Orange (colour) philosophy of ancient China, orange was the colour of transformation. In China and India, the colour took its name not from the orange fruit, but from saffron, the finest and most expensive dye in Asia. According to Confucianism, existence was governed by the interaction of the male active principle, the "yang", and the female passive principle, the "yin". Yellow was the colour of perfection and nobility; red was the colour of happiness and power. Yellow and red were compared to light and fire, spirituality and sensuality, seemingly opposite but really complementary. Out of the interaction between the two came orange,
Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – The Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis depicted their relationship in a number of his paintings, including "Light and Colour (Goethe's Theory) – the Morning after the Deluge – Moses Writing the Book of Genesis". According to this theory,the creation of colour is dependent on the distribution of dark and light reflecting through a transparent object. Turner uses main concepts from Goethe’s theory, which is a rejection of Newton's Seven Color Theory, and expresses the belief that every colour was an individualised combination of light and darkness. Newton's reasoning in his theory of light and colour was, in the words of Michael Duck, too "simplistic" for Goethe.