Fields Chromatography | Page 5

beautiful and
varied effects; effects which spring in other cases from a like
management of blue, white, &c. These powers of a colour upon itself
are highly important to the artist, and lead to that gratification from fine
colouring, which a good eye ever enjoys.
In landscape we see nature employing broken colours in harmonious
consonance and variety, while, equally true to picturesque relations, she
uses also broken forms and figures, in conjoint harmony with colours;
occasionally throwing into the composition a regular form, or a primary
colour, for the sake of animation and contrast. And if we inspect her
works more closely, we shall find that they have no uniform tints.
Whether in the animal, vegetable or mineral creation--flesh or foliage,
earth or sky, flower or stone--however uniform the colour may appear
at a distance, it will, when examined nearly, be found to consist of a
variety of hues and shades, compounded with harmony and
intelligence.
It is for this reason that no two colours are ever found discordant in
nature, however much so they may be in art. Blue and green have been
termed discordant, and in painting they may undoubtedly be made so.
Yet those are two colours which nature seems to intend never to be
separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty, without
the other--a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green
lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at
sunrise, in this coloured world of ours. A good eye for colour will soon
discover how constantly nature puts green and purple together, purple
and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral grey, and the like; and
how she strikes these colour-concords for general tones, before
working into them with innumerable subordinate ones.
Upon the more intimate union, or the blending and gradience of
contrasts from one to another mutually, depend some of the most
fascinating effects of colouring. The practical principle employed in

producing them is important, and consists in the blending and gradating
by mixture, while we avoid the compounding of contrasting colours.
That is, the colours must be kept distinct in the act of blending them, or
otherwise they will run into dusky neutrality and defile each other. This
is the case in blending and gradating from green to red, or from hue to
hue--from blue to orange, or to and from coldness and warmth--from
yellow to purple, or to and from advancing and retiring colours. It is the
same in light and shade, or white and black, which mix with clearness.
Now, there are only two ways in which this distinctness in union of
contrasts can be effected in practice: the one is by hatching or breaking
them together in mixture, without compounding them uniformly; and
the other is by glazing, in which the colours unite and penetrate
mutually, without monotonous composition.
The former process may be said to be the carrying out of the principle
of separate colours to the utmost possible refinement, by using atoms of
colour in juxtaposition, instead of in large spaces. And it is to be noted,
in filling up minute interstices of this kind, that if the colour with which
they are filled be wanted to show brightly, a rather positive point of it
had better be put, with a little white left beside or round it in the
interstice. This plan is preferable to laying a pale tint of the colour over
the whole interstice. Yellow or orange, for instance, will hardly show,
if pale, in small spaces; but they show brightly in free touches, however
small, with white beside them. The latter mode is founded on the fact,
that if a dark colour be laid first, and a little blue or white body-colour
struck lightly over it, a more beautiful gray will be obtained than by
mixing the colour and the blue or white. Similarly, if over a solid and
perfectly dry touch of vermilion there be quickly washed a little very
wet carmine, a much more brilliant red will be produced than by
mixing the two colours.
Transparency and opacity constitute another contrast of colouring, the
former of which belongs to shade and blackness, the latter to light and
whiteness. Even contrast has its contrast, for gradations or intermedia
are opposed to contrasts or extremes; and, upon the right management
of contrasts and gradations depend the harmony and melody, the tone,
effect, and general expression of a picture. Thus, painting is an affair of

judicious contrasting so far as regards colour, if even it be not such
altogether.
Colour, it has already been observed, is wholly relative. In contrasting,
therefore, any colour, if we wish it to have light or brilliancy, we cast
its opposite into the shade; if we would