The Painterdetails

MURAL DECORATION.

Municipalities abroad are often exercised in their minds as to the beautifying and decorating the interior and exterior of buildings contained in their several towns.

How refreshing it would be if some of ours did so occasionally! Bare and empty spaces are continually striking us as with a sense of something wanting, like the sightless eyes of a blind man. Me are sometimes perforce constrained, by this paucity of eye-interest, to turn with relief to the hoardings that are filled, every square inch of them, with illustrations that are oftener gaudy than neat.

In place of the eternal stucco pillars, the highest flight our insular fancy takes, we might amongst the monotonous drabs and greys pleasantly break out, now and then, into the warm red of terra-cotta, or the cool blue of glazed tiles. Allegorical designs in a large and grand manner, as well as of tbe merely decorative, might be advantageously introduced, so that the eye of the multitude may be insensibly educated.

Art must be brought to the people here in England, they have no time to seek it out for themselves. Every one knows the appreciative admirers the itinerant artist on the pavement collects, with his rainbow-hued mackerel and nightmare-looking eye of staring blue. The people possesses the material faculty of observation and intelligence. It is our duty to mould it aright. As long as art is an unknown language to the majority of us, we must ever remain the shop-keeping nation our neighbours love to call us.

M. Deck, of Paris, has executed plaques of an exceptionally large character, from the masterly designs of M. E. Ehrmann, well adapted for the purposes of mural decoration. We engrave specimens of two of them. [only one is currently scanned on this Web site] They are bold and simple in design, and the meaning of each figure is apparent, scarcely requiring the titles, which tell us that one represents “Painting,” and the other the art of “Engraving.”

The draperies are well expressed, and the outlines lose nothing of their power, although expressed in lines of studied gracefulness.

“Engraving” is particularly fine; and the implements of her craft are picturesquely grouped at the base of the figure, and serve to balance the com¬ position. “Painting is represented a little too much like a female Mercury, and although intense in her expression, gives one the idea, with her loose and flowing garments, that she has taken to the most difficult of arts, as an agrément rather than a profession. There are certain details in this figure which are open to criticism; it may be doubted, for example, whether the left knee should not have been bent to sustain the painting, the right leg supporting the weight of the figure. There is a sense of unfitness in the manner in which the designer has placed the canvas against a straightened limb. If the colour, and we have no reason to doubt it, be equal to the design, we have to congratulate M. Deck, whose reputation for admirable faïence is already world-wide, in his conception of figures especially adapted for exterior decoration.

(p. 228)