Royal Academy in 1874--had contributed, as his picture of that season,
an admirable representation of his own studio, with a number of his
friends looking upon a work on his easel, the back of which is turned
to the spectator. But one can readily imagine those friends of his
dividing their attention between the picture and the rich ornamentation
of the room they are in. An artist’s studio is apt to be, and ought
to be, as much a picture as any work of art born in it, but it hardly
comes within the scope of this article to describe rooms that are
expressions of individual genius and purpose; yet in every house where
cultivated persons are found individual aims are found also, and there
will be the effort to give to each of these its fit environment. The
first point to be secured in the study, or studio, or workshop is,
that everything in it shall be related to the work which is its end
and _raison d’être_. When Carlyle was engaged in writing his Life of
Frederick he had prepared a special study apart from his library,
whose walls were covered with books and pictures of which each one,
without exception, was in some way connected with the man of whom
he was writing. They who are not, even for a time, specialists may
nevertheless follow his example so far as to take care not to surround
themselves with distracting objects. That which is beautiful in a
studio may be ugly in a study. The studio of Alma Tadema sympathizes
in its minutest object with the artist, who is so much at home in all
the ages of art. Touches of Egypt, of Pompeii, of Greece, of Rome,
blend in the decorations of his studio, as their influences are felt
in his powerful works. And, indeed, throughout Townsend House there
is a beauty derived from the fact that every ornament is subordinate
to the purpose of the room which contains it. The dining-room, for
instance, opens into a beautiful garden; it is, therefore, not simply
an eating-room, but must in some weathers do duty as the _salon_ for a
garden party. The rich dado of matting is especially well placed in
such a room as this, which is large and luminous. It is capped by a
chair-board, which is ingeniously adorned with cockle-shells, and still
more at one point with the first name of the mistress of the house
painted in antique golden letters. Above this there is a cream-colored
paper of squares, with roses and birds, a hanging which I have already
spoken of as unpleasant in bedrooms or sitting-rooms; but in this large
dining-room, which opens into a garden, the effect of it is remarkably
fine. The cornice is Easter-eggs (variously and carefully colored),
beneath a higher member of grape and leaf, also colored. The whole of
one end of this room is covered by a rich drapery of fine Indian dyes,
elegantly striped. The servants’ entrance is behind a large screen of
gold leather.
Throughout this beautiful house there are little arrangements
for convenience, always attended by beauty, which are altogether
indescribable--a head or a sprig of ivy painted in some panel, or a
little gauze curtain draping a casual opening. But I must particularly
note in the drawing-room a beautiful capping to the dado. It is a white
moulding of the Elgin marble reliefs, and most beautifully fringes
the dark-figured stuff of the dado. I have already described the fine
drapery of this room. I need only now say that Mr. Alma Tadema has
designed some candelabra which appear to me most beautiful. The reader
will, I fear, be but little able to obtain from one of the drawings
an idea of the rich minglings of the bronze with the rose porcelain
egg-shaped centre-piece, and the figures painted upon it. Both of the
candelabra which I have selected as specimens are for rose-colored
candles. In the houses of many artists ancient oratory (suspended)
candelabra are used for the centres of rooms, and also brass repoussé
sconces bracketed with bevelled mirrors. The English upper classes have
never been reconciled to the use of gasaliers in their drawing-rooms,
and the artists have pretty generally opposed the use of gas, which is
believed to be damaging to oil-pictures.
In concluding this account of the most interesting examples of
decorative art with which I am acquainted in England, I add, in
preference to any general observations of my own, a few extracts from
very high authorities, affirming principles whose truth seems to me
to be illustrated by every exterior, and interior to which I have
referred. The first of these quotations is the placarded principles of
decorative art hung up in the school at South Kensington:
I.
1. The decorative arts arise from, and should properly be
attendant upon, architecture. 2. Architecture should be the
material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the
sentiments of the age in which it is created. 3. Style in
architecture is the peculiar form that expression takes under the
influence of climate and the materials at command.
