — the alkaline environment destroys the blue. This limitation excluded Prussian blue from the fresco tradition, confining it to oil painting, watercolour, gouache, and the water-based binder systems of Japanese woodblock printing, where it performs with exceptional stability.

The specific visual quality of Prussian blue — a deep, cool, saturated blue with high tinting strength (meaning a small amount produces a strong colour effect) — made it immediately valuable to painters who previously had access only to more expensive natural blues: ultramarine (from lapis lazuli, approximately $40,000 per kilogram in 2026 purchasing power), azurite (a copper carbonate blue that is less stable and less saturated), and smalt (a cobalt blue glass, coarser and less stable than Prussian blue). Prussian blue was dramatically cheaper than any of these alternatives and more stable than most, which explains its rapid adoption across European painting in the 1720s and 1730s.

Prussian Blue Across European Painting: Watteau to Gainsborough

Prussian blue entered European oil painting within approximately 20 years of its discovery. The earliest documented use in a major canonical painting is in Antoine Watteau's Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera (1717, Musée du Louvre Paris, 129 × 194 cm), which contains Prussian blue in the sky zones — one of the earliest major uses after the pigment's production method became more widely known. By the mid-18th century, Prussian blue was being used by painters across Europe: Thomas Gainsborough used it for the blue-grey sky zones in his portrait backgrounds; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo used it in the fresco-adjacent secco painting sections of his decorative ceiling programmes (though not in the buon fresco sections); and Francisco Goya used it extensively in his oil paintings, where it is identifiable by X-ray fluorescence analysis in the shadow zones of many works now in the Prado.

Prussian blue was particularly important to the development of 18th-century landscape painting because it enabled painters to produce atmospheric blue sky tones at a cost that made large-scale landscape canvases economically viable. The characteristic cool blue-grey sky of the English landscape tradition — from Gainsborough through Constable — depends significantly on Prussian blue as the dominant blue pigment. The alternative, ultramarine, was too expensive for large sky zones; azurite was too unstable and too coarse; Prussian blue provided the correct cool temperature, high tinting strength, and sufficient permanence to become the standard blue pigment of the European landscape tradition for approximately 100 years, until the development of synthetic ultramarine (1826) and cobalt blue (1802) provided alternatives.

Arrival in Japan c.1820: The Dutch Trade Route

Japan maintained a policy of national isolation (sakoku) from approximately 1635 to 1853, restricting international trade to a single point: the artificial island of Dejima (Deshima) in the harbour of Nagasaki, where the Dutch East India Company (VOC) maintained the only authorised foreign trading station. All European goods that entered Japan during the sakoku period entered through Dejima — including scientific instruments, books, medicines, and artists' materials. Prussian blue entered Japan through this single channel, brought by Dutch traders, probably in multiple shipments across the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The specific date of Prussian blue's arrival in Japan is not precisely documented in either Dutch or Japanese primary sources. The pigment's Japanese name — Berorin-ai (Berlin blue, Berlin indigo) — preserves the memory of its European origin: the Japanese name for the pigment is literally "Berlin blue," confirming that Japanese users in the early 19th century knew it as a European import from a specific European city. The earliest documented use of Prussian blue in Japanese woodblock printing is generally placed at approximately 1820, which corresponds to the period when Hokusai began the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series (published 1831–33) — the series that contains the Great Wave.

The arrival of Prussian blue in Japan in approximately 1820 had an immediate and dramatic effect on the ukiyo-e woodblock printing tradition. Before Prussian blue, Japanese printmakers had access to natural indigo (ai) and other plant-based blues — colours that are less saturated, less stable, and more expensive to produce than Prussian blue. Prussian blue's superior saturation and depth allowed Japanese printmakers to produce the deep, luminous blue tones that were impossible with the available natural alternatives. The period from approximately 1820 to 1850 — the period when Prussian blue was first widely available but before it was domestically produced in Japan — is often called the Prussian blue period of ukiyo-e by art historians, recognising the specific chromatic revolution the pigment produced in the tradition.

Hokusai and the Great Wave: Why Prussian Blue Made It Possible

Katsushika Hokusai (Edo/Tokyo, 1760–1849) published the Great Wave off Kanagawa (Under the Wave off Kanagawa, 神奈川沖浪裏) as plate 1 of the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji circa 1831. Hokusai was 70 or 71 years old when the series was first published — in the fourth decade of a career that had already produced thousands of prints, illustrated books, and paintings under multiple artistic names. The Thirty-Six Views series was conceived as a technically ambitious programme using the new capabilities that Prussian blue had made available to Japanese printmakers.

