32 
House & 
Garden 
HOW 
T O 
BUY 
PICTURES 
Sane Advice on the Role of the Picture in the Decoration of a Room Design 
and Color—■The Beginnings of a Collection 
Y OU consult me about buying a picture. 
What sort of a consultant are you looking 
for? One who will make a snap venture at 
your symptoms and prescribe nostrums, or one 
who will help you to understand your own case 
and cooperate with you in treating it? 
Too many people want to be saved the effort 
of understanding themselves and exercising 
their own will and judgment. In the case of 
pictures, they look to someone who professes 
to be an expert to tell them whether they ought 
to buy a picture and, if so, what sort of one. 
Probably, they have already “put it up” to an 
architectural expert to prescribe the type of 
house they ought to live in; and to an interior 
decorative expert how it should be decorated 
and furnished. They deliver themselves soul 
and body into the hands of experts. Granted 
that the experts are honest and competent to 
give good value for the money, their clients 
nevertheless get something that conforms to 
the taste of somebody else and is in no sense an 
expression or part of their own lives. 
So I put the question: Do you want to buy a 
picture yourself or have someone else buy it for 
you? If you wish to make your own selection 
and purchase I am ready to cooperate with 
you; my aim being to help you to discover any 
inclination of your own that may indicate the 
direction in which you should choose and to 
suggest to you certain tests by which you may 
fortify your choice. 
Know Your Own Home 
It is understood then that you yourself are 
going to buy a picture—either because you 
have been led to think that a picture is a de¬ 
sirable thing in itself, or because you have 
been advised that it is needed to complete the 
decoration of one of your rooms. Let us con¬ 
sider the latter case first. 
Now, you ought to know your room better 
than I can, even if I visit 
it, because you have 
lived in it. If you have 
not already summarized 
your impressions of it, 
try to do so. What is its 
prevailing characteris¬ 
tic? Comfort or ele¬ 
gance ? Solidity or light¬ 
ness? Formality or in¬ 
formality? Would you 
describe the feeling of it 
as intensive or extensive ? 
Has it, that is to say, a 
feeling of being closed 
in, concentrated, sug¬ 
gestive of intimacy—the 
feeling one may asso¬ 
ciate, for example, with 
a dining room, a den, a 
does it extend a welcome 
library or boudoir? Or 
to outside influences, as 
a reception room or 
drawing room, which 
needs a throng of vis¬ 
itors to complete its ef¬ 
fect; or as a breakfast 
room, morning room or 
bedroom that, especially 
CHARLES H. CAFFIN 
in a country house, seems to invite the pres¬ 
ence of morning sunshine? 
The answer to such questions as these will 
help you to determine what character of picture 
to select. It will have a bearing on the subject 
of the picture, its color-scheme, whether it 
shall be high or low in key, solid or light in 
texture, rich or delicate in suggestion, and 
whether its medium shall be oil-paint, water- 
color, pastel or some form of line work, such as 
an engraving, etching or drawing. 
Easy—Too Easy—Generalizations 
Now on all these points if you are playing 
merely for safety, it is easy to generalize. If 
your dining room, for example, suggests solid 
comfort, and is furnished in darkish or low- 
toned colors, you will be safe in selecting a 
portrait painted in oils in a low key; that is to 
say, without the introduction of clear, bright 
light and with pigments that are very little 
mixed with white. On the other hand, for 
your reception room, supposing that it is dec¬ 
orated and furnished in a high key and is rich 
and sumptuous in general effect, you will be 
safe in selecting an oil-painting in a high key, 
say of fruit or flowers; whereas, if the general 
impression is one of lightness and elegance, a 
water-color or pastel may be safely used. Or in 
either case, a landscape or figure subject may 
be substituted, especially if the composition is 
distinctly decorative; if, that is to say, the 
artist has not only represented objects naturally 
but has also arranged the masses and colors of 
his composition so that they form an ornamen¬ 
tal pattern. Again, it is a safe generalization 
that, if the room suggests intimacy, you may 
choose a picture that will bear looking into, 
that actually invites close study-—a quality 
which particularly distinguishes etchings, en¬ 
gravings and original drawings. 
But, after all, such generalizations have the 
“The Picture Buyer,” an etching by John Sloan 
value merely of suggestion. If you try to ap¬ 
ply them literally, as an artisan mechanically 
follows the specifications put into his hands, 
you will make little or no advance in personal 
judgment and taste. They are of no real value 
except in so far as they may prompt your own 
mental activity, your own observations and 
conclusions, and may lead you on to be con¬ 
scious of and to rely upon feelings of your 
own. Then you will discover that there is 
nothing in the above suggestions that cannot 
be contradicted in practice. 
Value of Contrast 
For example, they are based on the easy— 
too easy—principle of like fitting like. The 
clever hostess rejects this way of selecting 
guests for an intimate dinner party; she invites 
a variety of tastes and temperaments, so that 
monotony of agreement is avoided and the snap 
and brilliance of the occasion are enhanced by 
contrasts. And contrast equally is a source of 
piquancy in decoration. 
Thus, to reconsider the question of selecting 
a picture to complete—say, as an overmantel 
panel—the decoration of your reception room. 
Suppose that the prevailing color of the latter 
is a delicate rose; your picture, in order to fur¬ 
nish an accent—a culmination—to the color 
scheme, will do well to offer a contrast. It may 
be one composed of similarities or of differ¬ 
ences. A contrast of similarities can be secured 
by a picture that introduces richer hues or 
deeper tones of rose, extending to crimson; 
while for a contrast of difference you may re¬ 
sort to a predominance of the complementary 
colors, blue and yellow, either separately or in 
their combination—green. 
You can readily see what opportunities of 
refinement of taste this offers to the buyer of a 
picture that is to form the accent of the room. 
It demands, in fact, that the intelligent buyer 
of a picture shall culti¬ 
vate as nice a sense of 
color as a lady of dis¬ 
criminating taste em¬ 
ploys in the color scheme 
of her costume. Of 
course a lady can dress 
well without this color 
sense, by leaving every 
initiative and decision to 
her dressmaker. But I 
suppose it is not to be 
denied that those who 
dress with really per¬ 
sonal distinction are the 
ones who can cooperate 
with the dressmaker 
through having this feel¬ 
ing for design and color. 
And the same holds good 
in the selection of house¬ 
hold decoration. You 
cannot leave everything 
to the professional dec¬ 
orator and expect your 
room to have a distinc¬ 
tion personal to yourself. 
And speaking of de¬ 
sign, it is the eye for line 
(Continued on page 82) 
