PRODUCED BY ELECTRO-CHEMICAL ACTION. 117 



it impossible to obtain brightness of tint unless by sacrificing intensity, 

 is sufficiently demonstrated. 



Beauty and Monotony. 



Beauty consists in a certain variety which some tints possess in a 

 higher degree than others. The yellow, for example, and the red of the 

 spectrum have a tone peculiar to themselves: the golden contains the 

 essence of the red and the yellow, and is more agreeable to the eye than 

 either. 



The most beautiful tints in the scale commence at the orange colours 

 22 and 23, and continue to the end. 



The first element of pleasing is variety ; in this point of view the 

 purity and homogeneity of a colour are defects, of which philosophical 

 painters must have been sensible when they recommended the use of 

 compound in preference to simple colours *. 



The purest tint of tixe scale is perhaps that of the yellow No. 19. At 

 the first glance it is extremely pleasing, but soon becomes monotonous 

 and the eye turns away for relief to the higher tints, each of which pro- 

 duces the sensation of several colours. A painting in which there is 

 much yellow will therefore always fail to please on account of this mo- 

 notony ; for its effect is most disagreeable. 



Nothing can be more beautiful than the varying colours : when we 

 call them varying it is unnecessary to say why they please. Painters, 

 we know, in order to give a finish to their productions, overlay them 

 with certain tints. The colours of the painting appear through the 

 tint, are mingled but not confounded with it, and thus are produced 

 a variety and vividness unattainable by any other means. 



Warmth and Coldness. 



Those tints which contain the element of red are by painters called 

 warm, and those in which the element of azure abounds are termed cold. 



Red is the strongest and the most vivid colour : it is the colour oi Jive 

 and of blood, and it warms and inflames all the tints into which it is in- 

 troduced. 



If the idea of warmth is associated with red, azure gives rise to a 

 very different feeling: it is indeed preeminently the cold colour. 



Yellow approaches more nearly to the nature of red than to that of 

 azure, and is consequently rather warm than cold. Pure green cannot 

 be said to be cold or warm : it inclines however to the former or to the 

 latter accordingly as it is combined with blue or with yellow. 



Clieerfulness and Gloominess. 

 Cheerfulness is not to be confounded with beauty, nor gloominess with 

 monotony : they are more distinct sensations and seem to belong, the 



* Lemons Pratiques de Peinture, § v. 



