Term: Broken Color

Monet - Sunset at Lavacourt (1880)

Broken color is where small individual strokes of color are laid side by side in a painting. At a distance, the individual strokes are mixed optically by the viewer and appear as a different color. The Impressionists were the first to employ this method extensively. Modern painters accomplish something very similar by combining colors with the same value but different hue. This results in a visual variation that does not break-up the major shapes but that make the area seem more interesting and rich.