it impossible to obtain brightness of tint unless by sacrificing intensity, is sufficiently demonstrated.
Beauty and Monotony.
Beauty consists in a certain variety which some tints possess in a higher degree than others. The yellow, for example, and the red of the spectrum have a tone peculiar to themselves: the golden contains the essence of the red and the yellow, and is more agreeable to the eye than either.
The most beautiful tints in the scale commence at the orange colours 22 and 23, and continue to the end.
The first element of pleasing is variety; in this point of view the purity and homogeneity of a colour are defects, of which philosophical painters must have been sensible when they recommended the use of compound in preference to simple colours[1].
The purest tint of the scale is perhaps that of the yellow No. 19. At the first glance it is extremely pleasing, but soon becomes monotonous and the eye turns away for relief to the higher tints, each of which produces the sensation of several colours. A painting in which there is much yellow will therefore always fail to please on account of this monotony; for its effect is most disagreeable.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the varying colours: when we call them varying it is unnecessary to say why they please. Painters, we know, in order to give a finish to their productions, overlay them with certain tints. The colours of the painting appear through the tint, are mingled but not confounded with it, and thus are produced a variety and vividness unattainable by any other means.
Warmth and Coldness.
Those tints which contain the element of red are by painters called warm, and those in which the element of azure abounds are termed cold.
Red is the strongest and the most vivid colour: it is the colour of fire and of blood, and it warms and inflames all the tints into which it is introduced.
If the idea of warmth is associated with red, azure gives rise to a very different feeling: it is indeed preeminently the cold colour.
Yellow approaches more nearly to the nature of red than to that of azure, and is consequently rather warm than cold. Pure green cannot be said to be cold or warm: it inclines however to the former or to the latter accordingly as it is combined with blue or with yellow.
Cheerfulness and Gloominess.
Cheerfulness is not to be confounded with beauty, nor gloominess with monotony: they are more distinct sensations and seem to belong, the
- ↑ Leçons Pratiques de Peinture, § v.
