The Laws of Harmonious Colouring, Adapted to Interior Decorations, Manufactures, and Other Useful Purposes

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ... THE LAWS or HARMONIOUS COLOURING. The laws of harmonious colouring seem not only to have been thoroughly understood by those great painters of antiquity, whose works have been the admiration and study of succeeding ages, but were, even so far back as amongst the early Egyptians, carried to the greatest perfection in the more humble, though equally useful, art of internal decoration. Those travellers who have visited the remains of the magnificent cities and tombs erected by that wonderful people, speak of this branch of art as having been executed upon an evidently regular system of harmony, which had for its basis those laws that still continue to be the study of followers of the highest walks of art. The Romans, too, at the period of their greatest refinement, seem to have applied this science to the useful arts. Of this the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum afford ample proof. Such artists and ama A teurs as have visited those interesting ruins, and whom I have had an opportunity of consulting upon the subject, speak in the highest terms of the scientific manner in which the colours are arranged in the decoration even of the most ordinary dwellings. According to these accounts, and judging from many coloured sketches made upon the spot, with the sight of which I have been favoured, it appears to me that the knowledge of colour possessed by the Romans at that period must have been of the most scientific nature. They used upon all occasions the most brilliant and intense colours, without either discord or crudity resulting from their various combinations. Even at this day the Italians seem to surpass us in this particular. An eminent writer on the art of painting, and one who has of late years done much in an official capacity for the...