George Field

"As purple, when inclining toward redness, is a regal and pompous colour, it has been used in mythological representations to distinguish the robe of Jupiter the king of Gods, and in general also as a mark of sacerdotal superiority: in its effects on the mind it partakes principally, however, of the powers of its archeus, or ruling colour, blue, and is hence a highly poetical colour, stately, dignifying, sedate, and grave; soothing in its lights, and saddening in its shades: accordingly it contributes to these sentiments under the proper management of the painter and the poet, as it does also popularly in its use in court mournings, and other circumstances of state: hence the poets sing of "purple state."

"Green...contrasts more agreeably with all colours than any other individual colour. It has accordingly been adopted with perfect wisdom in nature as the general garb of the vegetal creation."

"The rose colours of madder have justly been considered as supplying a desideratum, and as the most valuable acquisition of the palette in modern times, since perfectly permanent transparent reds and rose-colours were previously unknown to the art of painting."

"The general powers of green, as a colour, associate it with the ideas of vigour and freshness; and it is hence symbolical of youth, the spring of life being analogous to the spring of the year, in which nature is surprisingly diffuse of this colour in all its freshness, luxuriance, and variety; soliciting the eye of taste, and well claiming the attention of the landscape-painter...Verdure is also the symbol of hope, which, like the animating greenness of plants, leaves us only with life: it is also emblematical of immortality, and the figure of old Saturn or Time is crowned with evergreen."

"Gray denotes a class of cool cinereous colours...The grays, like the other semi-neutrals, are sober, modest colours, contributing to the expression of gloom, sadness, frigidity, and fear,—the grave, the obscure, the spectral,—age, decrepitude, and death; bordering in these respects upon the powers of black, but aiding the livelier and more cheering expressions of other colours by diversity, connexion, and contrast, and partaking of the more tender and delicate influence belonging to white, as they approach it in their lighter tints."

"Brown is a sober and sedate colour, grave and solemn, but not dismal, and contributes to the expression of strength, stability, and solidity,—vigour, warmth, and rusticity,—and in minor degree to the serious, the sombre, and the sad; not with the painter only, but also with the rhetorician and poet, with whom, nevertheless, many of the broken colours are yet "airy nothings" and "without a name."

"Brown...is the rather indefinite appellation of a very extensive class of colours of warm or tawny hues....The term brown...properly denotes a warm broken colour, of which yellow is a principal constituent: hence brown is in some measure to shade what yellow is to light, and warm or ruddy browns follow yellows naturally as shading or deepening colours."