The specific visual quality of the Great Wave — the deep, saturated, cool blue of the wave's body against the near-white foam fingers at the crest and the pale blue-grey of the sky — is technically impossible without Prussian blue. The natural indigo available to earlier ukiyo-e printmakers could not produce this specific shade: indigo (from the plant Indigofera tinctoria) produces a blue that is less saturated, warmer in colour temperature (slightly violet-leaning rather than pure cool blue), and less stable in light (it fades to grey-blue with prolonged UV exposure). Prussian blue's higher saturation, cooler temperature, and superior lightfastness enabled Hokusai to produce the specific chromatic effect of the Great Wave — the contrast between the deep cool blue of the wave and the near-white of the foam — that makes the composition the most powerful water image in the history of printmaking.

The Great Wave's Prussian blue was applied in two or three successive printings from separate blocks, each application adding depth and saturation to the blue zones. The deepest blue areas — the wave's interior hollow and the shadow zones beneath the foam — required the most applications. The progressive buildup of Prussian blue across multiple printings created a tonal range within the blue field that goes from near-black at the deepest shadow points through full Prussian blue in the middle tones to near-white where the foam begins. This tonal range within a single pigment colour is a specific property of Prussian blue's high tinting strength: small additions of white reduce the saturation without shifting the colour temperature, allowing the printmaker to produce a complete range of blue tones from a single pigment source.

Hiroshige and the Blue Revolution in Ukiyo-e

Utagawa Hiroshige (Edo/Tokyo, 1797–1858) was the second major ukiyo-e printmaker to exploit Prussian blue's visual possibilities. His One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58) and The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1831–34) use Prussian blue for sky, water, and atmospheric distance zones in ways that create a specific atmospheric quality — the sense of deep spatial recession and aerial perspective — that was not achievable in the pre-Prussian blue tradition. Hiroshige's use of Prussian blue is more atmospheric and more graduated than Hokusai's: where Hokusai uses Prussian blue at high saturation for maximum graphic impact, Hiroshige typically uses it at lower saturation in multiple gradated applications (the bokashi or gradation technique) to create the soft atmospheric blue of rainy or misty days in Edo-period Tokyo and Kyoto.

The Hiroshige and Hokusai prints were imported into Europe in significant quantities from the 1850s onward, where they influenced the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements directly. Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh all collected Japanese woodblock prints. Van Gogh owned over 400 Japanese prints at the time of his death (now in the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam collection) and copied three Hiroshige prints directly in oil as a colour and compositional exercise in Paris (1887). The Prussian blue of the Japanese prints that influenced the European avant-garde was therefore the same Berlin pigment that had crossed the Dutch trade route to Japan 60–70 years earlier — a chromatic circle that began and ended in Europe.

Van Gogh and Prussian Blue: The Starry Night's Deep Shadow Zones

Van Gogh used Prussian blue extensively across his mature Arles and Saint-Rémy periods. Infrared spectroscopy and X-ray fluorescence analysis conducted by the Van Gogh Museum's conservation team on multiple major works have identified Prussian blue as a primary component of the deep blue shadow zones in: the Starry Night (1889, MoMA New York), the Night Café (1888, Yale University Art Gallery), the Bedroom in Arles (1888, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam), and multiple self-portraits from the Saint-Rémy period. In each of these works, Prussian blue provides the deep cool blue that reads as the darkest, most saturated tone in the palette — the colour that defines the bottom of the tonal scale in Van Gogh's warm-cool compositions.

In the Starry Night specifically, Prussian blue is the primary pigment of the deep blue sky background — the ground from which the swirling chrome yellow stars and crescent moon advance as warm-against-cool contrasts. The Prussian blue sky at full saturation creates a cool chromatic temperature of approximately 5000–6000K perceptual equivalent, against which the warm chrome yellow at approximately 2500–3000K perceptual equivalent advances with maximum warm-cool contrast. This is the specific optical relationship that makes the Starry Night's stars glow with apparent luminosity: the cool Prussian blue background maximises the perceptual contrast for the warm chrome yellow foreground elements. Without Prussian blue at this saturation level, the chrome yellow stars would read as simply brighter tones rather than as luminous warm points floating from a cool dark ground.

