Color problems

ABSOLUTE COLORS: see Local Colors.

ADVANCING COLORS: those of the longer wave lengths; those that seem to come forward; but each color only advances or recedes according to its relation to some other color. See Luminosity.

ANALOGOUS HARMONY: see Harmony.

BEAM OF LIGHT: a linear portion^[16] of light made of a number of rays.

BRIGHTNESS: see Luminosity.

BROKEN COLOR: a color changed by the addition of black and white or gray.

COLD COLORS: those of the shorter wave lengths, such as green, blue, and violet.

COLOR: an internal sensation, produced by various causes, chiefly by waves of incomplete light acting on the eye; as used by artists, the rich, harmonious effect, or full appearance produced by certain combinations of colors.

COLOR CHART: a systematic arrangement of colors in a geometrical design such that every variation and combination of hue, tint, and shade is in its proper place and in correct relation to all other hues, tints, and shades.

COMPLEMENTS or

COMPLEMENTARY COLORS: any color and the color of its after-image; any two colors which when mixed make white.

COMPOUND or MIXED COLOR: a color changed or neutralized by the addition of another color or colors.

CONSTANTS or QUALITIES OF COLORS: Hue, Purity, and Luminosity.

CONTRAST: see Simultaneous Contrast, page 53.

CONTRASTED HARMONY: see Harmony.

DIFFRACTION GRATING: a polished metal or brass surface ruled with fine lines and used instead of a prism to divide a ray of light and produce a spectrum.

DOMINANT HARMONY: see Harmony.

DOMINANT HUE: see Hue.

HARMONY: the pleasing effect due to the action upon each other of colors improved and made more beautiful by being put together; such an agreement between the different hues, tints, or shades of a design as will produce unity of effect.

Analogous Harmony: an agreeable combination of colors that are related to a fundamental color.

Complex Harmony: an agreeable combination of three or more colors, or with the addition of black or white, or gray, or gold, or silver, or any or all of them.

Contrasted or Complementary Harmony: an agreeable combination of any pair of complementary colors, or of their tints or shades, or tints and shades.

Dominant Harmony: an agreeable combination of colors in which one color predominates by modifying all the other colors, by serving as a ground, or by being added in small portions all over the design.

One-color Harmony, also called a Harmony of Self-tones: an agreeable combination of one color used in tints or shades, or tints and shades, or hue and tints, or hue and shades, or hue, tints, and shades.

HUE: color, by wave length, much the same as color; the chief quality by which one color differs from another color, as red differs from blue or green.

Dominant Hue: the hue which predominates through the larger part of a design or composition.

INTENSE: see Saturated.

LIGHT: the chief agent that produces vision.

LOCAL COLOR: the actual color of an object unaffected by shadows or reflected lights.

LUMINOSITY: the strength of the light sent to the eye by any color; a luminous color sends more than a non-luminous one.

LUMINOUS COLORS: those which reflect light in large quantities; the colors of the long wave lengths are more luminous than those of the short ones.

NEUTRAL COLORS: a term often incorrectly applied to black, white, gray, gold, and silver.

NORMAL, SPECTRAL, PRIMITIVE, or PRISMATIC COLORS: those seen in the rainbow and the solar spectrum are generally accepted as such and are used as the standard for the study of colors. Pigment colors can only imitate these colors imperfectly.

OIL COLORS: pigments ground in oil.

OPAQUE COLORS: pigment colors which are so thick that paper or canvas cannot be seen through them.

PIGMENTS: materials from which paints, inks, dyes, and stains are made.

PIGMENT COLORS: paints, inks, dyes, and stains used in the fine and industrial arts.

PRIMARY COLORS: red, blue, and yellow; so called because it was supposed that all other colors could be made from them.

PRIMITIVE COLORS: see Normal Colors.

PRISM: a triangular or three-sided bar of clear glass.

PRISMATIC COLORS: those that appear when a ray of white light shines through a prism. See Normal Colors.

PURE COLORS: those unmixed with white light or any other color; those of the spectrum.

PURITY OF COLORS: the absence of an admixture of any other color or colors, or white or black.

QUALITIES OF COLORS: see Constants of Colors.

RAY OF LIGHT: a small linear portion or streak of light which may be white or any color.

