TIIE LADIES' FLORAL CABINET. 
363 
India paper, are very effective when framed in this way. 
If one can obtain a set illustrating a particular locality 
or some favorite story, or showing in black and white 
the most characteristic works of a great artist, they 
always make an interesting object when so framed. 
Etchings require only the simplest frames, and the sug¬ 
gestions made for steel and copper plate engravings are 
equally applicable to them. 
Photographs are not, in the highest sense, works of 
art. There may be in them much that is artistic, and 
family portraits possess a value beyond estimate. They 
are at the best mechanical products, of which the clever 
photographer makes the best of his limitations, but of 
which he can never make anything absolutely beautiful 
for its mere art qualities. They may be framed much 
more elaborately than engravings, since their technique 
is something to be forgotten rather than to be brought 
out to its fullest expression. Frames or panels of rich 
colored plush, with light or even modestly carved mold¬ 
ings, are not too elaborate for photographs that for 
their subject alone have interest enough to be made 
conspicuous. The margin may be expanded by a mat 
or panel of considerable width, if the subject is of suf¬ 
ficient interest to warrant it. There are photographs 
not costing a dollar that can better bear a: ten-dollar 
frame than an engraving costing a hundred times that 
amount. A photograph will bear anything in the way 
of a frame, and small photographs are better if they 
have no frame at all. Large photographs of paintings 
or statuary, or portrait photographs in which the back¬ 
ground is dark, are effective with the frame so close to 
the picture that no margin shows at all; and large pho¬ 
tographs of statuary are always better seen for having 
a wide, thick panel with a beveled opening, the bevel of 
which may be gilded or bronzed. Photographs having 
no color of themselves, and no technical merit in the 
art sense of the word, may be framed with a regard for 
the associations they have, and with a view of making 
the frames a part of the color decoration of the 
room. 
Paintings are ordinarily of two kinds—those in oil and 
those in water color. Oil paintings of landscapes, if 
bold in conception and rich in color, gain by deep mold¬ 
ings of rich gold and bronze. The scientific reason for this 
is, that the yellow of the gold brings out by complemen¬ 
tary contrast all the blues in the picture and all the deep 
greens into which the blues enter so largely, while the re¬ 
flected lights from the burnished surface find their com¬ 
plementary contrasts in the shadows of the composition, 
and the depth of the molding aids in the illusion of dis¬ 
tance. More delicately-wrought landscapes, little bits of 
Nature, sketchy works in a high key of color, should 
have shallow frames, and the bronzes, or colored gold, 
make a more harmonious setting. In the design of the 
frame there should be some thought of subject harmony 
with the picture. One of the most effective frames that 
appeared in our last year’s Academy was a simple gil¬ 
ded, rough-sawed board, over which a gilded natural 
brier was fastened. The picture was a hill-side, covered 
with brambles and gorse, with rugged trees in the dis¬ 
tance. In figure subjects like this, harmony should 
also be especially regarded. If disregarded, the effect 
is ridiculous—as when a group of merry children is 
framed in a surrounding of palm branches with funeral 
urns at the corners, or a group of monks chant their 
hymns under garlands intertwined with instruments of 
music and surmounted by the joined masks of tragedy 
and comedy. Such instances were conspicuous in a 
recent exhibition. Frames for portraits are generally 
too elaborate, and when the portraits are of full length, 
look like huge carved door-frames, as is notably the 
case in Huntington’s portrait of Mr. Hayes, in the 
White House at Washington. The idea of symbolism 
in portrait frames is absurd. The picture itself should 
leave nothing for the frame to do in this line. . If a 
great discoverer is great enough to have a garlanded 
globe on his portrait frame, he is great enough to do 
without it. Accessory symbolism had its day when it 
was thought necessary to make Washington with a 
scroll in his hand and his sword on the table, Jefferson 
unrolling the Declaration of Independence, Franklin 
with his kite and electrical machine, and Morse insep¬ 
arable from a telegraph apparatus. This symbolism, 
carried out logically, would give us the portrait of the 
successful soap boiler among his vats, or of the affluent 
undertaker beaming upon a row of coffins. A nation 
ought to know the faces of its great men and women, 
and family portraits should be recognizable by the 
family and its friends at least. 
In regard to the hanging of pictures, there are a few 
cardinal principles that should not be lost sight of, Pic¬ 
tures are made to be seen. They should not be hung so 
high that one has to stretch one’s neck to see them. A 
picture highly worked up in detail should be closer to 
the eye than a strong, broad composition, in which all 
parts of the composition are put in masses. Family pic¬ 
tures should be confined to family rooms. The light on 
a picture should come from the same side as the light 
in a picture. Pictures on the line of sight should be 
hung flat to the wall; those above the line of sight may, 
for convenience of inspection, be tilted slightly forward. 
Large, heavy frames should never be tilted forward 
directly above sofas or chairs that are close to the wall. 
They always seem dangerous. It is not pleasant to have 
the consciousness of a two-hundred-pound man just over 
one’s head, and his whole body swung out of the center 
of gravity. Groups of pictures are only effective when 
there is harmony of subject, of color, and of fitness in 
the framing. Old paintings and new ones almost always 
injure each other when hung close together. Few pic¬ 
tures should be hungin the dining-room, and care should 
be taken in the selection of subjects. The writer was 
once obliged to take his dinner with an Oriental exe¬ 
cutioner and a decapitated victim on one side of him, 
and a lugubrious Christian martyr, by Max, on the 
other. It was almost as distressing as a crucifixion in a 
billiard-room, or the death of Marat in a bath-room. It 
is not appetizing to have realistic pictures of dead fish 
in the dining-room, nor does it add to the cheerfulness 
of a parlor to give ‘ ‘ The Death-bed of Abraham Lincoln ” 
a prominent place. Glazed pictures should never be 
hung opposite a window, as they are sure to reflect the 
light disagreeably. Masonic certificates, certificates of 
membership in a missionary society, are not pictures at 
all, no matter how much ornamented. They are purely 
personal affairs, and should not be framed or hung at 
all. They interest nobody but the owner and his nearest 
friends, and are almost never ornamental. One should 
not be egotistical in his pictures, any more than in his 
conversation.” 