On Canadian maple, the Prussian blue zones of Van Gogh's Starry Night and Hokusai's Great Wave read against the warm amber grain beneath the UV archival print as a cool accent against a warm organic ground — the specific warm-cool chromatic tension that makes both works effective as domestic wall art. The maple's warm undertone enriches the warm elements of both compositions (the chrome yellow stars of the Starry Night, the cream foam of the Great Wave) while the Prussian blue reads as the cool accent against this warm ground. This is the optical logic of both compositions made material in the substrate: warm ground, cool blue, warm accent.

Prussian Blue Today: Antidote, Pigment, and Archival Standard

Prussian blue has three significant contemporary uses beyond its historical role as an artist's pigment:

Medical antidote: Prussian blue is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a medical antidote for poisoning by thallium (a heavy metal used historically in rat poison and commercially in semiconductor manufacturing) and radioactive caesium (which can be released in nuclear accidents or dirty bomb explosions). The mechanism: Prussian blue binds to thallium and caesium ions in the gastrointestinal tract, forming insoluble complexes that are excreted rather than absorbed. The FDA approved Prussian blue (branded as Radiogardase) in 2003 for this purpose; the treatment was used following the 2006 polonium-210 poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London (though polonium is not treated by Prussian blue — this case used the FDA's expanded access programme for experimental treatments), and protocols for Prussian blue use were developed following the Chernobyl accident (1986) and the Goiânia accident in Brazil (1987, caesium-137 orphan source contamination).

Artist's pigment: Prussian blue remains commercially available as an artist's pigment (Pigment Blue 27, CI 77510) from all major paint manufacturers including Williamsburg, Gamblin, Old Holland, and Winsor & Newton. It is rated ASTM I (maximum lightfastness) by most manufacturers in oil painting media. Its tinting strength (the amount of colour effect per unit weight) is among the highest of any blue pigment, which means small amounts produce strong colour effects — the same property that made it so valuable to Hokusai's printmakers and Van Gogh's palette.

Archival and industrial applications: The cyanotype photographic process (1842, Sir John Herschel) uses iron cyanide chemistry related to Prussian blue — the characteristic blue of architectural blueprint drawings is a cyanotype, and the word "blueprint" itself refers to this blue. Industrial applications include electrochemical energy storage (Prussian blue analogues as electrode materials in sodium-ion batteries, a major area of current research) and gas sensing (Prussian blue films as electrochemical sensors for hydrogen peroxide and other analytes).

Prussian Blue on Canadian Maple: DeckArts Berlin

The DeckArts studio is located in Berlin — the city in which Prussian blue was discovered in 1704 by Johann Jacob Diesbach. The Hokusai Great Wave diptych and single deck that DeckArts produces in Berlin use UV archival pigment inks (not Prussian blue itself, but archival equivalents that reproduce the pigment's specific chromatic quality) on Grade-A Canadian maple. The Canadian maple substrate provides the warm amber ground against which the Prussian blue reads as a cool accent — the same warm-cool relationship that Hokusai designed into the Great Wave's composition between the warm cream foam and the cool blue wave body.

The UV archival pigment inks used by DeckArts are rated at 100+ years permanence under normal indoor conditions — a stability rating that exceeds the permanence of the original woodblock prints, which are subject to fading in the red and yellow ink zones (Prussian blue itself is the most stable pigment in the original prints). The archival print on maple therefore preserves the Great Wave's Prussian blue at its original 1831 chromatic intensity indefinitely, rather than in the partially faded state that many original impressions now show after 195 years of aging.

Under warm LED at 2700K in a Japandi, Scandinavian, or contemporary domestic interior, the Prussian blue of the Great Wave diptych reads as the room's primary cool chromatic accent against warm organic neutral materials (white oak, linen, warm plaster). The warm-cool tension between the Prussian blue and the maple's warm amber grain is the same warm-cool tension that Hokusai built into the original composition and that makes the Great Wave the most effective single cool-accent image in the DeckArts range for warm domestic interiors.

DeckArts Berlin

Hokusai — Great Wave Diptych (~$230)

Prussian blue: invented Berlin 1704 by Johann Jacob Diesbach. Arrived Japan ~1820 via Dutch trade. Made the Great Wave possible. DeckArts produces this print in Berlin — the city that invented the pigment Hokusai used.

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FAQ

Who invented Prussian blue?

