So On The Palette Of Nature Each Colour Is An Example Of Colouring:

: ON THE PRIMARY, BLUE.

no colour is too absolute or defined, no perfectly pure blue appears

beside a perfectly pure green. A blue flower nestled in its green leaves

does not offend the nicest eye, but the blue and green are not blue and

green alone. There is, perhaps, but a single gleam of pure colour in

each: the rest is composed of such varied hues and tints and shades, so

broken and blended and beautifully harmonized, that no jarring discord

is possible. Hue melts into hue, tint into tint, shade into shade; and

thus does the simplest weed teach a lesson in colouring the proudest

painter may stoop to learn.



We have spoken of blue, which is termed a cold colour, as retiring; and

of yellow and red, which are called warm colours, as advancing. By this

we must not be understood to mean that blue, as blue, expresses

distance; or that yellow and red, as yellow and red, express nearness.