“We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours and lines is an art analogous to the composition of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts.”

— John Ruskin , book The Stones of Venice

Volume II, chapter VI, section 42.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Context: We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours and lines is an art analogous to the composition of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts. Good colouring does not necessarily convey the image of anything but itself. It consists of certain proportions and arrangements of rays of light, but not in likeness to anything. A few touches of certain greys and purples laid by a master's hand on white paper will be good colouring; as more touches are added beside them, we may find out that they were intended to represent a dove's neck, and we may praise, as the drawing advances, the perfect imitation of the dove's neck. But the good colouring does not consist in that imitation, but in the abstract qualities and relations of the grey and purple.

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John Ruskin 133

English writer and art critic 1819–1900

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James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist

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Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

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“We are to remember, in the first place, that the arrangement of colours and lines is an art analogous to the composition of music, and entirely independent of the representation of facts.”

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John Ruskin 133

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