THE SENSE OF COLOR. 253 



THE SENSE OF COLOR. 



BY M. ANDK1S BEACCHI. 



~TTT~HEN the different rays of the solar spectrum strike the eye 

 * ' separately they each produce a particular characteristic and 

 subjective impression, which is called color. Ingenious theories have 

 been set forth by physiologists, like Young, Helmholtz, Hering, and 

 others, to explain the perception of colors by our eye, but the prob- 

 lem still awaits solution, and is not likely to be explained from that 

 side, because it is rather psychical. The laws regulating the percep- 

 tion of colors are not physiological ; we perceive only relations. We 

 know that the sense of color may be modified independently of that 

 of light and of space. Two phases may be distinguished in its evo- 

 lution. Every light, whether chromatic or not, produces a simple 

 luminous impression on the retina a simple excitation of the op- 

 tic nerve, without being analyzed by it. In the second phase the 

 brain, the psychic center of color, intervenes. There may obvi- 

 ously be considerable differences between persons in the interpre- 

 tation of what we call colors, and we may judge that there is an 

 education of this psychical center, and that it is an important 

 matter. 



Different as the ways of interpreting a sensation of color may be, 

 there are still some fundamental ideas in the matter which painters, 

 for example, do not all observe. Some, like the impressionists, 

 exaggerate them, and others neglect them. Which of these are 

 wrong? and which right? are questions we are not concerned with, 

 our purpose being to show that many of the phenomena of color, 

 shade, sources of light, etc., escape a large proportion of persons 

 unless they are attentive observers. If we visit the exhibitions of 

 the impressionists we shall be entertained at the criticisms we hear 

 over the canvases of such painters as Renoir and Monet; youths 

 who have just come out of the drawing school declaring that their 

 master never taught them to put blue on a face, and that in Nature 

 all shadows are gray or black, and none red or violet; and we should 

 astonish a great many people if we should say that a white robe 

 should never be painted in a portrait picture with white lead alone. 

 " All skies are blue, all trees are green, all pantaloons are red," said 

 a celebrated painter who was trying to show how the habit of seeing 

 a colored object in a certain way prevented one from perceiving the 

 different colors that might be applied to it. We recollect the trouble 

 of a brave youth who, having sat for his portrait to a celebrated 

 painter, was distracted at perceiving green in the reflections of the 

 hair of his likeness. Yet there are in Nature shadows that are blue 



