Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/15



Ever since Newton discovered the solar spectrum it has been referred to in a poetic way as Nature's standard of color. But as soon as the author attempted, some twelve years ago, to use it practically by making pigmentary imitations of the spectrum colors as standards they were decried as vulgar and inartistic. Under such circumstances it was a great pleasure to him to hear a celebrated art professor answer his inquiry if the solar spectrum is the proper place to look for standards of color with the emphatic assertion, "Certainly, there is no other place to go."

Where there are no standards there can be no measurements, and if in color we have no measurements of effects, no records can be made, and hence no comparisons of results at various places and times, and consequently no discussion and little progress. Because there have been no accepted standards and no measurements of color very little has thus far been decided regarding psychological color effects.

In drawing, as at present taught in our best schools from the kindergarten to the university, the foundation of art in black and white is laid in form study. From the drawing teachers we learn that a good touch and a fine sense for light and shade in all their subtle relations to each other are without value, unless due care has been given to the commonplace consideration of lengths and directions of lines, that is to say to the measurement of lines and angles, and to the laws of perspective. We cannot have measurements without standards. By the foot or the metre we measure lines and by the divided circle we measure angles.