II.
METAL-WORKS, POTTERY, AND PLASTIC FORMS GENERALLY.--1.
The form should be most carefully adapted to use, being studied
for elegance and beauty of line as well as for capacity, strength,
mobility, etc. 2. In ornamenting the construction care should be
taken to preserve the general form, and to keep the decoration
subservient to it by the low relief or otherwise; the ornament
should be so arranged as to enhance by its lines the symmetry
of the original form, and assist its constructive strength. 3.
If arabesques or figures in the round are used, they should
arise out of the ornamental and constructive forms, and not be
merely applied. 4. All projecting parts should have careful
consideration, to render them as little liable to injury as is
consistent with their purpose. 5. It must ever be remembered that
repose is required to give value to ornament, which in itself is
secondary and not principal.
III.
CARPETS.--1. The surface of a carpet, serving as a ground
to support all objects, should be quiet and negative, without
strong contrast of either forms or colors. 2. The leading forms
should be so disposed as to distribute the pattern over the
whole floor, not pronounced either in the direction of breadth
or length, all “up-and-down” treatments being erroneous. 3. The
decorative forms should be flat, without shadow or relief, whether
derived from ornament or direct from flowers or foliage. 4. In
color the general ground should be negative, low in tone, and
inclining to the tertiary hues, the leading forms of the pattern
being expressed by the darker secondaries; and the primary colors,
or white, if used at all, should be only in small quantity, to
enhance the tertiary hues and to express the geometrical basis
that rules the distribution of the forms.
IV.
PRINTED GARMENT FABRICS, MUSLINS, CALICOES, ETC.--1.
The ornament should be flat, without shadow and relief. 2. If
flowers, foliage, or other natural objects are the _motive_, they
should not be direct imitations of nature, but conventionalized
in obedience to the above rule. 3. The ornament should cover the
surface either by a diaper based on some regular geometrical
figure, or growing out of itself by graceful flowing curves;
any arrangement that carries lines or pronounces figures in the
direction of breadth is to be avoided, and the effect produced by
the folding of the stuff should be carefully studied. 4. The size
of the pattern should be regulated by the material for which it
is intended: _small_ for close, thick fabrics, such as ginghams,
etc.; _larger_ for fabrics of more open textures, such as muslins,
baréges, etc.; largely covering the ground on delaines, and more
dispersed on cotton linens.
In all the beautiful effects which I have observed the ornamentation
has been in more or less accordance with the fundamental principle
of these rules--namely, the subordination of decoration to use. Many
persons of taste and culture have had to wage a sometimes unequal
conflict with architecture whose object was a low one--to sell;
but they have been rewarded just in the proportion that they have
regarded the principles just quoted. It will be especially observed
that realism, in the sense of exact imitations of nature, is entirely
repudiated. Conventionalism, precisely because it is a degradation in
human character, is a first necessity in ornamentation. The _rationale_
of this is admirably given in a little book on the Oxford Museum,
by Dr. Acland and Mr. Ruskin, not likely to have been seen by many
American readers. The following remarks by Mr. Ruskin, taken from it,
constitute my second extract:
“The highest art in all kinds is that which conveys the most
truth, and the best ornamentation possible would be the painting
of interior walls with frescoes by Titian, representing perfect
humanity in color, and the sculpture of exterior walls by
Phidias, representing perfect humanity in form. Titian and
Phidias are precisely alike in their conception and treatment of
nature--everlasting standards of the right. Beneath ornamentation
such as men like these could bestow falls in various rank,
according to its subordination to vulgar uses or inferior places,
what is commonly conceived as ornamental art. The lower its office
and the less tractable its material, the less of nature it should
contain, until a zigzag becomes the best ornament for the hem of a
robe, and a mosaic of colored glass the best design for a colored
window. But all these forms of lower art are to be conventional
only because they are subordinate; not because conventionalism is
in itself a good or desirable thing. All right conventionalism is
a wise acceptance of, and compliance with, conditions of restraint
or inferiority. It may be inferiority of our knowledge or power,
as in the art of a semi-savage nation, or restraint by reason of
material, as in the way the glass-painter should restrict himself
to transparent hue, and a sculptor deny himself the eyelash and
the film of flowing hair which he cannot cut in marble. But
in all cases whatever right conventionalism is either a wise
acceptance of an inferior place, or a noble display of power under
accepted limitation; it is not an improvement of natural form into
something better or purer than Nature herself.
