Fuchsine is a purplish-red dye, named by the Lyon-based manufacturer Renard frères et Franc (1859), after the Fuchsia flower. As we can see from a bottle sample (CNAM Collection), the appearance of the substance is a dark green solid, but the colour in which the dye results during the process of tinting on cotton or silk is an astonishing series of nuances from magenta to bright pink. Fuchsine was used particularly in the textile industry, and also in the food industry, mainly for coloring red wines. Many medical treatises advised against the use of fuchsine because of its toxicity. Despite its unhealthy effect on the body, represented in many popular caricatures at the time, the fashionable brightness of this new dye caught the eye of tastemakers.

The French chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul clearly stated in a note to the Academy of Sciences published in 1860 that no other dye he knew could be compared to fuchsine for “brilliance, intensity and purity of colour”. The vibrant shades of pink, created by the use of fuchsine dye in the textile industry, became a fashion trend for women during the second half of the 19^th century, way before the popularised nuance of “shocking pink” invented by the designer Elsa Schiapparelli in 1937. 

Fashion magazines only rarely mentioned specific dyes in the descriptions of their hand-coloured plates, preferring instead more commercially appealing colour names. So, it’s frequent to find references to pink or sometimes magenta, but not to fuchsine. However, fuchsine is mentioned to describe the urban look of a woman represented in a plate published in 1862 by the French magazine Cendrillon: revue encyclopédique de tous les travaux de dames. The text accompanying the image describes the woman on the left dressed with a “fuchsine summer poplin dress trimmed with a matching ruche at the bottom” and accessorised with a hat decorated by “white feathers nuanced with fuchsine on and under the pass”. Even if the description cited fuchsine in both cases, the illustration shows visibly that the dress is coloured in a shade of purple, while the feathers are more pinkish and bright. This example demonstrates how fuchsine was correctly identified not with one specific colour but with the many vivid pinkish nuances it could generate, testifying to the popularity of this dye in 19^th century visual culture.