RECEDING COLORS: those which seem to retire or recede from the eye; those of the short wave lengths.

RETINA: a thin inner lining of the eye. See page 20.

SATURATED or INTENSE COLORS: colors that are pure and luminous to their greatest extent; without any mixture of white light.

SECONDARY COLORS: orange, green, and violet; so called because it has been thought they were made from combinations of the primary colors.

SELF-TONES: see Tone.

SHADE: a tone of a color darkened by the addition of black pigments to paints, inks, dyes, and stains, or by the action of diminished light on immaterial colors.

SHADOW: about the same as shade, as generally used, but for the sake of clearness it is best to designate by shadow those parts of an object which do not receive any direct rays of light, while those surfaces which receive but little direct light, and are thus intermediate in value between the light and the shadow, are called shade surfaces. Then the term cast-shadow denotes the shadow projected by one body on another body or surface.

SOLAR SPECTRUM: see Spectrum.

SPECTRAL COLORS: see Normal Colors.

SPECTRUM: the result of the decomposition of a ray of sunlight into all the colors which form it; the streak of colors formed by a ray of light that has passed through a prism or over a Diffraction Grating.

STANDARD COLORS: those of the spectrum.

TERTIARY COLORS: citrine, olive, and russet, so called because it has been thought that they were made from combinations of the secondary colors.

TINT: a tone of a color produced by the addition of white to oil, water to water, and white light to immaterial colors.

TONE: the given state of a color as it may be pure, luminous, broken, compound, a tint, or a shade.

Self-tones: tones of the same color.

TRANSPARENT COLORS: those in which the color tints the paper or canvas, which shows through the color, thus helping to produce the effect.

VALUES: the relative amount of light contained in the different colors of a picture, design, or composition; the lightest or most luminous being called the highest in value.

WARM COLORS: those of the longer wave lengths, as yellow, orange, and red.

WATER COLORS: pigments prepared to be used with water.

WAVE LENGTHS OF COLORS: objects having no color in themselves possess the power of reflecting waves of light; waves of light of varying lengths give us the effect of color. Either the amount of motion of the ether, or height of the wave, produces the intensity or brightness of the light, and the length of the wave produces the color; red has a wave length of about 7000/250,000,000 of an inch, orange 5979/250,000,000, yellow 5802/250,000,000, green 5272/250,000,000, blue 4732/250,000,000, and violet 4059/250,000,000.

As whatever may be of value in this little work on a theme so large and complex as color must of necessity be drawn largely from what has been written before, the following list of books and authors is given, partly as having been referred to during its preparation, and partly as a suggestion for further reading to any student of color who can afford the time and labor necessary to the acquisition of a larger and wider comprehension of a subject which can be treated only scantily enough within the scope of a single small volume.

Although no pretence is here made to completeness as bibliography, yet it is believed that the fifty works enumerated below fairly cover the history of color and of its ever-growing relation to Art and Manufacture. For the sake of convenience the list is chronologically arranged.

A Treatise on Painting. By Leonardo da Vinci. (London, 1835: Nichols & Sons.) (Translation.)

Colour. By M. E. Chevreul. (London, 1839: Geo. Bell & Sons.) (Translation.)

Theory of Colour. By J. W. von Goethe. (London, 1840: J. Murray.) (Translation, with notes, by Sir Chas. Eastlake.)

Rudiments of the Painter’s Art; or a Grammar of Colouring. By George Field. (London, 1850: Weale.)

Darstellung der Farbenlehre und optische Studien. By W. H. Dove. (Berlin, 1853.)

Researches on Colour-blindness. By G. Wilson. (Edinb., 1855: Sutherland & Knox.)

Grammar of Ornament. By Owen Jones. (London, 1856.)

On Colour (ETC.). By Sir J. S. Wilkinson. (London, 1858: J. Murray.)

Die Farbenharmonie in ihrer Anwendung auf die Damentoilette. By R. Adams. (Leipzig, 1862: J. J. Weber.)

Practical Hints on Colour in Painting. By John Burnet. (London, 1865: J. & J. Leighton.)

Des Couleurs au Point de Vue Physique, Physiologique Artistique et Industriel. By Ernst Bruecke. (Paris, 1866: J. B. Baillière & fils.)

The Principles of the Science of Colour. By William Benson. (London, 1868: Chapman & Hall.)

