Sepia ink was commonly used for writing in Greco-Roman civilization. It remained in common use as an artist's drawing material until the 19th century.[2]Grisaille is a painting technique developed in the 14th century in which a painting is rendered solely in tones of gray, sepia, or dark green.[4] In the last quarter of the 18th century, Professor Jakob Seydelmann of Dresden developed a process to extract and produce a concentrated form of sepia for use in watercolors and oil paints.[5]
In the 1940s in the United States, music intended for African American audiences was generally called race music or sepia music until the development of the expression rhythm and blues (R&B).[8][9][10] There was a magazine for African-Americans called Sepia, which existed from 1947 to 1983 (although the name Sepia was only applied after a change of ownership in 1953).[11]
Acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky used a sepia tone in his 1979 science-fiction film Stalker to visually distinguish scenes set in the ordinary world from the world of the forbidden Zone, which is portrayed in color.[12]
^The color displayed in the color box above matches the colour called sepia in the 1930 book by Maerz and Paul A Dictionary of Colour New York:1930 McGraw-Hill; the color sepia is displayed on page 39, Plate 8, Colour Sample A10.