From a Water-Colour by W. Davidson
SAINT GEORGE: FROM A ROOD SCREEN, RANWORTH CHURCH. NORFOLK: EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
timber fittings of the East Anglian churches, were all elaborately coloured, and painted with figures and decorative patterns. (Plates [4], [25], [27], [28].)
Flemish painting at that time had attained to great excellence, and there is no doubt that it strongly influenced the English art of the fifteenth century, and especially the decorative school of art which about that time rose to great eminence in East Anglia. Flemish methods and styles of church colouring and painting, and especially that of the rood-screens, roofs and reredoses, were freely adopted by the English decorative artists, and the types of the painted figures of saints, prophets and apostles, as well as the style and character of the floral and geometric ornamentation, which has been found in the existing decoration of the old English churches, had all their counterparts in Flemish church decoration (Plate [24]). The best examples of the English work of this period that are still in existence are the rood-screens of Norfolk, particularly those of Ranworth (Plates [4] and [28]), Barton Turf, Aylsham, and Cawston, and the screens of Southwold church in Suffolk. The painting on these screens is decidedly English in character and technique, however much the designs of the single figures may be Flemish or German in style.
The interior wall surfaces of the smaller English churches were usually coated with plaster, while the walls of the large ones and those of the cathedrals were of smooth-faced stone. The plaster surface was prepared for painting by simply coating it with a light, cream coloured, or pale grey wash of distemper. The decorative patterns and emblematic devices were painted on these grounds, or on similarly prepared grounds of soft-coloured tints of red, blue, or green. The patterns were sometimes painted in one colour only, but often in two or three, one of which being gold, or yellow, to imitate the colour of gold. On white, grey, or cream-coloured grounds the tints were usually dark grey, red, black, or green, and on the brighter colored grounds the pattern colours were generally in grey or black, or in a darker tint of the colour of the ground.
Although the early English decorators were good colorists, the range of the colour was limited, but they made good use of the small number of the colours they employed by often cleverly transposing and alternating the grouping or arrangements, so that although the same colour on the same pattern might be used, the transposition by alternation of the pattern gave great interest and variety to the general scheme of colour. Reds, yellows, black and white were the principal colours used in the early Gothic decoration; blues, greens and gold were added to these in the later periods, especially in the decoration and figure paintings on the rood-screens and ceilings, and on the woodwork generally.
Mouldings, whether of wood or stone were always coloured, as well as the piers, capitals and
