Theory of Colours — trans. Charles Lock Eastlake (1840)

For when we find ourselves surrounded by a given colour which excites its corresponding sensation on the eye, and compels us by its presence to remain in a state identical with it, this state is soon found to be forced, and the organ unwillingly remains in it.

805.

When the eye sees a colour it is immediately excited, and it is its nature, spontaneously and of necessity, at once to produce another, which with the original colour comprehends the whole chromatic scale. A single colour excites, by a specific sensation, the tendency to universality.

806.

To experience this completeness, to satisfy itself, the eye seeks for a colourless space next every hue in order to produce the complemental hue upon it.

807.

In this resides the fundamental law of all harmony of colours, of which every one may convince himself by making himself accurately acquainted with the experiments which we have described in the chapter on the physiological colours.

808.

If, again, the entire scale is presented to the eye externally, the impression is gladdening, since the result of its own operation is presented to it in reality. We turn our attention therefore, in the first place, to this harmonious juxtaposition.

809.

As a very simple means of comprehending the principle of this, the reader has only to imagine a moveable diametrical index in the colorific circle.[1] The index, as it revolves round the whole circle, indicates at its two extremes the complemental colours, which, after all, may be reduced to three contrasts.

810.

Yellow demands Red-blue,
Blue demands Red-yellow,
Red demands Green,
and contrariwise.

811.

In proportion as one end of the supposed index deviates from the central intensity of the colours, arranged as they are in the natural order, so the opposite end changes its place in the contrasted gradation, and by such a simple contrivance the complemental colours may be indicated at any given point. A chromatic circle might be made for this purpose, not confined, like our own, to the leading colours, but exhibiting them with their transitions in an unbroken series. This would not be without its use, for we are here considering a very important point which deserves all our attention.[2]

812.

We before stated that the eye could be in some degree pathologically affected by being long confined to a single colour; that, again, definite moral impressions were thus produced, at one time lively and aspiring, at another susceptible and anxious--now exalted to grand associations, now reduced to ordinary ones. We now observe that the demand for completeness, which is inherent in the organ, frees us from this restraint; the eye relieves itself by producing the opposite of the single colour forced upon it, and thus attains the entire impression which is so satisfactory to it.

813.

Simple, therefore, as these strictly harmonious contrasts are, as presented to us in the narrow circle, the hint is important, that nature tends to emancipate the sense from confined impressions by suggesting and producing the whole, and that in this instance we have a natural phenomenon immediately applicable to æsthetic purposes.

814.

While, therefore, we may assert that the chromatic scale, as given by us, produces an agreeable impression by its ingredient hues, we may here remark that those have been mistaken who have hitherto adduced the rainbow as an example of the entire scale; for the chief colour, pure red, is deficient in it, and cannot be produced, since in this phenomenon, as well as in the ordinary prismatic series, the yellow-red and blue-red cannot attain to a union.

815.

Nature perhaps exhibits no general phenomenon where the scale is in complete combination. By artificial experiments such an appearance may be produced in its perfect splendour. The mode, however, in which the entire series is connected in a circle, is rendered most intelligible by tints on paper, till after much experience and practice, aided by due susceptibility of the organ, we become penetrated with the idea of this harmony, and feel it present in our minds.

816.

Besides these pure, harmonious, self-developed combinations, which always carry the conditions of completeness with them, there are others which may be arbitrarily produced, and which may be most easily described by observing that they are to be found in the colorific circle, not by diameters, but by chords, in such a manner that an intermediate colour is passed over.

817.

We call these combinations characteristic because they have all a certain significancy and tend to excite a definite impression; an impression, however, which does not altogether satisfy, inasmuch as every characteristic quality of necessity presents itself only as a part of a whole, with which it has a relation, but into which it cannot be resolved.

818.