40 
HOUSE & GARDEN 
A balanced arrangement such as this is pleasing and restful to 
the eye, and thoroughly respectful to the pictures themselves 
Balanced—but a big picture with a little one at either 
side looks like a suburbanite out walking with his young 
THE GENTLE ART OF HANGING PICTURES 
Which Proves That It Is an Affair of the Heart in Which Abstruse 
Psychology and Commonplace Don’ts Are Mingled 
ROLL IN LYNDE HARTT 
B EES make honey, birds build 
nests and girls at a certain age 
pin things on walls. It ruins the 
thumbs. It mars the hair brush 
sometimes used as mallet. Yet lo, 
what triumphs! Maisie’s room de¬ 
lirious with Christy calendars, car¬ 
toons by Flagg or Fisher, and maga¬ 
zine covers by the ingeniously ellipti¬ 
cal Coles Phillips. Not a square inch 
of wall paper left exposed anywhere. 
Proof positive that Maisie has 
“knack.” Later on, with pictures to 
hang, she will rush in dauntlessly 
where artists fear to tread, and re¬ 
mind you a little of the rustic who 
was asked by his curate how he 
learned his profanity. “You can’t 
learn it,” said he. “It’s a gift.” So 
with picture-hanging, thinks Maisie. 
Now, I am soft on Maisie (the 
generic Maisie, I mean) and hate 
awfully to poke fun. But when I 
talked last evening with Mr. Arthur 
M. Hazard, the delightful portraitist 
and mural painter, it was noticeable 
that he did not assume to know “by 
instinct” just what belongs just 
where, or set up as a “born picture 
hanger,” or dismiss matters in the 
glib style Maisie affects. He has 
served on too many hanging commit¬ 
tees at distinguished picture shows. 
He has decorated too many fine 
houses, his own among them. He 
has dug his way through to funda¬ 
mentals, and become an authority. 
Half-past eight it was, when he began out¬ 
lining his philosophy of picture-hanging. 
Starting home, I glanced at my watch. Will 
you credit it? A quarter of eleven! 
All that while we had been tracing prin¬ 
ciples of psychology, of design, of light and 
optics—in short, of a fine and very delicate 
suits which room. A “born picture- 
hanger,” I know, generally grades 
art treasures according to their 
“swellness.” Nabobs—i. e., the big¬ 
gest, costliest and most showily 
framed — take to the drawing¬ 
room. A “fringe,” next in gran¬ 
deur, finds wall space in the living- 
room, library, dining-room and hall. 
The poor relations and hoi polloi— 
with tarnished gilt, alas, or faded 
mats—slink upstairs to some cham¬ 
ber (of horrors). For the “born 
picture-hanger” thinks last of sub¬ 
jects, or not at all. Whereas—psy¬ 
chologically and therefore humanly 
—no other consideration is half so 
vital. Subjects? Why, bless you, 
they are pretty nearly the whole 
thing! Congruity, my dears ! Sweet 
reasonableness. Propriety. The 
gentle ministering to mood. 
Naturally, nobody expects you to 
slap on congruity with fire in your 
heart and blood in your eye, and 
horribly overdo it. A nude over the 
bath-tub would be appropriate, and 
also silly. If you aim to make your 
dining-room an apotheosis of grub, 
introduce painted trout, painted 
game, painted apples and pears. It 
will be congruous, but funny. If, 
however, you want a festal note 
there and an incentive to gayety, 
good humor and genial, spontaneous 
chatter, you will reach the goal by 
indirection. There is nothing defi¬ 
nitely eatable about Crusaders, yet how can 
Mr. Hazard’s guests find themselves sur¬ 
rounded by his pageant of plumed knights, 
ramping steeds and bright pennons with¬ 
out being in the spirit for jovial conversa¬ 
tion? The pictures bring the mood, and 
what more than that can one desire ? 
Don’t hang a picture too high, especially if it con¬ 
tains a seated figure. Gainsborough complained of 
that, threatened to bolt the Royal Academy if they 
did it to him again; they did, and out he got 
art, as fascinating as it is difficult. Taken 
down verbatim, the interview would pack 
a rather tidy little volume. I shall merely 
sum it up, for in it lies the essence of 
rightness in a subject too little under¬ 
stood and too seldom considered. 
First, as concerns which kind of picture 
