"Let us now consider the building as painted with some pale neutral tint, dull green or buff. In doing this we should be perfectly safe, as, provided the colours were not too pale so as to be indistinct, or too dark so as sensibly to affect the eye, we could hardly make a mistake. Yet how tame and monotonous would be the result! It would be necessary that this tint, whichever we might choose, should be of a very subdued neutral character, in order to avoid the difficulty well known to mounters of drawings and painters of picture-galleries, viz., that in proportion as you incline to any particular shade of colour, so in that exact proportion you injure or destroy those objects it is intended to relieve which may have similar colour. To this, then, we should be reduced—a dull monotonous colour without character. How unworthy this would be of the great occasion! How little would it impress the public! How little would it teach the artist! It would be to cut instead of patiently to unravel the knot.
"We are now brought to the consideration of the only other well-defined system which presents itself, namely, parti-colouring. This, I conceive, if successfully worked out, would bring the building and its contents into perfect harmony, and it would fitly carry out one of the objects for which this Exhibition was formed, namely, that of promoting the union of the fine-arts with manufactures. It would be an experiment on an immense scale, which, if successful, would tend to dispel the prejudices of those whose eyes are yet unformed to colour, to develope the imperfect appreciations of others, and to save this country from the reproach which foreign visitors, more educated in this particular than ourselves, would not fail to make were the building otherwise painted; it would everywhere bring out the construction of the building, which, as I said before, would also appear higher, longer, and more solid."
Mr. Jones then adduced the practice of the ancient and mediæval artists, and explained the kind of colours they generally adopted, mentioning that in the best periods of art the primary colours were chiefly or exclusively used.
"In the decoration of the Exhibition building I therefore propose to use the colours blue, red, and yellow, in such relative quantities as to neutralise or destroy each other; thus no one colour will be dominant or fatiguing to the eye, and all the objects exhibited will assist, and be assisted by, the colours of the building itself.
"In house-decoration we occasionally find a run on one colour; thus we have a green room, a pink room, and a red room; but it would obviously be unwise to adopt any one colour for this building, whose contents will be of all imaginable hues from white to black. Discarding, on the other hand, the perfect neutral white as unfit for the occasion, we naturally adopt the colours blue, red, and yellow, in or near the neutral proportions of eight, five, and three; but to avoid any harsh antagonism of the primary colours when in contact, or any undesired complementary secondaries arising from the immediate proximity of the primaries, I propose, in all cases, to interpose a line of white between them, which will soften them and give them their true value.
"As one of the objects of decorating a building is to increase the effect of light and shade, the best means of using blue, red, and yellow is to place blue, which retires, on the concave surfaces; yellow, which advances, on the convex; and red, the colour of the middle distance, on the horizontal planes; and the neutral white on the vertical planes.
"Following out this principle on the building in question, we have red for the under-side of the girders, yellow on the round portions of the columns, and blue in the hollow parts of the capitals.
"Now, it is necessary not only to put the several colours in the right places, but also to use them in their due proportions to each other.
"Mr. Field, in his admirable works on colour, has shown by direct experiment that white light consists of blue, red, and yellow, neutralising each other in the proportions of eight, five, and three. It will readily be seen, that the nearer we can arrive at this state of neutrality the more harmonious and light-giving will a building become; and an examination of the most perfect specimens of harmonious colouring of the ancients will show that this proportion has generally obtained among them; that is to say, broadly, there has been as much blue as the yellow and red put together, the light and the shade balancing each other.
"Of course, we cannot in decorating buildings always command the exact proportions of coloured surface which we require; but the balance of colours can always be obtained by a change in the colours themselves. Thus, if the surfaces to be coloured should give too much yellow, we should make the red more crimson and the blue more purple; that is, we should take the yellow out of them. So, if we had too much blue, we should make the yellow more orange, and the red more scarlet.