Light and shadow

“ And this shadow moves like a ghost through the dim trunks and passes far out over the moor to the sky—then the birches stand out again like gay banners on white poles, with their red and gold patches of autumn-tinted leaves.
I often become so lost in the play of soft light and transparent shadow, that I almost fail to hear the commands. It is when one is alone that one begins to observe Nature and to love her. ”

“ The splendor of the eyes that we worship belongs to them only as brightness to the morning-star. It is a reflex from beyond the shadow of the Now,—a ghost-light of vanished suns. Unknowingly within that maiden-gaze we meet the gaze of eyes more countless than the hosts of heaven,—eyes otherwhere passed into darkness and dust. ”

“ The foreground of the picture is all in shadow, and in the depths of that shadow kneels one prostrate form in an abandon of anxiety or grief. Behind it, unseen, stands a wondrous, pitying, strongly supporting figure with hand outstretched, an aura of light about it, love and understanding emanating from it. ”

“ Only in the cruel serenity of the sky, under the merciless brilliance of the sun, the dazzled eye misses the delicate detail, sees only the strong outlines, while the colours, in the steady light, seem crude and-without shadow. ”

“ Every one knows the changed aspect of the whole material world, when one of the lights that radiated the inner self has merged into shadow, leaving us to grope our way in darkness, until the radiance of a new light, emerging from ourselves, shall penetrate the shadow and shine with the combined brightness of both. ”

“ Your shadow, like a rose's, on the grass
Where your feet pass.
The shadow of the dimple in your chin,
The shadow of the lashes of your eyes,
As on your cheek, soft as a moth, it lies;
And, as a church, I softly enter in
The solemn twilight of your mighty hair,
Down falling there.
These are Love's shadows, Love knows none but these:
Shadows that are the very soul of light,
As morning and the morning blossom bright,
Or jewelled shadows of moon-haunted seas;
The darkest shadows in this world of ours
Are made of flowers. ”

“ Three things are, indeed, needed to form a shadow: light, a body, a dark place. The shadow of heaven forms the darkness of the world. Understand, I pray you, what I mean, by a simple example—by raising for yourself at midday a tent of some compact and impenetrable material, you shut yourself up in sudden darkness. ”

“ Sun and shadow flit across it, changing every moment dark to light and light to dark, so that the general emphasis and expression of the scene constantly vary, like the expression of a human face, as we watch it. ”

“ When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,
For all the day they view things unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,
And darkly bright, are bright in dark directed. ⁠4
Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,
How would thy shadow's form form happy show
To the clear day with thy much clearer light,
When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so! ”

“ Good and evil are combined, like lights and shadows in art—sometimes, as in Rembrandt, voluminous darkness nursing a small spot of light; sometimes all light and hardly enough dark to cast a shadow.
“In looking at our own day and our own country there is both light and shadow. ”

“ Take, for instance, a garden scene—a broad walk, trees on each side—all is in broad light, but all is in painful glare, monotony, and sameness of endless detail. Let a shadow pass over it, a broad shadow—or rather a half-tone of light, that shall only show the local colour subdued—how, let a gleam pass across it, and just touch here and there the leafage, and seem to escape behind it—how small is the light, but it has given life to the picture. I cannot but think it a fault of our day that half-tone is neglected; light is made a glare, and therefore the very object of light is lost. ”

“ Light striking sharply on one side, as when a lantern picture is thrown obliquely against a wall, making the nearest edge sharp against a deep dark, and drifting into shadow by degrees, thus founding the principles of light and shadow. Light-acute, half-light, middle-tint, dark-acute, half-dark, and middle-tint. ”

“ So true are his shadows,—equally free from coldness, opacity, or false glare;—so clear, so broken, so airy, and yet so deep, that if you hold your hand so as to cast a shadow on any part of the flesh which is in the light, this part, so shaded, will present exactly the same appearance which the painter has given to the shadowed part of the picture. ”

“ Then observe this optic phenomenon of the greatest darkness with the greatest light. The shadow is the deeper, the brighter the light that casts it. One characteristic of Truth is that it makes the bad worse and the good better. ”

“ Darkness, then, is the strongest degree of shadow and light is its least. Therefore, O Painter, make your shadow darkest close to the object that casts it, and make the end of it fading into light, seeming to have no end. ”

“ However, out of the cloud comes lightning--from the depths of night bursts forth the sun; all bright things are preceded by darkness; and the shadow that is upon me may give place to light. Even here, perhaps, I may be enabled to do more for the cause I have undertaken than if I had reached France. ”

“ Light and Shade. Is the picture flat and without appearance of life, or do the persons and objects stand out in a life-like manner? Are parts of the picture in shade, so that outlines are lost? The artist has shown the left of the building in the foreground as in shadow; how is this effect produced? Do you observe gradations of tone in the shawl on Tiny Tim, which indicate relative light and shadow? Where is the highest light in the picture, and where the darkest shadow? Are the lights strong as if the sun were shining, or soft and diffused, as is noticeable on a snowy winter’s day? ”

“ A light here required a shadow there. ”

“ Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit; this is his grief; let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?—But, referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, which is no greater than his own opacity. The divine light is diffused almost entirely around us, and by means of the refraction of light, or else by a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have it, transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, we are able to enlighten our shaded side. ”

“ Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light. ”

