adorned on the theory that its function is one which requires a degree
of richness bordering on brilliancy, which were out of place in a
study, or studio, or sitting-room. Here are to be happy assemblies of
light-hearted people, in gay dresses, and the room must be in harmony
with the purpose of pleasure which has brought them together; but
then the drawing-room must not obtrude itself--it must not outshine
their lustres or pale their colors; rather it must supply the company
with an appropriate framing, and set them all in the best light. The
drawing-room at Grove Lodge seemed to me a purely artistic creation of
a beautiful out of a poorly constructed room. A paper of heraldic pink
roses, very faint, with leaves in mottled gold, makes a frieze of one
width above a wall-paper of sage-gray, which has no discernible figures
at all on it. This sage-gray supplies an excellent background to the
pictures--which are moderate in quantity, charming in quality--and
for the picturesque ladies, who are too often fairly blanched by the
upholsterer’s splendor, as they might be by blue and silver lights
in a theatre. At the cornice is a gold moulding and fretting, making
an agreeable fringe to the canopy (as the star-spotted ceiling may
be appropriately called). The ceiling is not stellated, however,
with the regularity of wall-paper designs, but with stars of various
magnitude and interspaces. It must be, of course, a room in which the
deep tones of color preponderate which could alone make such a ceiling
appropriate. In this instance it is rendered appropriate not only by
the character of the hangings of the room, at once rich and subdued,
and by the carpet, which Mr. Boughton had made for the room, the
basis of whose design is the greensward, touched here and there with
spots of red, but also by the fact that it is a double drawing-room,
lighted in the daytime only at the ends, and requiring, therefore, a
bright ceiling. There are two old Japanese cabinets: one is richly
chased, but with nothing in relief except the gold lock-plates, and
some twenty-eight hinges (themselves a decoration); the other is more
complex, and has figures in relief. In addition to these there are two
cabinets of unique beauty, designed by Mr. Boughton--one possessing
a bevelled mirror running its whole width at the top; the other with
panels, on which the artist has painted Spring and Autumn in gold.
In this residence some of the best effects were produced by the
extraordinary lustre of color and quality of surface in the stuffs
used for curtains, furniture-covers, and upholstery. These are such as
are not ordinarily manufactured, and can be procured in London only
by searching for them. Manufacturers in this country, and no doubt in
America also, are in the habit of bleaching their stuffs as white as
possible, and the consequence is they will not take rich and warm dyes.
The secret of those Oriental stuffs upon whose surface, as they appear
in our exhibitions, English manufacturers are so often seen looking
with despair, is that they never bleach to whiteness anything that is
to be dyed. If the Eastern dyers should put their deep colors upon a
surface bleached to ghastliness, their stuffs would be as ghastly as
our ordinary goods speedily become. The Oriental dyer simply leaves the
natural color of the wool or cotton creamy and delicate, and the hues
never turn out crude and harsh, as do those of English stuffs. This
bleaching, moreover, takes the life out of a natural material, and is
the reason of the superior durability of colored Oriental fabrics.
Mr. Boughton has named the grand mansion built for him on Campden
Hill, “West House,” in honor of Benjamin West, the first American
artist who received in England honors similar to those which have been
accorded himself. In this house he has had ample room to develop his
ideas of decoration. It is Grove Lodge, as it were, in full flower.
An excellent effect has been secured by giving to each of three large
rooms, opening into each other through richly-draped door-ways, tints
of their own; each is different, while harmonious with its neighbor. It
would require a pamphlet to do justice to all the decorations of West
House, and I must content myself with having already given an extended
analysis of the ideas of ornamentation which our American Academician
has done so much to diffuse. But one thing I must not omit to mention.
In the removal to this house a large and magnificent old bevelled
mirror was cracked irregularly across the entire surface. The eye of
the artist detected in the misfortune an opportunity for a novel touch
of decoration. He painted the blemish into a beauty. A beautiful vine
in leaf and blossom now runs across the mirror, which, I hear, has been
imitated by some who have seen it, in ignorance, perhaps, that the
pretty device was suggested by a flaw. Boughton’s mirror might well
have an inscription beneath it from Shakspeare: “Best men are moulded
out of faults.”
