DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1211#0027
ON THE
FULL ARRANGEMENT
COLOURS.
IN order to arrange a variety of colours in a group, so as to produce harmony,
attention must be paid to the order in which they are seen in the Rainbow,
or the Prismatic Spectrum*; for if colours are promiscuously jumbled to-:
gether, without regard to the proper quantity of each, and no other means used
to obtain harmony than merely subduing them by shade, or breaking them by
mixing them with one another, it will frequently be impossible to do it that
way without departing from nature; and if they could be even kept ever so
well in subordination by those means, still the additional attention to the
natural lightness, strength, and quantity, of each, is as requisite to be observed
as the rules of perspective in regard to the size and figure of objects: for
* It is scarcely necessary to explain the well-known spectacle alluded to : but as there may be
some young ladies who have not seen it, I shall beg leave to inform them it is a mode of separating
the component parts of a ray of the sun's light by means of a three-corner'd wedge of glass, called a
prism, which will fling them upon any object in their way, such as a sheet of paper, and there exhibit
exactly the same colours seen in the rainbow, beautifully blending one into another as seen there,
and form what is called the Prismatic Spectrum.
FULL ARRANGEMENT
COLOURS.
IN order to arrange a variety of colours in a group, so as to produce harmony,
attention must be paid to the order in which they are seen in the Rainbow,
or the Prismatic Spectrum*; for if colours are promiscuously jumbled to-:
gether, without regard to the proper quantity of each, and no other means used
to obtain harmony than merely subduing them by shade, or breaking them by
mixing them with one another, it will frequently be impossible to do it that
way without departing from nature; and if they could be even kept ever so
well in subordination by those means, still the additional attention to the
natural lightness, strength, and quantity, of each, is as requisite to be observed
as the rules of perspective in regard to the size and figure of objects: for
* It is scarcely necessary to explain the well-known spectacle alluded to : but as there may be
some young ladies who have not seen it, I shall beg leave to inform them it is a mode of separating
the component parts of a ray of the sun's light by means of a three-corner'd wedge of glass, called a
prism, which will fling them upon any object in their way, such as a sheet of paper, and there exhibit
exactly the same colours seen in the rainbow, beautifully blending one into another as seen there,
and form what is called the Prismatic Spectrum.