The good or bad effect of two or more colors in combination in decorative designs or fine art depends very largely upon phenomena which are elaborately explained in a book entitled "The principles of Harmony and Contrasts of Colours" by M. Chevreul. [A] The first edition of this book was prepared in 1835 and published in 1838. The author had at that time been employed for a number of years as superintendent of the manufactory of Gobelin Tapestries in Paris under the control of the French government.
In this book are described in detail the results of a great number of experiments which were instigated by complaints regarding certain colors produced in the dyeing department of the manufactory, and which afford the most elaborate exposition of the subject ever published.
One of the first things which led Chevreul to make his investigation was the complaint that certain black yarns used as shades in blue draperies were not a full black but more or less gray.
The author says in his preface, "The work I now publish is the result of my researches on Simultaneous Contrasts of Colours; researches which have been greatly extended since the lectures I gave on this subject at the institute on the 7th April, 1828. In reflecting on the relations these facts have together, in seeking the principle of which they are the consequence, I have been led to the discovery of the one which I have named the Law of Simultaneous Contrast of Colours."
The closing sentence of the preface to the first edition and dated 1835 is as follows:—
"I beg the reader never to forget when it is asserted of the phenomena of simultaneous contrast, that one colour placed beside another receives such a modification from it, that this manner of speaking does not mean that two colours, or rather the two material objects that present them to us, have a mutual action, either physical or chemical; it is really only applied to the modification that takes place before us when we perceive the simultaneous impression of these two colours."
It was not till three years later that a publisher could be found for this book, which is still a standard.
The English translation comprises over five hundred closely printed pages with many engraved and colored plates, and yet, it has been of comparatively little value in popular instruction because of the lack of a generally accepted color nomenclature or list of well defined color terms, by which the readers might have understood and repeated for themselves the experiments described.
Unfortunately Chevreul was fully impressed with the Newton-Brewster idea of three primaries, red, yellow and blue, and therefore some of his deductions from his experiments seem to have been more or less influenced by the attempt to make them harmonize with this theory, and yet the subject which he has treated so exhaustively and intelligently is one of the most important in the æsthetic study and use of colors. In all expressions of colors in combination with each other, whether in nature, fine arts or the decorative and industrial arts, every color is affected by its surrounding colors, a fact which is exhaustively treated in this book.
While with our present knowledge of the subject it does not seem that the material use of color can be reduced to an exact science, this should not prevent us from accepting all the natural and scientific aids which have been or may be discovered toward this desirable result. Because of this lack of scientific knowledge in Chevreul's time much of the worth of his experiments is lost to us, yet there is very much of value in his work, suggesting as it does experiments which may be tried with present standards and modern methods.