A Child's Guide to Pictures

by Charles H. Caffin

Now applying this to colors, you may see that the point to which I am leading you is this. Just as the knife varies in value from other knives, so may one tint of black vary from another tint of black; one tint of red from another tint of red; one tint of yellow from another tint of yellow. Equally, since a certain quantity of crackers may have the same value as a certain quantity of cheese, so may a certain tint of red have the same value as a certain tint of yellow. But what is the standard by which one kind of color can be compared with another?

The standard of value adopted by a painter, is light. The value of any color depends upon the amount of light reflected from it. Thus, if you look at a man dressed in black, you will notice that the black upon the shoulder, or the chest, or whatever part receives the greatest quantity of light, will seem less black than those parts which receive less light. And it may be only in the hollows or shaded parts that the black looks really black. Well, each one of these separate degrees of black represents to the painter a separate value of black.

Perhaps you will say—Why this is only a repetition of what was said about the painting of reflections of light and the shadows on the blue skirt! You are right. Then—why, you ask, this new term—values? Well, it was when the modern man discovered that the painting of these reflections and shadows could be made a means of producing harmonies of color; that, indeed, harmonies could be produced out of the reflections alone, that they invented this new name. They had discovered a new principle of harmony, depending upon the varieties of light on color, and they gave to these varieties the new name of values. Not that the principle was really a new one. It was an old one discovered by Velasquez and at the same time by the Dutch—Vermeer among them.[10] But about 1860 some modern artists from studying the works of these men made a new discovery of the principle.

Before discussing the importance of the rediscovery, let us turn back to the other use of that word values. If you remember, the word is used not only of the differences in degree in tint of some one color; for example, the different values of black, of green, of red and so on, but it is also used as a standard to compare a color of one hue with a color of another hue. Let me remind you of that Dutch treat picnic to which everybody brought a contribution of equal value. I need not tell you that the ten cents’ worth of soda crackers will make a bigger parcel than the ten cents’ worth of cheese, while ten cents’ worth of——’s “fine chocolate” would make a very small parcel indeed. Now, colors differ in the same way. All colors throw off a certain quantity of light, but the amount varies.

You remember, we said that the cause of color was the fact, that light which is made up of all colors penetrates every object in nature; that each object absorbs a certain quantity of the color and throws off the remainder. And that this remainder is what appears to our eyes as the color of the object. But while we think of this remainder as color, do not let us forget that it is light. And, recollecting that color is light, we can understand that one color has more or less light in it than another.

I wish to make sure that you do understand this, so let us try to illustrate it. We are in the habit of estimating things by percentage. Suppose then that we think of the light of the sun as representing one hundred points. Scientists have discovered that objects which we call yellow absorb only some twenty of these points; that, in fact, the quantity of light thrown off by what we call yellow, or in other words its value, is some eighty per cent. What we call red, however, represents some sixty per cent. of light; green, about forty per cent.

Now supposing an artist wishes to combine these colors in a Dutch picnic; if he wishes, that is to say, to combine these colors, so that they will contribute equally to the whole composition of color. He will use a great deal less yellow than red, and less of either of these colors than green. The packet of green, like the crackers; will be bigger than the cheese, or red; the yellow, or chocolate, smallest of all.

Let us imagine a picture that will illustrate this. But before we do so I must remind you that what we are talking about is color harmonies, and particularly those harmonies of color in which the modern artist delights. He learned them, as I have said, from Velasquez, who was debarred from using brilliant colors, he learned them also from the old pictures of the Dutchmen, like Vermeer; lastly he learned them from studying the pictures and prints of the Japanese. The effect of all these examples was to make him prefer subtlety to splendour.

I have already explained the meaning of subtlety and subtle. Both are derived from a Latin word which means “finely woven”—fine spun threads of silk or linen, woven closely together into a strong but very delicate and thin fabric. So when we speak of a subtle distinction we have in mind a distinction that is very slight; as between two tints of yellow. To many eyes they will seem the same; whereas an eye more subtly sensitive to degrees of color can distinguish the difference. We may say of such an eye, that it has a very delicate sense of sight, or subtlety of vision. Subtlety implies delicacy; and when we speak of the subtlety of an artist’s color harmonies—how subtle they are—we have in mind a delicate, exquisite, refined use of color. He has not used many colors; nor obtained his effects by force of strong contrasts. On the contrary, it is by subtle relation of a few colors, by the subtle differences in their values that a harmony, distinguished by its exquisite delicacy, is produced.

Our own American artist, the late James McNeill Whistler, was one of the first of the modern artists to paint this sort of harmony. He painted four pictures of a girl in a white dress, which he afterwards entitled “Symphonies in White,” numbering them one, two, three, and four, just as a musician’s works are distinguished by a number. For Whistler felt that there is some similarity between the harmonies of color and those of sound notes, and tried in his pictures to produce subtle effects as musicians do. In one of this series he represents the girl in a white dress, standing on a white rug, before a white wall. The only variation from the white is afforded by her dark hair and the flesh coloring of her face and hands. These are what we may call “accents”—notes of color that stand out with prominence and decision. The rest is a symphony in white.