Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by ArtistsField, George
Science
Field's Chromatography: or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists
Field, George
Color; Colors; Painting -- Technique
Owing to confused nomenclature, most of the colours and pigments of
this class have been assigned to other denominations--puce, murrey,
morelle, chocolate, columbine, pavonazzo, &c., being variously ranked
among reds, browns, and purples. This vagueness also accounts for
pigments having been ranged under heads not suited to the names they
bear, and explains why Brown Ochre has been classed among the yellows,
Italian Pink among the same, Brown Pink among the citrines, &c.
As adapted to the walls of a picture gallery, marrone, more or less deep
and inclined to crimson, is one of the best colours known. For the
reason that each colour has its antagonist, and consequently may affect
a picture well or ill, according to its tone or general hue, there can
be no universally good colour for such a purpose. What suits one picture
or style of painting may not suit another: with a blood-red sunset, for
instance, or portrait with crimson drapery, marrone would be out of
place. But as it is impossible to provide each picture with a separate
background, all that can be done in large collections is to study the
general effect, sacrificing the interests of the few to the good of the
many. If cool-coloured landscapes predominate, with blue skies and green
foliage, it will be found that the orange-yellow of the frames agreeably
contrasts the former, and the crimson-marrone of walls as agreeably sets
off the latter. If portraits and historic paintings prevail, which are
in general of a warm advancing nature, then a modest green may prove
eligible. And if engravings form the staple, the grey hue of the print
is best opposed by a bright fawn colour. Where several rooms are devoted
to pictures, a suitable wall colour is most easily secured by
classifying the paintings as far as possible according to their general
hue, and placing them in different chambers: in each there will be a
prevailing character in the colouring of its pictures, and each can be
painted or papered accordingly. However, whether this plan is adopted or
not--and it may be objected to as involving a certain monotony--care
should be taken to have a wall colour of some sort or other, that is, to
let it be seen. Pictures crammed together kill each other: without a
pin's point between them, a speck of wall space visible, much of the
illusion is destroyed. "It is only," says Chevreul, "the intelligent
connoisseur and amateur who, on seeing a picture exhibited in a gallery,
experience all the effect which the artist has wished to produce;
because they alone know the best point of view, and because, while their
attention is fixed on the work they are observing, they alone end by no
longer seeing the surrounding pictures, or even the frame of that one
they contemplate." Amid a moving crowd of people, inseparable from
nearly all public exhibitions, it becomes difficult for the visitor,
intelligent or otherwise, thus to concentrate his attention on one work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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