“Strictly speaking there is neither line nor colour in nature. It is man that creates line and colour. They are twin abstractions which derive their equal status from their common origin. . . .
Line and colour both of them have the power to set one thinking and dreaming, the pleasures which spring from them are of different natures, but of a perfect equality and absolutely independent of the subject of the picture.”
—Charles Baudelaire, ‘The LIfe and Word of Eugene Delacroix’, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, translated by Jonathan Mayne, 1964.