Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, June 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
From this little experiment we may conclude that a warm light provokes
a cold shadow, a cold light a warm shadow, and that the color of the
shadow is complementary to that of the light. In the experiment,
daylight was the source of the cold light. Let us now take a third
source of light, warmer than that of the candle, the flame produced by
burning alcohol and salt--a very warm, deep orange light, which makes
the light of the candle seem cold and its blue shadows appear yellow,
while its own shadows are blue.
We recently observed a very striking example of these warm and cold
appearances of light; it was at the theater: a beam of red light shone
brightly upon an actor, whose shadow was absolutely green. Some of the
people around us were astonished at the phenomenon, which they could
perceive very plainly. Phenomena of this kind are produced every
instant in a nature illuminated by the sun; nearly all the shadows are
colored in hues which we can distinguish with a little attention where
the unpracticed eye sees nothing but gray. Thus in a mountainous
country, exposed to the warm light of the sun, the mountains in the
horizon appear blue through the haze; then, as evening draws on, the
sun appears a deeper orange, more reddish, while the sky seems green
by contrast, and the red rays of the sun falling on the mountains turn
them violet, in those beautiful tints which give so much glory to
those countries of large shadows and bright lights.
However intense the light of day may be, it is therefore always
colored, and gives those colored shadows which painters do not always
observe. The painter, in fact, should make an analysis of the complex
light around him, and should repeat the result in synthesis on his
canvas. Upon hardly any other condition can he represent the
transparency of the atmosphere, or the luminosity of a subject or a
landscape. These colored shadows are not, therefore, false colors, as
often seems to be believed, or optical illusions; they are really
existent, but our eyes are hardly ever practiced enough to discern
them; we are deficient in education of the color sense. This education
is not hard to attain. There are persons who have special aptitudes
and are consequently remarkable colorists, just as some persons have
an admirably organized ear for music; but, besides these, it is
possible for all persons endowed with the faculty of observing and
capable of attention to acquire with considerable rapidity the faculty
of discerning colors, where they at present hardly see anything but
confused gray masses. (The epithet gray, we may observe, is used as
applied to many things the color of which is not susceptible of exact
determination.) Such attentive observation of colors is, however,
attended with some danger to painters. Every person prefers some one
color, is influenced by a particular shade. When we examine the works
of the painters we see that there are many differences in the way of
seeing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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