When daylight struggles with candle- or lamp-light, one may notice that upon the white cloth of a dinner-table the light is blue and the shadows yellow or orange—the orange deepening as with the fading daylight the blue grows deeper, until the colour of the light and the shadow change places. The same principle may be noticed in firelight, but the redder the flame the greener will be the shadows.
Harmony in colour may be said to consist—apart from the general acknowledgment of the law of complementaries, in giving quality to the raw pigments by gradation, by a certain admixture or infusion of other colours.
To begin with the negatives—white and black—white may be creamy or silvery; black may be of a greenish or a bluish or brownish tone; then the primaries—red, blue, yellow, or red, green, violet—red may range from crimson to orange and russet; yellow may approach green or gold; green may be first cousin to blue; blue may be turquoise on the one hand, and touch purple upon the other; and so on through infinite variations of half tints and tones.
No doubt it is an easier matter to harmonize half tints than full bright colours, which may account for the prevalence of the former in decorative work. Nature's pattern-book, too, is full of half tones and mixed tints.
The Colour Sense
We may not all see colour precisely in the same way, and the same colour may appear to be of a different tint to different eyes; and it seems certain that climate and surroundings affect the colour sense: light and colour will stimulate the delight in colour; while, where grayness and dullness characterize the surroundings of life, the colour sense will grow weak, or, if it is manifested at all, it will show a tendency to grayness and heaviness of tint.
The art of the different peoples of the world illustrates this, and, as we may see by turning from east to west, or from north to south, or even from winter to summer, in the main the love of colour follows the sun, like the rainbow.
We can all do something to cultivate our sense of colour, however, and there is no better way than studying the harmonies and varieties of nature. Even the town-dweller is not altogether deprived of the sight of the sky, which constantly unfolds the most beautiful compositions both of form and colour.
As to the choice of colours in decorative design, so far as that is not narrowed by the particular conditions of the work, we must be guided by much the same considerations as would serve us in designing generally, and must, of course, think of appropriateness to position and purpose. Much depends, too, upon proportions of colour, and a beautiful and harmonious effect may be produced in a room by keeping the colour in a particular key, or even delicately varying the designs and tints of one or two colours. The same might be said in arranging a scheme of colouring for any particular piece of design—say, a painted panel or a textile pattern; although such things must ultimately be governed by their relation to other parts in any general scheme—circumstances necessitate their being often designed apart. Still, if the colour of a pattern has been carefully thought out, or rather harmoniously felt, as a real organic thing, it is sure to fit into its place when its time comes.
In arranging our design of colour we can have no better guide, as to proportions and quality, than nature, and should do well, as a matter of practice, to take a flower, or the plumage of a bird, or the colours of a landscape, and adapt them to some particular pattern or scheme of decoration, following the relative degrees of tint and their quantities as nearly as possible. To do this successfully requires some invention and taste; but successful, or unsuccessful, one could hardly fail to learn something positive and valuable about colour, if the attempt was conscientiously made; and fresher motives and sweeter colour would be more likely to result from such study.