Jonquil, the Light Yellow of Early Flowers, Mad Painters, and Dust Bowl–Era Pottery

John William Waterhouse, Echo and Narcissus, 1903.

Here are two yellow fables:

In the first story, a man sits next to a pool of water. It gleams silver in the moonlight, and the surface is untroubled by leaves or raindrops. He can see his own reflection, and he admires the tender sweep of his brow. He looks for so long that he no longer wants food. Even though he sits near water, he feels no thirst. Eventually, his body, his beloved physicality, withers, and he dies. Where he once sat, a slender-stalked flower appears. The nymph, who had watched the man’s demise from the cover of the trees, names it for him. Every year, in that same spot, a narcissus opens its butter-yellow petals to reveal a diminutive golden trumpet, a floral echo of his lost beauty. 

Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House (The Street), 1888.

In the second story, an artist sits at his easel and feels the creeping dread of depression begin to fill each chamber of his mind. His world is made gray—he is sick