Pictorial Decoration, Ducal Palace, Venice
From a Photograph by Alinari
Some facetious friends of William Morris once proposed to send him a circular asking subscriptions to an association for the protection of the poor easel-picture painter, since he was being frozen out by designers of wall-papers and hangings of such mere ornamental interest that people did not want anything else on their walls.
It was a joke, but there was meaning in it, and, thrown as we are on the world-market, the floating of one man or one kind of art is too often at the expense of the sinking of another. Pictures, like other things, should, in an ideal state, be produced for use and pleasure not for profit, and there would then be less doubt of their decorative relationship; and, although, if this method were adopted generally, it would greatly reduce the output, I cannot help feeling the Japanese show a true instinct for the decorative relation of pictures when they only show one kakimono at a time; but, after, all that would only mean that we could keep the rest of our collection—as so many masterpieces have been kept—rolled up or with their faces to the wall.
A GREAT ARTIST IN A LITERARY SEARCHLIGHT[2]
Our late veteran idealist-sculptor-painter so often sat in the chair of the literary operator, whether journalistic critic, interviewer, or more serious biographical appraiser, that one imagines that in his life-time he must long have ceased to wonder what manner of man—or artist—he might be, and, like enough, vexed not himself when vivisected to make a British holiday.
[2] “G. F. Watts,” by G. K. Chesterton. London, Duckworth and Co.
The necessity for a more or less complete “sizing up” of a famous artist, of classifying him and affixing a descriptive label, or brand, seems to answer to some requirement of the age, despite the chance of the label becoming out of date, owing, perchance, to the unexpected versatility or longevity of the labelled.
It accords with the habits of a commercial people to have “all goods marked in plain figures;” curiosity, too, must be satisfied, and art, not always at once clearly speaking out for itself in the vernacular, the literary interpreter and critical labeller find their opportunity.