In the basement of Tate Britain Gallery one can find the studies of vision by J. M. W. Turner, regarding on how to produce on the eye of the observer a sensation of colour by just printing onto a lithography a set of tiny black lines, one close to another, leaving a white background. The eye, as a perception device, does not register each black fine line, but receives a spectrum of different colours from the decomposed white background, cut by the said black lines. In that exhibition you are learnt that, at the same time, J. W. Goethe was also studying this kind of phenomena. In fact, he wrote two books related to the matter: one essay, “Theory of Colours” (Zur Farbenlehre) and one novel “Elective Affinities” (

Die Wahlverwandtschaften

–the latter concerning how chemistry has influence over human passions and institutions