Thursday, December 13, 2012

Tone and climate

"...for  wherever  climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every 200 feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower ones; these from the rest of the landscape, and  in  all  probability,  some  part  of  the  horizon  from  the  rest. And  when  nature  allows  this  in  a  high  degree,  as  in  her  most gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at  once with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a July  evening,  but  rather  with  the  magnificence  and  variety  of associated colour, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity  and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. Now, in Turner's power of associating cold with warm light no one has ever approached or even ventured into the same field with him. The old masters, content with one simple  tone,  sacrificed  to  its  unity  all  the  exquisite  gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. "

MP 1, p. 275

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