Color problems

Colors have three principal qualities, called scientifically “constants of color,” which should be studied as a preparation for the study of the harmony of colors. These qualities are hue, purity, and luminosity. To make these as clear as possible, we will for the present, at least, ignore the delicate divisions of the spectrum made by both scientists and artists of which about one thousand have been counted, and divide it arbitrarily into six pure spectral colors differing from each other by their hues as by their wave lengths; the wave lengths we give according to Rood, expressed in ten-millionths of a millimetre (¹⁄₁₀₀₀₀₀₀₀). (See Plate III.) These six divisions can be placed beside and compared with flowers and colored materials, and are printed to imitate colored light as nearly as pigments and paper can give them. At best, any such imitation falls far short of nature.

The first quality or constant of colors is hue, this term being generally agreed upon by scientists to mean color pure and simple, according to its wave length in the spectrum. Plate III gives us six hues—violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Each of these is quite different from the next one, as the violet hue is from the blue hue, the blue hue from the green hue.

The second quality or constant of colors is purity, that is, its lack of any mixture of white, black, or any other color. These not only weaken the color but change its character, as will be found by mixing white paint with vermilion paint, which will be seen to grow more pink, as well as lighter, as the white is added.

The third quality or constant of colors is their luminosity or brightness, also sometimes called clearness. It is measured by the total amount of light reflected to the eye, and is therefore independent of hue and purity. The amount of luminosity of a color can be determined correctly by means of an invention called Maxwell’s Disks. These disks date back to the time of Ptolemy, but were brought into use early in this century by Maxwell. A disk, or round piece of cardboard, painted with the color to be tested, is put behind two smaller disks, one of white and one of black, which can be so adjusted that on turning them all rapidly the gray formed by the mingling of black and white matches in luminosity the one back of it.

From such experiments we see that a room papered or painted in yellow will give you the lightest room, because it will reflect more light to the eye than any of the other colors; one done in orange will come next, and so on through the list. A practical knowledge of these different luminosities is most useful in decoration, both on account of the contrast between colors for this reason as well as for their hues. Also for the ability to lighten a dark part of a room by placing there a piece of luminous coloring, and vice versa to darken what is too bright. We must here add that these terms, purity of color and luminosity, are used by artists in quite a different sense, as they call paintings noticeable for purity of color, meaning only that the tints in them have no tendency to look dull or dirty, but not at all implying the absence of white or gray light. They call color in a painting luminous simply because it actually recalls to the mind the impression of light, not because it actually reflects much light to the eye. Plate No. IV gives the six spectral colors in their order of luminosity.

We will now take up in turn each of the six hues by itself and study it in its variations towards its neighboring hues.

That we do not appreciate the influence of color upon man as well as upon the lower animals, is true; but color has not been studied by us as it probably will be in the near future. The powers of attraction of different colors for ants and bees have occupied the time and close observation of Sir John Lubbock and of many other scientists, and now the effect of different colors is being tried on the children in some schools and on the patients in certain insane asylums. A few facts are enough to show that there is still much to learn in that direction, and that these questions can be investigated with profit. One of these facts is that a certain shade of purple always produced the condition of the skin commonly known as “goose-flesh” upon a girl in a normal condition of health.

Goethe in his Theory of Colour, as translated by Sir Charles Eastlake, records observations and experiments of the most minute character with regard to light and colors—of a character hardly touched upon by others. His suggestion of using colored glass for study in colors is very valuable. He says, “People experience a great delight in color generally. The eye requires it as much as it requires light. We have only to remember the refreshing sensation we experience, if on a cloudy day the sun illumines a single portion of the scene before us and displays its colors. That healing powers were ascribed to colored gems may have arisen from the experience of this indefinable pleasure.

“From some of our earlier observations we can conclude that general impressions produced by single colors cannot be changed, that they act specifically and must produce definite specific states in the living organ.

