Part 7

In Birmingham, also, I believe a scheme of painted panels has been devised to illustrate local history, and students of the Municipal School of Art have competed for the design of these. This seems an excellent idea which might be generally adopted. Every town which has municipal buildings and a municipal school of art might do much not only to stimulate public spirit and local feeling, but also materially to help young students and designers by giving them an opportunity of doing public work and thus getting practice in the highest kind of decorative art--mural painting.

Surely if we have any pride of place, if we regard our towns and cities as something more than mere mills for money-making we must feel how greatly their interest and beauty might be added to in such ways as these, as well as public parks and gardens, fountains, trees along the streets, and seats and shelters. Indeed, having regard to the future of our race, and the importance of space and open air and surroundings of some beauty to the healthy growth and upraising of children, it becomes a public question of pressing importance, this of the conditions of life in our cities, housing, and house and school building and decoration.

One remarkable demonstration or object lesson has been given, owing to the initiative energy and philanthropy of Mr. George Cadbury at Bournville near Birmingham, which I was afforded the opportunity of seeing the other day. He has proved, at least (even as William Morris did), that factory work may be carried on amid pleasant surroundings and means of recreation for body and mind, and that a working population can be housed in close proximity to their work in picturesque and cheap healthy dwellings, surrounded with ample gardens and pleasant trees.

The Garden City Association is also in the field with Mr. Ebenezer Howard’s scheme for uniting agriculture, horticulture and manufactures, with beautiful and healthy dwellings in garden cities which will, it is hoped, relieve the overcrowding of our great towns, and bring back the people to the country with all the conveniences and advantages of well-organized city life, and moreover enable the inhabitants to become the collective owners thereof.

The rapid means of escape from towns which modern invention and commercial interest and enterprise have placed within reach of the town dweller--while they suggest that modern cities are not meant to dwell in--by those who can get out of them--may to some extent counteract the ill effects of an artificial existence, at least among some classes of the population, but I think a certain restlessness is induced which has its effects--even upon decorative art. The modern mind seems more easily fatigued, and to require more constant and rapid change. This restlessness, no doubt accelerated by the effects of grime and smoke, leads to the desire for more frequent change of colour and pattern in the living rooms, than formerly. This, it may be said, is healthy, because it is “good for trade”--for the painters’ and decorators’ trade, that is. One of the drawbacks of modern life, however, is the existence of trade organizations that are prepared to supply (on the shortest notice) any atrocity which may be in demand--indeed, I am not sure that supply does not in some cases create demand, and I suppose he is but a poor salesman who cannot persuade people to buy what they do not want--it may be some passing whim or phase of public taste, or want of taste; but the circumstances which are good for such trade cannot be expected to evoke much _artistic_ enthusiasm. What is “good for trade” is not always good for human beings, either in the making or the using, of which we have often had evidence, but trade, or profit, is the modern fetish to which, apparently, all other considerations are expected to bow.

Now, I take it, a painter or a decorator must be primarily concerned with producing something of beauty, even if, owing to circumstances over which he has no control, it cannot be “a joy for ever.” Let his problem be of the simplest--the choice of a flat tint for a wall, for instance--the important element of individual taste comes in. This, again, must be checked by considerations of adaptability and utility, such as aspect and conditions of lighting in the room, the kind of room, its proportions and purpose.

We all know what a different effect the same tint has in full or in half-light, in sunlight or in shadow, and what transformations are effected in rooms by simply changing the tint or the wall-paper.

The effect, too, of the same tint upon different surfaces should be noted. Any texture or granulation of surface improves the quality of a flat tint, and for this reason wall coverings with a texture in them; such as are known under the name of Burlaps, are excellent, providing a variety of plain tints of pleasant texture for wall coverings, or admirable grounds for the decorator to work upon.

A good sense of colour, therefore, is of the first importance. A knowledge of how to produce certain tints; the effect of one tint upon, or in juxtaposition to, another; the effect of one tint and of different tints in the same light; the best grounds for different tints; all these things, in addition to the workman’s skill of hand in laying on paint evenly, are essential parts of a painter’s and decorator’s training and equipment.

The complex elements out of which have been evolved our ideas of harmonious decoration are not more complex than those out of which the varieties of the modern house have been produced. True taste, as well as common sense, would say, “cut your coat according to your cloth”--build your house and decorate it according to what you can spend upon it: let it represent your own ideas of taste and comfort, after due thought, and not be an imitation of another’s, or of something in the mode which you think you ought to like, neither something costly because of the cost, or a cheap imitation of something costly.

