Part 4

And it is just here that a careful criticism is necessary. While the purely architectural work merits all the praise that can be claimed for it, securing an admirable play of light, making each division add its light to the other, and reducing the space occupied by pillars and other accessories to a minimum, the decorations are but measurably successful. The faults are due, I think, to the intention that the ornaments themselves should present some of the features of a collection of styles. The result proves that it would be better if the varied styles were exhibited in a court set apart for the purpose. The floor, for example, is rich in its varieties of tiles, there being some five or six of different designs and shades. It is true that the great central floors are made of tiles of uniform design and color, and that these--a deep brick red, with small green spots at the corners of each tile--are grave and good; but all around, where we pass through arch or door, there is a deep fringe of brilliant tiles, which are reflected into the glass cases nearest them, to the injury of the objects shown; and in the series of “cloisters,” as the spaces beneath the picture-gallery may be called, there are further experiments in floor tiles which militate against the effect of the articles exhibited in them. The ceilings in these cloisters, or side spaces, have been covered with Oriental decorations by the late Owen Jones; they are Indian, Persian, moresque, and of the greatest beauty, each coffer in the ceiling and each archway presenting a new design, and yet all in harmony: these being too far above the show-cases to affect any objects in them, are rightly placed; but the floor, as the necessary background to many objects in the rooms--many of which depend on delicate shades of color for their effect--will eventually, I suspect, have to be reconstructed, and made entirely of the grave hue which has happily been already adopted for the greater part of it. Ascending a little above the floor, it must be said also that there is too much brilliancy about the lower arches and their spandrels--too much white and gold. It is not only that this does not give a sufficiently subdued background for the bright glass or chased metals in the upper parts of the cases (on the ground-floor), but they are by no means the best supports for the grand series of life-sized figures in mosaic, on deep gold surfaces, which make the magnificent frieze of the upper wall.

It is these superb figures, representing the great artists of the past, which constitute the most salient feature of decoration in the museum. In this case (as in so many others in the museum) the scheme--due to the late Mr. Godfrey Sykes--of combining the purposes of general decoration with subjects of special interest in a museum, has been most fortunate: the general effect is noble, the figures interesting as portraits and as representations of costume, the varieties of mosaic in which they are produced being of value for comparison. There are thirty-six flat alcoves--eighteen on each side--and the figures in them are those of the chief artists in ornamentation, with the names of their designers beneath: Phidias (by Poynter); Apelles (Poynter); Nicola Pisano (Leighton); Cimabue (Leighton); Torel, the English goldsmith, d. 1300 (Burchett); William of Wykeham, bishop and architect of Winchester Cathedral, d. 1404 (Burchett); Fra Angelico (Cope); Ghiberti (Wehnert); Donatello (Redgrave); Gozzoli, one of whose Florentine frescoes, containing his own portrait, is in the museum, d. 1478 (E. Armitage); Luca della Robbia, specimens of whose terra-cotta work in the museum show him to have been a man of genius, d. 1481 (Moody); Mantegna (Pickersgill); Giorgione (Prinsep); Giacomo da Ulma, friar at Bologna and painter on glass, d. 1517 (Westlake); Leonardo da Vinci (J. Tenniel); Raphael (G. Sykes); Torrigiano (Yeames); A. Dürer (Thomas); P. Vischer (W. B. Scott); Holbein (Yeames); Giorgio, painter in majolica, d. 1552 (Hart); Michael Angelo (Sykes); Primaticcio, the Italian who made the decorations at Fontainebleau, d. 1570 (O’Neil); Jean Goujon, to whom is attributed the old carving in the Louvre, d. 1572 (Bowler); Titian (Watts); Palissy (Townroe); François du Quesnoy, Flemish ivory carver, d. 1546 (Ward); Inigo Jones (Morgan); Grinling Gibbons (Watson); Wren (Crowe); Hogarth (Crowe); Sir J. Reynolds (Phillips); Mulready (Barwell). The only very modern artist in this list is Mulready, and he is certainly unfortunate, looking as if Mr. Punch’s most cynical artist had been employed to depict him. The late Mr. Owen Jones has been well represented in a mosaic set in the wall near a staircase leading from the Oriental Court decorated by him. Mulready is the only bit of really ugly work in the series, although, of course, the merits of the others are unequal. The artists have evidently given careful archæological study to the costumes of each period, and in some cases--as Prinsep’s Giorgione, Scott’s Vischer, and Pickersgill’s Mantegna--the work is such as the grand old workers around need not be ashamed of. Of great interest, too, are the varieties of material of which the mosaics are composed, concerning which I can only say here that the Italian glass appears to me incomparably superior to the experiments in English ceramic wares.