“They likewise produce a corresponding influence on the mind. Experience teaches us that particular colors excite particular states of feeling. It is related of a witty Frenchman, “Il pretendoit que son ton de conversation avec Madame étoit changé depuis qu’elle avait changé en cramoisi le meuble de son cabinet, qui étoit bleu.” (He imagined that the tone of his conversation with Madame was changed since she had changed the coloring of her sitting-room from blue to crimson.)

“In order to experience these influences completely, the eye should be entirely surrounded with one color; we should be in a room of one color, or look through a colored glass. We are then identified with the hue, it attunes the eye and mind in mere unison with itself.^[4]

“The colors on the plus side are yellow, red-yellow and yellow-red. The feelings they excite are quick, lively, and aspiring.

“The colors on the minus side are blue, red-blue and blue-red. They produce a restless, susceptible, anxious impression.”

Each of these six hues can be divided roughly into three, as they are pure or tend toward their neighboring hues. So violet, of which we have pure normal or spectral violet, with red-violet on one hand, blue-violet on the other; or yellow, of which we have pure normal or spectral yellow, with orange-yellow on one side, green-yellow on the other.

Violet is a cold color, red-violet warmer than blue-violet. It is grave, dignified, as compared with the other colors. Being a retiring color, it will serve well as a background, as it will throw forward any more luminous color put upon it. In flowers we have examples of this color in its variety in violets, lilacs, asters, sweet peas, and morning-glories. In the latter it is exquisitely shaded from one extreme to the other. The wild Eupatorium furnishes a fine example of red-violet, the cultivated variety an equally good one of the blue-violet, almost cold enough for a blue. There is no sound pigment which can be used alone to paint this color. The violet in the originals for these plates was made with French blue and crimson lake, and crimson lake is not considered a permanent color. Violet of all kinds suffers from artificial light, losing much of its blue, and becoming more red and dull.

Blue is a cold color, and a retiring one, especially suited for backgrounds, as one will notice in studying a blue sky, against which the landscape stands out with great beauty. In flowers, examples of this color are more rare than of others. The blue gentian is not a true blue, it is so close on blue-violet. Forget-me-nots, chicory, centaureas, and larkspur give us blue in differing varieties. The sky from the deep violet blue of a winter’s night to the pale, greenish tones near the horizon on a summer’s day shows us an unsurpassed scale of this hue.

Goethe says of it, “It may be said that blue brings a principle of darkness with it.

“This color has a peculiar and almost indescribable effect on the eye. As a hue it is powerful, but it is on the negative side, and in its highest purity is, as it were, a stimulating negation. Its appearance, then, is a kind of contradiction between excitement and repose.

“As the upper sky and distant mountains appear blue, so a blue surface seems to retire from us.

“But as we readily follow an agreeable object that flies from us, so we love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it.

“Blue gives us an impression of cold, and thus again reminds us of shade. We have before spoken of its affinity with black.

“Rooms which are hung with pure blue appear in some degree larger, but at the same time empty and cold.

“The appearance of objects seen through a blue glass is gloomy and melancholy.

“When blue partakes in some measure of the plus side the effect is not disagreeable; sea-green is rather a pleasing color.”

Genuine ultramarine is an expensive but very pure blue paint made from lapis-lazuli. Artificial ultramarine generally inclines towards violet. A good deal of green and violet light is reflected from cobalt blue. There is some green in Prussian blue, in indigo, and in cerulean blue. Prussian blue, if used quite thickly, reflects some red. The blue for the original of Plate X was made of French blue (artificial ultramarine), tinged on the violet end with crimson lake, and on the greenish end with emerald green, which latter is not a permanent color, but which approaches nearest of any pigment to the green hue in the spectrum. Blue is one of the colors most used in decoration.

Green may be cold or warm, retiring or advancing according as it approaches blue or yellow, although pure spectral green is of a cold nature. When one studies the great scale of greens as seen in a landscape lit up with full sunshine, and notices the intense yellow-green where the sun shines through the leaves, the pale gray greens produced by the sun’s glancing over the polished surfaces of others, and the rich dark green in the shadows, it seems as if no other color would admit of so varied a scale or be more restful to the eye.

