[(175)] Appreciation of beautiful color grows by exercise and discrimination, just as naturally as fine perception of music or literature. Each is an outlet for the expression of taste,—a language which may be used clumsily or with skill.
[(176)] As color perception becomes finer, it discards the more crude and violent contrasts. A child revels in strong chromas, but the mark of a colorist is ability to employ low chroma without impoverishing the color effect. As a boy’s shrieks and groans can be tempered to musical utterance, so his debauches in violent red, green, and purple must be replaced by tempered hues.
[(177)] Raphael, Titian, Velasquez, Corot, Chavannes, and Whistler are masters in the use of gray. Personal bias may lead one colorist a little more toward warm colors, and another slightly toward the cool field, in each case attaining a sense of harmonious balance by tempered degrees of value and chroma.[33]
[(178)] It is not claimed that discipline in the use of subtle colors will make another Corot or Velasquez, but it will make for comprehension of their skill. It is grotesque to watch gaudily dressed persons going into ecstasies over the delicate coloring of a Botticelli, when the internal as well as the external evidence is against them.
[(179)] The colors which we choose, not only in personal apparel, but in our rooms and decorations, are mute witnesses to a stage of color perception.
If that perception is trained to finer distinctions, the mind can no longer be content with coarse expression. It begins to feel an incongruity between the “loud” color of the wall paper, bought because it was fashionable, and the quiet hues of the rug, which was a gift from some artistic friend. It sees that, although the furniture is covered with durable and costly materials, their color “swears” at that of the curtains and wood-work. In short, the room has been jumbled together at various periods, without any plan or sense of color design.
[(180)] Good taste demands that a room be furnished, not alone for convenience and comfort, but also with an eye to the beauty of the various objects, so that, instead of confusing and destroying the colors, each may enhance the other. And, when this sense of color harmony is aroused, it selects and arranges the books, the rugs, the lamp shade, the souvenirs of travel and friendship, the wall paper, pictures, and hangings, so that they fit into a color scheme, not only charming to the eye at first glance, but which continues to please the mind as it traces out an intelligent plan, bringing all into general harmony.
[(181)] Nor will this cease when one room has been put to rights. Such a coloristic attitude is not satisfied until the vista into the next apartment is made attractive. Or should there be a suite of rooms, it demands that, with variety in each one, they all be brought into harmonious sequence. Thus the study of color finds immediate and practical use in daily life. It is a needed discipline of color vision, in the sense that geometry is a discipline of the mind, and it also enters into the pleasure and refinement of life at every step. Skill or awkwardness in its use exerts as positive an influence upon us as do the harmonies and discords of sound, and a far more continuous one. It is thought a defect to be unmusical. Should it not be considered a mark of defective cultivation to be insensitive to color?
[(182)] In this slight sketch of color education it has been assumed that we are to deal with those who have normal perceptions. But there are some who inherit or develop various degrees of color-blindness; and a word in their behalf may be opportune.
[(183)] A case of total color-blindness is very rare, but a few are on record. When a child shows deficient color perception,[34] a little care may save him much discomfort, and patient training may correct it. If he mismatches some hues, confuses their names, seems incapable of the finer distinctions of color, study to find the hues which he estimates well, and then help him to venture a little into that field where his perception is at fault. Improvement is pretty sure to follow when this is sympathetically done. One student, who never outgrew the habit of giving a purplish hue to all his work, despite many expedients and the use of various lights and colored objects to correct it, is the single exception among hundreds whom it has been my privilege to watch as they improved their first crude estimates, and gained skill in expressing their sense of Nature’s subtle color.