48 On Architectural Colouring. 
vulgar groups on walls, ignoring all principle, and defying all taste. 
With him that chapter of the arts was closed. 
When the painter and the architect first worked together the 
spirit of the age which brought their arts into life and action 
inspired them alike. It has been common among art-critics 
to regard rather with a compassionate admiration that union of 
spirit which kept those arts in harmony. In the account taken of 
Pagan and Christian arts, that period is regarded as that of their 
weakness or their infancy. The full dignity of manhood has been 
accorded to them only when they had arrived at a direct and 
positive antagonism—when, for instance, painting worked for its 
own glorification—when it took a space assigned to it by the 
architect, and turned that space into a lie,—when it turned the 
surface of strong walls into scenes of atmospheric perspective, or a 
cupola into a region of clouds. I urge that this was and isa 
miserable abuse of art—I believe that this abuse lies in a mis- 
appreciation of the vastness and elasticity of art. It comes of 
conceit, and the self glorification of one art in abnegation of the 
purposes of another. I speak not now of painting merely for its 
decorative effects, but of the higheat sphere of that art, its historic, 
sacred and poetic expression in alliance with architectural design. 
I must express regret at the paucity of ideas, not only in our own 
day, but even in the greatest days of artist life by which one ex- 
clusive phase of the painter’s art has been recognised as perfect,— 
that of pictorial effect. I believe the greatness of that art rather 
to consist in the greatness of its adaptability—in its power to 
respond to the most opposite demands. But now it is restricted to 
one only phase—that one only is supposed compatible or proper to 
its highest aims—that whether that grand art be applied within 
the limits of a gold frame, or be spread over some great surface, 
needed for the repose and grandeur of architectural effect, yet still 
that the same ever repeated phase of “‘ picture” should prevail. It 
is strange that artists should not see the excessive weakness of this 
poor restriction of their art—that whether it be applied toa picture . 
in a boudoir, to the bulging side of a jug, to the bottom of a dish, 
or to the great wall spaces of architectural design, their grand art 

