ON COLOURS AND PIGMENTS INDIVIDUALLY.
Having briefly discussed the relations and attributes of colours and
pigments generally, we come to their powers and properties
individually--a subject pregnant with materials and of unlimited
connexions, every substance in nature and art possessing colour, the
first quality of pigments.
With regard to _colours_ individually, it is a general law of their
relations, confirmed by nature and the impressions of sense, that those
colours which lie nearest in nature to light have their greatest beauty
in their lightest tints: and that those which tend similarly towards
shade are most beautiful in their greatest depth or fulness, a rule of
course applying to black and white particularly. Thus, the most
beautiful yellow, like white, is that which is lightest and most vivid;
blue is most beautiful when deep and rich; while red is of greatest
beauty when of intermediate depth, or somewhat inclined to light; and
their compounds partake of these relations. We speak here only of the
individual beauty of colours, and not of that relative beauty by which
every tint, hue, and shade of colour become pleasing, or otherwise
according to space, place, and reference; for this latter beauty belongs
to the general nature and harmony of colours.
In respect to _pigments_ individually, it may be observed that--other
things being equal--those pigments are the most beautiful which possess
the most colour, whether they be light or dark, opaque or transparent,
bright or subdued. There are some which exhibit all their colour at a
glance: there are others that the more they are looked into the more
colour they are found to have--containing, as they do, an amount of
_latent colour_, not immediately apparent. Apart from the beauty which a
wealth of colour imparts, those pigments imbued with it are, as a rule,
the most permanent. And not unnaturally so, for the more colour there is
present, the longer it takes to be affected, either by exposure or
impure air. Colour within colour, therefore, not only lends charm to a
pigment, but contributes to its safety.
There is often a vicious predilection of some artists in favour of a
particular colour, from which many of our best colourists have not been
totally free, and which arises from organic defect, or mental
association. Such predilection is greatly to be guarded against by the
colourist, who is every way surrounded by dangers. On the one hand,
there is fear lest he fall into whiteness or chalkiness; on the other,
into blackness or gloom: in front he may run into fire and foxiness, or
he may slide backward into cold and leaden dulness: all of which are
extremes he must avoid. There are also other important prejudices to
which the eye is liable in regard to colours individually, that demand
his particular attention. These are occasioned by the various specific
powers of single colours acting on the eye according to their masses and
the activity of light, or the length of time they are viewed. By
consequence, vision becomes over-stimulated, unequally exhausted, and
endued, even before it is fatigued, with a spectrum which not only
clouds the colour itself, but gives a false brilliancy by contrast to
surrounding hues, so as totally or partially to throw the eye off its
balance, and mislead the judgment. This derangement of the organ may be
caused by a powerful tint on the palette, a mass of drapery, the colour
of a wall, the light of a room, or other accidental circumstance; and
the remedy is to refresh the eye with a new object--of nature, if
possible--or to give it rest. The powers of colours in these respects,
as well as of pigments individually, together with their reciprocal
action and influence chemically, will be adverted to under their
distinct heads.
The attention of the artist to the individual powers of pigments,
although it may be of less concern than the attention to general effect
in colouring, is by no means less necessary in practice. For he who
would excel in colouring must study it from several points of view, in
respect to the whole and the parts of a picture, as regards mind and
body, and concerning itself alone. To this end, is needed a knowledge of
his pigments individually.
If nature has arrayed herself in all the colours of the rainbow, she has
not been niggardly in offering man the materials wherewith to copy them.
The mineral, animal, vegetable kingdom--each helps him to realize,
however faintly, her many manifold beauties: to give some idea, however
slight, of that glorious flood of colour, which light lets loose upon
the world. Metal, ore, earth, stone; root, plant, flower, fruit; beast,
fish, insect--in turn aid the arduous task. The painter's box is a very
museum of curiosities, from every part of the universe. For it, the
mines yield their treasures, as well as the depths of the sea: to it
come Arab camel, and English ox, cuttle-fish and crawling coccus: in it
the Indian indigo lies next the madder of France, and the gaudy
vermilion of China brightens the mummy of Egypt. Varied, indeed, are the
sources whence we derive our pigments; and if they still leave much to
desire, improvement is clearly manifest. Slowly but surely, year by
year, we are advancing. With the growth of science, the exhaustless
stores of creation, will there at last be attained--step by step, though
it be--that summit of the artist's hopes, a perfect palette?