of the family drawing-room: the latter is essentially a room in which
people should be made comfortable. There must be a well-appointed
writing-table; the chairs must be conveniently grouped about various
tables, each with its lamp;--in short, the furniture should be so
disposed that people are not forced to take refuge in their bedrooms
for lack of fitting arrangements in the drawing-room.
The old French cabinet-makers excelled in the designing and making of
furniture for the _salon de famille_. The term "French furniture"
suggests to the Anglo-Saxon mind the stiff appointments of the gala
room--heavy gilt consoles, straight-backed arm-chairs covered with
tapestry, and monumental marble-topped tables. Admirable furniture of
this kind was made in France; but in the grand style the Italian
cabinet-makers competed successfully with the French; whereas the
latter stood alone in the production of the simpler and more
comfortable furniture adapted to the family living-room. Among those
who have not studied the subject there is a general impression that
eighteenth-century furniture, however beautiful in design and
execution, was not comfortable in the modern sense. This is owing to
the fact that the popular idea of "old furniture" is based on the
appointments of gala rooms in palaces: visitors to Versailles or
Fontainebleau are more likely to notice the massive gilt consoles and
benches in the state saloons than the simple easy-chairs and
work-tables of the _petits appartements_. A visit to the Garde Meuble
or to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of Paris, or the inspection of any
collection of French eighteenth-century furniture, will show the
versatility and common sense of the old French cabinet-makers. They
produced an infinite variety of small _meubles_, in which beauty of
design and workmanship were joined to simplicity and convenience.
The old arm-chair, or _bergère_, is a good example of this
combination. The modern upholsterer pads and puffs his seats as though
they were to form the furniture of a lunatic's cell; and then, having
expanded them to such dimensions that they cannot be moved without
effort, perches their dropsical bodies on four little casters. Any one
who compares such an arm-chair to the eighteenth-century _bergère_,
with its strong tapering legs, its snugly-fitting back and cushioned
seat, must admit that the latter is more convenient and more beautiful
(see Plates VIII and XXXVII).
The same may be said of the old French tables--from desks, card and
work-tables, to the small _guéridon_ just large enough to hold a book
and candlestick. All these tables were simple and practical in design:
even in the Louis XV period, when more variety of outline and ornament
was permitted, the strong structural lines were carefully maintained,
and it is unusual to see an old table that does not stand firmly on
its legs and appear capable of supporting as much weight as its size
will permit (see Louis XV writing-table in Plate XLVI).
The French tables, cabinets and commodes used in the family apartments
were usually of inlaid wood, with little ornamentation save the design
of the marquetry--elaborate mounts of chiselled bronze being
reserved for the furniture of gala rooms (see Plate X). Old French
marquetry was exquisitely delicate in color and design, while Italian
inlaying of the same period, though coarser, was admirable in
composition. Old Italian furniture of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was always either inlaid or carved and painted in gay
colors: chiselled mounts are virtually unknown in Italy.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVII._
ROOM IN THE PALACE OF FONTAINEBLEAU.
LOUIS XV PANELLING, LOUIS XVI FURNITURE.]
The furniture of the eighteenth century in England, while not
comparable in design to the best French models, was well made and
dignified; and its angularity of outline is not out of place against
the somewhat cold and formal background of an Adam room.
English marquetry suffered from the poverty of ornament marking the
wall-decoration of the period. There was a certain timidity about the
decorative compositions of the school of Adam and Sheraton, and in
their scanty repertoire the laurel-wreath, the velarium and the
cornucopia reappear with tiresome frequency.
The use to which the family drawing-room is put should indicate the
character of its decoration. Since it is a room in which many hours of
the day are spent, and in which people are at leisure, it should
contain what is best worth looking at in the way of pictures, prints,
and other objects of art; while there should be nothing about its
decoration so striking or eccentric as to become tiresome when
continually seen. A fanciful style may be pleasing in apartments used
only for stated purposes, such as the saloon or gallery; but in a
living-room, decoration should be subordinate to the individual,
forming merely a harmonious but unobtrusive background (see Plates
XXXVI and XXXVII). Such a setting also brings out the full decorative
value of all the drawing-room accessories--screens, andirons,
_appliques_, and door and window-fastenings. A study of any old
French interior will show how much these details contributed to the
general effect of the room.
