Fields Chromatography | Page 6

become reconciled, softened in effect, and harmonized, when a broken colour composed of the two intervenes. The same may be said of other colours, shades, and contrasts.
Seeing that the management and mastery of colours are to a great extent dependent on the same principles as light and shade, it might become a point of good discipline, after acquiring the use of black and white in the chiaroscuro, to paint designs in contrast; that is, with two contrasting colours only, in conjunction with black and white--for example, with blue and orange, before attempting the whole. Indeed, black can be dispensed with in these cases, because it may be compounded, since the neutral grey and third colours always arise from the compounding of contrasting colours. In this way, even flesh may be painted--for instance, with red and green alone, as Gainsborough is said at one period to have done.
Some artists have produced pictures in the above hot and cold colours only; which, although captivating to the eye, and true in theory with respect to colour, light and shade, are generally false in practice with regard to nature, which rarely employs such extreme accordances. Colouring like this, therefore, is more beautiful than true. It is as though a painter were to execute a landscape in the full light of day, as he saw it looking through a prism, so that every object glowed with rainbow hues. Such a picture would present a beautiful fairy scene, and be true as regards colours, but as respects nature, it would be false.
Colour, and what in painting is called transparency, belong chiefly to shade. It has been a common error to ascribe those properties to light only, and hence many have employed a uniform shade tint, regarding shadows as simply darkness, blackness, or the mere absence of light; when, in truth, shadows are infinitely varied by colour, and always so by the colours of the lights which produce them. But while we incline attention toward the relation of colour to shade, both light and shade being strictly co-essential to colour, a vicious extreme must be avoided. For although, as transparent, colour inclines to shade, and, as opaque, it partakes of light; yet the general tendency of colour is to transparency and shade, all colour being a departure from light. Hence it becomes a maxim, which he who aspires to good colouring must never lose sight of, that the colour of shadow is always transparent, and only that of extreme light objects opaque. It follows, that white is to be kept as much as possible out of shadow, and black, for the same reason, out of colour. In their stead, whenever it is necessary to cover, opaque tints may be employed, glazed over with transparent colours. Such practice would also be more favourable to durability of the tones of pictures, than the shades and tints produced with black and white. The hues and shadows of nature are in no ordinary case either black or white, which, except as local colours, are always poor and frigid. The perfection of colouring is to combine harmony with brilliancy, unity with variety, and freshness with force, without violating the laws of nature.
With regard to the perspective of colours, or the manner in which they affect the eye, according to position and distance, it is a branch of a?rial perspective or the perspective of light and shade. This is distinguished from linear perspective, or the perspective of drawing, as drawing is from colouring; and they have progressed alike in the art. The most ancient painters seem to have known little of either; and linear perspective was established as science before the a?rial, as drawing and composition preceded colouring.
The perspective of colours depends upon their powers to reflect the elements of light, powers which are by no means uniform. Accordingly, blue is lost in the distance before red, and yellow is seen at a point at which red would disappear; yet blue preserves its hue better than yellow, because colours are cooled in the distance. In this respect, the compound colours partake of the powers of their components, in obedience to a general rule, by which local colours closely connected with black are first lost in the distance, and those nearly related to white disappear last. The same may be said of local light and shade, the latter of which is totally lost at great distances; and it is for this reason the shadowed side of the moon is not generally seen. These powers of colours are, however, varied by mist, air, altitude, and mixture, which produce evanescence; and by contrast, which preserves the force of colours by distinguishing them. Colours do not decline in force so much by height as by horizontal distance, because the upper atmosphere is less dense and clouded with