bar() and barh() ignore rcparams patch.facecolor and patch.endcolor

I've noticed that the rcparams settings for patch.facecolor and
patch.endcolor is ignored by bar() and barh() (and therefore hist()),
always displaying as blue and black, respectively. Is this intentional? I'm running matplotlib 0.87.3

The culprit:

def bar(self, left, height, width=0.8, bottom=0,
         color='b', yerr=None, xerr=None, ecolor='k', capsize=3
         ):

Don't know if this is the best way, but here's a solution:

def bar(self, left, height, width=0.8, bottom=0,
         color=matplotlib.rcParams['patch.facecolor'],
         yerr=None, xerr=None,
         ecolor=matplotlib.rcParams['patch.edgecolor'], capsize=3
         ):

Similar situation for barh()

Cheers,

Martin