[This text is intended for readers who cannot use the "real" (unicode, utf-8) version of the file. A few characters such as "ae" have been unpacked; fractions are written out as "1-1/2", and symbols such as degree signs have been expanded.

The Table of Contents, Index, and all cross-references use paragraph numbers, shown in (parentheses).

Braces have been added to a few long fractions that were originally printed on two lines.

The numbers in expressions such as R2, R3, R4 were printed as superscripts.]

[Illustration: A BALANCED COLOR SPHERE PASTEL SKETCH]

A COLOR NOTATION

_By_

A. H. MUNSELL

A MEASURED COLOR SYSTEM, BASED ON THE THREE QUALITIES

_Hue, Value, and Chroma_

with

Illustrative Models, Charts, and a Course of Study Arranged for Teachers

_2nd Edition Revised & Enlarged_

GEO. H. ELLIS CO. BOSTON 1907

COPYRIGHT, 1905 by A. H. MUNSELL

_All rights reserved_

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

At various times during the past ten years, the gist of these pages has been given in the form of lectures to students of the Normal Art School, the Art Teachers' Association, and the Twentieth Century Club. In October of last year it was presented before the Society of Arts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the suggestion of Professor Charles R. Cross.

Grateful acknowledgment is due to many whose helpful criticism has aided in its development, notably Mr. Benjamin Ives Gilman, Secretary of the Museum of Fine Arts, Professor Harry E. Clifford, of the Institute, and Mr. Myron T. Pritchard, master of the Everett School, Boston.

A. H. M.

CHESTNUT HILL, MASS., 1905.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

The new illustrations in this edition are facsimiles of children's studies with measured color, made under ordinary school-room conditions. Notes and appendices are introduced to meet the questions most frequently asked, stress being laid on the unbalanced nature of colors usually given to beginners, and the mischief done by teaching that red, yellow, and blue are primary hues.

The need of a scientific basis for color values is also emphasized, believing this to be essential in the discipline of the color sense.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Color Notation by A. H. Munsell
• 2: Munsell seems to have most successfully accomplished
• 3: So should color be supplied with an appropriate system
• 4: And a black wafer may be added beneath
• 5: But omitting to define chromas
• 6: How this system describes the spectrum
• 7: Where the chroma is greatly weakened
• 8: Loss of chroma is loosely called fading
• 9: Comparing them with the enamels of middle chroma
• 10: Should stronger chromas be discovered
• 11: And chroma unite in every color sensation
• 12: Seeing that this describes the chromas of red
• 13: Matching and imitation of chromas
• 14: The Value Scale and Chroma Scale
• 15: Popularly called grass green
• 16: Instead of mixing these opposite hues
• 17: One half is thus said to be variable because of its valve
• 18: But N9 and N3 will unite to form N6
• 19: Then YR7 becomes the buttercup
• 20: And chroma by compensations of quantity
• 21: Without a measured and systematic notation
• 22: And this is to be inferred from their spectra
• 23: Painters use original yellow pigments
• 24: But unfamiliar with spectrum analysis
• 25: 94 Before leaving these prismatic colors
• 26: Which in a few weeks lost four steps of chroma
• 27: Even with the strongest pigments obtainable
• 28: All weaker and stronger chromas
• 29: Munsell Illustration PLATE 3
• 30: 28 Next a set of carefully chosen pigments
• 31: Purple and Madder and cobalt
• 32: That its opposite hue was deficient in chroma
• 33: The less are its changes of value and chroma
• 34: But the lower numeral traces loss of chroma by 3
• 35: While that of ultramarine is purplish
• 36: Led Professor Rood to give assistance in the tests
• 37: While their length describes its chroma
• 38: 5G 5 5 is their centre of mutual balance
• 39: With a numeral added for its chroma
• 40: Harmony of sound is unlike harmony of color
• 41: But monotonous in value and chroma
• 42: 166 This use of a small point of strong chroma
• 43: A child revels in strong chromas
• 44: When a child shows deficient color perception
• 45: PAINTED WITH MUNSELL WATER COLOR Published By WADSWORTH
• 46: Show soap bubbles and prismatic spectrum
• 47: Review sequence of five middle hues
• 48: Review sequences combining three chromas
• 49: To recognize sequences of chroma
• 50: A pure blue tending toward cyan blue and of high luminosity
• 51: Distinctively called a diffraction or a diffraction grating
• 52: Combined with defective CHROMA
• 53: A luminous variety of low CHROMA
• 54: Adapted to laboratory work in general