of nature a genius of bright and early promise-in this poetical painting, who, in the following stanzas, has unconsciously, but with just feeling, brought together the entire scale of primary and secondary colours accurately arranged and contrasted, in all the glow of natural imagery: 'Twas in a glorious eastern isle,— Where the acacias lightly move Their snowy wreaths; where sunbeams smile That shine when day gives place to night, The shells, that are as rainbows bright, Glow through the waters in a blaze Of glorious gold and purple light! Where roses blossom through the year, And palms their green-plumed branches rear. MARY ANN BROWN'S ADA. It may be added, that the female eye seems to be particularly receptive and perceptive of the tender, beautiful, and expressive relations of colours; and we have repeatedly heard it remarked by that graceful painter and colourist, the late lamented President of the Royal Academy, whose subjects were from the high and refined classes of the sex, that in no instance whatever had he occasion to request or desire any change of the colours in which they presented themselves, so judicious and natural was their taste and feeling as to what best suited their peculiarities of character, complexion, and expression. From the foregoing, it may be concluded that the sentiments effected in the mind by hues, shades, and colours can, next to nature and painting, be nowhere better studied than among the poets; we shall accordingly, as occasion offers, make free use of their productions. * At sixteen years of age. CHAP. III. ON THE RELATIONS OF COLOURS. "I know not if lessons of colouring have ever been given, notwithstanding it is a part so principal in painting that it has its rules founded on science and reason. Without such study it is impossible that youth can acquire a good taste in colouring, or understand harmony." MENGS ON THE ACADEMY AT MADRID. "He that would excel in colouring must study it in several points of view; in respect to the whole and in respect to the parts of a picture, in respect to mind and in respect to body, and in regard to itself alone."-OPIE'S LECT. IV. p. 138. HAVING treated of the relations of colours, and exemplified them in a distinct essay, we may speak more briefly on this important branch of our subject, upon which the expression of colours discussed in the preceding section rests, and their right application in practice depends. BLACK and WHITE are extreme colours, comprehending all other colours synthetically, and affording them all by analysis. The truth of this position is illustrated by our first and second Experiments, Chap. xxiv., wherein the fundamental fact upon which the true natural relations of colours rests is demonstrated by the eduction of an aureola of the three primary colours from a black spot upon a white ground, or, vice versa, of a white spot upon a black ground, as represented Plate 1. fig. 1. The PRIMARY COLOURS are such as yield others by being compounded, but are not themselves capable of being produced by composition of other colours. They are three only, yellow, red, and blue;† and are sometimes, by way of distinction, called entire colours. * See "Chromatics, or, an Essay on the Analogy and Harmony of Colours," wherein the relations of each colour to every other colour, and to light and shade, is shown by examples. + See Note C. The SECONDARY COLOURS are such only as can be composed of, or resolved into, two primaries, and are also three only; namely, orange, composed of red and yellow; green, composed of yellow and blue; and purple, composed of blue and red. The TERTIARY COLOURS are such only as can be composed of, or resolved into, two secondary colours, or the three primaries; and these are also three namely, citrine, composed of green and orange, or of a predominant yellow with blue and red; russet, composed of orange and purple, or of a predominant red with blue and yellow; and olive, composed of purple and green, or of a predominating blue with yellow and red.* These three genera of colours comprehend in an orderly gradation all the colours which are positive or definite; and the three colours of each genus, united or compounded in such subordination that neither predominate to the eye, constitute the negative or NEUTRAL COLOURS, of which black and white are the opposed extremes, and greys are their intermediates. Thus black and white are constituted of, and comprehend latently, the principles of all colours, and accompany them in their depth and brilliancy as shade and light; of which more hereafter.† Colours thus generally defined are exemplified in the definitive scale of colours, Pl. 1. fig. 3, in which their relations to each other, and to light and shade, are distinctly and in an orderly manner discriminated from white to black. It is to be noted, however, that the above denominations of colours do not merely express the individual hues or tints by which they are exemplified in this diagram, but denote classes or genera of colours, each colour comprehending an indefinite series of shades between the extremes of light and dark, as each compound colour also does a similar series of hues between the extremes of the colours which compose it. As each class or genus of colours, primary, secondary, and tertiary, has the property of combining in a neutral or achromatic state, when duly subordinated or compounded, it follows that each secondary colour, being