HOUSES AND GARDENS 



plaster walls of Venice. Get rid, then, at once of any idea of decorative art 

 being a degraded or separate kind of art. Its nature or essence is simply its 

 being fitted for a definite place, and in that place forming part of a great and 

 harmonious whole, in companionship with other art ; and so far from thus 

 being a degradation of it so far from decorative art being inferior to other 

 art because it is fixed to a spot on the whole it may be considered as rather 

 a piece of degradation that it should be portable. Portable art independent 

 of all place is for the most part ignoble art ! " 



An unkind critic might be tempted to wonder why a writer who thus dis- 

 praises portable art should have written so eloquently in praise of portable art 

 as displayed in the pictures of Turner. But this is to judge by the letter 

 instead of the spirit. 



However beautiful a picture may be, it is an isolated and unrelated beauty. 

 It is not a member of that great fraternity of the arts where each has not 

 alone its individual qualities, but its definite and calculated relation to its 

 fellows. 



But this portable art in the form of pictures painted for no place in par- 

 ticular is a thing to be reckoned with in the making of a modern house and 

 as the pictures we possess have not been made to fit the house, we must needs 

 pocket the pride which claims that architecture is the essential and ruling art, 

 and try to make the house to fit the pictures. If Mahomed will not come to 

 the mountain, it is the mountain which must go to Mahomed. It has already 

 been suggested how, in the decoration of the wall, a gilded canvas may help to 

 connect the picture with its surroundings. What is required is not so much 

 what is called a good background for pictures in the treatment of the wall 

 on which they are to be hung, for this, in relieving the picture and its frame 

 unduly, still makes it appear an alien there. Rather it must be our aim 

 to make the picture merge into the wall surface and appear a part of it. The 

 frame thus becomes the connecting link between it. On a wall panelled in 

 dark oak, for instance, dark oak becomes the best material for the picture 

 frame in most cases. Pictures should not be dotted over a wall, but definitely 

 arranged to emphasise certain focal points framed in panelling over a mantel- 

 piece, perhaps, or placed over some important piece of furniture. They need 

 not always be hung, but may stand on shelves flanked by ornaments. If they 

 are few and choice, and possess a decorative quality, they will thus become 

 really helpful in accentuating centres of interest in the decorative scheme. 



In a large house a collection of pictures should be displayed in a private 

 picture-gallery. It has already been urged that the house should not be a museum. 

 Still less should it be a picture-gallery. Many of the historic houses of 

 England, where the walls of the apartments are lined with pictures, are, indeed, 

 full of artistic and antiquarian interest. But they are no longer homes in the 

 best sense, and convey little idea of that early beauty they possessed when their 

 furnishing consisted of a few essential things, and their walls were covered with 

 real decoration in the form of panelling and tapestry. 



An excellent example of this kind is the old Elizabethan house, "Plas Maur," 

 in North Wales, which has recently been made into a picture-gallery, and 

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