Light and Color in the Landscape

Abstract

It is difficult to judge the color of the sun, owing to its dazzling brightness. Personally, however, I would say that it is decidedly yellow and this, combined with the light from the blue sky, forms the mixture that we call ‘white’ the color of a sheet of paper when the sun is shining and the sky is clear. Estimates of this kind give rise to difficulties, owing to a certain vagueness in the notion ‘white’. Generally speaking, we are inclined to call the predominating color in our surroundings white or nearly white—cf. § 114.