Goethe says: “The eye experiences a distinctly grateful impression from this color. The beholder has neither a wish nor the power to imagine a state beyond it. Hence for rooms to live in constantly, the green color is most generally selected.” This assertion may be doubted, many persons objecting to green, the truth probably being that it has been found difficult to use, and not having been understood or well treated has not been appreciated. Its healthfulness cannot be doubted if one considers how refreshing the surroundings of trees and grass are to an invalid who has been surrounded by city bricks and stones. Can we not derive a like benefit from this color by decorating our city rooms with varying tones of soft gray greens, like nature, relieved here and there with a touch of brightness, as flowers, birds, and butterflies gleam amid the foliage in their native haunts? The rules for heightening these contrasts with certain varieties of green will be given in the chapter on contrasts. The extremes of green blend better than those of other colors. Emerald green has been used as being the best paint with which to imitate the normal green of the spectrum, but it must be remembered that it is a trifle bluer than it should be to be exact.

Of yellow Goethe writes, “This is the color nearest the light.

“In its highest purity it always carries with it the nature of brightness, and has a serene, gay, softly exciting character.

“In this state applied to dress, hangings, carpets, etc., it is agreeable. Gold in its perfectly unmixed state, especially when the effect of polish is superadded, gives us a new and high idea of this color; in like manner, a strong yellow, as it appears on satin, has a magnificent and noble effect.

“We find from experience again that yellow excites a warm and agreeable impression. Hence in painting it belongs to the illumined and emphatic side.

“This impression of warmth may be experienced in a very lively manner if we look at a landscape through a yellow glass, particularly on a gray winter’s day. The eye is gladdened, the heart expanded and cheered, a glow seems at once to breathe towards us.”

Yellow is both a warm and an advancing color, especially useful to apply as ornament on other colors, as gold embroidery is beautiful on any color. With the exception of white there are more yellow flowers than of any other color. In Moorish decorations, which are some of the finest in the world, gold is used as ornament on blue and red grounds; in fact, throughout the history of ornament, yellow is more often used in that way than as a groundwork.

A thin wash of Aurora yellow gave the color for the original of Plate XII. This paint, when put on thickly, tends too much toward orange to imitate well the very narrow band of yellow in the spectrum. It is made from cadmium, and, according to Church,^[5] the deep or orange cadmiums are all more lasting than the pale or lemon-colored kinds.

Orange is still a warmer color than yellow, and is also an advancing color. Goethe says, “All that we have said of yellow is applicable here in a higher degree. The red-yellow (orange) gives an impression of warmth and gladness, since it represents the hue of the intenser glow of fire, and of the milder radiance of the setting sun.” Orange is perhaps the most intense color and should be used sparingly in decoration, as it needs great care as to the quality and quantity of other colors to balance it. Orange cadmium was used for the original of Plate XI.

Red is a warm color and an advancing one. Goethe says, “The agreeable, cheerful sensation which red-yellow excites increases to an intolerably powerful impression in bright yellow-red.

“The active side is here in its highest energy, and it is not to be wondered at that impetuous, robust, uneducated men should be especially pleased with this color. Among savage nations the inclination for it has been universally remarked, and when children left to themselves begin to use tints (paints), they never spare vermilion and minium.

“In looking steadfastly at a perfectly yellow-red surface, the color seems actually to penetrate the organ. It produces an extreme excitement, and still acts thus when somewhat darkened. A yellow-red (scarlet) cloth disturbs and enrages animals. I have known men of education to whom its effect was intolerable if they chanced to see a person dressed in a scarlet cloak on a gray, cloudy day.” In nature we have red only in small portions, a few red birds or those with throats or spots of red; almost no butterflies, but many flowers. The rose, which leads in beauty the long procession of flowers, contains an immense scale of this color on the violet side, from the palest blush to the deepest crimson, almost purple. There being less of red in nature than of any other color, it becomes by contrast the decorative color. It has also the quality of changing less with lessening light than any other color, and is particularly fine in combination with blue. Vermilion and carmine were used to make the spectral red of Plate XIV, though they are far from reproducing the vivid quality of the original. Vermilion used with oil is much more permanent than with water. Of the lakes, Church says in his Chemistry of Paints and Painting: “No artist who cares for his work, and hopes for its permanency, should ever employ them.”