Another American artist adorned his London residence in a way quite
notable. The ancient mansion of the Lindsays (300 years old) on the
northern bank of the Thames, at Chelsea, was divided up into six
houses, and one of these was for some years occupied by Mr. Whistler.
This gentleman’s enthusiasm for Japanese and Chinese art is well known;
but that large number of people who are in the habit of holding up
their china plates at dinner as texts from which to descant on the
strange ignorance of drawing and perspective under which the Chinese
and Japanese labor, would find good reason to check their laughter
should they be fortunate enough to see Mr. Whistler’s rooms. The
Chinese and Japanese have known for a good many centuries certain
principles of art which Europeans are only beginning to recognize; one
of these is, that a plate or pot is by no means the proper place for a
realistic picture, but, on the contrary, that the only use of art on
such an object is to give it spots of color. The chief object is not
the picture, but the pot. No people know the laws of perspective better
than the Chinese and the Japanese, or have greater realistic power.
Mr. Whistler dots the walls and even the ceiling of his rooms with
the brilliant Japanese fans which now constitute so large an element
in the decoration of many beautiful rooms; but in his drawing-room
there were fifteen large panels made of Japanese pictures, each about
five feet by two. These pictures represent flowers of every hue, and
birds of many varieties and of the richest plumage. The very lustre of
nature is on every petal and on every feather; the eyes of the birds
are as gems that emit light, and their tortuous necks are painted with
a boldness which no European art can rival. The Japanese, when they
aim at nature, have the rare courage to paint nature as it is; and, as
a result, the tortuous necks of their birds tell the story of their
reptilian relationship as clearly as it has been told by Professor
Huxley. There are also in the room an ancient Chinese cabinet with a
small pagoda designed on the top, an old Japanese cabinet of quaint
construction, and several screens from the same region, altogether
making one of the most beautiful rooms imaginable. Mr. Whistler did
much to light up and beautify a somewhat dark staircase in his house
by giving the walls a lemon tint above a dado of gold, on which he
has painted butterflies such as adorn the frames of his pictures, and
constitute the signature of his work. I have become convinced, however,
by a visit to the beautiful house which Chambrey Townshend arranged
at Wimbledon, that there can be nothing so suitable for somewhat dark
corridors and staircases as a faint rose tint. In Mr. Townshend’s
house, however cold and cheerless the day may be, there is always
a glow of morning light. This gentleman has shown that a sage-gray
paper with simple small squares (such as Messrs. Marshall & Morris
make) furnishes a good dado to support the light tints upon walls not
papered. Where the walls are papered several gentlemen of taste have
substituted for the usual dado, made of somewhat darker paper, one
of matting. If the matting has a dark red stripe the effect is good,
but checker marks are not pleasant. Mr. Ionides, a Greek gentleman,
of London, arranged a remarkably beautiful hall and stairway in his
house at Notting Hill by using a plain straw-colored matting for
the continuous dado, uniting it by an ebonized chairboarding with a
light-colored Morris wall-paper. Of course tiles are sometimes used
to make the dado, but either because of their common use in hotels
and public buildings, or for some other reason, they appear with
increasing rarity in private houses in any other capacity than that of
adorning the fireplace. This remark does not include the use of tiles
as plaques, to be hung as works of fine art--a use of them which is now
frequent, and is the means of producing a great deal of beautiful work.
[Illustration: WILLIAM MORRIS.]
