Black and white

“ If we were to paint the globe in two colors—black and white—allowing the black to represent the "heathen," and the white the Christian, we would see spread before our eyes a limitless sea of inky blackness, with a few white dots floating in it. ”

“ Black′-wash, a lotion of calomel and lime-water: anything that blackens.—Black and blue, with the livid colour of a bruise in the flesh; Black book, an official book bound in black, a book recording the names of persons deserving punishment; Black eye, an eye of which the iris is dark—a point of beauty: a discoloration around the eye due to a blow or fall; Black fellow, a native in Australia.—In black and white, in writing or in print: in art, in no colours but black and white.—To be black in the face, to have the face purple through strangulation, passion, or effort ”

“ It also reminds us that colour is influenced by other surrounding colours.
"What is colour?" cries the young artist.
We say that black is black and white is white, that snow is white, the clean linen handkerchief is white, the ermine fur that you wear round your neck is white. Drop your handkerchief upon the snow, lay your ermine on its unbroken surface, the one will look murky and grey and the other yellow.
Black is just black, you say. But is it? Objects are black because they come in contrast with other colours. ”

“ Black and white may soften, may blend; but they are not therefore the same. Nor, when they are so softened and blended with each other, or with different colors, is the power of black as black, or of white as white, so strong as when each stands uniform and distinguished. ”

“ The artist uses the 'mixed convention' of solid black and line with less confusion than many modern draughtsmen. Once its dangers must have been evident, but now the puzzle pattern, with solid blacks in the foreground, background, and mid-distance—only there is no distance in these drawings—is a common form of black and white. ”

“ White is our only semblance to light, and what a leaden symbol it is when we regard the brightness of our example!
Black is our deepest dark, and how shallow it is when we try to look into the depth of the shadows about us! ”

“ They’re all alike; a lot of people go about telling each other how black white is and that white is always black—until somebody suddenly discovers that black and white are a sort of greenish red. Then the audience applauds frantically in spite of the fact that everybody in it had concluded that black and white were really a shade of yellowish yellow! ”

“ Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every passion by a greater or less suffusion of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference to them, as uniformly as is the preference of the oroonowtang for the black women over those of his own species? ”

“ Have you ever seen a cotton-field white with harvest,—its golden fleece hovering above the black earth like a silvery cloud edged with dark green, its bold white signals waving like the foam of billows from Carolina to Texas across that Black and human Sea? ”

“ We do also firmly declare, That it is our resolution, as long as we live, to call black, black; and white, white. And we shall upon all occasions oppose such persons, that, upon any day of the year, shall call black white, or white black, with the utmost peril of our lives and fortunes. ”

“ Black is black. White is black. White and black is black and white. What I recollect when I am there is that words are not birds. How easily I feel thin. Birds do not. So I replace birds with tin-foil. Silver is thin. ”

“ All artists, and all other people know the power of contrast. White never looks so white as when it is relieved against black; black never so intense as when it is relieved against white. A white flower in the twilight gleams out in spectral distinctness, paler and fairer than it looked in the blazing sunshine. So, if we take and put these two things together—the dark mass of man's miseries and the radiant brightness of God's mercies, each heightens the colour of the other. ”

“ It is well, therefore, to be acquainted with the possibilities of certain color combinations. The most brilliant effect in black and white drawing is that obtained by placing the prominent black against a white area surrounded by gray. The white shows whiter because of the gray around it, so that the contrast of the black against it is extremely vigorous and telling. ”

“ Black is the last and lowest in the series or scale of colours descending—the opposite extreme from white—the maximum of colour. To be perfect, it must be neutral with respect to colours individually, and absolutely transparent, or destitute of reflective power as regards light; its use in painting being to represent shade or depths, of which black is the element in a picture and in colours, as white is of light. ”

“ Look at the hundreds of advertised hair-dyes, used for the purpose of changing Nature! See men with their gray beards dyed black; women with those beautiful [Pg 388] black locks, which but yesterday were as white as the driven snow! Not only this, but even those with light or red whiskers run to the dye-kettle, steal a color which Nature has refused them, and an hour after curse the negro for a complexion that is not stolen. If black is so hateful, why do not gentlemen have their boots whitewashed? If the slaves of the South had been white, the same prejudice would have existed against them. ”

“ Impure black is brown, but black in its purity is a cold colour, and communicates a coolness to all light colours; thus it blues white, greens yellow, [388] purples red, and cools blue. Hence the artist errs with ill effect who regards black as of nearest affinity to hot and brown colours, and will do well to keep in mind—"The glow of sunshine and the cool of shade."
It is a fault of even some of our best colourists, as evinced by their pictures, to be too fond of black upon their palettes, and thence to infuse it needlessly into their tints and colours. ”

“ It is in the like of me that clothes show fair and to the like of me that hearts incline. Moreover, in whiteness are many excellences; for instance, the snow falls white from heaven, and it is traditional that white is the most beautiful of colours. The Muslims also glory in white turbans; but I should be tedious, were I to repeat all that may be said in praise of white; little and enough is better than too much. So now I will begin with thy dispraise, O black, O colour of ink and blacksmith's dust, thou whose face is like the crow that brings about lovers' parting! ”

“ For what one has, in black and white,
One carries home and then goes through it. ”

“ Whatever is the order of the day, the highest ton among the whites is instantly adopted, with the most ludicrous exaggeration, by the blacks: if small brims be worn by the beaus of the former, they degenerate to nothing on the skulls of the latter; if width be the order of the day, the coloured gentlemen rush out in unmeasurable umbrellas of felt, straw, and gossamer. A long-tailed white is, in comparison, but a docked black. ”

