The Press.
London, England, 1858-11-27 00:00:00

fit eraturt.

On Colour, and on the Necessity for a General
Diffusion of Taste among all Classes. Illus-
trated by Woodcuts and Coloured Plates.
By Sir J. G. Wilkinson. London : Murray.
Tins magnificent volume, with its cover of deep
skyblue, lighted up by golden vases, and its
dazzling illustrations of every variety and combi-
nation of colour, its fund of common sense, its
easy agreeable conversational style, and complete
freedom from the arrogance and ill-humour that
so often deform works to which Beauty should
have lent the quintessence of her own nectar, is
fitted to provoke discussion and reconsideration
of much received practice, though the principles
are not, we think, other than would be found
accordant with the best received opinions. The
fault of the book is its extremely clumsy method
of arrangement. The paragraphs are numbered
in different ways, the divisions and subdivisions
do not logically follow each other, there is no
clear separation into chapters or subjects, and
there is no table of contents. Readers to whom
these defects do not form the drawback, which,
we confess, they do to us, will find in the book
much that is entertaining, pleasant, sensible, and
useful, and much that will lead them to look
round their own houses and gardens and, what is
more amusing, their neighbours, with a new sense
of the Splendid and the Becoming. Sir J. G.
Wilkinson is not by any means a second Ruskin.
Ile is not brilliant or rhapsodical, but he is
always readable and never needlessly offensive.
We will try to give some idea of his general ideas
and particular suggestions.
The true knowledge of colour is not to be
acquired by theory. Some people have a false
taste ; some a false perception, which is other-
wise called " colour-blindness." A true percep-
tion is a natural gift, like an car for music, and it
may be cultivated, but cannot be acquired. To
attempt to find the reasons why one colour har-
monizes with another is futile, until we have
obtained a full empirical generalization. One
theory, for instance, is, that the three primary
colours, when used in the proportion necessary to
form white light, neutralize each other, and
should therefore be used in ornamentation. This
is absurd, because we do not want to neutralize
or fuse them together ; on the contrary, we
desire them all to be shown. It is equally useless
to deduce a theory of the proportions in which
colours should be used, from the numerical pro-
portion in which they appear in the rainbow ;
for the effect turns out something altogether
different from what would have been expected.
Besides, in the rainbow the colours are blended,
while in ornamentation we wish them to be con-
trasted.—Another theory is that of following in
ornament the vertical order in which colours
occur in nature ; thus it is sometimes said that
blue carpets are objectionable, because blue is
the colour of the sky, and therefore ought to be
appropriated to ceilings ; while brown or green,
being the colours of the earth or grass, should be
placed in the lower part of a room. This, how-
ever, would make the scale of ornament depend
upon climate, since in some tropical countries the
landscape only contains two colours—the blue of
the sky and the parched yellow of the ground;
in others the green is not below our feet, but, as
in trees, level with or above the eye ; in Arctic
regions, too, there would be only two colours,
blue and white. The real reason for sometimes
allowing ornamentation to coincide with such an
arrangement is that certain optical laws are
thereby obeyed ; " though blue demands a pro-
" minent place in a ceiling, it is not because the
" sky is blue ; cold transparent colours are of use
" iu that position, as they tend to give suitable
" lightness to the upper parts of a room."
One of the greatest mistakes which modern
colourists have fallen into is the introduction of
large quantities of green, a practice which the
monuments of other nations show to have been
only resorted to in the decline of their art. in
nature much green is pleasant, because it affords
repose to the eye, but in ornament we do not seek
repose, but excitement. This may explain the
dislike always felt (in spite of our nature-worship)
to pictures in which a great deal of green is intro-
duced artists, as is well known, preferring
autumnal tints. Another mistake is to imagine