Howard, Frank: Colour, as a means of art: being an adaptation of the experience of professors to the practice of amateurs (London, 1838)

COLOURING OBJECTS. 79

rays of all the light that has passed and is
passing through it!

Such being the effect of the atmosphere
and such being the antagonizing influence of
Association in looking at Nature, it has been
found necessary for the purposes of Art, in
representation, to exaggerate the former, to
overstep the modesty of Nature, and thus to
produce what may be termed conventional
imitations or translations of Nature.

For in looking at a picture, Association again
affects us; and as we know what is before us
to be a flat surface, this can only be overcome
by increasing the effects produced by atmospheric
influence, reflections, refractions, &c. Hence
the colour of all distant objects are reduced to
some tone of grey, oscillating between the
extremes of bright blue or even purple, and the
medium between black and white as the
subject, may be in sunshine cold daylight; or,
as the taste of the artist may lead him to
prefer one scale of colouring to another.
Those who delight in the sunny skies of Italy,
or tropical climates, represent the distance by
the purest blue that Ultramarine affords.
Others who delineate the village church or