Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis feelings, while the colour blue contrasts such as it creates the emotion of melancholy and desolation. According to Goethe's concept, yellow undergoes a transition of light becoming darker when light reaches its peak, just as the Sun shines in the sky, it develops to a white light that is colourless. But the light deepens and evolves the yellow into an orange and then finally to a ruby red hue. Turner illustrates the process of yellow transitioning into phases of light by showing how, as the viewer moves away from the centre, the edges get darker. The yellowing colouring of the
Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis painting is a reference to Goethe’s "Theory of Colour", which explains the colour yellow as being the first colour transmitted from light. The form of the painting is circular, symbolising the construction of the human eye, changing the focus of a typical linear splitting of space to a more subjective portrayal. The colour yellow is typically optimistic, but Turner captures the negativity of yellow by attaching the colour to a light that is subject to change. The morning sun aspect of the colour is something transient. "Light and Colour" was among three paintings stolen from a Frankfurt museum in 1994.