Those who really care for books are seldom content to restrict them to
the library, for nothing adds more to the charm of a drawing-room than
a well-designed bookcase: an expanse of beautiful bindings is as
decorative as a fine tapestry.
The boudoir is, properly speaking, a part of the bedroom suite, and as
such is described in the chapter on the Bedroom. Sometimes, however, a
small sitting-room adjoins the family drawing-room, and this, if given
up to the mistress of the house, is virtually the boudoir.
The modern boudoir is a very different apartment from its
eighteenth-century prototype. Though it may preserve the delicate
decorations and furniture suggested by its name, such a room is now
generally used for the prosaic purpose of interviewing servants, going
over accounts and similar occupations. The appointments should
therefore comprise a writing-desk, with pigeon-holes, drawers, and
cupboards, and a comfortable lounge, or _lit de repos_, for resting
and reading.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXVIII._
LIT DE REPOS, EARLY LOUIS XV PERIOD.]
The _lit de repos_, which, except in France, has been replaced by the
clumsy upholstered lounge, was one of the most useful pieces of
eighteenth-century furniture (see Plate XXXVIII). As its name implies,
it is shaped somewhat like a bed, or rather like a cradle that stands
on four legs instead of swinging. It is made of carved wood, sometimes
upholstered, but often seated with cane (see Plate XXXIX). In the
latter case it is fitted with a mattress and with a pillow-like
cushion covered with some material in keeping with the hangings of the
room. Sometimes the _duchesse_, or upholstered _bergère_ with
removable foot-rest in the shape of a square bench, is preferred
to the _lit de repos_; but the latter is the more elegant and
graceful, and it is strange that it should have been discarded in
favor of the modern lounge, which is not only ugly, but far less
comfortable.
[Illustration: _PLATE XXXIX._
LIT DE REPOS, LOUIS XV PERIOD.]
As the boudoir is generally a small room, it is peculiarly suited to
the more delicate styles of painting or stucco ornamentation described
in the third chapter. A study of boudoir-decoration in the last
century, especially in France, will show the admirable sense of
proportion regulating the treatment of these little rooms (see Plate
XL). Their adornment was naturally studied with special care by the
painters and decorators of an age in which women played so important a
part.
It is sometimes thought that the eighteenth-century boudoir was always
decorated and furnished in a very elaborate manner. This idea
originates in the fact, already pointed out, that the rooms usually
seen by tourists are those in royal palaces, or in such princely
houses as are thrown open to the public on account of their
exceptional magnificence. The same type of boudoir is continually
reproduced in books on architecture and decoration; and what is really
a small private sitting-room for the lady of the house, corresponding
with her husband's "den," has thus come to be regarded as one of the
luxuries of a great establishment.
The prints of Eisen, Marillier, Moreau le Jeune, and other
book-illustrators of the eighteenth century, show that the boudoir in
the average private house was, in fact, a simple room, gay and
graceful in decoration, but as a rule neither rich nor elaborate (see
Plate XLI). As it usually adjoined the bedroom, it was decorated in
the same manner, and even when its appointments were expensive all
appearance of costliness was avoided.[35]
The boudoir is the room in which small objects of art--prints,
mezzotints and _gouaches_--show to the best advantage. No detail is
wasted, and all manner of delicate effects in wood-carving, marquetry,
and other ornamentation, such as would be lost upon the walls and
furniture of a larger room, here acquire their full value. One or two
well-chosen prints hung on a background of plain color will give more
pleasure than a medley of photographs, colored photogravures, and
other decorations of the cotillon-favor type. Not only do mediocre
ornaments become tiresome when seen day after day, but the mere
crowding of furniture and gimcracks into a small room intended for
work and repose will soon be found fatiguing.
