Punch,  36 (1859), 222.

Punch on Party Colours

Anon

Genre:

Essay, Drollery

Subjects:

Light, Politics


    Announces that while Michel E Chevreul has been writing a work with the English title of The Laws of Contrast of Colour, and their Application to the Arts (see Chevreul 1857), Mr Punch has been completing a similar work—'On the Contrast of Party Colours, and their Application to the Electioneering Arts'. Accordingly, Punch uses Chevreul's work to interpret recent political events: for example, following Chevreul's research on the 'instability' of grey dyes, Punch notes that Mr Punch agrees that there is a 'political "instability of the Greys"' (an allusion to the distinguished family of Liberal peers). Similiarly, following Chevreul's observation that all colours are composed of combinations of the three primary colours, Punch notes that 'the various shades' of party colour are made up from the primary 'colours' of Tory, Whig, and Radical, and that the principle of complementarity also applies to politics. Mr Punch gives a political interpretation to Chevreul's claim that prolonged observation of one colour increases one's sensitivity to the complementary colour, and that all objects will be tinted by this latter colour. On this basis, Mr Punch claims that 'he who looks on party colours with the eye of an observer "acquires an aptitude" for seeing of what shades they are composed, and may moreover see that any party politician is likely to be "influenced in his appreciation of all objects" by the colour of the party by which they are pursued'.



© Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical Project, Universities of Leeds and Sheffield, 2005 - 2020

Printed from Science in the Nineteenth-Century Periodical: An Electronic Index, v. 4.0, The Digital Humanities Institute <http://www.sciper.org> [accessed ]