Some light rays are reflected to produce the observed object color. What is important about Newton's work is that he was the first one to organize colors into a circle. The theory of the three primary colors-red, yellow and blue originated about a century later when a Frenchman, Jean C. Le Bon, published a treatise on pigment mixing. The theory has since become the basis for any work involving colored pigment. Without light there is no color.
Total darkness is void of all color.
We see the colors produced by an object only when it is bathed in natural light. Everything in nature is composed of various chemical elements. These elements and combinations have varying degrees of light ray absorption. Depending on the elements contained, each object has its own distinctive color. When we look upon a given color of raw pigment we are looking upon a chemical element that is reflecting certain light rays.