TRUTH BLINDFOLDED
Merton Abbey Tapestry. Byram Shaw, Artist
The most enchantingly mediæval and most modernly perfect piece is by Burne-Jones, called David Instructing Solomon in the Building of the Temple. (Plate facing page [257].) In this the time of Gothic beauty lives again. Planes are repeated, figures are massed, detail is clear and impressive, yet modern laws of drawing concentrate the interest on the central action as strongly as though all else were subservient.
The Passing of Venus was Burne-Jones’ last cartoon for Merton Abbey looms. (Plate facing page [260].) Although a critique of the art of this great painter would be out of place in a book on the applied arts, at least it is allowable to express the conviction that more beautiful, more fitting designs for tapestry it would be difficult to imagine. Modern work of this sort has produced nothing that approaches them, preserving as they do the sincerity and reverence of a simple people, the ideality of a conscientious age, yet softening all technical faults with modern finish. An unhappy fact is that this tapestry, which was considered by the Merton Abbey works as its chef d’œuvre, was destroyed by fire in the Brussels Exhibition of 1910.
Alas for tapestry weaving of to-day, the usual modern cartoon is a staring anachronism, and a conglomerate of modes. An “art nouveau” lady poses in a Gothic setting, a Thayer angel stands in a Boucher entourage, and both eye and intelligence are revolted. The master craftsman and artist, William Morris, alone has known how to produce acceptable modern work from modern cartoons. Other examples are Angeli Laudantes, and The Adoration. (Plates facing pages [261] and [256].)
A false note is sometimes struck, even in this factory of wondrous taste. In Truth Blindfolded (plate facing page [258]), Mr. Byram Shaw has drawn the central figure as Cabanel might have done a decade ago, while every other figure in the group might have been done by some hand dead these four hundred years.
Morris’ manner of procedure differed little from that of the decorator Lebrun, although his work was a private enterprise and in no way to be compared with the royal factory of a rich king. Burne-Jones drew the figures; H. Dearle, a pupil, and Philip Webb drew backgrounds and animals, but Morris held in his own hands the arrangement of all. It was as though a gardener brought in a sheaf of cut roses and the master hand arranged them. Mr. Dearle directed some compositions with skill and talent.
With the passing of William Morris an inevitable change is visible in the cartoons. The Gothic note is not continued, nor the atmosphere of sanctity, which is its usual accompaniment. A tapestry of 1908 from the design of The Chace by Heyward Sumner suggests long hours with the Flemish landscapists of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with a jarring note of Pan dragged in by the ears to huddle under foliage obviously introduced for this purpose.
