It is a rest, a complete rest, for the tired brain-cells, to lift one’s eyes from one’s work and gaze at a picture—the effect is like unto that of distant music wafted through the open window.
Of all men in the world, the busy American is most in need of pictures on the walls of his office—not one or two, but many. The busier he is, the more he needs; his walls should be a blaze of color.
Most of our bankers and corporation magnates spend large sums in “solid mahogany fittings.” Their offices resemble old-fashioned Pullman sleepers. Cost is the one impressive feature. Woodwork, furniture, rugs, everything to the inkstand are massive and—oppressive. Everything is admirably calculated to make work more burdensome; commercial and financial life more sombre.
Why not the reverse of all this? Why fit up an office so that it is about as inviting as a tomb?
Why not make it so attractive that a man will look forward each morning to entering it? Why not so inviting that friends and strangers will be glad to visit it?
Why should an office be a place where no one goes except for business? Why should not men say to one another, “Come in a minute; I have a new picture I want to show you”?
One has simply to enter the offices and school-rooms of any art institute to realize the hollowness of the pretense of love for the beautiful. Infinite pains are taken to arrange the pictures and sculpture in the galleries; once out of the galleries, and all feeling of art disappears; the offices and school-rooms are more sordid, barren, and uninviting than most shops and factories.
In other words, the very men who are supposed to be devoting their lives to the service of art, to making the world more beautiful, who promote exhibitions and urge people to buy pictures, are content to pass all their working lives amidst surroundings unrelieved by a single picture, unadorned by a single fresco.