“Now, this great and most precious principle may be compromised
in two quite opposite ways. It is compromised on one side when
men suppose that the degradation of the natural form, which fits
it for some subordinate place, is an improvement of it, and that
a black profile on a red ground, because it is proper for a
water-jug, is therefore an idealization of humanity, and nobler
art than a picture by Titian. And it is compromised equally
gravely on the opposite side when men refuse to submit to the
limitation of material and the fitnesses of office, when they try
to produce finished pictures in colored glass, or substitute the
inconsiderate imitation of natural objects for the perfectness of
adapted and disciplined design.”
I was much struck on a recent occasion with an illustration of how
little the principles thus explained by Mr. Ruskin are understood
even among the learned. It was at the Anthropological Society, where
archæologists, antiquarians, metallurgists, and experts of various
kinds were examining a collection of specimens of the gold-work of
the Ashantees. One of the leading authorities present gave it as
his opinion that the specimens, though of a fineness which English
workmanship could not rival, nevertheless represented a degradation of
art and of civilization among the Ashantees; and the reason assigned
was, that the ornamentation indicated that an original imitation of
forms--some natural, others of European design--had been departed
from till the significance of the forms had been lost. Of course the
argument really proved a progress in art among the Ashantees, and a
fine perception of the laws that must govern all work upon gold. But
it is of great importance that no one should confuse conventionalism
in the decorative flower or other form with conventionalism in the use
of them in any house or on any object. The houses of the millions are,
indeed, conventionally decorated now, and they are ugly; the individual
taste will convert the commonplace forms and colors into individual
expression, as his soul has previously transmuted the commonplace clay
into a physiognomy like and unlike all others.
But it were a serious error to suppose that the words “conventional,”
“heraldic,” “decorative,” etc., employed to express those ornamental
forms which are derived without being copied from nature, really
express the significance of those forms. They do represent the spirit
of nature. In the extract with which I conclude, the growth of such
flowers and forms in a fairer field is most subtly described. It
is from the best existing work on the genesis and evolution of the
decorative arts, Mr. Scott’s _History and Practice of the Fine and
Ornamental Arts_, now used as a manual and official prize-book at the
South Kensington School of Design:
“Taste is that faculty by which we distinguish whatever is
graceful, noble, just, and lovable in the infinitely varied
appearances about us, and in the works of the decorative and
imitative arts. The immediate impulse in the presence of beauty
is to feel and admire. When the emotion and the sentiment are
strong we are compelled to imitate. We cannot make ourselves more
beautiful physically than Providence has decreed, but we wish to
see again, to feel again, what caused in us so vivid a pleasure;
and we attempt to revive the image that charmed us, to re-create
those parts or qualities in the image that we found admirable,
with or without those other parts or qualities which did not touch
us, but which were necessary to its existence in a conditional and
transitory life. Hence a work original and peculiar to man--a work
of art.”
[Illustration: decorative block]
BEDFORD PARK.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM A BALCONY.]
BEDFORD PARK.
