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| Frank Brangwyn, Market Scene Jaffa, 1890 50.5 x 61cm (19 7/8 x 24in). |
Biographer Walter Shaw-Sparrow said, "The thing that counted as the saving grace of style was tone, which may be described as a unifying mystery of colour that permeates a picture, and binds all its parts together, giving a sort of inner depth and richness....Nature is a vast unity with scattered parts, while art is a limited harmony; and it is tone that helps us to resolve profusion into a definite whole, true to the same key in every plot of colour."
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5 comments:
James . . . for some reason, this post reawakened in me the need to ask (beg) someone like you to please explain the difference between hue, chroma, tone, color, and especially tone. Is tone a color. If it's a color, why not call it color. I believe hue is color, and chroma is the intensity of color. I think I have that right . . . don't I? But tone and color . . . ??? Is tone a veiled reference the value of the color under discussion?
Colour can be broken down and measured it’s three attributes: Hue, Value and Chroma. Hue is the colour family (reds, blue, yellow, etc.) Value is how dark or light the colour is, some refer to value as “tone”, and chroma is a colour’s intensity.
Broker, Glenn is right: We usually use the word "tone" to refer to the relative lightness or darkness of a given color mixture. The actual luminance is relative whatever stands in for white and black in the surface color of the object. Here I think the author is using "tone" in a broader sense, as he says, a kind of "unifying mystery of colour that permeates a picture." Taking his discussion out of context might make it a little vague and confusing, but if I understand him right, he means "tone" as a holistic effect of chroma, value, hue working together to create a sense of atmosphere, depth, and unity.
Thanks Glenn and James. Let me suggest that perhaps his use of tone might also be referring to a painting that points to sunset, or a night scene where the "tone" of the whole painting is "dark" even in the light places . . . or a "high noon" painting where everything, even the darks, are "lighter?"
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