“Opposites are:
for tone, a more luminous/lighter one for a darker one.
for tint, the complementaries, that is, a certain red opposed to its complementary, etc.
Red — Green
Orange — Blue
Yellow — Violet
for line, those making a right angle.”

—  Georges Seurat

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Maurice Beaubourg', August 1890

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Opposites are: for tone, a more luminous/lighter one for a darker one. for tint, the complementaries, that is, a cert…" by Georges Seurat?
Georges Seurat photo
Georges Seurat 20
French painter 1859–1891

Related quotes

Paul Signac photo

“We have never heard Seurat, Cross, Luce, Van de Velde or indeed Van Rysselberghe or Angrand speak of dots. We have never seen them be preoccupied by Pointillism. Read these lines, dictated by Seurat to Jules Christophe, his biographer: 'Art is harmony; harmony is the analogy between opposites and between similar elements of tone, tint and line. By tone I mean light and dark; tint is red and its complementary: green, orange and its complementary: blue, yellow and its complementary: purple... The method of expression relies on the optical mixture of tones, tints and their reactions”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

shadows that follow very strict rules
Quote from Maria Buszek, online - note 22 http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/Expressionism/Readings/SignacDelaNeo.pdf
Seurat's quote from: Jules Christophe, Seurat, in 'Les Hommes d'aujourd'hui', no. 368, March-April 1890
From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

Georges Seurat photo

“.. the flag is green with a red spot in the center; above, the blue of the sky, the orange-tinted white of the walls, and the orange-grey of the clouds.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

short notation, 1881: from 'Notes inedites de Seurat sur Delacroix', in 'Bulletin de la Vie Artistique', April 1922; as quoted by John Rewald, in Georges Seurat', a monograph https://ia800607.us.archive.org/23/items/georges00rewa/georges00rewa.pdf; Wittenborn and Compagny, New York, 1943. p. 6 - note 9
Seurat studied carefully the paintings of Eugene Delacroix, and wrote in 1881 about Delacroix's painting 'The Fanatics of Tangier' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_The_Fanatics_of_Tangier_-_WGA06195.jpg this notation
Quotes, 1881 - 1890

Jayant Narlikar photo

“We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His observations on the "strange events in our solar system" and as to why the sky looked blue and red colour was used in traffic lights to signal to vehicles to stop.
When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Otto Weininger photo

“Colour-blindness always extends to the complementary colours. Those who are red blind are also green blind; those who are blind to blue have no consciousness of yellow. This law holds good for all mental phenomena; it is a fundamental condition of consciousness.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 110.

Paul Signac photo

“Neo-Impressionist method is an attempt is made to achieve the richness of the sunlight spectrum with all its tones. An orange that blends with yellow and red, a violet that tends toward red and blue, a green between blue and yellow are, with white the sole elements. Through mixture (in the eye of the observer) of these pure colours, whose relationship can be varied at will, from the most brilliant to the greyish. Every brush stroke that is taken from the palette remains pure on the canvas.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

Franz Marc photo

“You know my tendency is always to imagine things in my head and to work from this idea. I am going to explain my theory of blue, yellow and red, which will probably seem as 'Spanish' to you as my face.
Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy and always the color to be opposed and overcome by the other two. For example, if you mix serious, spiritual blue with red, you intensify the blue to unbearable sorrow, and yellow the conciliatory, the complementary color to purple, becomes indispensable... If you mix red and yellow to make orange, you turn passive, feminine yellow into a Fury, with sensual force that again makes cool, spiritual blue indispensable, the man..”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Quote in Franz Marc's letter to August Macke, Dec. 1910; as cited by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 129
1905 - 1910

Umberto Boccioni photo

“It will be readily admitted that brown tints have never coursed beneath our skin; it will be discovered that yellow shines forth in our flesh, that red blazes, and that green, blue and violet dance upon it with untold charms, voluptuous and caressing.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 136.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

David Levithan photo

“I barely notice colors unless I taste them. Not the yellows or the greens. I taste the deeper blues. The darker reds.”

David Levithan book Every You, Every Me

Source: Every You, Every Me

Paul Signac photo

“Of the three primary colors, the three binary ones are formed. If you add to one of these the primary tone that is its opposite, it cancels it out. This means that you produce the required half-tone. Therefore, adding black is not adding a half-tone, it is soiling the tone whose true half-tone resides in this opposite me have just described. Hence the green shadows found in red. The heads of the two little peasants. The yellow one had purple shadows; the redder and more sanguine one had green ones.”

Paul Signac (1863–1935) French painter

Quoted by Maria Buszek, online - note 19 http://mariabuszek.com/mariabuszek/kcai/Expressionism/Readings/SignacDelaNeo.pdf
The notebook where this sentence appears was only published, in facsimile, in 1913 by J. Guiffrey. Signac therefore must have consulted it at the Conde Museum, in Chantilly. This Moroccan travel document was bought at the Delacroix sale by the painter Dauzats for the Duc of Aumale.
From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, 1899

“Use materials with forceful MUSCULAR colours – the reddest of reds, the most purple of purples, the greenest of greens, intense yellows, orange, vermillion – and SKELETON tones of white, grey and black.”

Giacomo Balla (1871–1958) Italian artist

(Manuscript, 1914); as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 148
Futurist Manifesto of Men's clothing,' 1913/1914

Related topics