“ The poets may speculate about man’s first thoughts on light, the sun, moon and stars, and fire. But man used his eyes for ages before he became interested and considered why and how he could15 see, and what light and shadow might be and how they could be usefully harnessed. Even in our day of apparent enlightenment, the underlying explanation of vision and light still eludes our scientists, so we should be patient about the time it took our ancestors to devise ways of harnessing light and shadow to prepare the brightly lighted way for the Bing Crosbys and Betty Grables of our day. ”

“ The shadow is long or short, clear-cut or vague, dark or light, blue or purple, violet or black. Each phase of it has a special [Pg 181] significance. It presages luck or ill-luck on the chase, sickness and death in the future, the presence or unrest of the souls of parted friends. Even the souls of the living sometimes get mixed. Then there is love or intrigue. All the passions of wild life can be read from the shadows. ”

“ Everything else is gradation, from the highest light to the lowest light, the lowest light being almost a shadow; and from its darkest dark to its lightest dark the lightest dark again being almost a light. ”

“ It is good to see a drawing come out of its ground like a vision of light only; the shadows lost, or disregarded in the vague of space. In vulgar chiaroscuro the shades are so full of reflection that they look as if some one had been walking round the object with a candle, and the student, by that help, peering into its crannies.
169. II. But, in the reality of nature, very few objects are seen in this accurately lateral manner, or lighted by unconfused direct rays. Some are all in shadow, some all in light, some near, and vigorously defined; others dim and faint in aerial distance. ”

“ Shadow is only, more or less, by comparison with the brightness of the light. This is best explained by making a room dark by degrees, and holding up some object against the light as it diminishes, until it is quite dark. ”

“ But whereas we see on our earth that places in shadow which are near purple or scarlet cloths, or near lakes, or rivers open to the sun, partake in the brilliance of these colours and offer many varied splendours because of the reflexions, what wonder |E| if a great stream of shadow, falling upon a celestial sea of light, not stable or calm but agitated by myriads of stars and admitting of combinations and changes of every kind, presents to us different colours at different times impressed on it by the moon? For a star or a fire could not show when in shadow as black or grey or blue. ”

“ Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light. Primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. And derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. A primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall. ”

“ So I will only remind you that in this picture there is practically no contrast of shadow. The whole scene is bathed in a uniform light. But the contrast of dark is obtained by putting in certain objects, the red box, the blue vase, and so on, the values of which are lower than that of the white dress. The artist has thought of darkness, not as the result of shadow, but of certain colors being darker in themselves, because they reflect less light than others. ”

“ Thirdly, in the Night-time the Eye being placed in the shadow of the Earth, those reflexions of a Star will be yet more easily visible; whenas the great light of the Sun by Day must needs much debilitate these reflected Images of the Objects upon the Earth, his beams striking our Eyes with so strong vibrations. ”

“ The light of the sun always reflects a shadow equal to the object which it projects on a parallel plane. The sun being larger than the body illumined, throws a shadow less than that body. On the contrary, the light of a candle, being less than the object reflected, produces the contrary effect, the shadow increasing as it retires, not in parallels, but in rays, thrown by the light. ”

“ Shadow is diminution of light.
Darkness is absence of light.
Shadow is divided into two kinds, of which the first is called primary shadow, the second is derived shadow. The primary shadow is always the basis of the derived shadow. ”

“ The vigour of the light will dissolve all chance of influence in the half tints; while the extreme depth of the shadow, carried perhaps to a little excess, will gather up and absorb all the subordinate shadows. ”

“ Carrying the shadow across the middle of the subject is attended with many advantages; among which are, bringing the foreground into extreme vigour; furnishing ourselves with greater facilities in getting away the background; and more readily obtaining distance and repose by blending the horizon with the clouds ”

“ A shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background. ”

“ Hope, frail but lovely shadow! thou dost come,
Like a bright vision on our pathway here,
Making the gloomy future beautiful,
And gilding our horizon with a light,
The fairest human eye can ever know. ”

“ The lightness or darkness of shadows are entirely regulated by the colour of the objects on which they fall.
An object painted in a light colour will be more or less light, according to the strength of its shadow, from the consequences attending opposition. ”

“ As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top,
So, darkness in the pathway of Man's life
Is but the shadow of God's providence,
By the great Sun of Wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in Heaven." ”

“ THE BODY WHICH IS NEAREST TO THE LIGHT CASTS THE LARGEST SHADOW, AND WHY? If an object placed in front of a single light is very close to it you will see that it casts a very large shadow on the opposite wall, and the farther you remove the object from the light the smaller will the image of the shadow become. ”

“ Masses of light, supported and brought out by masses of shadow, are the surest means of producing it. Effect is procured by the strongest opposition, and sometimes by the reverse. Arrangement and Expression is, in historical composition, much the same thing that Effect is in landscape-painting. ”

“ That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day history and daylight have arrived.
That light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; ”

“ You will find this most useful when you want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. ”

“ Then he heard the tinkle of a bell below deck, and he realized that the engines had stopped.
In the lull of the quieted ship's screw he could hear the wash of distant surf, faint and phantasmal above the material little near-by boat-noises. Then came a call, faint and muffled, like the complaining note of a harbor gull. A moment later the slow creak of oars crept up to Blake's straining ears. Then out of the heart of the darkness that surrounded him, not fifty feet away, he saw emerge one faint point of light, rising and falling with a rhythm as sleepy as the slow creak of the oars. ”