There is another quality shown in Plate III by which colors may be divided into the warm and cold classes. The six spectral colors we have so far been studying in this chapter may be roughly divided as follows:

although some varieties of green may be classed among the cold colors because of the large amount of blue they seem to contain, and others may be classed among the warm ones from their seeming to contain so large an amount of yellow.

It is well to remember that cold colors seem to retire or go back from the eye, while the warm ones seem to come forward, and that the right use of these qualities greatly affects architecture and decoration. (See Plates V and VI.)

To recapitulate, we have first, three qualities or constants of colors: hue, purity, luminosity; then the qualities of being warm or cold. Following upon these are divisions of the tones into three other groups or scales of tints, shades, and gray or broken tints.

These scales have been confined to six for the sake of simplicity, but the reader may multiply them infinitely to correspond with the infinite gradations in nature.

1. Tints.—“The reduced scale—that is, the normal hue mixed with progressive increments (additions) of white, thus forming tints.” The spectral hue of the color weakened by white. Plate VII.

2. Shades.—“The darkened scale—that is, the normal hue mixed with progressive increments (additions) of black, thus forming shades.” The spectral hue of the color darkened with black. Plate VIII.

3. “The dulled scale—that is, the normal hue mixed with progressive increments of gray, thus forming broken tints commonly called grays.” The spectral hue of the color changed by black and white. Besides these regular scales which can be approximately rendered in paint or colored inks there is an infinite variety of what we might call irregular scales which can never be given save in nature. They are those in which a color is changed or neutralized by one or more of the other colors. These cannot even be named, for their multitude.

With the aid of a color wheel on which he used disks of black, white, and the six prismatic colors, Professor Rood has drawn up and formulated the proportions of 488 of these compound or neutralized colors. With the formulæ a number of them have been printed in color quite successfully. It is probably the first attempt to establish standard colors, and a most valuable one, which it is hoped may bear fruit. If those and the arbitrary terms for colors and their different states could come into general use it would greatly help all descriptions of color-harmonies.

Having become familiar with the six colors, we now arrive at the object for which we have gone through the previous study; namely, the first kind of color harmony, one-color combinations, also called combinations of self-tones, the simplest and the preliminary harmony to that of combined colors. The first rule to be observed in making one-color combinations is to avoid putting together what we may call, borrowing the term from the language of music, the large intervals, or extremes, of a color in their pure spectral hues. For example, in arranging a basket of flowers, never put those of a crimson or violet-red, such as an American Beauty rose, next to a scarlet or orange-red flower, such as a scarlet geranium. These are too unlike each other, being at the large intervals of the hue. They injure each other and are therefore disagreeable.

As a second rule, all colors, even those above-named, may be combined in one harmony, but this harmony must be produced from the fact that tints, or shades, or both combined, are used, rather than the simple spectral hues. In fact, nature uses pure colors most sparingly; they appear, if you will remember, in small bright spots in jewels, in somewhat larger quantities in flowers and fruit, in the wings of butterflies and the plumage of birds, to relieve and ornament the more subdued great masses of neutral greens and grays that make up the ordinary garb of nature.

But to return to the combinations of larger intervals of color we were considering. For instance, while scarlet (orange-red) and crimson (violet-red) do not combine well, at a French sea-shore resort was seen the combination of a pink (that is, a tint of violet-red) dress, shaded by a brilliant scarlet (orange-red) parasol carried by its wearer. It was as daring a combination as could be made; its success was complete owing to the pale tint of the dress and the correspondingly correct hue of the scarlet of the parasol. The effect was helped and complemented by the large mass of the sea as background. No rule can prescribe these tints or shades exactly, a gifted eye only can combine them with success; but the fact might serve as a hint to those who find by examination and experiment that they have such an eye.