Prussian blue (ferric ferrocyanide, Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃) was invented in Berlin in 1704 by colour maker Johann Jacob Diesbach, working in the laboratory of alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel. The discovery was accidental: Diesbach was attempting to produce a red lake pigment using potash contaminated with animal-bone cyanide compounds from Dippel's laboratory. The contaminated potash reacted with iron in the substrate to produce a deep blue precipitate — Prussian blue. The production method was published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1724 by chemist John Woodward.

When did Prussian blue arrive in Japan?

Prussian blue arrived in Japan approximately around 1820 via the Dutch East India Company's trading post at Dejima island in Nagasaki harbour — the only point through which foreign goods entered Japan during the sakoku isolation period (1635–1853). The Japanese name for the pigment — Berorin-ai (Berlin blue) — preserves the memory of its European origin. The earliest documented use in Japanese woodblock printing is placed at approximately 1820, coinciding with the period when Hokusai began the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series (published 1831–33).

Why is the Great Wave blue?

Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa (c.1831) is its specific deep cool blue because it uses Prussian blue (Berorin-ai) — a pigment invented in Berlin in 1704 and arrived in Japan approximately 1820 via Dutch trade. The natural indigo available to earlier Japanese printmakers could not produce this saturation or depth. Prussian blue's superior saturation, cool colour temperature, and high lightfastness enabled the specific chromatic effect of the Great Wave's deep blue wave body against near-white foam — technically impossible with pre-1820 Japanese pigments. DeckArts produces the Great Wave in Berlin, the city that invented the pigment.

Is Prussian blue still used today?

Yes. Prussian blue (Pigment Blue 27, CI 77510) is still commercially available as an artist's pigment from Williamsburg, Gamblin, Old Holland, Winsor & Newton, and other manufacturers, rated ASTM I (maximum lightfastness) in oil painting. It is also FDA-approved as a medical antidote for thallium and radioactive caesium poisoning (branded as Radiogardase, approved 2003). The cyanotype photographic process (1842) and architectural blueprints use related iron cyanide chemistry. Prussian blue analogues are currently being researched as electrode materials for sodium-ion batteries.

What colour is Prussian blue exactly?

Prussian blue (ferric ferrocyanide) is a deep, saturated, cool blue — cooler in colour temperature than ultramarine (which has a slight violet-red undertone) and deeper than cerulean or cobalt (which are lighter and more sky-blue). Its absorption peak in the red-orange region (~700 nm) produces a reflected colour that is approximately equivalent to a blue with a colour temperature of 5000–6500K. It has very high tinting strength — small amounts produce strong colour effects. Under warm LED at 2700K, Prussian blue reads as a cool accent against warm domestic materials, creating the warm-cool chromatic tension that makes it effective in Japandi and Scandinavian interiors.

Article Summary

Prussian blue (ferric ferrocyanide, Fe₄[Fe(CN)₆]₃, Pigment Blue 27) was invented in Berlin in 1704 by colour maker Johann Jacob Diesbach in the laboratory of Johann Conrad Dippel — an accidental discovery when cyanide-contaminated potash was used in a red lake pigment process. The production method was published in 1724 (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, John Woodward). By the 1730s it was used by Watteau, Gainsborough, Tiepolo, and Goya. Arrived Japan ~1820 via Dutch East India Company Dejima trading post; Japanese name Berorin-ai (Berlin blue) preserves the origin memory. Enabled the Prussian blue period of ukiyo-e (~1820–1850). Hokusai's Great Wave (c.1831) and Hiroshige's Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1831–34) are the defining works of this period — visually impossible with pre-1820 indigo. Van Gogh used Prussian blue in the Starry Night (1889, MoMA), Night Café (1888, Yale), and Bedroom in Arles (1888, Van Gogh Museum): confirmed by X-ray fluorescence analysis. Today: FDA-approved antidote (thallium, radioactive caesium, Radiogardase 2003), artist's pigment (ASTM I lightfastness), cyanotype photography, sodium-ion battery research. DeckArts produces Hokusai Great Wave in Berlin — the city that invented the pigment Hokusai used — from ~$140 single / ~$230 diptych. Canadian maple. UV archival 100+ years. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director originally from Ukraine, now based in Berlin. With experience in branding, merchandise design and vector graphics, Stanislav connects classical art, skateboard culture and contemporary interior design through premium skateboard wall art.