How few houses seem to be built or decorated upon these principles. How few, indeed, build their houses at all, or have much choice in the matter--except perhaps that of Hobson, who must also have been a jerry builder.

There is an old saying that fools build houses and wise men live in them. However that may be, certainly town-dwellers are often like hermit-crabs, glad to creep into more or less inconvenient empty shells erected by former generations, happy if they succeed in adapting them to their own requirements more or less. In a book on architecture of about the date 1836, elevations and plans are given of “a First-rate House,” “a Second-rate House,” “a Third-rate House,” and even “a Fourth-rate”--quite on the principle of railway carriages, but going one better, or one worse. They all present modest street frontages of about twenty feet, duly cemented and painted. They differ chiefly in the number of their stories, and consequently windows, but the plans and elevations are all of the same type, slightly varied in the details. The “first-rate” house, though a little more ornate and classic in some ways is by no means a palace, and the fourth-rate house is not exactly a cottage; the second-rate is only a cheaper edition of the first-rate, and the third-rate tries to look like the second-rate, but is conscious of having only one window to the dining-room. All sport balconies to the first-floor front windows and iron railings, guarding the ground-floor and basement, only the fourth-rate has no basement. It is as if the architect started with one elevation and literally cut it down to meet the exigencies of second, third, and fourth-rate tenants--I had almost said passengers--and in strict accordance with the then building acts.

Those building acts, perhaps, are responsible for the monotony of our modern streets. Although they have in some respects been modified of late, houses in a street or road are obliged to dress up to a straight building line, toeing the mark like a file of soldiers. Or, perhaps, more suggestive of a train of railway carriages, which only needs a locomotive attached to the end of the row to pull them along, and one might hope, out of sight, also. There are miles of houses of this type still existing in our towns, notably London, for which in fact the designs I speak of were intended, but I have seen their like in Liverpool, Dublin, and elsewhere.

Though carefully graded in classes and adjusted to certain rentals, the aim of the builder has been to make each present, on the outside, an equally neat and respectable appearance. This is thoroughly characteristic of mid-nineteenth century ideas, and the love of neatness has always been characteristic of the English. The compromise, also, between modest requirements, or shall we say, between 5 per cent. and a respect for the Five Orders, which the street frontages of this period exhibit, is equally characteristic. We see the last results of the wave of Greco-Roman taste which ruled from the end of the eighteenth century to the early Victorian time. Of course we have got beyond all that now, though the type remains, and in some cases even, with its remnants of style, affords a slight relief and sense of repose after certain flamboyant erections in terra-cotta and plate glass which have appeared in our streets, with the up-to-date builders.

The type, as I have said, of these middle-class dwellings remains, their chief charm as well as decorative point being in the design of the street doorway, with classical columns or pilasters and a fanlight often with a graceful design in leaded glazing, too often ruthlessly scooped out to make way for blank plate glass. We know those iron railings (protecting the area and kitchen quarters from the attacks of the soldier and policeman), the windows of the basement timidly peeping above the ground as with half-closed eyes; the steps to the front door whitened by successive generations of devoted housemaids; the more or less Doric front door; the entrance hall, or long squeezy passage with the umbrella stand as a principal decoration; the staircase at the end leading to the upper rooms; the dining-room opening out of the aforesaid passage, with perhaps a dismal window in the rear, commanding a fine prospect of back yards, unless considerately veiled by ferns, or stopped out by some would-be stained glass. The bedrooms over, back and front, follow naturally from such an obvious plan.

Such types of houses, however out of date, ought not to be without interest to the house-painter and decorator, since they depend for keeping up appearances almost entirely upon fresh paint--and nothing is, as we know, “as fresh as paint.” Indeed, I have often noticed in London--from that commanding eminence the top of a ’bus--how the white-painted old-fashioned fronts with green doors of some of the houses in Piccadilly, facing the Green Park, donning new “coats” for the season, quite put to shame some of their neighbours--the gorgeous stone-built and marble-columned club façades with all the grime of a London winter thick upon them.

