International studio (40.1910)

Blue Shadows in Nature and Art

Courtesy oj Yamanaka & Co.

PRINTS BY HOKUSAI FROM A SERIES ILLUSTRATING SCENES FROM THE POEMS OF NATIVE POETS, 183O TO 1835

and also in the collars of the two fine portraits of To me, who for twenty years previously had seen
men by Rembrandt on the same wall. A young ar- these blue shadows in nature, even on such unprom-
tist to whom I pointed out these shadows, on return- ising surfaces as those of gray macadamized roads
ing to the Hals, of which he was making a careful and occasionally in landscapes, this attitude was in-
study, said that the grayish blues he had not before comprehensible. But as blue shadows of the same
observed now seemed to him to give to the whole pitch happened to lie on the deep sunlit snow all
color scheme a greater fulness and significance. round the building which contained the collection, I
The late J. H. Twachtman is supposed to have thought there would be no difficulty in disabusing
been the first American artist to employ blue shad- my hearers of their idea. None of them, however
ows, and yet I cannot remember any instance of had, it appeared, ever previously observed the color
them in his four pictures at the World's Fair in in shadows on snow. Some could not see it then,
1893. In the end of the following year, however, and others there were who, although they did,
having been asked to give a series of talks on the frankly maintained that their recognition of it was
comparative merits and technique of a large collec- due to suggestion, and to this notion they ad-
tion of pictures by contemporary American artists hered when on the following day they had been un-
to an audience composed of the members of an art able, as they said, to see the color for themselves,
society and of certain other clubs, it so happened But lest it should appear that this was but a solitary,
that one of the pictures selected by me for apprecia- or unusual, instance in which people of intelligence
tion was one of these brilliantly sunlighted snow and culture, the majority of whom were conversant
scenes with luminous blue shadows with which all with the contents of galleries at home and abroad,
lovers of the art of Mr. Twachtman are now famil- were unable from preconviction to see blue in na-
iar. I had spoken somewhat enthusiastically of it, ture shadows, I think it well to say that, during the
and among other things had said that the color of fifteen years which have since elapsed, I have met
these shadows was true to nature, when it at once with innumerable instances of people of similar
became evident that I was the only person present caliber, several of them personal friends, to whom it
who held that view of the color, my hearers being had never occurred that shadows on snow, or any
unanimously of opinion that, under all conditions of other surface, could be anything else than neutral
lighting, the shadows of nature were gray, and that, in color.

therefore, the introduction of blue was a mere color One result of this impasse, nevertheless, was that

fad of the artist. it led to an attempt on my part to discover the cause

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