we know that no scenic papers can be dated before the Ricci prints, or before Jackson’s wallpaper venture. Oman[39] comments:
The use of wall-paper to imitate large architectural designs dates, as we have seen, from the days of J. B. Jackson. During the remainder of the century this style was used almost exclusively for decoration of the halls and staircases of great houses.
These papers covered rooms with landscape panoramas or with landscapes in Rococo scroll frames, relieved by decorative panels with busts, statuettes, and floral ornaments. As in preceding work, they were usually painted in opaque water colors. Most of the landscapes were loose transcriptions of designs by Pannini, Vernet, Lancret and other painters of architectural, scenic, and pastoral subjects. The treatment was generalized and superficial, the touch light and detached.
In this approach to wallpaper we see the basic ideas of Jackson, but with more emphasis on charm and elegance. Ironically, as years passed and original sources grew obscure, it became the tendency to attribute scenic papers in great houses to Jackson.[40] If he was a failure as a pioneer in the field, he remained its most highly prized legend.
The Essay continued with a criticism of the current taste in wallpaper. Jackson enlarged on the lack of discrimination of persons who would prefer popular papers to his.
It seems, also, as if there was great Reason to suspect wherever one sees such preposterous Furniture, that the Taste in Literature of that Person who directed it was very deficient, and that it would prefer Tom D’Urfy to Shakespear, Sir Richard Blackmore to Milton, Tate to Homer, an Anagrammatist to Virgil, Horace, or any other Writer of true Wit, either Ancient or Modern.
He added that his prints, made in oil colors, would be permanent “whereas in that done with Water-Colours, in the common Way, Six Months makes a very visible Alteration in all that preposterous Glare, which makes its whole Merit....”
The Essay has eight plates, four of ancient statues in chiaroscuro and four of plants, animals, and buildings, in probably six colors. They were hastily done and no doubt had a rather fresh charm when published, but unfortunately the oil in the pigments was inferior, and every print in the book has darkened and yellowed
badly. The prints and neighboring pages are heavily spotted and stained. This book which should have been his vindication became instead an argument for his lack of merit, especially to those who were not familiar with his other work.
We do not know how large a working force Jackson had or how many of the projected plates he planned to assign to helpers or to carry out himself. Some of the decorative borders from four blocks, blue, red, yellow, and gray-green, he undoubtedly made and printed himself. They are heavy and rather fruity in effect but are incisively drawn and cut. Also bearing Jackson’s stamp are some ornamental frames with fruit and flowers in the same full range of colors.