Mr. Boughton has named the grand mansion built for him on Campden Hill, “West House,” in honor of Benjamin West, the first American artist who received in England honors similar to those which have been accorded himself. In this house he has had ample room to develop his ideas of decoration. It is Grove Lodge, as it were, in full flower. An excellent effect has been secured by giving to each of three large rooms, opening into each other through richly-draped door-ways, tints of their own; each is different, while harmonious with its neighbor. It would require a pamphlet to do justice to all the decorations of West House, and I must content myself with having already given an extended analysis of the ideas of ornamentation which our American Academician has done so much to diffuse. But one thing I must not omit to mention. In the removal to this house a large and magnificent old bevelled mirror was cracked irregularly across the entire surface. The eye of the artist detected in the misfortune an opportunity for a novel touch of decoration. He painted the blemish into a beauty. A beautiful vine in leaf and blossom now runs across the mirror, which, I hear, has been imitated by some who have seen it, in ignorance, perhaps, that the pretty device was suggested by a flaw. Boughton’s mirror might well have an inscription beneath it from Shakspeare: “Best men are moulded out of faults.”
Another American artist adorned his London residence in a way quite notable. The ancient mansion of the Lindsays (300 years old) on the northern bank of the Thames, at Chelsea, was divided up into six houses, and one of these was for some years occupied by Mr. Whistler. This gentleman’s enthusiasm for Japanese and Chinese art is well known; but that large number of people who are in the habit of holding up their china plates at dinner as texts from which to descant on the strange ignorance of drawing and perspective under which the Chinese and Japanese labor, would find good reason to check their laughter should they be fortunate enough to see Mr. Whistler’s rooms. The Chinese and Japanese have known for a good many centuries certain principles of art which Europeans are only beginning to recognize; one of these is, that a plate or pot is by no means the proper place for a realistic picture, but, on the contrary, that the only use of art on such an object is to give it spots of color. The chief object is not the picture, but the pot. No people know the laws of perspective better than the Chinese and the Japanese, or have greater realistic power. Mr. Whistler dots the walls and even the ceiling of his rooms with the brilliant Japanese fans which now constitute so large an element in the decoration of many beautiful rooms; but in his drawing-room there were fifteen large panels made of Japanese pictures, each about five feet by two. These pictures represent flowers of every hue, and birds of many varieties and of the richest plumage. The very lustre of nature is on every petal and on every feather; the eyes of the birds are as gems that emit light, and their tortuous necks are painted with a boldness which no European art can rival. The Japanese, when they aim at nature, have the rare courage to paint nature as it is; and, as a result, the tortuous necks of their birds tell the story of their reptilian relationship as clearly as it has been told by Professor Huxley. There are also in the room an ancient Chinese cabinet with a small pagoda designed on the top, an old Japanese cabinet of quaint construction, and several screens from the same region, altogether making one of the most beautiful rooms imaginable. Mr. Whistler did much to light up and beautify a somewhat dark staircase in his house by giving the walls a lemon tint above a dado of gold, on which he has painted butterflies such as adorn the frames of his pictures, and constitute the signature of his work. I have become convinced, however, by a visit to the beautiful house which Chambrey Townshend arranged at Wimbledon, that there can be nothing so suitable for somewhat dark corridors and staircases as a faint rose tint. In Mr. Townshend’s house, however cold and cheerless the day may be, there is always a glow of morning light. This gentleman has shown that a sage-gray paper with simple small squares (such as Messrs. Marshall & Morris make) furnishes a good dado to support the light tints upon walls not papered. Where the walls are papered several gentlemen of taste have substituted for the usual dado, made of somewhat darker paper, one of matting. If the matting has a dark red stripe the effect is good, but checker marks are not pleasant. Mr. Ionides, a Greek gentleman, of London, arranged a remarkably beautiful hall and stairway in his house at Notting Hill by using a plain straw-colored matting for the continuous dado, uniting it by an ebonized chairboarding with a light-colored Morris wall-paper. Of course tiles are sometimes used to make the dado, but either because of their common use in hotels and public buildings, or for some other reason, they appear with increasing rarity in private houses in any other capacity than that of adorning the fireplace. This remark does not include the use of tiles as plaques, to be hung as works of fine art—a use of them which is now frequent, and is the means of producing a great deal of beautiful work.
WILLIAM MORRIS.
It is easy to understand that the house in which one resides must have a large share in determining the decorations which shall be placed in or upon it. An historic or semi-palatial mansion of the olden time will require to have its great halls and stairways and deep rooms illuminated with colors, and its large spaces intersected with pictorial screens. Mr. William B. Scott, of whose mural paintings I have already spoken, and whose occupation it is to study effects of ornamentation, has a happy field for his taste and task in his residence, Bellevue House, at Chelsea. This mansion merits particular attention, both on its own account architecturally, and for its decorations, added recently. These have been chiefly devised by the artist himself in carrying out the original plan, and add a suggestive and, properly speaking, imaginative character to the interiors. The house was built, it is said, by the Adamses, the architects of the Adelphi, in the Strand, where the Society of Arts holds its meetings (the approach to which is still called Adams Street). At that time, about a century ago, decorations in the way of carved mouldings running around door-ways, and passing all round the rooms on the surbase and dado, were in use. Previously to that time the entire walls were generally panelled, but then began the system of panelling or boarding flatly to the height of three feet only, at which height began the lath-and-plaster wall. Along the top edge of this dado—which, being just over the height of a chair or table, gives a very well-furnished and comfortable air to a room, and ought on that account to be again adopted—ran a more or less ornamental moulding. That mostly used in Bellevue House is carved in wood, and very good, closely resembling, indeed, those on the best specimens of Chippendale furniture, which belongs to the same date—about 1770. I may add here that the demand among artistic designers for a recurrence to the dado is shown by the increasing frequency with which a darker paper than that above, with paper cornice, is made to do duty for it.
MOULDING OVER DADO.
A hundred years ago the hall of a mansion was a more important part of the plan, and more decoratively treated, than now. The entrance is here divided by folding-doors from the hall proper, which is ample enough in area to place the stair a good way back, and to give a correspondingly wide space above, on the drawing-room landing, filled in the olden time by a table, cabinet, eight-day standing clock, and other objects. The ends of the steps were carved, sometimes very elegantly. But the most ornamental feature then in use was the moulded ceiling, which was planned in ovals and spandrels, according to the shape of the room, sometimes with medallions of Cupids, and occasionally with a picture, representing an emblematic personage or some such matter, in the centre. A few of these are still to be seen in London. There is one in Knight-Rider Street, painted by Cipriani. In Bellevue House the two drawing-rooms possess very pretty arrangements of fan-shaped ornaments and delicate foliage. These are now “picked out” in colors—blue and white for the most part—producing an effect resembling that of Wedgwood ware.