A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

The reason was, that I wished you not to think of color as paint. Paints, or as artists call them, pigments, are only the materials that man has invented to imitate the real thing. The real thing is nature’s color. Pigments we will speak of later.

From early ages man has been attracted by nature’s colors and has tried to imitate them in order to brighten up his own person and his surroundings. He began by smearing his own body with some form of dye or pigment, either to make himself more attractive or to strike terror into his enemies. As he became more civilised and learned to weave wool and cotton and flax, he dyed his blankets and clothing, and added gay borders and patterns to the local color. Growing more skilful in the fashioning of clay pots, and bows and arrows, and other articles of war and domestic use, he decorated them with colored designs. Little by little he learned how to imitate the beauty of nature’s coloring. But, at first, it seems to have been the brightness of color that attracted him; just as to-day, a great many children and, for that matter, grown-ups as well, prefer gay colors. Manufacturers and merchants know this. Accordingly, to suit the taste of a great many customers who still have the primitive child-man’s love of gay-colored things, they fill the markets with gaudy-colored carpets and wall-papers, and gaudily upholstered furniture, gaudy curtains, cushions and so forth. And people buy them, so that thousands of households are furnished in a way that to any one who loves nature’s coloring, seems horrible. Yes, this is a strong word. But if you will believe me, not too strong to express the feelings of distress that such parlors excite in people whose taste is more civilised. They are as much distressed, as if the parlor were filled with roosters, parrots and monkeys, all crowing, and screeching and chattering together in a horrible discord of sound.

Perhaps you do not like my hinting that people who prefer these noisy colors are not yet fully civilised. You have been taught that we are living in a very civilised age, with all sorts of modern improvements that the people of the past never thought of, much less enjoyed. This of course is perfectly true. Science and mechanical inventions have made living easier; travel is cheaper, education has advanced, books are within the reach of everybody and, best of all, we have more pity for the poor, and the sick and the afflicted, and try to make their lot less terrible. Yes, and in thousands of other ways we are more civilised. Yet, even so, we may be far from enjoying all the opportunities of civilisation that this wonderful age offers.

How many girls and boys, I wonder, who have enjoyed the benefits of a good education, when they reach the age in which they can choose for themselves what they will read, select the best books? I mean by the best books, those that in history, poetry, biography, travel, science, and fiction, really give us the best kind of knowledge of men and life. Are there not thousands of readers who are satisfied to read nothing else but the latest novel, no matter how trashy it may be? Thousands, indeed, who are not bettering their minds and lives, as really civilised people should try to do; but allowing the garden of their hearts and souls to become laid waste and barren, just as your flower garden would soon be, if you turned loose in it the poultry and the pigs.

The truth with such readers is, that, though they enjoy the blessings of civilisation, they have missed one of civilisation’s finest products. They have not good taste, their taste is bad. And bad taste is like a poison. If it is allowed to remain in the system it will in time affect the whole body. None of us can make a habit of reading trash without sooner or later becoming trashy and cheap and commonplace in our thoughts, conversation, choice of friends and conduct.

However, as you are reading this book, I hope it is a sign that you do not care for trashy reading. So let us get back to the subject of taste in matters of color. If one looks back over the past, there is no doubt that as people became more civilised, one of the ways in which they showed improvement was in color taste. They gradually ceased to be attracted only by the brightness of color; they began to find beauty in the relation of one color to another; to try to produce a harmony of colors.

I wonder whether, as you have been reading, it has occurred to you to think: Why does the author object to bright colors? He says we learn to love color by studying nature’s coloring. Are there not bright colors in nature? Is it wrong to like them?

Certainly not; nor do I object to bright colors. I am often delighted with them. But, in the first place, bright colors do not look the same in nature as they do in a parlor. Secondly, art, as we have said before, is different to nature. The artist does not imitate everything he sees in nature, but from it selects this and that to make his work of art.

Nothing in our garden makes a brighter spot than the giant poppy. Its wide and flaring crimson cup, stained with the purple of its stamens, burns like a flame. I love the brave show poppies make, ranged at intervals along the borders or massed in a clump with a setting of greenery around them. For, to prevent their brilliance overpowering the garden, they need plenty of space and abundance of contrasting colors. I cannot imagine anything more noisy and gaudy than a little yard entirely filled with them. The reason they need space is that they may be surrounded with plenty of atmosphere. It is this which makes so great a difference between effects of color out of doors and indoors. Out of doors the atmosphere acts like a veil, softening the sharpness of colors and forms and helping to draw them together into a unity of effect. It is indeed, more like a succession of veils, for between us and nearby objects is a certain amount of atmosphere; while objects further off, and still further off, and further off still, are separated from us by continually increasing quantities of atmosphere. And these planes of atmosphere, as we called them in Chapter IV, act like veils of gauze through which everything is seen. As I have said, they help to subdue the colors and draw them into relation with one another, and so suggest an effect of harmony. In a room, however, especially a small one, we cannot get far enough away from objects to permit much atmosphere to come in between. There is not so much distance to lend enchantment to the view. Consequently, though we may enjoy the beauty of a few of those poppies in a bowl on our table, we should find a carpet or curtains or sofa of the same color much too gaudy and overpowering. The effect would be much as if, while the piano was being played, someone should blow loudly on a tin horn. The noise would disturb the harmony of the music; we should shut our ears or turn the tin horn disturber out of the room. So when we enter a gaudily furnished room, we should like to shut our eyes to the discord of color, and, if we had our way, would banish the disturbing objects to the junk-shop.

But now for the second reason why some of nature’s colors, beautiful in themselves, may be less so when introduced into a room or picture. For the furnishing of a room, like the composing of a picture, should, as far as possible, be a work of art, and the artist, as you recollect, does not imitate nature. He selects from nature. Out of her unlimited storehouse of form and color he chooses for his purpose some few effects at a time and combines them in his work of art; guided in his choice and arrangement by the principles of beauty he has discovered in nature, particularly by the principle of harmony. And in this respect he has an advantage over nature. For the light and atmosphere cannot choose the colors and objects which they help to harmonise. Even after they have done their best, there may be so many of those poppies that, while their colors are subdued and brought into some relation with the other colors, the relationship is still too distant—the difference between the two colors too wide—to produce a perfect harmony. But the artist, since he can pick and choose what he will put into his picture, is able to avoid this difficulty; just as a young couple when they start housekeeping can generally avoid having things that will disturb the harmonious arrangement of their parlor. I say “generally,” for sometimes, notwithstanding their own taste, they receive from some kind but tasteless friend, the present of a piece of furniture that plays the tin-horn to all their ideas of harmony. This is a hard case. They do not wish to offend Mrs. So-and-so or Aunt Jane, and yet they do not like having to live with something offensive to their own feelings!