There is nothing like leather--I mean paint--after all! In fact, whether inside or outside, the town house requires constantly cheering up by the painter and decorator, but it must be the decoration that cheers but not inebriates--and there is a good deal of what I should call inebriated decoration about. Much of what is generally known as “l’Art nouveau,” for instance, belongs to this category--the wild and whirling squirms which form the chief ornamental unit, whether in surface decoration, furniture construction, wood carving, inlays, or textiles--which was so much in evidence at the late Paris Exhibition, and in the pages of “The Studio,” which is, moreover, generally on the continent considered to be English in its origin. In some of its forms it certainly does suggest a free translation into French or German of a kind of decorative art associated with the designers of the Glasgow school, but, no doubt, like all modern and mixed styles (like the melancholy of Jacques in “As you like it”), it is extracted from many simples and compounded of many elements. It is said that the Emperor Augustus found Rome of brick and he left it a city of marble. I should, contrariwise, suggest that our decorator, supposing he found the woodwork of “a desirable residence” _grained_, should leave it _plain-painting_--beginning at the front door. Iron railings, it may be noted, in passing, are generally painted (perhaps from economic reasons) too dark a colour, which darkens still more in the smoke of towns. A favourite hue is a kind of beefy red, sometimes picked out with gilding, though this artistic touch is generally reserved for public buildings--or the public house. Graceful wrought ironwork of a light kind often looks well painted white or a light cool green, but ordinary Brunswick-green (of a middle tint) has a good appearance with the white window frames, reveals and door jambs of a red-brick house, the green being repeated for the front door and any outside shutters. Apropos of the heavy red paint so frequently used for ironwork, I think that the cylinders of gas-works (which form such important items in the scenery of our suburbs) would be far less trying objects if they were painted a discreet and retiring cool tint of green, and the light ironwork supporting standards or columns painted white. I do not think such a treatment ought to raise the price of gas, but it would certainly elevate (or shall we say mitigate) the gasometer, and it would certainly dispel the irresistible impression on the mind of the unprejudiced that these rotundas were really huge rounds of pressed beef waiting for some giant Cormoran’s luncheon.

But we stopped at a green door, with white jambs. Dear to some decorator-painters’ hearts (and hands) is “graining.” Wonderful, and sometimes fearful are its results. I quite recognize the skill sometimes spent upon graining--the extraordinary imitation of costly natural woods which a skilled grainer can produce over ordinary painted deal. There are also motives of economy, I believe, to account for the persistence of graining--in an age of such transparent honesty and simple habits as ours (?). The practice, I have heard, commends itself in some quarters for the same reason that influenced Dame Primrose in the choice of her wedding gown, namely, “for qualities that wear well.”

Nothing can be a more delightful, or a more durable lining for the walls of hall or living-room than oak panelling, but nothing, to my mind, can be more sordid and unpleasant than the woodwork of a room grained to imitate oak.

The one field where skill in graining and marbling would be appropriate is that of stage scenery and decoration, where the object is to imitate, and where the scene has to be quickly changed in obedience to the demands of the drama.

Few interiors are more pleasant than the white-painted panelled rooms in eighteenth-century houses, a mode which some modern architects have revived with much success. There is nothing like white paint for the wood-work of modern rooms. It is the best set-off to wall-papers, and though many attempts have been made by house painters and decorators to get variety of effect by repeating in the styles and panels of the doors some leading tint of the wall-paper, the eye soon tires of the rather restless result, and welcomes plain white flatted paint, leaving it to the mouldings to give the necessary relief.

Door panels are often considered suitable fields for painted or other decoration; if, however, door panels are emphasized in this way, the walls would have to be quiet in pattern and colour, so as to let the doors tell as the chief decorative points; in such a scheme they would naturally be balanced by a painted treatment of a wood mantelpiece and connected by a chair rail and panelled dado, or wainscot; on the other hand, with a richly patterned and coloured wall the wood-work, if painted, should be kept plain colour.

If our technical schools where house-painting is taught, instead of devoting time and skill to teaching methods of imitative graining, were to endeavour to train the pupils to use the brush as decorators and encourage them to design and paint simple ornamental borders, fillings, and friezes, such as might be useful in interior decoration, and train them to be able to space out walls with simple but tasteful sprays of leaves and flowers, decoratively treated, and painted by direct clean brush touches, we should surely see better results. Following the spirit of such types as these from the Ranworth screen in Norfolk, for instance (a beautiful piece of mediaeval English work of the fifteenth century, drawn for me by Mr. Cleobury, who has also furnished the South Kensington Museum with a complete set of drawings from the screen), they would be doing much more excellent as well as interesting work, work which in its practical results ought to prove much more pleasant and useful, both to house-painters and to house-holders. This might be supported by prizes being offered for such work in public exhibitions.