“ If so, why do we see so much black in common use as clothing among all classes? Indeed, black is preferred to either white or colors. How often the young man speaks in ecstasies of the black eyes and black hair of his lady-love! ”

“ White is also more plentifully distributed, and is seen in the hair and beard of old men, in horses, and in many accessories, for which red is also occasionally employed. As{230} the art developed, red figures were more frequently introduced among those in black; and we also find the artist entirely obscuring the natural color of the paste by means of a white slip, or coat, upon which he painted the black figures. ”

“ Perfect white is opaque, and perfect black transparent; hence when added to black in minute proportion, white gives it solidity; and from a like small proportion of black combined with white, the latter acquires locality as a colour, and better preserves its hue in painting. Both white and black communicate these properties to other colours, in proportion to their lightness or depth; while they cool each other in mixture, and equally contrast each other when opposed. ”

“ White and black represent extremes in color. Mixing of all the color rays of the solar spectrum produces white, and mixing of all the colors in the solid form of printing ink produces black. From this contrast of white and black maybe drawn a lesson in color. (Example 31.) Light represents warmth, darkness cold. As the colors are toward light they are warm; as they are toward darkness they are cold. Red becomes warmer as it takes on an orange hue, and colder as it takes on a purple hue. A warm color should be contrasted with a cold color—as orange with black. ”

“ White is worn universally by men and women next to the face, in collars or in neckwear, and the reason for it is that the contiguous white intensifies whatever color they may possess. Black, on the other hand, lessens the color or lowers its tone.
32. Gray is a medium between the two. While it renders an adjacent color less brilliant, it takes to itself at the same time a tint that is a complement of that adjacent color. ”

“ For the black-veined variety the white lead ground is gone over here and there, but not too much of it, with a touch of black which must be vigorously worked into the white to produce a few blotches of light, faint gray not prominent at all. The veining is gray of a trifle darker tone, which is called black by courtesy and as a contrast to the white of the ground. ”

“ There are as many blue blackguards as there are orange, and as many white as there are purple, or any other colour, and I won't have any of my family mixed up with it. Even women and children are ready to quarrel for the sake of a colour, and not one in ten of them knows what it is about. ”

“ And I shall insert an Essay, as well Speculative as Historical, of the Nature of Whiteness and Blackness, that you may have a Specimen of the History of Colours, I have sometimes had thoughts of; and if you dislike not the Method I have made use of, I hope, you, and some of the Virtuosi, your friends, may be thereby invited to go thorow with Red, Blew, Yellow, and the rest of the particular Colours, as I have done with White and Black, but with farr more sagacity and success. ”

“ Custom has prescribed that on these occasions the colour of the victim shall be black, as an emblem of the wished-for rain-clouds. But if fine weather is wanted, the victim must be white, without a spot. ”

“ May we not learn from hence that black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot, sunny climate or season as white ones?" That all summer hats, particularly for soldiers, should be white, and that garden walls intended for fruit should be black, were suggestions put forth as a result of this experiment. ”

“ Never his brothers before him
Showed the hint of a stain.”
Hark to the tups and wethers;
Hark to the old gray ram:
“We’re all of us white, but he’s black as night,
And he’ll never be worth a damn.” ”

“ In such a white world, the entrance of a black man would be hailed with joy by the inhabitants. Anybody or anything would be welcome that would break the oppressive and tormenting monotony of the all-prevailing white. ”

“ White, black and gray, which find no place in the color-tone series, give an intensity series of their own, running from white through light gray and darker and darker gray to black, and any gray in this series may be the zero point in a saturation series of any color-tone. ”

“ I say Colored people, because we would have been pure black, were it not that immoral white men have, by force, injected their blood into our veins, to such an extent, that we now represent all colors, from pure black to pure white, and almost entirely as{131} the result of the licentiousness of white men, and not of marriage or by the cohabitation of Colored men with white women. ”

“ When the circumstances are favourable between the white and the black, it is evident that there exists no inimical relationship between them; they love each other and are attracted to each other; equally unlike, their respective deficiencies perfect nature. ”

“ After all, some very well informed and very well meaning people will read what I have now said, and what seems to me so just and reasonable, and will still insist that the color of the negro has something to do with the feeling entertained toward him; that the white man naturally shudders at the thought of contact with one who is black -- that the impulse is one which he can neither resist nor control. ”

“ Black is the resultant of the combination in unequal proportions of blue, red, and yellow.
Black, in Christian art, expressed the earth; darkness, mourning, wickedness, negation, death; and was appropriate to the Prince of Darkness. White and black together signify purity of life, and mourning or humiliation; hence adopted by the Dominicans and Carmelites. In blazonry, black, called sable, signifies prudence, wisdom, and constancy in adversity and love, and is represented by horizontal and perpendicular lines crossing each other. ”

“ In consequence of this law of contrast of tone the contrast of black with active colors generally tends to intensify the black and lower the tone of the color, i.e., to weaken it as though white or light gray was mixed with it, but this effect is modified by contrast of color. ”

“ My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light. ”

“ All we can say to him with reference to this portion of his violent suppositions is that "the average black nature, such as it now exists," should NOT, in a civilized community, be left free to assert itself, any more than the average white, the average brown, the average red, or indeed any average colour of human nature whatsoever. ”