“By the brightness of the sun when he shineth,
By the moon when she followeth him,” etc.
Sir Frederick Leighton’s chief room is his studio; it covers more than half of the whole area of the top floor of the house. The walls are hung with stuffs from many countries—tapestries, rugs, ancient Japanese silks—which fall from the cornice to the floor. There are some fine ebonized bookcases and cabinets, designed by Mr. Aitchison and Sir Frederick together. The roof is arranged with sky-lights and sliding curtains of various descriptions, so that there is no kind of light or shade whatever that the artist is not able to bring upon his work. The drawing-room has a white coffered and tinted ceiling, and neat mouldings above the bay-window gather round a fine oil-picture, by Eugene Delacroix, fixed in the ceiling. It is beautiful, but I could not help feeling that some mural painting by another artist might well be substituted, and the Delacroix placed “on the line.” There is suspended a very rich central candelabrum of Venetian glass in many colors. The walls are hung with cigar-tinted cloth, with modified fleur-de-lis spots, beneath which a floor of ash-blue is disclosed for the width of a yard between the wall and the bright Persian carpet.
A GRATE OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.
In all the houses which are carefully decorated in London great use is made of tiles. The tiles which are unrivalled in the esteem of artists are the old Dutch, which consequently have been nearly all bought up. A single old Dutch tile, which when made hardly cost more than a sixpence, now finds eager purchasers at a pound. It is a singular fact that our manufacturers can imitate Persian and Egyptian tiles, but have still to send to Holland to get anything resembling the old Dutch, and even there they can obtain but an approach to the rich coloring and quaint designs of old times. Mr. Stevenson, the architect whose book has been referred to on a previous page, obtained a large number of these old tiles, which when put together formed large pictures; but several of them were wanting, and he had to make designs of what those he possessed appeared to imply were on the others. He had tiles made which, at any rate, completed the pictures; and though the new ones were carefully made, they may be easily picked out from the old. These tile pictures have been placed by Mr. Stevenson on the side of a sheltered entrance that leads from the street across the front-yard to his beautiful residence in Bayswater. Inside of this house there are many beautiful things, but it is chiefly remarkable for the admirable mantel-pieces on the ground-floor and that above it—in the hall common to both—which show rich old carvings set with tiles, chiefly Persian and Dutch, which are built from floor to ceiling. In the children’s school-room there is a chimney-piece covered with Dutch tiles representing most quaintly all the most notable scenes in the Bible, which must be a source of endless amusement to the little ones. The finest designs for tiles which I have seen in London are those of Messrs. Morris & Co., whose pictures, however, are often so beautiful that one dislikes to see them ornamenting fireplaces. Nevertheless, the grate and its arrangements are becoming matters of serious importance in every room, and a walk through the establishment of Messrs. Boyd, in Oxford Street, will show that the “warming engineers” have not been behindhand in providing stoves, tiles, and grates that may be adapted to many varieties of decoration. These gentlemen tell me that they are continually on the watch to get hold of old grates, fenders, fire-dogs, and so forth, that were made a hundred years ago, on account of the great demand for them, and that they reproduce them continually; nevertheless they believe that they can produce a prettier grate now than could have been made in the last century. The engraving on page 198 represents a grate found in an English mansion about one hundred years ago. The one on this page represents a grate recently made for the late Baron Rothschild. The one on page 200 represents a grate and fireplace designed and made by Messrs. Boyd, which appears to me one of the most beautiful I have yet seen.
GRATE MADE FOR BARON ROTHSCHILD.
In the houses thus far described I have mentioned several which have been decorated in whole or in part by Messrs. Morris & Co., but have reserved until now a special treatment of their style. Their decorations, apart from their undeniable beauty, derive importance from the fact that they can be adapted to the requirements of persons with moderate incomes, or to the needs of those who are prepared to pay large sums. The firm in question—as befits a company whose head is one of the most graceful of living poets—has mastered the Wordsworthian secret of