The latter must always be light
scattered from the former. Now, in the high Alps you have, on clear day,
a deep blue-black sky, very different indeed from the blue sky of Italy
or of England; and as it is the sky which is the chief agent in lighting
up the shadows, not only in those regions do we have dark shadows on
account of no intervening--what I will call--mist, but because the sky
itself is so little luminous. In an artistic point of view this is
important. The warmth of an English landscape in sunlight is due to the
highest lights being yellowish, and to the shadows being bluish from the
sky light illuminating them. In the high Alps the high lights are colder,
being bluer, and the shadows are dark, and chiefly illuminated by
reflected direct sunlight. Those who have traveled abroad will know what
the effect is. A painting in the Alps, at any high elevation, is rarely
pleasing, although it may be true to nature. It looks cold, and somewhat
harsh and blue.
In London we are often favored with easterly winds, and these, unpleasant
in other ways, are also destructive of that portion of the sunlight which
is the most chemically active on living organisms. The sunlight
composition of a July day may, by the prevalence of an easterly wind, be
reduced to that of a November day, as I have proved by actual
measurement.
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