Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/67

 The practices and recommendations of noted artists who have appeared to be gifted with intuitive perceptions regarding color combinations have frequently included those for which there seemed to be no recognized authority, and yet their beauty could not be questioned. As the rules of grammar are but the correlation of the practices of the best scholars, so the rules governing color combinations must be the summary of the practices and recommendations of the best artists, if they are to be generally accepted as final, and hence we must patiently await the growth of similarly established laws by the comparison of the opinions of critics of acknowledged ability in various departments of the world of art. This has not been possible in the past and can never occur until there is a language of color through which color facts can be somewhat accurately expressed in verbal and written language, and this language cannot exist until there is an accepted alphabet of color on which it can be based. This alphabet is now in part furnished by the spectrum standards and completed by the pigmentary standards and the rotating disks made like them. Together they form the basis for a nomenclature by the use of which the questions involved in harmonies can be discussed and the results expressed in written/language.

In the investigation of any subject with a view to elementary instruction, classification is an important factor, but one which heretofore has been almost ignored as regards color education. Consequently at present the more definite division of harmonies into classes is very much a matter of personal opinion, but Mr. Henry T. Bailey, State Supervisor of Drawing in Massachusetts, has suggested a very useful classification in which he arranges all harmonies under these five heads: Contrasted, Dominant, Complementary, Analogous and Perfected.

Contrasted.—The contrasted harmonies are those in which color is contrasted with non-color, or more accurately in which an active color, that is a tone from the spectrum circuit, is contrasted with a passive color, white, black, gray or silver and