ADDRESSES ON DECORATIVE COLOUR 501

interview the young man pointed out to the composer a number of faults and departures from the established rules of harmony which he had marked in one of his overtures. He inquired the cause of these errors, and why such a note had been used, when a different one would have been the more correct. Haydn replied that he had done so because it had a good effect, and pleased his taste. The Englishman disapproved of the alterations, when Haydn told him to play the passages as he would wish them to be altered, and see which would produce the best effect. After a good deal of argument on each side, the great composer, becoming perfectly impatient, said, “My lord, you have the goodness to give me lessons, and I do not deserve the honour of receiving them from you,” and bowed him out of the room.

31. He was anxious to get his hearers entirely quit of the notion of supposing that they could do nothing without “rule.” We were told, as a rule, that there were three primary colours-red, blue and yellow-and that these primaries should occur in every composition; that these three colours always existed in a ray of light in the proportions of eight, five, and three, and that in these proportions they neutralised each other, and produced white light. Then, said the scientific gentleman, “Because these colours occur in a ray of light, you should always put them into your colour compositions in just such a manner as that each colour may be neutralised by its neighbour.” How absurd was all this! Were there not also acids and alkalies in chemistry which neutralised each other? and would it not be equally reasonable for a man to say to his cook, “Whenever you squeeze a lemon on my veal, put a pinch of magnesia with it, in order that the alkali may neutralise the acid”? There, said the lecturer (producing at the same time an orange), is as fine a yellow as you can have. If the scientific man were asked what colours should be introduced with it in a composition, he would reply, “Well, eight of red, and five of blue.” But what said Nature? She gave neither red nor blue, but, placing the orange in the midst of bright green leaves, enabled you to look on one of the most beautiful objects in existence-an orange grove. Look, too, at the beautiful little sky-blue flowers of the gentian.¹ Did Nature give that eight of blue, five of red, and a touch of yellow? No such thing. There were the green grass, the white lilies of the valley, and the grey rock, but not a touch of red or yellow; yet that flower always looked beautiful. Some fine specimens of water-colour drawings of Turner and others were exhibited, for the purpose of showing that beautiful effects might be obtained without adherence to these arbitrary rules, and could often only be obtained by definance of them; and the lesson which the lecturer deduced from these examples, as well as from a careful study of the finest works of the old masters, was that a close observance of these laws would most assuredly lead the scholar in a wrong direction.

32. But not only were these laws calculated to lead people wrong, but they would make those who followed them immoderately conceited. He was talking the other day to a man² who, of all others, had, perhaps, been the most successful in pursuing these laws of colour, and, in the course of conversation, the lawgiver said, “Well, I find, upon the whole, that there

¹ [For Ruskin’s love of the gentian, see Vol. II. p. 431 n.]

² [No doubt, Sir David Brewster, F.R.S. (1781-1868).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]