SOURCE: “Color in ‘To the Lighthouse,’” in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 31, Winter, 1985, pp. 438–58.

In the following essay, Stewart compares Woolf's literary technique in To the Lighthouse with the artistic techniques—particularly the use of color—of painters of the post-Impressionist movement.

According to Virginia Woolf, “painting and writing … have much in common. The novelist after all wants to make us see. … It is a very complex business, the mixing and marrying of words that goes on, probably unconsciously, in the poet's mind to feed the reader's eye. All great writers are great colourists. …”¹ While “sound and sight seem to make equal parts of [her] first impressions,” Woolf stresses their painterly quality.²

In To the Lighthouse, Woolf's search for spiritual essences is expressed in light and color.³ Johannes Itten's metaphysic of light and color illuminates the relation between creative source (Mrs. Ramsay/the Lighthouse) and creative artist (Lily Briscoe...