100 ON COLOUR. Paut I. 



is combined with a light one : e. g. crimson with canary, or 

 with lemon-colour : black with pale straw-colour ; a deep red 

 with a pale blue, and others ; when the first looks heavy and 

 the other poor, and the latter is overpowered by the deeper 

 tone of its companion. Thus too a grey looks paler in com- 

 pany with black. The same attention to the balance of hues 

 is of course essential in furniture, draperies, and all coloured 

 combinations ; and even flowers, bright as they are, may have 

 their effect lessened by an injudicious introduction of brilliant 

 colours in the vases which contain them, or by the too 

 gorgeously painted walls of a conservatory. Here, indeed, a 

 more subdued tone of decoration is required, as the flowers 

 are to be admired for their own merits, and are not expected 

 to form part of the general ornamentation. 



It does not follow that a pure colour must accord with a 

 compound one in which the hue most opposed to the pure 

 one predominates, merely because one of the two forming 

 that compound is a harmonious contrast to it; and yellow 

 with blue-green (though yellow and blue are concords), do 

 not accord as well as yellow and yellow-green : thus the 

 flower and leaves of the Tropseolum canariense are better 

 suited to each other than the same flower to the leaves of 

 the Iris, or Flag. But this is partly owing to the latter 

 being of a different intensity ; and flowers are not always a 

 safe guide {see pp. 1 9, 106). Nor is red with a green containing 

 much blue so good a combination as with a green which has 

 more yellow. This too shows that the blue-green, which is 

 nearer to the complementary or accidental colour of red, does 

 not suit the red so well as does a yellower green, as I have 

 already stated. Scarlet too accords better than pure red with 

 green ; and this even suits a yellow-green rather than one in 

 which the blue tint predominates. Crimson, again, is dis- 

 agreeable with green. 



It is not only when two colours are of a different character 



