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 is a 

 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 highest 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 to a 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 



