Most of the French pictorial ceilings are so painted that they are properly seen when the spectator stands with his back close to the fire. This is very awkward, as the rules of society do not allow us to stand in this position before company. Pictorial works are altogether out of place on a ceiling; they ought to be framed and hung right way upwards upon walls where they can be seen. We have a well-known painted ceiling at the Greenwich Hospital.
Arabesque ceilings, such as that of the Roman Court at the Crystal Palace, are also very objectionable.
What can be worse than festoons of leafage, like so many sausages, painted upon a ceiling, with griffins, small framed pictures, impossible flowers, and feeble ornament, all with fictitious light and shade? But not content with such absurdities and incongruities, the festoons often hang upwards on vaulted or domed ceilings, rather than downwards. Such ornaments arose when Rome, intoxicated with its conquests, yielded itself up to luxury and vice rather than to a consideration of beauty and truth.
Decorations like these were to an extent again revived by the great painter Raphael; but it must ever be remembered that Raphael, while one of the greatest of painters, was no ornamentist. It requires all the energy of a life to become a great painter; and it requires all the energy of a life to become a great ornamentist; hence it is not expected that the one man should be great at the two arts.
In all ages when decorative art has flourished, ceilings have been decorated. The Egyptians decorated their ceilings, so did the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Moors, and the people of our Middle Ages, and a light ceiling appears not to have been esteemed as essential, or as in many cases desirable. It is strange that so few of our houses and public buildings contain rooms with decorated ceilings; but the want is already felt, the fashion has set in, and many are at this present moment being prepared. We must get simple modes of enrichment for general rooms—modes of treatment which shall be effective, and yet not expensive—and then we may hope that they will become general.
DIVISION II.—DECORATIONS OF WALLS.
We must now devote ourselves to the consideration of wall decoration, or to the manner in which ornament should be applied to walls with the view of rendering them decorative.
It will appear absurd to say that all ornament that is applied to a wall should be such as will render the wall more beautiful than it would be without it; but this statement is needed, for I have seen many walls ornamented in such a manner, that they would have looked much better if they had been perfectly plain, and simply washed over with a tint of colour.
To ornament is to beautify. To decorate is to ornament. But a surface cannot be beautified unless the forms which are drawn upon it are graceful, or bold, or vigorous, or true, and unless the colours applied to it are harmonious. Yet how many walls do we meet with even in good houses—walls of corridors, walls of staircases, walls of dining-rooms, walls of libraries, and, indeed, walls of every kind of room—which are rendered offensive, rather than pleasing, by the decorations they bear.
A wall may look well without decoration strictly so called, and this statement leads me to notice the various ways in which walls may be treated with the view of rendering them beautiful.