Besides the use of tints and shades to help us in combining what would otherwise be inharmonious color, gradation is another means we can employ to serve our purpose. For instance, considering different blues, which are not agreeable together, we will look at a cloudless sky; we find that above us it may be of a deep blue verging on violet blue, while, as we let the eye follow it down through the infinite and exquisite gradations it contains, near the horizon we come gently upon our other blue, the greenish one, and feel no discord. The rainbow, which is, in fact, a kind of spectrum, is the best possible example of the great use of gradation; there we have all the pure colors, one differing immensely from the other, but the gradations between them are so fine and complete as to prevent the least discord. In opals and pearl shells, in peacock’s feathers and soap bubbles, such coloring is also seen enhanced by being broken by soft grays and greens. It is caused by what is scientifically called interference; that is, the thin layers of the material interfere or break up the waves of light and so produce the color.

Reflection in colored materials can be used to help greatly in harmonizing them. Look at a piece of red sealing-wax. Hold it up by a window and the high gloss on it will reflect so much light as to make the side toward the light appear almost white. On another side the true or local color, the brilliant red, will be seen, and the side in shadow will be of another color still, darker and more crimson or violet-red. Red satin will have the same varieties in its high lights, middle, and shaded parts, and these whiter lights and shaded parts really gray and subdue the color of the material. A woollen cloth of the same color which has less power of reflection will therefore have less of the gray about it. With practice, fine and beautiful one-color combinations, greatly varied, can be made by using materials of different textures but of the same color.

What has been said so far of colors applies to them as seen in ordinary daylight, but we must also know how they are affected by lessened, increased, and artificial light. Rood made many elaborate experiments in this direction, too numerous to be given here. With these in view, Church gives the following table of the main changes that occur in colored objects from the changing of the light in which they are commonly seen:

We must also note the effect produced by double light; as, for instance, at sunset when we find in one direction the cool light from the blue of the sky, in another the warm light from the setting sun. This is more complicated and difficult to understand.

Reflections from near objects produce similar effects; as, for instance, in the city, the light reflected from a red brick wall and that from a blue sky. An artist painted a portrait in which the likeness was spoiled by the unnatural amount of red in the complexion. On examination it was found to have been put there rightly, inasmuch as the artist certainly saw it; the error lay in choosing a place for the subject where the red reflection from a brick wall was thrown on his face. In a room, a yellow wall paper and a curtain of some other color may throw combined and confusing though perhaps at the same time most interesting reflections on some object. The combined effects of daylight and gas or lamp light are similar.

We will next consider the effect upon colored objects of a light, itself colored,—of what is called a dominant light. (See Plate VI, with instructions.)

Chevreul made many experiments with these. Church gives them to us, with modifications, in the following concise form:

In this table the effect of yellow light gives us the effect of gas or lamp light on colors, as they are yellow in character. To make his experiments with artificial light as sure as possible, Rood, or Chevreul, in daylight, threw the light from a gas burner on colors set in a camera so as to judge at the same time of the effects of the two kinds of light, for we must remember that commonly when we see colors by gas or lamp light we are so surrounded ourselves by the same yellow light that everything is tinged by it, and our judgment is affected; all we see being yellower, yellow objects will look less yellow for want of the contrast seen in daylight. This effect is now understood and provided for by dry goods merchants, who have for some time shown materials for evening dresses in rooms lighted by gas. A fairly good idea of the appearance which pictures, colored materials, articles of dress and decoration will make by gas or lamp light can be had by looking at them through a piece of pale orange-yellow glass.

Electric and calcium lights, being much whiter than that of gas or oil, make less difference in colors, but their intensity being different from that of ordinary diffused daylight, it produces different and more intense effects.