compounded of two primaries, is neutralized and contrasted by the remaining. primary, alternately; and that each tertiary colour, being a like binary compound of secondaries, is also neutralized or contrasted by the remaining secondary alternately. These relations of colours will be readily understood by an attentive * See Note D. + See Exp. I. II. III. Chap. XXVI. reference to the diagram or SCALE OF CHROMATIC EQUIVALENTS, Pl. I. fig. 2, in which each denomination of colours is opposed to its contrasting denomination reciprocally. By the term equivalent we here denote such a relation of quantities in the combination of antagonist or opposite colours, as produces achromatic or neutral shades, in which the two constituent colours disappear. Such antagonists or opposites of colours have received different denominations according to circumstances:-thus the spectral antagonist, called an ocular spectrum, which arises after long viewing a colour, has been variously denominated adventitious, accidental, &c. and is always its true opposite, but never its equivalent: such colours simply opposed in juxta-position are called contrasts, and may be either equivalent or unequal contrasts. All these correspondent colours have also been called complementary, although to be properly complementary they ought to be equivalent. This Scale of Chromatic Equivalents is constituted of six circles, comprehending the primary blue, red, and yellow, and secondary colours, orange, green, and purple, alternately within a larger graduated circle,-the compound denominations appearing within the intersections or crossings of the circles: firstly, the binary, or secondary compounds, red-purple, red-orange, yellow-orange, &c. comprising the star formed by the alternate crossings of two circles; and secondly, the ternary, or tertiary compounds, russet, &c. comprehended in the smaller central star formed within the crossings of three of the circles alternately.* The graduated scale by which the whole is circumscribed, is divided round the inward edge by numerals diametrically opposed, denoting the proportions in which colours lying on any radius of the circle neutralize and contrast any colour, simple or compound, on the opposite radius; while the mediating colours, which subdue without neutralizing or contrasting, succeed each other side by side all round the scheme: e. g., red subdues and is subdued, or melodized, by the orange and purple contiguous to it, and so on. The eye is quiet, and the mind soothed and complacent, when colours are opposed to each other in equivalent proportions chromatically, or in such proportions as neutralize their individual activities. This is perfect harmony, or union of colours. But the eye and the mind are agreeably moved, also, when the mathematical proportions of opposed or conjoined See Note E. colours are such as to produce agreeable combinations to sense; and this is the occasion of the variety of harmony, and the powers of composition in colouring. Thus colours in the abstract are a mere variation of relations of the same thing. Black and white are the same colour; and, since colours are mere relations, if there were only one colour in the world there would be no colour at all, however strange, offensive, or paradoxical such assertions may appear. The neutralizing powers of colours, called compensating, have also been improperly denominated antipathies, since they are the foundation of all harmony and agreement in colours; too much of any colour in a painting being invariably reconciled to the eye by the due introduction of its opposite or equivalent, either in the way of compounding, by glazing or mingling, or by contrast,-in the first manner with neutralizing and subdued effect, and in the last with heightened effect and brilliancy,—in the one case by overpowering the colour, in the other by overpowering the organ; while in each the equilibrium or due subordination of colours is restored. It is not sufficient, however, that the artist is informed what colours neutralize and contrast, if he remain unacquainted with their various powers in these respects. If he imagine them of equal force, he will be led into errors in practice from which nothing but a fine eye and repeated attempts can relieve him; but if he know beforehand the powers with which colours act on and harmonize each other, the eye and the mind will go in concert with the hand, and save him much disappointment and loss of time, to say nothing of the advantage and gratification of such foreknowledge in realizing their beauties with intention. We have been enabled to demonstrate the proportional powers of colours numerically, as given in our Scale of Chromatic Equivalents, by means of the METROCHROME,* whereby it is ascertained that certain proportions of the primary colours, which reduced to their simplest terms are as 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue, of equal intensities, neutralize each other, integrally, as 16; consequently, red 5 is equivalent to green 11, yellow 3 to 13 purple, and blue 8 to 8 orange. The intermediate proportions all round the scale may be obtained by adding any number thereon to that preceding or following it, and the like compounded number diametrically opposite it will be its proportional for the colours on the same diameter. Some of these may * For the principle and mechanism by which we have effected this, see Chap. xxv. Exp. XXVII. |