White cat, white wall, white clouds (and white words). Are any truly straight-from-the-tube white?
Is the bit of wall which is painted “exterior pure white” (but not the bit with a shadow falling on it) or is the glare from the sun behind a cloud (but might that not simply be camera glare/burnout and really sunlight is yellowish)?
What we so readily call “white” isn’t generally the same single white. As with all colours, there are variations, in tone (light/dark) and saturation (intensity). Reflected colours in the white, form shadow colour, cast shadow colour.
We easily learn to add white to a colour to lighten it — a lighter yellow, a lighter blue. But it’s harder somehow to switch my mind to start with white as the colour and add another to darken (relatively speaking) it — a vaguely yellowish white, a subtly blueish white.
Which leads to questions of when is it still a white and when is it a grey or pink or light yellow? Does it really matter?
Monet’s whites remain the benchmark for me. What’s yours?