The shape of this double room, it will be borne in mind, implies four large lunettes, one, that is, at each end of the two large roof-spans. One of these has been already filled by Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A., with an admirable allegorical painting representing the “Arts of War.” Here we see workmen forging every variety of armor, shields, weapons, and women buckling them on to knights, as is written in fabliaux of the Round Table. Sir Frederick has put his most graceful drawing and purest colors into this fine work. There is also in the gallery a design for a companion picture of the “Arts of Peace,” wherein the ladies are engaged in the pleasanter work of adorning themselves, and utilizing mirrors, while the men are toiling to provide the sinews for the gentler siege in which their own hearts are liable to capture. These works are scholarly, almost hypercritically exact in archæological details, and when the second is completed the court will be greatly improved.

To Mr. F. W. Moody, one of the most energetic and accomplished teachers at the museum, the institution is indebted for many instructive experiments and designs in the way of decoration. No one should fail to observe the very remarkable exterior wall decoration covering one entire side of the new School of Science, which is a most complete revival of the _sgraffito_ work of the fifteenth century. This experiment by Mr. Moody of the high Renaissance in Italy has been placed on a wall of the building not visible from the streets, but only from the windows of the museum. It is analogous to the _niello_, which was graven in silver and the lines filled in with carbon, making a black picture on a white ground. (There is a good account of this ornamentation, said to be the origin of all engraving for printed work, in W. B. Scott’s _Half-hour Lectures_.) Mr. Moody’s experiment is made by filling in the hollows of the cement, presenting a multiplicity of scrolls, symbols, allegorical figures--Natura, Scientia, etc.--and portraits of scientific men. The stairway from which this vast work--covering the wall for four or five stories--can best be seen is another interesting experiment of Mr. Moody’s. As befits a stairway leading to the Ceramic Gallery, its ornaments are made of Minton porcelain. The steps and facings of the steps are a kind of mosaic made of hexagon pellets painted; the walls are panelled with white porcelain; and their effect under the light falling through large figured windows, toned rather than colored, is very good indeed.

Entering now the Ceramic Gallery, we find its contents illustrated by a very ingeniously devised series of window etchings (as they may be called), which are probably unique in the history of work on glass. The windows on one side of this room, fifteen in number, each double, were intrusted to Mr. William B. Scott, who as an archaeologist in art has few superiors. Mr. Scott designed no fewer than forty-eight large pictures, representing the history of ceramic art from the most ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, and Persian down to Wedgwood; and these he has placed in the fifteen windows, where, unhappily, they are little observed, being without mention, much less description, in any work except that now before the reader. They are for the most part in black and white, colors being introduced only once or twice, and then but slightly. The first and second windows are devoted to the Chinese, their work being, if not the earliest, the most ancient in porcelain, and that which has most influenced the European art. Here is shown their whole method, from the preparation of the clay, the half-naked natives bringing the kaolin from caves in panniers, others steeping it in water, refining it in large mortars, and kneading it on tables. The potter is seen before his rude wheel, and forming the vessel by hand-pressure. And after this we trace his work to the furnace, and on to its place in the shop. This work implies the most patient study of original Chinese models. One window represents characteristic Chinese ornamentation--such as the royal dragon and the bird of paradise, and a bazar at Pekin. The third window represents early Egyptian art. The upper part shows the casting of brick by packing in boxes, and then turning it out, all under the whip of the taskmaster, the work and the whip being but little different to-day from what they were in the ancient days whose relics have been so diligently studied by Mr. Scott on the papyri of the British Museum. Beneath, a skilled workman is painting a large Canopus: he is on his knees, with his feet doubled behind him. One page, so to speak, of this window represents Assyrian art by a triumphal procession, in which immense vases are carried on ox trucks, and smaller ones on the heads of prisoners--a design based upon discoveries in Nineveh which show the great importance that people ascribed to earthenware. The fourth window is Greek and Etruscan. The Greek legend of the origin of painting--the daughter of the potter of Sicyon tracing on the wall the shadow of her lover on his leaving her for a journey--is exquisitely done. Next we see the girl applying her plan to her father’s vases. We have also depicted with learning the honorary uses of pottery among the Greeks, the vases given as prizes in public games, or as votive offerings for the dead, by which custom the finest examples we have were transmitted; and, finally, there is the genius of Death holding in her hand the cinerary urn. The fifth window is Hispano-Moresque. The earliest ware in Europe after the Samian of which we have any examples was that made by the Moors, who brought the art of making it from east of the Mediterranean. This was the famous “lustre-ware” which was supplied from Spain, which is now so eagerly sought by collectors, both on account of its beauty and as the origin of the Italian majolica. Specimens of this kind of pottery have been found by Layard at Nineveh and at Ephesus. There appears to be little doubt that it is of Persian origin. It must have been always very difficult to make; in the modern manufacture about fifty per cent. of the pieces come out of the furnace dull and worthless. The fine specimens seem to the workmen happy accidents rather than the steady results of any normal process upon which they can depend. The first design in this window of Mr. Scott’s represents the master-potter amidst his swarthy workmen watching the hour-glass beside the fire. This wonderful lustre was the result of some utilization of smoke in modifying the copper glaze, and was probably discovered by accident, as so many fine effects in the ceramic art have been. This beautiful ware has lately attracted especial attention in England because of the experiments which Mr. De Morgan, son of the late mathematician of University College, is making. He has tried nearly every kind of smoke influence upon copper and silver pigments, in contact with glaze and his success has been remarkable. These lustre-wares are still, I believe, made in some parts of Spain in a small way; also at Gubbio, in Italy; but the furnace of Mr. De Morgan at Chelsea is the most active and successful in bringing out such wares in all their varieties.