Many English houses, especially in the country, contain a useful room
called the "morning-room," which is well defined by Robert Kerr, in _The
English Gentleman's House_, as "the drawing-room in ordinary." It is,
in fact, a kind of undress drawing-room, where the family may gather
informally at all hours of the day. The out-of-door life led in England
makes it specially necessary to provide a sitting-room which people
are not afraid to enter in muddy boots and wet clothes. Even if the
drawing-room be not, as Mr. Kerr quaintly puts it, "preserved"--that
is, used exclusively for company--it is still likely to contain the
best furniture in the house; and though that "best" is not too fine
for every-day use, yet in a large family an informal, wet-weather room
of this kind is almost indispensable.
[Illustration: _PLATE XL._
PAINTED WALL-PANEL AND DOOR, CHÂTEAU OF
CHANTILLY. LOUIS XV.
(EXAMPLE OF CHINOISERIE DECORATION.)]
No matter how elaborately the rest of the house is furnished, the
appointments of the morning-room should be plain, comfortable, and
capable of resisting hard usage. It is a good plan to cover the floor
with a straw matting, and common sense at once suggests the furniture
best suited to such a room: two or three good-sized tables with
lamps, a comfortable sofa, and chairs covered with chintz, leather, or
one of the bright-colored horsehairs now manufactured in France.
[Illustration: _PLATE XLI._
Sa triste amante abandonnee
Pleure ses maux et ses plaisirs.
FRENCH BOUDOIR, LOUIS XVI PERIOD.
(FROM A PRINT BY LE BOUTEUX.)]
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Much of the old furniture which appears to us unnecessarily stiff
and monumental was expressly designed to be placed against the walls
in rooms used for general entertainments, where smaller and more
delicately made pieces would have been easily damaged, and would,
moreover, have produced no effect.
[35] The ornate boudoir seen in many XVIIIth-century prints is that of
the _femme galante_.
XI
GALA ROOMS: BALL-ROOM, SALOON, MUSIC-ROOM, GALLERY
European architects have always considered it essential that those rooms
which are used exclusively for entertaining--gala rooms, as they are
called--should be quite separate from the family apartments,--either
occupying an entire floor (the Italian _piano nobile_) or being so
situated that it is not necessary to open them except for general
entertainments.
In many large houses lately built in America, with ball and music
rooms and a hall simulating the two-storied Italian saloon, this
distinction has been disregarded, and living and gala rooms have been
confounded in an agglomeration of apartments where the family, for
lack of a smaller suite, sit under gilded ceilings and cut-glass
chandeliers, in about as much comfort and privacy as are afforded by
the public "parlors" of one of our new twenty-story hotels. This
confusion of two essentially different types of room, designed for
essentially different phases of life, has been caused by the fact that
the architect, when called upon to build a grand house, has simply
enlarged, instead of altering, the _maison bourgeoise_ that has
hitherto been the accepted model of the American gentleman's house;
for it must not be forgotten that the modern American dwelling
descends from the English middle-class house, not from the
aristocratic country-seat or town residence. The English nobleman's
town house was like the French _hôtel_, with gates, porter's lodge,
and court-yard surrounded by stables and offices; and the planning of
the country-seat was even more elaborate.
A glance at any collection of old English house-plans, such as
Campbell's _Vitruvius Britannicus_, will show the purely middle-class
ancestry of the American house, and the consequent futility of
attempting, by the mere enlargement of each room, to turn it into a
gentleman's seat or town residence. The kind of life which makes gala
rooms necessary exacts a different method of planning; and until this
is more generally understood the treatment of such rooms in American
houses will never be altogether satisfactory.
Gala rooms are meant for general entertainments, never for any
assemblage small or informal enough to be conveniently accommodated in
the ordinary living-rooms of the house; therefore to fulfil their
purpose they must be large, very high-studded, and not overcrowded
with furniture, while the walls and ceiling--the only parts of a
crowded room that can be seen--must be decorated with greater
elaboration than would be pleasing or appropriate in other rooms. All
these conditions unfit the gala room for any use save that for which
it is designed. Nothing can be more cheerless than the state of a
handful of people sitting after dinner in an immense ball-room with
gilded ceiling, bare floors, and a few pieces of monumental furniture
ranged round the walls; yet in any house which is simply an
enlargement of the ordinary private dwelling the hostess is often
compelled to use the ball-room or saloon as a drawing-room.
