Ruskin, John: The elements of drawing: in three letters to beginners (London, 1857)

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THE ELEMENTS OP DRAWING. [letter iii.

they are in Nature, while others are much subdued,
you have no longer a true statement. You cannot
say to the observer, " Fancy all those colours a little
deeper, and you will have the actual fact." However
he adds in imagination, or takes away, something is
sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of har-
mony.

It will happen, however, much more frequently,
that you have to darken the whole system of colours,
than to make them paler. You remember, in your
first studies of colour from Nature, you were to
leave the passages of light which were too bright to
be imitated, as white paper. But, in completing the
picture, it becomes necessary to put colour into
them; and then the other colours must be made
darker, in some fixed relation to them. If you
deepen all proportionately, though the whole scene
is darker than reality, it is only as if you were
looking at the reality in a lower light: but if,
while you darken some of the tints, you leave others
undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will
not give the impression of truth.