XXII. Pictures

It would be interesting to inquire how far the art of picture painting is coincident with the decline of Art in its widest interpretation, representing the last stronghold of the artist driven from the service of life behind the gilded pale of the picture frame, where he dreams in a little shadow world all his own. It is curious to note in the daily newspaper that the concerns of art are dealt with in a separate column applied to the discussion of pictures. And these “Art Notes” seem to bear such an insignificant place in the record of life which the newspaper presents. In the ages when art was a vital part of the national existence, how inadequate such a classification would have appeared! Then there was hardly a thing which the hand of man could do or his brain conceive which was not an expression of unconscious art. It is true we have now the art of the shops, but it is a spurious art, crushed under the iron heel of commercialism.

If art is then to become again an all-pervading influence instead of the concern of a few dilettante connoisseurs, it must reconstruct the old conception of its scope. Primarily it will be concerned with buildings and their adornment, and here the picture falls into its proper place as the decoration of the wall. As such it can no longer be an isolated product. The picture painter will be the first to admit that the beauty of the picture as a whole depends on the relation of its parts; but if the relation of one colour to another is so important, the logical inference is that the picture itself must depend for its beauty on its place in the scheme of things. And so one finds in the earlier ages of painting the painter at his best was a wall decorator. As Ruskin has said, “There is no existing highest order Art but is decoration. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front—the best painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael’s best doing is merely the wall-colouring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his cartoons were made for tapestries. Correggio’s best doing is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma. Tintoret’s of a ceiling and a side wall belonging to a charitable society in Venice; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts, not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and plaster walls of Venice. Get rid, then, at once of any idea of decorative art being a degraded or separate kind of art. Its nature or essence is simply its being fitted for a definite place, and in that place forming part of a great and harmonious whole, in companionship with other art; and so far from thus, being a degradation of it—so far from decorative art being inferior to other art because it is fixed to a spot—on the whole it may be considered as rather a piece of degradation that it should be portable. Portable art—independent of all place—is for the most part ignoble art!”

An unkind critic might be tempted to wonder why a writer who thus dispraises portable art should have written so eloquently in praise of portable art as displayed in the pictures of Turner. But this is to judge by the letter instead of the spirit.

However beautiful a picture may be, it is an isolated and unrelated beauty. It is not a member of that great fraternity of the arts where each has not alone its individual qualities, but its definite and calculated relation to its fellows.

But this portable art in the form of pictures painted for no place in particular is a thing to be reckoned with in the making of a modern house—and as the pictures we possess have not been made to fit the house, we must needs pocket the pride which claims that architecture is the essential and ruling art, and try to make the house to fit the pictures. If Mahomed will not come to the mountain, it is the mountain which must go to Mahomed. It has already been suggested how, in the decoration of the wall, a gilded canvas may help ta connect the picture with its surroundings. What is required is not so much what is called a good background for pictures in the treatment of the wall on which they are to be hung, for this, in relieving the picture and its frame unduly, still makes it appear an alien there. Rather it must be our aim to make the picture merge into the wall surface and appear a part of it. The frame thus becomes the connecting link between it. On a wall panelled in dark oak, for instance, dark oak becomes the best material for the picture frame in most cases. Pictures should not be dotted over a wall, but definitely arranged to emphasise certain focal points framed in panelling over a mantelpiece, perhaps, or placed over some important piece of furniture. They need not always be hung, but may stand on shelves flanked by ornaments. If they are few and choice, and possess a decorative quality, they will thus become really helpful in accentuating centres of interest in the decorative scheme.

In a large house a collection of pictures should be displayed in a private picture-gallery. It has already been urged that the house should not be a museum. Still less should it be a picture-gallery. Many of the historic houses of England, where the walls of the apartments are lined with pictures, are, indeed, full of artistic and antiquarian interest. But they are no longer homes in the best sense, and convey little idea of that early beauty they possessed when their furnishing consisted of a few essential things, and their walls were covered with real decoration in the form of panelling and tapestry.

An excellent example of this kind is the old Elizabethan house, “Plas Maur,” in North Wales, which has recently been made into a picture-gallery, and where the dignity and reality of the ancient art of building seems to make the best of the modern pictures on its walls appear frivolous and vulgar. From the decorative point of view, a picture is merely a pattern of certain colours and tones. That it should be more than this I do not wish to deny, but whatever interest it possesses in its subject and its associations is not a matter of decoration. As decoration, it would probably look as well hung upside down. And it is. the decorative qualities of the picture which really count. To the occupants of a room the pictures normally exist merely as patches of colour with gilded outlines. It is only by a definite and conscious effort that one perceives at intervals beauties of subject or composition. The decorative quality is a conistant factor. If we imagine, for instance, the tired man of business returning to his suburban home in the evening, it can hardly be supposed that he will be prepared to make the special mental effort involved in an inspection of his pictures; but whatever decorative quality they express in conjunction with their surroundings will at once enfold him as in an atmosphere which soothes and charms like harmonious music.

A man may leave a room so adorned without being able to render an intelligible account of anything in it, and yet have felt its beauty to the full.

Pictures, then, in the house, it may be said, should possess a decorative quality which should be brought into harmony with the whole scheme of which they form a part.