On Architectural Colouring. 



All art is subject to conditions. Its excellence depends on their; 

 fulfilment. It is this fact of subjection to conditions which makes;, 

 all art necessarily conventional. Painting is an art of exceedingly! 

 wide range — wide in respect to itself, from the bold symbolic! 

 outlines of an Egyptian hierograph to the niggling mimicry of a 

 Dutch picture, and wide in respect to the purposes it can fulfil,: 

 such as for pottery, for walls, for moveable pictures, enamels,! 

 sculpture, architecture, glass, tapestry, &c. This versatility of 

 powers must be thoroughly realised before any just judgment can 

 be formed. People err in taste because they ignore the proper base 

 of criticism. They are confounded by the flood of heterogeneous 

 forms which disgrace the character of modern art, and no wonder. 

 But once seize the guiding star of all judgment ; once realise the 

 condition in which a work is placed, conditions as to itself, con- 

 ditions as to its place, purpose, and materials, and then all is clear. 

 No matter how much consecrated by long use or common associations, 

 it must be at once condemned if its conditions be unfulfilled. 

 Apply this to the subject before us. Monumental art is of all 

 others the highest in its aim. It must compel the resources which 

 all arts can afford into unison. The success of former ages is attri- 

 butable to that unison in which the whole chorus of the arts joined. 

 It is the modern self-assertion of each individual art that renders 

 success in monumental art well nigh impossible. By monumental 

 art I mean the combination of the whole sisterhood of arts clustering 

 round and working under the master spirit of architecture. Let 

 each art be free as air, and revel in its own powers alone and 

 uncontrolled. But here it is not alone. I can conceive no taste 

 more reprobate than that of vain self-assertion, where self restraint 

 would be the most graceful virtue. Take for instance such a case 

 as this — an artist paints a scene for a theatre. It would be im- 

 possible for hm to imitate too closely the natural effects, both of 

 linear and atmospheric prospective. But apply this scene so painted 

 with its sunny foreground in strong relief, its receding forms of 

 wood or mountains, or of distant water mingling its horizon with 

 the sky, — apply this elsewhere. It was a triumph of art in its 

 own sphere ; it had fulfilled all its conditions. But now how 

 ridiculous would all those be, associated with the condition of 



