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At the turn of the nineteenth century, several theories about the nature of color emerged. They started from the principle that the appreciation of color phenomena depends largely on the physiology of the eye and the complementarity of colors. These theories found considerable resonance in the French artistic field from the 1830s onward. More specifically, we wish to question the ways in which color optics are integrated into art criticism. After a brief overview of some physiological approaches to color in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we look at texts by Théophile Thoré, Théophile Gautier, and Charles Baudelaire—three critiques that enable us to identify the epistemological issues that lie beneath the aesthetic judgment.