Oldal 21 [21]
LIGHI AND WATER
INTRODUCTION
ATER, whether still or in motion, has so great
an attraction for the lover of nature, that the
most beautiful landscape seems scarcely complete
without it. There are no effects so fascinating as those
produced by the reflexions in nature’s living mirror,
with their delicacy of form, ever fleeting and chang¬
ing, and their subtle combinations of colour. But
though water owes its chief characteristics to the
highly reflective power of its surface, it possesses in
its transparency another attribute which distinguishes
it still more from the lifeless metallic mirror, and is of
the greatest importance where the question of colour
is concerned. In the following pages an attempt has
been made to show, on the one hand, how the various
phenomena of reflexion are produced in accordance
with natural laws, and, on the other, to what extent
. the colours we see in water are inherent in the water
itself, visible in virtue of this property of transparency,
or borrowed from the sky and neighbouring objects.
The true artist will always be guided by his eye
rather than by any rules of science, and will instinct¬
ively seize the characteristics of water, still or in move¬
ment, and faithfully reproduce them; and some may
B