We all know how distressingly tiresome a wall-paper becomes if it is made up of imitative scenes—that is, a series of pictures, and the better the pictures the sooner we tire of the paper.
While a paper that contains no imitative spots, or in which the imitative features are so subdued and conventionalized we feel them rather than see them, may be restful and pleasing; and a wall that is a monotone if bordered by wainscoting and frieze in monotones, may wear the best of all.
But while the great, the practical use of line and color followed parallel lines with sound and got farther and farther away from imitative features, the art of painting, as it is commonly called, developed in just the opposite direction, it became more and more imitative, until of late years it would seem that the last word has been said in the reproduction of natural objects and natural light and color effects.
Of course the last word has not been said, and never will be said so long as individuals are born, but so much has been said that it is not surprising there is a reaction, nor is it surprising that one phase of this reaction should be an attempt to use line and color as the decorator and the dressmaker and a thousand others use them, to express and kindle pleasurable emotions.
In short it is not surprising that the painter of pictures should awaken to the realization of the fact that others use and have used, from the beginning, line and color to make delightful compositions that have no relation to natural objects, as the musician uses sound to make delightful compositions that have no relation to natural noises.
As a rule women have a finer instinct for the use and arrangement of color than painters. Few wives of painters would trust their husbands to decorate their dinner tables.
Look at the gruesome and ugly “still lifes” done by painters of renown. I saw one the other day of some fish on a platter by an American painter famous for such things. If his wife had found that platter of dead and clammy fish in her drawing room she would have exclaimed, “For goodness sake, how did that get in here? Take it back to the kitchen.”