gray. Starting from this idea, the attempt has been made to fix the proportional size of the areas, which would have to be assigned to the various colors usually employed in the arts, for the purpose of arriving at the result indicated. This idea was especially elaborated by Field, an Englishman, who gave the name of 'chromatic equivalents' to the numbers of the proportions obtained, a designation which has since been very generally adopted. In reality, however, these 'chromatic equivalents' have no value whatever."
The same writer also says: "It will always remain incomprehensible that even a man like Owen Jones in the text accompanying his beautiful "Grammar of Ornament" should have adopted this proposition in the form given to it by Field, since among all the ornaments reproduced in the work just mentioned there are scarcely any which will really show the distribution of colors demanded by the proposition in question."[1]
In accordance with this eminent authority any one familiar with disk combinations will know by experiment that no combinations of red, yellow and blue approaching the proportion named by Field can produce a neutral gray effect in the eye.
For practical study of color some economic material is absolutely necessary and nothing so well combines manual work with aesthetic cultivation as colored papers, if specially prepared in standard colors and with a dead plated surface.
In the manufacture of the colored papers adopted in the Bradley scheme of color instruction, the effort has constantly been to produce the closest possible imitations of natural colors consistent with the material.
With this aim in view we have secured the brightest possible red, orange, yellow, green and blue and have chosen a violet
- ↑ The Theory of Color in its relation to Art and Art Industry. By Dr. William Von Bezolcl. Translated from the German by S. K. Koehler with introduction and notes by Edward C. Pickering. Boston; L. Prang & Company, 1876.
