Ever since Newton discovered the solar spectrum it has been referred to in a poetic way as Nature's standard of color. But as soon as the author attempted, some twelve years ago, to use it practically by making pigmentary imitations of the spectrum colors as standards they were decried as vulgar and inartistic. Under such circumstances it was a great pleasure to him to hear a celebrated art professor answer his inquiry if the solar spectrum is the proper place to look for standards of color with the emphatic assertion, "Certainly, there is no other place to go."
Where there are no standards there can be no measurements, and if in color we have no measurements of effects, no records can be made, and hence no comparisons of results at various places and times, and consequently no discussion and little progress. Because there have been no accepted standards and no measurements of color very little has thus far been decided regarding psychological color effects.
In drawing, as at present taught in our best schools from the kindergarten to the university, the foundation of art in black and white is laid in form study. From the drawing teachers we learn that a good touch and a fine sense for light and shade in all their subtle relations to each other are without value, unless due care has been given to the commonplace consideration of lengths and directions of lines, that is to say to the measurement of lines and angles, and to the laws of perspective. We cannot have measurements without standards. By the foot or the metre we measure lines and by the divided circle we measure angles.
Geometrical forms have already been so definitely analyzed by the science of mathematics that if destroyed today these solids and surfaces could be reconstructed at any future time from written or printed directions. But suppose all material samples of color to be lost, it would be impossible by the ordinary system of color nomenclature to even approximately restore a single one from written or verbal descriptions.
Color is one of the first things to attract the attention of the infant, almost as soon as a sound and long before form appeals to him, so that a collection of colored papers will often prove more interesting and instructive than a picture book to the baby, while the graduate from a two year's course in the kindergarten may have a better color sense than is at present enjoyed by the average business or professional man.
If we could determine the colors used by the great masters in the past, we could add much to our knowledge of the fine arts; and if we knew what colors Chevreul, the master dyer of the Gobelins Tapestry works, refers to in his writings, and which he indicated by hundreds of numbered samples filed away in his cabinet, we should in this generation have a wonderful fund of information to increase our knowledge of harmonies, on which to base our study of color in the industrial arts.
But alas! the paintings of the old masters have faded and the great dyer had no language in which to describe his colors in his writings, and therefore it is claimed that little or no advance in color perception has been made in modern times, if indeed we have held our own. The further assertion is made that those semi-civilized nations whose drawings are the least artistic greatly surpass us in natural color perceptions. If color is the one thing in which we are deficient and in which we are making no advance, is it not necessary that we adopt a new line of operations for our color instruction in the primary grades? It is self-evident that in primary work highest art is not expected in either literature, music, drawing or painting, but as has been the aim in literature for a long time and in drawing and music more recently, so in coloring, our instruction should be based on those principles on which highest art must rest.
When through the introduction of colored papers in the kindergartens and primary schools the teachers began to call for better assortments of colors in their papers than were to be found in the market, and some of us in the field attempted to meet their wants, the solution of the problem seemed almost a hopeless task, because no two wanted the same colors; each teacher was a law to herself and one thought a color "just lovely" which another declared "perfectly horrid." According to the early theories then in vogue the first colors called for were red, yellow and blue for primaries, but no two persons were sure just what they wanted for either of these, and there was no authority to be referred to for a decision.
In this strait, which was practically a serious difficulty, the artists were appealed to for a decision as to the three "primary colors," and also for examples showing in what proportions the "ideal primaries" must be mixed to produce the "ideal secondaries." But in this there was no satisfaction because hardly two agreed in the primaries and necessarily the secondaries were much less definite, which was the result that should have been expected.