It adds greatly to the charm of these windows that they are as a frame around the objects whose history they tell. Fine examples of the “lustre-ware” from the earliest ages are in this gallery. And we have only to turn round from admiring another part of this fifth window, showing the building of the Alhambra, and its wonderful vase, to see the finest copy of that unparalleled piece of lustre-ware. The vase is four feet five and a half inches high, by eight feet two and a half inches in circumference; it is decorated with two antelopes, and foliations covering the body of the vase, intermingled with which are African characters whose sense is “Felicity and Fortune,” “Permanent Prosperity;” and the colors are brown and blue on a yellow ground, the lustre being of a mother-of-pearl tint. From rich specimens of ancient Italian majolica we in turn refer to the sixth window, which shows us the embryonic and later phases of this beautiful art. The Italians imitated the Hispano-Moresque lustre as well as they could, but not being able to attain it exactly, they secured new tints of their own, especially a very fine ruby lustre. Afterward they painted their wares without trying to get lustres, to obtain which was perhaps a work too slow and precarious to be profitable. The vast development of ceramic art in Italy has required three windows--sixth, seventh, and eighth--for its representation. First we have bird’s-eye views of the localities with which it was chiefly associated: Urbino, the seat of the finest ware made in the time of Raphael, wherein is portrayed their process of softening and refining the clay by putting it in square pits in the ground; Duranto, with its method of grinding the clay in a sort of water-mill; Gubbio, with its own ingenious processes. Then we have other Italian methods--foot-mill, hand-mill, horse-mill. An artist is seen in his studio, receiving as sitters ladies whose portraits he paints on plates that are to be their marriage gifts--a design taken from a plate in the gallery painted by Maestro Giorgio--while other details have been taken from a MS. by Piccolpasso, also preserved in the museum. And, finally, we have a representation of Luca della Robbia, of the fifteenth century, who used earthenware medallions, admirably modelled and fired with white glaze, which were fixed on the outside of buildings, and may be seen to-day on the Foundling Hospital and several churches at Florence. The very word “majolica” (Majorca) shows that the Italians found their art where the Moors left it. But if they could not equal the moresque lustres, they certainly developed and enriched their designs. Such decorations as that encircling the figure of St. George on the Urbino plate (see engraving) may be called “arabesque,” but they are equally Italian. It is curious to compare such arabesques with the ornament on a piece of real Arabian work, such as the accompanying ancient lamp. (This lamp, singularly enough, is of a form represented in very early Italian bronze carvings of sacred subjects.) Window ninth is devoted to Dutch tiles and pots and Flanders-ware, which were once imported in such vast quantities to this country: here they may be traced from their manufacture in Holland to their sale in the Thames docks. Window tenth relates the curious story of the Dresden-ware. Here it was that the famous material of the best porcelain (kaolin), which was so long the secret of China, was discovered by a happy accident--Böttcher, the alchemist, having taken a notion to analyze the white dust which his barber had used to powder his wig in a year of dear flour. The two men are represented, and also the château of Meissen, where the first Dresden porcelain was secretly made. Window eleventh tells the story of Palissy, who, instructing himself, ruined his family: one leaf of the window shows him feeding his furnace with his broken furniture, while his wife with her babe stands beseechingly by; the other shows his triumph, as he builds and decorates the grottoes in the Tuilleries garden. The story recalls that of Benvenuto Cellini, who, having been seized with a fever while casting his Perseus and Medusa, heard that his work was ruined. Leaping from his bed, he found the furnace burst, but he saw the metal was partly fused; he cast in two hundred pieces of his table-service, and the mould was filled. The great work was saved, and so was the artist; he ate a hearty meal with his workman, slept soundly, and was himself again. Window twelfth is devoted to Sèvres, where porcelain was carried to its highest perfection. The famous “Rose du Barry” and “Bleu du Roi” are represented--and here exquisite colors are used--by Louis XV. and Madame Du Barry exchanging vases of those colors. The old manufactory is pictured, and some of its finest designs, in the lower panes of the window. Near by is the beautiful specimen of Sèvres which France contributed to the first International Exhibition in London. In window thirteenth we are introduced to English wares, at present the most excellent in the world. The processes described are--preparing the clay, making different colored clays, stamping tiles, filling color into moulds, “throwing,” “turning,” applying printed patterns. It takes two of the double windows to display this, which brings us to the fifteenth and last, in which there are four designs of the greatest historical interest: Dr. Doddridge’s mother teaching her child Bible history from the tiles in the fireplace; Dr. Samuel Johnson trying experiments; figures of Josiah Wedgwood and Bentley, his partner; Flaxman and Stothard, the painter. The two artists last named both worked in decorating earthenware for Wedgwood. Flaxman was underpaid by Wedgwood for the numerous models he supplied--models still used by the firm. The poor artist has made the fortunes of three generations of his employer’s family, whose present representatives are so liberal that one must suppose their ancestor to have hardly realized the value of the artist’s work until it was too late to reward him.

