26 
House & Garden 
H ere is an odd rumor. Some good woman, intent 
on having her home in the best of taste, writes, 
“I hear that pictures are going out. Is this true?” 
The vision this conjures up! You see the Louvre 
and the Metropolitan deserted—windows hoarded up, huge pad¬ 
locks on the doors, weeds growing in the driveway, a policeman 
asleep on the top step by the entrance. You see the Sargeants 
and the Henris drifting about the avenues rattling little tin cups, or 
going into the more lucrative business of laying bricks. You see 
the lovely Fragonards and Watteaux dumped on the garbage heaps 
of the city, along with the wornout discards of a day. 
A mad vision? Granted. Yet if pictures were going out, the 
results might not be so different after all. 
But pictures are not going out. The things genuinely essential 
to life never go out of fashion. They are integral elements, and 
the more the world becomes civilized the higher are they valued. 
To live without pictures would be as unthinkable as living without 
music, without rainbows, without good deeds and laughter. They 
are essential to life. They are essential to a home, which is the 
heart of life. They are as necessary to the complete decoration of 
the rooms of a home as chairs and tables. 
E ven before men thought of kindly deeds they took to draw- 
< ing pictures on the walls and to fashioning the utensils of 
everyday life into things of beauty. An ipherent craving was 
thereby satisfied. ... In this year of grace, other cavemen 
fashion things of beauty and cover canvases with visions of ter¬ 
rible and lovely things. Paris and London and Berlin are holding 
their exhibits of “trench” art. The latter-day caveman must seek 
some satisfaction for his soul in the midst of minxlerous warfare. 
The artist stands in much the same position. Elis work marks 
the transition between cave days and the present, cave habits and 
civilization. His expressions of beauty, grown more marvelous 
with the years, have become more treasured. The same folk who 
lament the loss of life in warfare also lament the loss of great 
works of art, because art has become essential to life and to destroy 
the creation of a master hand is almost akin to destroying ruth¬ 
lessly the tender life of man. 
Conceive the world without pictures and you conceive chaos. 
Pictures are stabilizers. They can be weighed against crime and 
passion and gross materialism and ugliness, and never be found 
wanting. 
So then, when for some commercial purpose the rumor is spread 
abroad that pictures are going out, we might just as well throw all 
the good things of life into the discard. For when the appreciation 
of good pictures passes from us there will also pass the apprecia¬ 
tion of honest workmanship, the sense of 
rhythm, the understanding of line and 
contour—expressions into which the 
vision of the artist crystallizes itself 
whether his medium be a chair, a vase 
or a painting. 
the elements. The caveman had his bench and his rock- 
ledge table. He also had his walls, and on them he 
scrawled his visions of mighty deeds and loveliness. It is 
the wall, then, that decides the final character of the room. 
Read down through the history of architecture and you will 
find that invariably the architecture “came through” to the interior 
walls. The transition from one historic period to another was first 
a transition from one wall treatment to another. From the archi¬ 
tecture that “came through” to the walls were taken the motifs 
that decided the character of the furniture. Between the outside 
environment (which created the type of architecture) and the 
chairs fashioned by cunning workmen, stood the walls. There has 
always been a writing on the wall that told men of the things 
which were to come to pass. 
Against these walls we live and at these walls we look. They 
are backgrounds to life; they should be inspirations to living. 
What goes on them will stamp the individuality of the room and 
oftentimes the type of life lived in the room and the type of life 
of the age. The room in which life is active, busy, constantly 
stirring, requires a restful background to act as foil. When day- 
to-day life is of this character men must have walls that inspire 
them to peace and contentment. They must have walls on which 
they can read the hand-writing. 
It is not enough that we have chairs to sit in and tables to sit 
at. If these were all we needed life would be of a very low order, 
indeed. We must be able to look upon walls that satisfy the 
demands of something more than the mere physical requirements of 
aching bone and tired muscle. We must have pictures on the walls. 
T 
HE good woman who wanted to know if pictures were going 
out had wisdom in her question. Bad pictures, cheap pictures, 
futile pictures are going out. The survival of the fittest functions 
even in art. There was also wisdom in her question because we 
no longer cover our walls with pictures. Our busy American life 
demands the soothing foil of restful backgrounds whereon men 
may look for peace and beauty enshrined as it should be—the new 
writing on the wall. 
And in enshrining beauty as it should be lies the secret of 
modern decoration. Have only the necessary furniture in a room, 
but have it of honest workmanship, of good line and good propor¬ 
tion. Place it so it will be convenient and comfortable and shown 
to the best advantage. Let your walls meet the requirements of 
your life. Hang on them only such pictures as you will always be 
content and happy and proud to live with. And place them so 
that they will give the best that is in them to those who look upon 
their visions of light and shade for the things which life craves. 
A ll decoration is based first on the 
requirements of comfort and con¬ 
venience. The chair must be comfort¬ 
able to sit on—much more comfortable 
than the floor, else why chairs? It must 
be convenient—light enough to move 
about so that the furniture of the room 
can be grouped into centers of work and 
play—the window where we read and 
write, the hearth where we play and rest. 
The bare essentials of a room—a chair, 
a table, a bed—contribute to the bare 
essentials of physical existence. 
But to stop decoration there would be 
as absurd as wearing no more clothes 
than are necessary to protect us against 
THE FRANTIC ASTRONOMER 
At night, before I go to bed, 
I look up at the sky: 
I see the Dipper overhead 
Hanging out to dry. 
That Dipper, so isosceles. 
Is hard at work all day: 
To keep the Moon supplied with cheese 
It churns the Milky Whey. 
—Christopher Morley. 
¥ 
A re pictures going out? Rather they 
are coming in. Americans need pic¬ 
tures. No nation under the sun needs 
them so desperately. No national soul 
stands in greater need of pictures on the 
wall. 
We read that the currents of art are 
turning toward America. The demands 
of war have made Continental owners 
sacrifice priceless works for what they 
will fetch here. The ill wind has blown 
us this good opportunity. Slowly the art 
center is shifting from the old world to ■ 
the new. Americans will be able to look 
upon here at home—and even own—great 
works that hitherto they traveled thou¬ 
sands of miles to see. 
Let us make the most of this opportu¬ 
nity. Let us cherish the works of master 
hands. Let us read the writing on the 
wall—the writing Americans can inscribe 
there themselves—the appreciation of 
pictures in the home. 
