Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/90

LANDSCAPE PAINTING laws of color, for its first and immediate effect is to call up the complementary. I sat one day out in the blazing sunlight on the white painted deck of a river steamer holding in my hand a crimson ticket, in the centre of which a square hole had been perforated. After glancing through this hole for an instant I handed the ticket to my companion and asked her to say what color the deck appeared to be as seen through the square opening. "Why! it is brilliant green," she replied, at the same time putting the ticket aside to see if in reality the deck had been painted green in that particular spot. This, of course, was an extreme case; the very powerful scarlet, under the compelling stress of the intense sunlight, had simply conjured up its complementary in an exceptionally [60]