Misuse of 



garden 



ornaments. 



CHAPTER XI. 



In the last chapter, we dealt with the four principal architectural accessories of the 

 garden, and in this we must continue the same subject by considering, as fully as space 

 will allow, all those smaller and more portable features which form fitting subjects for 

 applied art. 



Generally speaking, garden furniture of every description suffers in repute from the 

 very indiscriminate manner in which it has been used. In many, one might almost say, 

 in a majority of gardens, such features as statuary, vases and seats are dotted about 

 with very little regard to their surroundings, and so look absurdly out of place. In 

 fact, to such an extent was this done in the case of statuary in the gardens laid out 

 during the first half of the last century, that the very term " garden statuary " calls up 

 to the mind of most people a vision of hideous plaster figures completely spoiling the 

 whole effect of natural glades or sylvan scenery, seeming almost to shiver in their slight 

 classical drapery as the green drip from the trees falls upon them and covers them with 

 dirty streaks. The prejudice thus created is so great that many garden-lovers would 

 seem to be unable to see that statuary has any fitting place or function in a well-ordered 

 pleasaunce, and yet, where else could it be so effective as in a garden, ostensibly devoted 

 to the leisured cultivation, expression and satisfaction of our artistic leanings ? 



I agree most wholeheartedly that poor plaster casts from the antique or conventional Statuary. 

 figures in glaring white marble are totally unsuited to our purpose, for, quite apart from 

 questions of subject and treatment, their hard sharply insistent white silhouettes must 

 cause an over -emphasis of the point they are supposed to adorn ; but this does not mean 

 that statuary in other materials, such as lead or bronze, which tones and harmonizes with 

 the surrounding greenery, rightly placed and in keeping with its setting both as to scale 

 and sentiment, may not be used with the happiest results. 



Severe restraint is, however, more necessary in the introduction of this feature than 

 of any other, simply because it represents the last and culminating point in the com- 

 position beyond which we have no further power of emphasis. In music, the sudden 

 loud crash of sound, in pictorial art, the most vivid contrasts of tone and colour, in 

 rhetoric, the highly figurative hyperbole, must be used but rarely and with caution, 

 because, in every case, they represent the last effort, the exhaustion of the full range 

 of the powers of expression, and so, in the employment of statuary, which takes much 

 the same position in our own art, restraint and reserve are equally necessary, and the 

 highest point must be touched but seldom and, where approached, must show the 

 evidences of a master-hand. 



It is evident that the subject matter of a statue will go very far to determine its 

 suitability or otherwise for a place in the garden, but this does not mean that we must 



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