Be careful of the pictures and their relations to the walls. Rooms should rather be a setting for a beautiful moving picture of the shifting groups of people in it.
Too much gilding, too many gaudy oil paintings attract the eye and distract the mind.
There is a simple picture in my room, red curtains, a white-robed child kneeling, that is all, but everything in it harmonizes, and it harmonizes with the furnishings of the room, and my eye is often drawn toward it.
One authority objects to portraits as a decoration. “Their presence, if at all impressive, is too stimulating.”
Picture frames should never be so gorgeous as to distract the mind from the picture. “Frames are to protect the picture and relate it to the walls.”
Group etchings together and put engravings in the portfolio. Over low bookcases pictures should be large, and in this form they give a style to the room. Water colors look admirable if treated in this manner, and if two bookcases are put together so as to form one, divide the pictures by a bracket, on which place a jar of some unique pattern.
SELECTING PAINTINGS FOR HOME DECORATION.
Small rooms require medium-size pictures, which can be hung one above the other, and three may even be placed on line with good effect. For an ideal head in oil the frame should be of broad gilt. Hang it in a good light, and on one side group two small water-color pieces in the fashionable white band frame. For an oblong picture a small sketch under it looks well equipped.
A very large and beautiful picture sometimes sets the keynote of color for the apartment. Otherwise, subordinate them as decorations to the colorings of the room, as in the ivory and gold room.