XXI. Colour

In the use of colour in the house, perhaps the most important question to consider is, Will it fade? It may be noted that those colours which at once captivate and attract the eye are generally the most evanescent.

As in the world of letters there is a kind of book which has a brief passion of life succeeded by total neglect, so in the decorative world there are brilliant colours, the stimulating effects of which soon pall. In the natural world these intense colours are found in the passing pageant of the flowers, while the constant tints are those sober, quiet tones which one may love little, but which one can love long; and inasmuch as these vivid colours are those which fade, one may perhaps take the hint which nature thus conveys, and in the permanent dyes for the adornment of the house keep to quiet colour as a setting for the transient brightness of flowers, or the concentrated brilliance of a decorative picture in stained glass.

The use of aniline dyes instead of the old vegetable ones has been the chief cause of the prevalence of unreliable colours in modern materials. William Morris made a careful study of dyeing, and revived the use of most of the old vegetable dyes, so that the great merit of the Morris fabrics apart from their beauty of design is the permanence of their colouring. The most reliable colours generally are yellow and reds, but blue and mauve should be used with caution. Some colours, while they fade, may end by becoming pleasant tints, and a vivid green may thus become eventually a uniform grey green tone, and such materials may often be used when experience has shown to what extent they will change in time. For curtains or other materials which are exposed to direct sunlight, the use of undyed materials may be recommended as a safe course.

If the spectrum of sunlight is examined, it will be found to range from purple at one end, merging into blue, and a central zone of green, which passes through shades of yellow and orange into red, at the opposite end. The central green zone may be said to represent in the decorative world a normal colour—” work-a-day “green, as Morris called it. The blue and purple end represents the more” spirituelle “tints, while the yellow and red appeal to the animal instincts and merge into the heat rays. The cultivation of the colour sense leads to the extension of the spectrum and the inclusion of many gradations of exquisite subtlety. The central green invariably satisfies the normal eye, while the pleasure conveyed by the extreme tints ot the spectrum varies according to the predominance of the spiritual or animal in the mood of the observer.

The terms “spiritual” and “animal” convey the idea I wish to suggest somewhat inadequately, and I do not wish it to be inferred that the heart-warming pleasure conveyed by red is necessarily base, or the refined appreciation of mauves and blues an indication of superiority. In the complete human consciousness each pleasure has its appointed place, and to be uncheered by a red colour is a sign of an incomplete rather than a superior mind.

A room decorated in tones of blue and mauve may be dainty and refined, but it is somewhat lacking in virility, and it may very well be complemented by a scheme derived from the opposite end of the spectrum, but generally the central green tone of the spectrum is most satisfactory with the introduction of its adjacent tints of either blue or yellow. The decorative use of colour implies the cultivation of the faculty of thinking in colour, as the musician thinks in sounds—and this process does not involve the indication of natural forms as a medium for expression of an arrangement of tints which may be disposed in a purely conventional way. As an example of this thinking in colour, one may instance the Japanese prints, which judged on their merits as imitations of nature may seem somewhat crude, while considered as scheme of colour arrangement they are wonderfully beautiful and full of suggestions for decorative schemes, which those who regard painting as merely an imitative art will perhaps hardly appreciate.

Passages of colour occur just as passages of sound in a musical composition having no relation to any natural objects, and these are charged with a mysterious and inexplicable beauty which is elusive and unsubstantial. But while this kind of beauty is recognised and expected in the musical composition, it is considered, when it is considered at all, only as secondary to imitative art in the picture. The highest form of picture making is often held to be that which creates the most convincing illusion of reality; and the artist who, giving up the impossible ideal involved in competing with Nature uses his subject as a field for an arrangement of colour, is generally misunderstood and often condemned. For those who can refrain from abusing what they do not understand are unfortunately represented by a very small minority.