There exist, therefore, certain definite tests for the work of the decorative artist. Does the design fit its place and material? Is it in scale with its surroundings and in harmony with itself? Is it fair and lovely in colour? Has it beauty and invention? Has it thought and poetic feeling? These are the demands a decorator has to answer, and by his answer he must stand or fall; but such questions show that the scope of decoration is no mean one.
It must be acknowledged that a mixed exhibition does not easily afford the fairest or completest tests of such qualities. An exhibition is at best a compromise, a convenience, a means of comparison, and to enable work to be shown to the public; but of course is, after all, only really and properly exhibited when it is in the place and position and light for which it was destined. The tests by which to judge a designer's work are only complete then.
As the stem and branches to the leaves, flowers, and fruit of a tree, so is design to painting. In decoration one cannot exist without the other, as the beauty of a figure depends upon the well-built and well-proportioned skeleton and its mechanism. You cannot separate a house from its plan and foundations. So it is in decoration; often thought of lightly as something trivial and superficial, a merely aimless combination of curves and colours, or a mere réchauffé of the dead languages of art, but really demanding the best thought and capacity of a man; and in the range of its application it is not less comprehensive.
The mural painter is not only a painter, but a poet, historian, dramatist, philosopher. What should we know, how much should we realise, of the ancient world and its life without him, and his brother the architectural sculptor? How would ancient Egypt live without her wall paintings—or Rome, or Pompeii, or Mediæval Italy? How much of beauty as well as of history is contained in the illuminated pages of the books of the Middle Ages!
Some modern essays in mural painting show that the habit of mind and method of work fostered by the production of trifles for the picture market is not favourable to monumental painting. Neither the mood nor the skill, indeed, can be grown like a mushroom; such works as the Sistine Chapel, the Stanzi of Raphael, or the Apartimenti Borgia, are the result of long practice through many centuries, and intimate relationship and harmony in the arts, as well as a certain unity of public sentiment.
The true soil for the growth of the painter in this higher sense is a rich and varied external life: familiarity from early youth with the uses of materials and methods, and the hand facility which comes of close and constant acquaintanceship with the tools of the artist, who sums up and includes in himself other crafts, such as modelling, carving, and the hammering of metal, architectural design, and a knowledge of all the ways man has used to beautify and deck the surroundings and accessories of life to satisfy his delight in beauty.
We know that painting was strictly an applied art in its earlier history, and all through the Middle Ages painters were in close alliance with the other crafts of design, and their work in one craft no doubt reacted on and influenced that in another, while each was kept distinct. At all events, painters like Albert Dürer and Holbein were also masters of design in all ways.
Through the various arts and crafts of the Greek, Mediæval, or Early Renaissance periods, there is evident, from the examples which have come down to us, a certain unity and common character in design, asserting itself through all diverse individualities: each art is kept distinct, with a complete recognition of the capacity and advantages of its own particular method and purpose.
In our age, for various reasons (social, commercial, economic), the specialised and purely pictorial painter is dominant. His aims and methods influence other arts and crafts, but by no means advantageously as a rule; since, unchecked by judicious ideas of design, attempts are made in unsuitable materials to produce so-called realistic force, and superficial and accidental appearances dependent on peculiar qualities of lighting and atmosphere, quite out of place in any other method than painting, or in any place but an easel picture.
From such tendencies, such influences as these, in the matter of applied art and design, we are striving to recover. One of the first results is, perhaps, this apparently artificial distinction between decorative and other painting. But along with this we have painters whose easel pictures are in feeling and treatment quite adaptable as wall and panel decorations, and they are painters who, as a rule, have studied other methods in art, and drawn their inspiration from the mode of Mediæval or Early Renaissance times.