It is easy to understand that the house in which one resides must have
a large share in determining the decorations which shall be placed
in or upon it. An historic or semi-palatial mansion of the olden
time will require to have its great halls and stairways and deep
rooms illuminated with colors, and its large spaces intersected with
pictorial screens. Mr. William B. Scott, of whose mural paintings
I have already spoken, and whose occupation it is to study effects
of ornamentation, has a happy field for his taste and task in his
residence, Bellevue House, at Chelsea. This mansion merits particular
attention, both on its own account architecturally, and for its
decorations, added recently. These have been chiefly devised by the
artist himself in carrying out the original plan, and add a suggestive
and, properly speaking, imaginative character to the interiors. The
house was built, it is said, by the Adamses, the architects of the
Adelphi, in the Strand, where the Society of Arts holds its meetings
(the approach to which is still called Adams Street). At that time,
about a century ago, decorations in the way of carved mouldings running
around door-ways, and passing all round the rooms on the surbase and
dado, were in use. Previously to that time the entire walls were
generally panelled, but then began the system of panelling or boarding
flatly to the height of three feet only, at which height began the
lath-and-plaster wall. Along the top edge of this dado--which, being
just over the height of a chair or table, gives a very well-furnished
and comfortable air to a room, and ought on that account to be again
adopted--ran a more or less ornamental moulding. That mostly used in
Bellevue House is carved in wood, and very good, closely resembling,
indeed, those on the best specimens of Chippendale furniture, which
belongs to the same date--about 1770. I may add here that the demand
among artistic designers for a recurrence to the dado is shown by the
increasing frequency with which a darker paper than that above, with
paper cornice, is made to do duty for it.
[Illustration: MOULDING OVER DADO.]
A hundred years ago the hall of a mansion was a more important part of
the plan, and more decoratively treated, than now. The entrance is here
divided by folding-doors from the hall proper, which is ample enough in
area to place the stair a good way back, and to give a correspondingly
wide space above, on the drawing-room landing, filled in the olden
time by a table, cabinet, eight-day standing clock, and other objects.
The ends of the steps were carved, sometimes very elegantly. But the
most ornamental feature then in use was the moulded ceiling, which was
planned in ovals and spandrels, according to the shape of the room,
sometimes with medallions of Cupids, and occasionally with a picture,
representing an emblematic personage or some such matter, in the
centre. A few of these are still to be seen in London. There is one in
Knight-Rider Street, painted by Cipriani. In Bellevue House the two
drawing-rooms possess very pretty arrangements of fan-shaped ornaments
and delicate foliage. These are now “picked out” in colors--blue
and white for the most part--producing an effect resembling that of
Wedgwood ware.
[Illustration: CHIPPENDALE MAHOGANY MOULDING, BELMONT HOUSE.]
The plan on which the rooms of large London houses were originally
arranged was _en suite_, entering one through another, connected by
double doors if the walls were thick enough, so that on great occasions
they could be opened throughout. On either side of the drawing-rooms at
Bellevue House are smaller rooms connected in this way, one of which is
at present used as a library and evening sitting-room, and, I must also
add, as a room on the walls of which the ever-bourgeoning studies of
the idealist take shape and color. The wood-work--that is to say, the
dado, doors, etc.--is painted Indian red, with black or light yellow
edgings; above this the wall is covered by a green pattern, but the
upper part of this surface is divided by painting into panels two feet
deep by a foot and a half wide, the _stile_, or division, between being
half a foot. The ceiling is, in the centre, a very faint blue, with a
darker blue meeting the cornice (two feet wide); this darker blue--the
blue of the sky--also fills the painted panels, which thus resemble
the openings for ventilation in some Oriental countries. Across these
openings a flight of vermilion birds--Virginian nightingales, plumed
and winged by imagination, red being evidently chosen for bright effect
against the blue--is represented. The birds reappear above the cornice,
and stream in pretty migration round the ceiling, decreasing in size
till they nearly disappear.
[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM OF BELLEVUE HOUSE.]
The chimney-piece of this little room is exquisite, and is much like
one designed by Sir E. Landseer, which I saw among his sketches, except
that the jambs were caryatides. The white marble jambs and architraves
in Mr. Scott’s design are diapered with leaves--laurel and ivy--of
Indian red color, and above the chimney-shelf is a second chimney-piece
and shelf, thus giving double accommodation for objects of ornament or
use. The artist’s collection of old china, majolica, and other objects
of similar kind serves to render his chimney-pieces particularly
beautiful. I have not seen a more attractive work of this kind than
the chimney-piece in his principal drawing-room. The jambs here are
panelled, the panels being filled with mirrors, and divided half-way,
two feet nine from the floor, by a shelf large enough to accommodate
a lamp or candle, with a teacup or other object. The arrangement is
admirable both for utility and beauty. A supplementary chimney-shelf is
added here, also, to the marble one; and rising nearly to the ceiling
is a surface of black wood, with brackets, for the exhibition of some
very fine old Hispano-Moresque ware, the golden, metallic lustre of
which is favorably seen against the black. The centre is filled by Mr.
