nd of their combinations.

=The Color Sense.=--Therefore color is a thing to be striven for for
its own sake. Good color is a value in itself. You may not have the
genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the
color sense can be definitely acquired. I will not say that color
initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to
judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a
good painter, even of a great one.

I knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness
as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a
very inferior perception of color to the power which, as I say, came
near to greatness. He was an able painter and a well-trained one
before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he
deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the
result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply by recognizing where he
needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine
distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. Summer
after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to
study out certain problems. Every year he set himself mainly one
problem to solve. This year it might be luminosity; next it might be
the domination of a certain color; another year the just
discrimination of tones--and he became a most exquisite colorist.

So, as I knew his work before and after this self-training, and as I
know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, I think I
can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color
sense is possible.

=Taste.=--It is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent
on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color
does not rest on mere opinion. That a good colorist's idea of color
does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking,
in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to
his. The colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by
rule. He works from his feeling of what is right. But there is a law
back of his taste and feeling. The laws of color harmony are
definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated.
Color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of
light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves.

=Color Waves.=--These waves of light give sensations of color which
vary with the rapidit