The attention now being given in primary schools to brush-work, if wisely directed in its effects, by giving facility to young hands in the use of the brush, with its power of expressing form by direct strokes, ought to be an excellent aid and preparation for such an after training in practical painting and decorating as is here suggested.

Stencilling and the design of stencils (which affords excellent practice in pattern construction of all kinds to the designer and decorator), has been developed of late years to rather a remarkable degree by our art schools, as the National competitions bear witness. There has been a tendency to over-elaborate this kind of decoration, however, by complex patterns and the use of blended tints, which its conditions hardly bear. Though a useful and cheap and effective method of decorating large wall spaces, friezes, and even temporary hangings, and for temporary decoration generally, it seems to have its natural limits, and is hardly fitted for positions near the eye. But I have seen it effectively used in the large rooms and rough plastered walls of an Italian villa, associated with bold hanging brocade patterns of a Gothic type.

In deciding on a scheme for the decoration of one’s house, one must consider what are to be the chief decorative points, and endeavour to lead up to them. The choice of wall-papers, for instance, would naturally be influenced by various considerations. There is first the purpose and use of the room--dining, drawing-room, library, living-room or bed-room, or what not--there is its aspect and amount of lighting. If the question be the colouring of a whole house, a reasonable scheme would be to be comparatively simple and sparing of colour and ornament in the passages, staircase, and less important rooms, but with some connecting link of colour lead on to the important rooms, which might be much richer, and vary much from each other. At the same time it is not pleasant to jump suddenly from warm to cool tones, and a house or suite of rooms might be reasonably planned in either a warm or a cool key according to its character, situation, and lighting. Much, too, would depend upon the type of furniture, since house construction, decoration, and furniture, are properly all closely related.

There is the question of pictures. It should never be a struggle for ascendancy between the wall-paper and the pictures. Pictures may be considered as central points in the decorative scheme of a room and the colour and pattern of the main field of the wall arranged and carefully harmonized to suit them. The choice of tint must depend upon the tone and colour of the pictures to some extent, though usually a gray-green or subdued red forms a suitable background, or plain brown paper, which is a very safe one. A white wall, however, has more distinction, and pictures in gold or black frames look remarkably well upon white. One often sees old pictures hanging on white walls in old country houses, and they always have a fine and dignified effect. The little Dutch interior by Van der Meer in the National Gallery, besides being a little gem of painting, shows how beautiful a thing is a white wall, and how suitable for pictures and becoming to persons. One gets a more luminous effect in a white interior, and in our towns, where there is none too much light, it is a good thing to get rid of gloomy corners.

Two other charming interiors, each distinct and characteristic of different races, country, and climate, may be studied in the background of Van Dyck’s wonderful portrait picture of Jan Arnolfini and his wife, a Flemish interior of the fifteenth century, and again in the delightful house of the Virgin in Carlo Crivelli’s “Annunciation,” with all its wealth of decorative detail, which gives one an excellent idea of a well-appointed Venetian citizen’s house of the fifteenth century. Both of these are well-known gems of our National Gallery.

Illustrations of these pictures are given in my book on “Line and Form,” so that instead of repeating them here I give one from Lucas van Leyden’s “Annunciation” at Munich (Pinacothek) which shows a charming Gothic interior with a wagon-vaulted roof, wheel window, and a rich brocade hanging to the bed, with other interesting details.

Another delightful example is the early renascence Venetian interior which forms the background of Carpaccio’s “Dream of St. Ursula” (L’Accademia, Venice).

For photographs or prints a pale yellow wall looks well--a pale lemon or primrose tint--it lights up softly and agreeably at night. Pale yellow may also be recommended for a rather dark room. Even one fleck of sunlight on a pale yellow wall has a marvellous reflecting power and will illuminate the whole room. One can agreeably complete the harmony with brown, or black and white, with a touch of orange in the furniture and texture.

As a rule, in modern drawing-rooms and living-rooms, there are too many colours, as well as too much furniture. The proportions of the architect and the scheme of the decorator hardly have a chance.

“Elizabeth in her German Garden” speaks of the charm of rooms newly distempered and papered, with no furniture in them; but though it might make a paper-hanger happy, I fear this would be too severe for ordinary English taste.

I remember a gentleman at Los Angeles, California, showing me with pride a room in his villa he had papered with a gorgeous wall-paper with lots of gold in it. He considered it sufficient in itself, an end and not a means, and apparently had no intention of disturbing or obscuring the design by pictures or furniture, except perhaps a chair or a couch from which to contemplate the splendours of the pattern.