Scott’s own most beautiful picture of Eve, which, with a large screen
covered with classical figures, sheds a glory of color through this
unique room, which has, besides, the good fortune to command from its
windows the finest views of the Thames.
Entirely different from either of these residences is that of Mr.
George W. Smalley, the distinguished correspondent of the New York
_Tribune_, in Chester Place. Birket Foster, George Boughton, W. B.
Scott, and J. McNeil Whistler have naturally decorated their houses
with an eye to picturesque effect; theirs are the homes of men whose
daily life is consecrated to art, and a use of colors seems appropriate
to their environment which might not so well accord with persons
differently occupied. Those who have experienced some of the wear and
tear of this busy London existence can hardly enter the door of this
American gentleman without finding a sufficient justification for
the growing desire of families to surround themselves with household
beauty, against all the charges of the puritanical. “Thus I tread on
the pride of Plato,” said Socrates, as he stepped on the carpet of
his famous friend. “With a pride of thy own,” answered Plato, who is
supposed to have got the better in this little encounter. Nature is not
nowadays in such discredit as formerly for having blended beauties with
utilities, making even her pease and potatoes bear graceful blossoms.
And there would appear to be some reason in the tendency of her yet
higher product, a home, to wear a fitting bloom as the sign of its
reality. Such a suggestion is made by the subdued and delicate tints
and tones which here meet the eye. One may have stepped from other
houses of this fashionable neighborhood to find here a sweet surprise.
There is, then, no absolute and eternal law making it compulsory to
select ugly things instead of pretty things. Tinsel is not intrenched
in the decalogue. Here is a hall in which gray and brown shades prevail
in dado and paper, where a soft light prevails, and the garish light
and the noise of the street can hardly be remembered. One may enter
the nursery and find the children at play or study amid walls that
bring no shams around their simplicity, no finery, but sage-gray and
straw-color, setting off well their bright faces and those panels in
the bookcase which tell the story of Cinderella.
[Illustration: LIBRARY IN BELLEVUE HOUSE.]
To the suite of drawing-rooms every excellence must be ascribed. They
consist of two large rooms and a large recess, all continuous, whose
decorations adapt them to any domestic or social purpose whatever.
It is an apartment in which the finest company would feel itself in
an atmosphere of refinement and taste, and it is a place to lose
one’s self in a good book; it is a place where the mind can equally
well find invitation to society or solitude. Perhaps it is the rich
Persian carpet that gives such grace. It is after a pattern more than
a thousand years old, but which in all that time has never repeated
itself, each carpet coming forth with its own tints and shades, and in
which every color is surrounded by a line which mediates between it and
the next. It is not stretched up to the walls and nailed, as if its
business were to conceal something, or as if it were too flimsy to lie
still except by force of iron: it is as a large rug laid for comfort
on the waxed parquet, which is ready to display more of its own beauty
when the proper season arrives. Beginning with this rich carpet, with
its sober tints, the eye ascends to the dado, to the walls, to frieze,
cornice, and ceiling, and finds variation at every stage, but no break
in the harmony of all. The golden tints in the carpet are more fully
represented in the dado, which is of an olive-golden color, with a
small turquoise line on its cornice leading to the main papering. This
paper is of a French tapestry pattern, in which the golden thread,
which is its basis, weaves in colors that are rich but always subdued,
and of every shade. There is no pattern to rivet the eye; it has
no certain relation to the vegetal, or floral, or animal kingdom.
This paper rises to a Moresque frieze of about one foot in depth,
which holds hexagonal medallions containing the ghosts of plants.