A gala room is never meant to be seen except when crowded: the crowd
takes the place of furniture. Occupied by a small number of people,
such a room looks out of proportion, stiff and empty. The hostess
feels this, and tries, by setting chairs and tables askew, and
introducing palms, screens and knick-knacks, to produce an effect of
informality. As a result the room dwarfs the furniture, loses the air
of state, and gains little in real comfort; while it becomes
necessary, when a party is given, to remove the furniture and
disarrange the house, thus undoing the chief _raison d'être_ of such
apartments.
The Italians, inheriting the grandiose traditions of the Augustan age,
have always excelled in the treatment of rooms demanding the "grand
manner." Their unfailing sense that house-decoration is interior
architecture, and must clearly proclaim its architectural
affiliations, has been of special service in this respect. It is rare
in Italy to see a large room inadequately treated. Sometimes the
"grand manner"--the mimic _terribilità_--may be carried too far to
suit Anglo-Saxon taste--it is hard to say for what form of
entertainment such a room as Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti in the
Palazzo del T would form a pleasing or appropriate background--but
apart from such occasional aberrations, the Italian decorators showed
a wonderful sense of fitness in the treatment of state apartments. To
small dribbles of ornament they preferred bold forcible mouldings,
coarse but clear-cut free-hand ornamentation in stucco, and either a
classic severity of treatment or the turbulent bravura style of the
saloon of the Villa Rotonda and of Tiepolo's Cleopatra frescoes in the
Palazzo Labia at Venice.
[Illustration: _PLATE XLII._
SALON À L'ITALIENNE.
(FROM A PICTURE BY COYPEL.)]
The saloon and gallery are the two gala rooms borrowed from Italy by
northern Europe. The saloon has already been described in the chapter
on Hall and Stairs. It was a two-storied apartment, usually with
clerestory, domed ceiling, and a gallery to which access was obtained
by concealed staircases (see Plates XLII and XLIII). This gallery
was often treated as an arcade or loggia, and in many old Italian
prints and pictures there are representations of these saloons, with
groups of gaily dressed people looking down from the gallery upon the
throngs crowding the floor. The saloon was used in Italy as a
ball-room or gambling-room--gaming being the chief social amusement of
the eighteenth century.
In England and France the saloon was rarely two stories high, though
there are some exceptions, as for example the saloon at
Vaux-le-Vicomte. The cooler climate rendered a clerestory less
necessary, and there was never the same passion for grandiose effects
as in Italy. The saloon in northern Europe was always a stately and
high-studded room, generally vaulted or domed, and often circular in
plan; but it seldom reached such imposing dimensions as its Italian
prototype, and when more than one story high was known by the
distinctive designation of _un salon à l'italienne_.
The gallery was probably the first feature in domestic house-planning
to be borrowed from Italy by northern Europe. It is seen in almost all
the early Renaissance châteaux of France; and as soon as the influence
of such men as John of Padua and John Shute asserted itself in
England, the gallery became one of the principal apartments of the
Elizabethan mansion. There are several reasons for the popularity of
the gallery. In the cold rainy autumns and winters north of the Alps
it was invaluable as a sheltered place for exercise and games; it was
well adapted to display the pictures, statuary and bric-à-brac which,
in emulation of Italian collectors, the Northern nobles were beginning
to acquire; and it showed off to advantage the long line of ancestral
portraits and the tapestries representing a succession of episodes
from the _Æneid_, the _Orlando Innamorato_, or some of the
interminable epics that formed the light reading of the sixteenth
century. Then, too, the gallery served for the processions which were
a part of the social ceremonial in great houses: the march to the
chapel or banquet-hall, the escorting of a royal guest to the state
bedroom, and other like pageants.
In France and England the gallery seems for a long time to have been
used as a saloon and ball-room, whereas in Italy it was, as a rule,
reserved for the display of the art-treasures of the house, no Italian
palace worthy of the name being without its gallery of antiquities or
of marbles.
