| Warm colours (red and yellow, and related
colours) |
Cold colours (blue and related colours) |
warm colours
seem to come forward towards the spectator;
they were used for the main subject to give it volume |
whereas cold colours seem
to recede;
they were used for the background |
| http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk
search for Reynolds – Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar (1787) |
http://www.huntington.org
Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (on the home page) |
| Reynolds followed the normal
practice –recommended in his Discourses– of using warm
colours for the sitter (his red uniform) |
Gainsborough’s portrait –though
it predates (c.1770) Reynolds’s Discourse VIII on this subject
(1778)– is said to have been painted on purpose to show that
the practice could be reversed, and cold colours used for the
main subject–one of visual paradoxes |