Five years ago I happened to pass through Chiswick, near London, and
paused near a field where Prince Rupert and his little army camped
overnight, on their retreat before Hampden and his Roundheads--a
scene which the perspective of time has made into an allegorical
tableau of Aristocracy retreating before Yeomanry. (It is a retreat
that steadily goes on still.) At that time I found it pleasant to see
large and beautiful gardens, with stately poplars and every variety of
fruit-tree, glorifying the acres once steeped with the bluest blood
of England. Eight hundred Cavaliers were here found dead when the
Roundheads came in the early morning, glowing with victory, to pitch
their tents where the Cavaliers had just folded theirs. Last year I
turned in to take another look at the same place. I paused again near
the Rupert House--surely a very civil-seeming home for the barbaric
prince whose name was twisted into “Prince Robber.” Two lions couch
above the projecting door-way, two child-figures stand on the ground
beneath, which may be emblems of that ferocity for which the prince was
famed beyond all warriors of his time, until he fell in love with the
pretty actress under whose sway he became gentle as a child.
I meant to enter on the grass-covered Roman Road along which the prince
retreated some seventeen centuries after the Romans made it. Here Roman
coins and bits of ancient tile have been found, are still occasionally
found. At any rate, it is well enough to keep one’s eyes sharp upon
the ground for a few hundred yards. But first another good look at
the beautiful gardens which cover the camp of the Cavaliers--gardens
planned and planted by Lindley, the famous horticulturist and botanist,
father of the present Mr. Justice Lindley.
Angels and ministers of grace! am I dreaming? Right before me is the
apparition of a little red town made up of quaintest Queen Anne houses.
It is visible through the railway arch, as it might be a lunette
picture projected upon a landscape. Surely my eyes are cheating me;
they must have been gathering impressions of by-gone architecture along
the riverside Malls, and are now turning them to visions, and building
them by ideal mirage into this dream of old-time homesteads!
I was almost afraid to rub my eyes, lest the antique townlet should
vanish, and crept softly along, as one expecting to surprise fairies
in their retreat. But when across the Common a Metropolitan train came
thundering, and the buildings did not disappear, I began to feel that
they were fabrics not quite baseless. That they should be real seemed
even stranger than that they should be fantasies. The old trees still
stood, the poplars waved their green streamers in the summer breeze,
the huge willows branched out on every side; but the turnips and
pumpkins they once overhung had become æsthetic houses, and amid the
flowers and fruit-trees rosy children at play had taken the place of
grimy laborers. I passed beneath a medlar--who ever before heard of
a medlar-tree out on a sidewalk?--on through a wide avenue of houses
that differed from each other sympathetically, in pleasing competition
as to which could be prettiest. Their gables sometimes fronting the
street, their door-ways adorned with varied touches of taste, the
windows surrounded with tinted glass, the lattices thrown open, and
many comely young faces under dainty caps visible here and there,
altogether impressed me with a sense of being in some enchanted land.
After turning into several streets of this character, and strolling
into several houses not yet inhabited, watching the decorators silently
engaged upon their work, I recognized that this was the veritable land
of the lotus-eaters, where they who arrive may sit them down and say,
“We will return no more.”
My summer ramble ended in a conviction that Bedford Park was an
adequate answer to Mr. Mallock’s question, “Is life worth living?”
If lived at Bedford Park, decidedly yes! In one year’s time an
architectural design adapted to our taste and needs stood finished
in brick, amid trees planted by Lindley; the last convenience was
completed, the ornamentation added; and therein I now sit to write this
little sketch of the prettiest and pleasantest townlet in England,
while my neighbor Mr. Nash is out on the balcony sketching the trees
and houses that wave and smile through my study windows. For those
who dwell here the world is divided into two great classes--those who
live at Bedford Park, and those who do not. Nevertheless, we of the
first class are not so far removed from those of the second as not to
feel for them, and to help them as well as we can to see our village,
so far as it can be put on paper in white and black. It is with that
compassionate feeling that Mr. Nash with his pencil and I with my pen
have prepared some account and illustration of what has been done
toward building a Utopia in brick and paint in the suburbs of London.