In modern houses the ball-room and music-room are the two principal
gala apartments. A music-room need not be a gala room in the sense of
being used only for large entertainments; but since it is outside the
circle of every-day use, and more or less associated with
entertaining, it seems best to include it in this chapter.
Many houses of average size have a room large enough for informal
entertainments. Such a room, especially in country houses, should be
decorated in a gay simple manner in harmony with the rest of the house
and with the uses to which the room is to be put. Rooms of this kind
may be treated with a white dado, surmounted by walls painted in a
pale tint, with boldly modelled garlands and attributes in stucco,
also painted white (see Plate XIII). If these stucco decorations are
used to frame a series of pictures, such as fruit and flower-pieces or
decorative subjects, the effect is especially attractive. Large
painted panels with eighteenth-century _genre_ subjects or pastoral
scenes, set in simple white panelling, are also very decorative. A
coved ceiling is best suited to rooms of this comparatively simple
character, while in state ball-rooms the dome increases the general
appearance of splendor.
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIII._
BALL-ROOM, ROYAL PALACE, GENOA. LATE XVIII CENTURY.
(EXAMPLE OF STUCCO DECORATION.)]
A panelling of mirrors forms a brilliant ball-room decoration, and
charming effects are produced by painting these mirrors with birds,
butterflies, and garlands of flowers, in the manner of the famous
Italian mirror-painter, Mario dei Fiori--"Mario of the Flowers"--as he
was called in recognition of his special gift. There is a beautiful
room by this artist in the Borghese Palace in Rome, and many Italian
palaces contain examples of this peculiarly brilliant style of
decoration, which might be revived to advantage by modern painters.
In ball-rooms of great size and importance, where the walls demand a
more architectural treatment, the use of an order naturally suggests
itself. Pilasters of marble, separated by marble niches containing
statues, form a severe but splendid decoration; and if white and
colored marbles are combined, and the whole is surmounted by a domed
ceiling frescoed in bright colors, the effect is extremely brilliant.
In Italy the architectural decoration of large rooms was often
entirely painted (see Plate XLIV), the plaster walls being covered
with a fanciful piling-up of statues, porticoes and balustrades, while
figures in Oriental costume, or in the masks and parti-colored dress
of the _Comédie Italienne_, leaned from simulated loggias or wandered
through marble colonnades.
The Italian decorator held any audacity permissible in a room used
only by a throng of people, whose mood and dress made them ready to
accept the fairy-tales on the walls as a fitting background to their
own masquerading. Modern travellers, walking through these old Italian
saloons in the harsh light of day, while cobwebs hang from the
audacious architecture, and the cracks in the plaster look like wounds
in the cheeks of simpering nymphs and shepherdesses, should remember
that such apartments were meant to be seen by the soft light of wax
candles in crystal chandeliers, with fantastically dressed dancers
thronging the marble floor.
Such a ball-room, if reproduced in the present day, would be far more
effective than the conventional white-and-gold room, which, though
unobjectionable when well decorated, lacks the imaginative charm, the
personal note, given by the painter's touch.
Under Louis XIV many French apartments of state were panelled with
colored marbles, with an application of attributes or trophies, and
other ornamental motives in fire-gilt bronze: a sumptuous mode of
treatment according well with a domed and frescoed ceiling. Tapestry
was also much used, and forms an admirable decoration, provided the
color-scheme is light and the design animated. Seventeenth and
eighteenth-century tapestries are the most suitable, as the scale of
color is brighter and the compositions are gayer than in the earlier
hangings.
Modern dancers prefer a polished wooden floor, and it is perhaps
smoother and more elastic than any other surface; but in beauty and
decorative value it cannot be compared with a floor of inlaid marble,
and as all the dancing in Italian palaces is still done on such
floors, the preference for wood is probably the result of habit. In a
ball-room of any importance, especially where marble is used on the
walls, the floor should always be of the same substance (see floors in
Plates XXIX, XXX, and LV).
[Illustration: _PLATE XLIV._
SALOON IN THE VILLA VERTEMATI. XVI CENTURY.
(EXAMPLE OF FRESCOED WALLS AND CARVED WOODEN CEILING.)]