Page:Elementary Color (IA gri c00033125012656167).djvu/22

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they may work in sympathy with each other instead of at cross purposes as has been the case heretofore, and the results with children have already been such as to testify fully to the efficiency of this line of work.

Thus the feeling for color which every true artist has, may be to a certain extent analyzed so that it can be understood by the scientist and recorded for the benefit of fellow artists one hundred or a thousand miles away and in time an aggregation of facts regarding the psychological effects of color collected which will form the beginning of a valuable fund of color knowledge to be increased from age to age.

The Speculations of the Past.

Ever since Newton produced the prismatic solar spectrum, the so-called science of color as applied to pigments and coloring, has been a most curious mixture of truth, error and speculation. It was supposed by Newton and Brewster that in the solar spectrum the colors were produced by the over-lapping of three sets of colored rays red, yellow and blue. The red rays at one end were supposed to overlap or mix with the yellow rays to make the orange, and on the other side of the yellow the blue rays were supposed to combine with the yellow to produce green.

Following the same theory in pigmentary colors, it has been claimed that all colors in nature may be produced by the combination of pigments in. these three colors red, yellow and blue, and hence they have been called primary colors. It is still claimed by the advocates of this theory that from the three primaries red, yellow and blue the so-called secondaries orange, green and purple can be made, and that the secondaries are complementary to the primaries in pairs; the orange to the blue, the green to the red and the purple to the yellow.

By similar combinations of the secondaries it is claimed that three other colors, in themselves peculiar, and different from the first six, may be made, the orange and green forming citrines, orange and violet russets, and green and violet olives