The visitor to the Ceramic Gallery in this museum will be apt to admit that there were never windows that shed more light than these of the kind required by a student. He will see lustres on the lustre-wares beyond what mere sunlight can give, and the huge dragons, deer, and horned birds on the Moresque-Spanish dishes will link the culture of 1882 with the barbaric mediæval mythology. He will, indeed, find at every step that he is really exploring in this gallery of pots and dishes strata marked all over with the vestiges of human and ethnical development. Nothing can be more complete than the arrangement of the gallery. Not only is it chronological, but beneath each particular specimen a card tells when and where it was made, and the price paid for it by the museum. If it has gone off with the floating collection, the card reports that also. One may learn what changes have occurred in the prices of such wares by finding Sèvres vases, for instance, marked at £100 or £200, of a like character with those six for which Lord Dudley recently paid £17,500. These are articles which, when first collected, incited the first cabinet minister who inspected them to ask, “What’s the use of all this trash?” There is a single candlestick in this room now worth all the “trash” in that noble lord’s mansion. It is a specimen of that famous “Henri Deux ware” of which only fifty-five pieces exist, so far as is known. This elegant ware has been such a puzzle to antiquarians that no fewer than thirteen different works have been written about it. It was finally ascertained by M. Riocreux, of the Imperial Ceramic Museum at Sèvres, that the pottery was made at Oiron, in France; that two artists made it in the earlier part of the sixteenth century for Henry II. and his queen, whose initials or monograms are on several of the pieces; and the artists were François Cherpentier and Jean Bernard. Cherpentier, the chief maker, had been an architect, and when he set about working in earthen-ware he was fond of moulding it in little monumental shapes, and filling in the hollows with different colors. The candlestick has a pale yellow ground, with arabesques, etc., in reddish-brown. The base is circular, with projecting brackets, on which stand three boys holding shields inscribed with the arms and cipher of Henri Deux. Above are three terminal figures of satyrs. This work (which it is to be hoped will some day be called by the artist’s name instead of the king’s) is less than a foot high; it cost £750, and is one of the cheapest purchases ever made. Seven of the fifty-five specimens of this ware are in the collection of Sir Anthony de Rothschild, two in that of Baron Lionel de Rothschild, two in that of Baron Gustave de Rothschild, three in that of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, while the Louvre has the same number as the South Kensington Museum--five. Three very beautiful specimens (candlestick, ewer, and large salt-cellar) were found some years ago, very carefully wrapped in a blanket, placed in a wicker clothes-basket, under a bed in a garret of Narford Hall. Our engraving (p. 56) represents the candlestick so found. The pieces were no doubt collected by Sir Andrew Fountaine in France, in the last century, and, put away perhaps by some provident house-keeper, now turn up as a more valuable bequest to the old connoisseur’s descendants than he could have imagined, but which is rightly appreciated by the present owner of the pieces, Mr. Andrew Fountaine. The other specimens of this Henri Deux ware in this gallery are two tazzas, a plateau, and a wonderful salt-cellar, of which last the skill of a pupil at South Kensington enables me to give the linear design.