There is next a cornice of three mouldings--arabesque, Egyptian, and
floral--leading to the ceiling, which is covered with paper of a rich
creamy color, with very light cross-bands passing between figures in
which a fertile fancy may trace the decorative symbols of earth, air,
and water in an orb, a butterfly, and certain waving lines. It may be
remarked here that it is only on a ceiling that any forms, even in such
abstract shapes as these, are admissible. Here they are noticeable only
if one is lying flat on one’s back and gazing upward, in which case,
especially if invalidism be the cause, some outlines of a dreamy kind
are not without their value. Moreover, any designs, when raised to the
ceiling, require to be larger than similar ones on the floor or line of
the eye, in order that they may be at all similar in effect. The plan
of covering or coloring the ceiling has a good foundation in the fact
that a mere white wall overhead conveys the sorry impression that the
house is left naked in every corner and spot not likely to be gazed at.
The ceiling in Mr. Smalley’s drawing-room exemplifies, however, one
important fact: although a mere color placed on a ceiling depresses it,
a good pattern has just the contrary effect. By good pattern I mean
one that shows a double ground--the lower one being open work, through
which a farther ground is seen. Mrs. Smalley, whose taste has been the
life of the ornamentation of her house, told me that when this ceiling
was being painted the decorated part appeared to rise more than a foot
higher than the blank part.
The wood used in the drawing-room is ebonized, and of it are several
cabinets--one displaying some fine specimens of china--bracket-shelves,
and two remarkably beautiful chimney-pieces, supporting bevelled
mirrors, framed with shelves which display porcelain and other
ornaments. The recess which has been mentioned is what might be better
understood, perhaps, if described as a bay-window. Its chief object
is to hold a large window, in five contiguous sections, which admit a
toned light, and have each a cluster of sunflowers at the centre. This
little room has a broad divan, covered with stamped green (Utrecht)
velvet, running around, and its wall is decorated with gold-tinted
leather, on which are two bright tile ornaments. The large opening into
this recess is adorned by two antique bronze reliefs of great beauty,
and the whole is related to the drawing-rooms by an open drapery of
greenish-golden curtains--a velvet of changeable lustre--uniform with
the other hangings of these beautiful rooms.
It is remarkable, indeed, how much may be accomplished with rooms
inferior in size to those we have been visiting by the skilful use of
curtains. If a gentleman in London enters a house with the intention
of decorating it in accordance with principles of art, his first
work, probably, will be either to tear away doors that divide the
drawing-room, and substitute a draping, or else frame it round with
looped and corded drapery, which, having in itself an artistic effect,
shall change the barrier into beauty. Nothing is better understood than
that no square angles should divide a drawing-room, and the curtain
is more graceful than any arch or architraves for that purpose. The
following sketch may convey some idea of an effect which has been
secured in Townsend House, Titchfield Terrace, residence of the
distinguished artist Mr. Alma Tadema; though the impression can be but
feeble, on account of the exquisite use he has made of the colors,
which must be left to the reader’s imagination, with a warning that
they are as quiet as they are rich.
[Illustration: DRAWING-ROOM IN TOWNSEND HOUSE.]
The question as to the best color for a wall, one of whose chief
objects is to show off framed pictures, is a vexed one. Messrs.
Christie & Co., the famous art auctioneers, have their rooms hung with
dark green baize from floor to sky-light, and certainly the result
justifies their experience; but I think any one who enters the hall of
Sir F. Leighton, P.R.A., will see that there may be a more effective
wall-color to set off pictures than green, not to speak of certain
other effects of the latter which really put it out of the question.
It is difficult to say just what the color in Sir Frederick Leighton’s
hall is. It is a sombre red, which at one moment seems to be toned in
the direction of maroon, and at another in the direction of brown. It
has been made by a very fine mingling of pigments; but the general
result has been to convince me that there can be no better wall for
showing off pictures, especially in a hall with a good deal of light,
than this unobtrusive reddish-brown. I remember that when the Boston
Theatre was first opened a wall of somewhat similar color added
greatly to the brilliancy of the scenery. But there are many eyes to
which this would not be a pleasing color or shade even for a hall--it
would hardly be beautiful in a purely domestic room--and such will do
well to try some of the many beautiful shades of olive or sage-gray.
Mr. W. J. Hennessy, the eminent American artist, made his house in
Douro Place, before he left it for the old château in Calvados,
remarkably charming by a careful use of such shades throughout. His
quiet rooms were restful as they were pervaded by refinement, and each
frame on the walls had a perfect relief, each picture a full glow.