THE GREAT MIKROR 



89 



more lovely as they faint and fade. Nothing 

 in painting can more than suggest such a color 

 scheme as this. Turner's most brilliant pig- 

 ments are dull as ditch-water beside the flam- 

 ing sea; and Claude Monet's primary colors, 

 placed in juxtaposition upon the canvas for an 

 effect of light, do not reach halfway up the 

 scale. No pigment ground in a mortar or 

 squeezed out of a lead tube ever came within 

 fifty degrees of nature's hues. 



Almost invariably at sea we watch the sun- 

 set in the sky rather than in the water, and 

 yet the reflection below is perhaps more beauti- 

 ful because more harmonious. The colors 

 deepen and become finer in quality. The scar- 

 lets run into dark red, the yellows into orange, 

 the blues into ultramarine. The water becomes 

 a medium, an atmosphere that blends all the 

 hues together to make a color mystery as pro- 

 found as any held in the ocean's depths. 



And yet still more distinguished in color 

 than this sunset sea incarnadined are the waters 

 back in the east that reflect the opalescence of 

 the sky in hues of mother-of-pearl. The east- 

 ward-lying sea at sunset never startles nor 

 amazes; it is not noisy nor blatant, but it has 

 the charm of perfect accord and the sulHlety 

 of refined beauty. You watch it for many min- 



Insuffi- 

 ciency of 

 painters' 

 pigments. 



Sunset 

 colors in the 

 water. 



Enstivard- 

 hjinij icatera 

 at sunset. 