Color. By M. É. Cavé. (New York, 1869.) (Translation.)

Manual of the Science of Colour. By W. Benson. (London, 1871: Chapman & Hall.)

The Theory of Colouring. By J. Bacon. (London, 1872: G. Rowney & Company.)

L’Ornement Polychrome. By A. Racinet. 2 vols. F^o. (Paris, 1873–86: Firmin Didot.)

A Grammar of Colouring applied to Decorative Painting and the Arts. By George Field. (London, 1875: Lockwood & Company.)

Theory of Color. By Dr. Wilhelm von Bezold. (Boston, 1876: L. Prang & Company.) (Translation.)

Die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Farbensinnes. By Hugo Magnus. (Leipzig, 1877: Veit.)

The Principles of Light and Color. By E. D. Babbitt. (New York, 1878: Babbitt & Company.)

Complément des Études sur la Vision des Couleurs par E. Chevreul. By M. E. Chevreul. (In Institut de France. Académie des Sciences—Memoires. T. 41, partie 2.) (Paris, 1879.) (English translations exist.)

Modern Chromatics, with Application to Art and Industry. By O. N. Rood. (New York, 1879: D. Appleton.)

The Colour Sense: its Origin and Development. By Grant Allen. (London, 1879: Trübner & Company.)

Color-Blindness. By B. Joy Jeffries. (London, 1879.)

A Handbook for Painters and Art Students on the Character and Use of Colours. By W. J. Muckley. (London, 1880: T. & C. Baillière.)

Sight; an Exposition of Monocular and Binocular Vision. By Joseph Le Conte. (New York, 1881: D. Appleton & Company.)

Untersuchungen über den Farbencontrast vermittelst rotirender Scheiben. By G. B. T. Schmerler. (Leipzig, 1882: W. Engelmann.)

La Grammaire de la Couleur. By E. Guichard. 3 vols. (Paris, 1882: H. Cagnon.)

Die Farbenwelt. By Max Schasler. (Berlin, 1883: C. Habel.)

The Laws of Contrast of Colour and Their Application to the Arts and Manufactures. By M. E. Chevreul. (London, 1883: Routledge.) (Translation.)

Colour. By A. H. Church. (London, 1887: Cassell & Company.)

Il Libro dei Colori. Segreti del Secolo XV. Da O. Guerrini & C. Ricci. (Bologna, 1887: Romagnoli Dall’ Acqua.)

Colour, An Elementary Treatise. By C. T. Whitmell. (Cardiff, 1888: W. Lewis.)

F. C. Schroeder’s “Systematic Index.” By F. C. Schroeder. (Boston, 1888: F. C. Schroeder.)

Iris: Studies in Colour and Talks about Flowers. By A. F. Dielitzsch. (Edinburgh, 1889: T. & T. Clark.) (Translation.)

Répertoire Chromatique. By Charles La Couture. (Paris, 1890: Gauthier, Villars & Fils.)

The Chemistry of Paints and Painting. By A. H. Church. (London, 1890: Seeley & Company.)

Colour in Woven Design. By R. Beaumont. (London, 1890: Whittaker & Company.)

Colour-Blindness and Colour-Perception. By F. W. Edridge Green. (London, 1891: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company.)

A Text-Book of Physiology. By M. Foster. (London, 1891: Macmillan & Company.)

Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement. By Condor. (Yokohama, 1891: Kelly & Walsh.)

Colour Measurement and Mixture. By W. de W. Abney. (London, 1891.)

Harmonious Colouring. 3 vols. F^o. By C. H. Wilkinson. (Manchester, 1891: Harmonious Colouring Company.)

Colour Vision. By E. Hunt. (Glasgow, 1892: Smith.)

On a Color System. By O. N. Rood. (New Haven, 1892.)

Students’ Text-Book of Color; or, Modern Chromatics. By O. N. Rood. (New York, 1892: D. Appleton & Company.)

Colour Vision. By W. de W. Abney. (London, 1895; Low.)

Color-Vision and Color-Blindness. By J. E. Jennings. (Phila., 1896: Davis Company.)

Colour in Nature. A Study in Biology. By M. I. Newbegin. (London, 1898: J. Murray.)

(a) In their order of Luminosity

(b) Pure and Grayed