Opaque Contrary And Vice Versa: Indeed In Practice All These Must

: ON COLOURS AND COLOURING.

be in some measure combined.



Such are some of the powers of contrast in colouring alone, and such is

the diversity of art upon which skill in colouring depends. It must not

be forgotten, however, that contrasts or extremes, whether of light and

shade, or of colours, become violent and offensive when they are not

reconciled by the interposition of their media, or intermediates, which

partake of both extrem s of the contrasts. Thus blue and orange in

contrast 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