For a long time cultured taste in London for persons of moderate means
had been able to express itself only on paper. Any deviation from the
normal style could be achieved only by the wealthy. The Dutch have the
proverb, “Nothing is cheaper than paint,” but the Dutch might have
discovered their mistake had they lived in London within recent years,
and ventured to desire any variation from the conventional decoration
of houses. Even twenty years ago the artistically decorated (modern)
houses in this vast metropolis might almost be counted on one’s fingers
and toes, and they were the houses of millionnaires or of artists. The
artists could do much of the work themselves, and the millionnaires
could command special labors. But meanwhile the people who most desired
beautiful homes were those of the younger generation whom the new
culture had educated above the mere pursuit of riches, at the same
time awakening in them refined tastes which only through riches could
obtain their satisfaction. However, London is a vast place. One of the
best things about it is that nearly every head, however ingeniously
constructed, can find a circle of other heads to which it is related.
The demand of a few expanded until its supply was at hand. Jonathan
Carr, member of a family to which much of this kind of artistic
activity in London is due, had become the proprietor of a hundred acres
of land out here at Chiswick. It was land on which art had already been
at work; a considerable part of it had been the home garden of Bedford
House, where, as already said, Lindley had resided. Around the large
garden were orchards and green fields. Mr. Carr believed that his land
might fairly be made the site of a number of picturesque houses, both
as to architecture and decoration, such as many of his acquaintances
were longing for; he believed that if a considerable number of persons
should contract for such houses, that kind of work which has been
costly because exceptional might be much reduced; he believed also that
there were architects and decorators who, out of materials sufficiently
alike to be secured in large quantities, could produce a rich variety
of combinations, so that a maximum of individual taste might be
expressed at a minimum of cost. Mr. Carr consulted Norman Shaw on the
matter; that architect encouraged the project, and agreed to devote
himself personally to it. And I may say here that the speedy success
of the scheme was largely due to the well-known characters of the
landlord and the architect. Their enthusiasm for art, their liberality
and honor, excluded all suspicion that the scheme was a money-making
bubble; the slow-growing plant of confidence was already grown in their
case for the kind of people who really wanted these houses. In the
course of little more than five years three hundred and fifty houses
have been erected. They are embowered amid trees, and surrounded by
orchards; their generous gardens are well stocked with trees, flowers,
and fruits, so that these houses appear as if they had been here for
generations. No one could imagine that seven years ago they were all
little sketches on paper, passing between landlord, architect, and
house-hunters; and indeed my friend Abbey, the artist, who has visited
us occasionally, says he cannot yet get it out of his head that he is
walking through a water-color.
The first consideration is health. Bedford Park is naturally healthy.
It is situated upon a gravel-bed, remote from the fogs of London,
and with easy access to the river for its drains. Kensington is but
twelve minutes nearer the centre of London than Bedford Park, yet at
Kensington few afternoons between October and February can be passed
without gas-light, whereas here there were only four or five occasions
last fall and winter when the lights were required before evening.
There are beautiful walks around, and in ten minutes by train we
reach Kew Gardens. The Chiswick Horticultural Gardens are under ten
minutes’ walk. Near these is the long avenue, overarched by trees,
the Duke’s Walk; it leads to famous Chiswick House, whose sixty acres
of ornamental wooded ground is the most beautiful private park in the
suburbs of London, to say nothing of the charms of romance investing
the old Italian villa where statesmen consulted the fair Duchess of
Devonshire. There is thus no lack of breathing space. The houses are
built with fourteen-inch brick walls, and without cellars. It is in
conformity with what has been decided to be the prudent plan in London
that underground rooms are unknown here, each house being founded on a
solid bed of concrete, the floors raised sufficiently high above this
to allow of full and free ventilation beneath every house.
[Illustration: DINING-ROOM IN TOWER HOUSE.]
Sanitary considerations are not neglected in the decorations. Matting
is used in the lining of halls and staircases; it is easy to keep
clean, and does not gather or send forth dust every time a door is
opened, as is often the case with paper. Tiles are also much employed,
which are also easy to keep clean; and although stained glass is used,
it is as a decorative casement, and is not allowed to impede the light,
which can never be spared in England.