ART.

DECORATIVE ART AT THE ACADEMY. AT last the Academy seems trying to justify its position, and has promoted an exhibition which is not merely a shop for miscellaneous easel pictures, but an attempt to give a

lead to the artistic talent of the country by pointing out a neglected road. The road is the one of wall-painting. In the past the art of painting grew out of the desire to decorate walls, and it is possible to show that the pettiness, the incoherence, the uninspired realism, and the mere statement of fact, indeed all the qualities which drag down the art of painting to a low level, assert themselves in proportion as the original purpose, the decoration of walls, is lost sight of.

At the present time there is talk of the monumental quality in painting, and in trying to obtain this inside a picture frame

too often the only result is uncouthness. Therefore, the aim of the present exhibition, which is to make artists turn again to the decoration of walls, is of the greatest importance, because by this means we may recover the essential qualities, now nearly lost, of creation instead of representation, the emotional and not the scientific outlook on Nature, and monumental simplicity of design.

It is a hopeful sign that comparatively few artists here make the mistake of supposing that the ordinary style of realistic painting can be applied to walls without modification.

Of course, the classic instance of this is the Pantheon in Paris, where alone Puvis de Chavannes shows himself a wall..

painter, the rest of the decorations being only misplaced Salon pictures. While our painters have grasped the necessity of a change of style, it would be unwise to say that more than intelligent exploration of the subject has been achieved.

Many of the experiments, from Mr. Clausen's aridly simple lunette (71) to Mr. Cayley Robinson's complex and unrelated War Memorial (125), show how much experiment it will require before the right roads—and they are many—are found. Mr. Arming Bell has achieved a happy result in his large lunette, The Awakening (184), which is so simple in its masses that it tells perfectly a long way off without any sacrifice of graciousness of line, and, although it has strong contrasts of light and dark, in no way breaks up the flatness of the wall. The effectiveness of the work in combining with architectural features can be well seen when one looks at it through the doorway from Room III. Mr. Sims shows again a very large and very interesting design, Crafts (116). It is one of the few things here in which use is made of the unclothed human form for decorative purposes in the manner of the later Italian work ; it also shows a fine sense of pale, luminous colour. Of the number of works shown by Miss Ethel Walker the Nausicaa (144) is the best. Miss Walker has invention and a good sense of atmospheric colour, but her composition is too complicated to be effective, in spite of desperate attempts to give it unity by a general indecision of outline and confusion of planes. A number of designs are shown for decorations in the London County Council Hall.

Several are the work of students of the Westminster School of Art. Of course, it would be most unfair to judge of such works from these small designs, but it must be said that they are not encouraging. The style seems too mannered and undistinguished, and the colour heavy and oppressive.

Many valiant attempts to treat modern subjects have been made ; here, of course, the difficulty is how to deal with the

intractable modern clothes which, if made too much of, look ugly and cumbersome, and if over simplified absurd and merely another form of costume. Mr. Vivian Forbes, in his Mural Decoration for a School or University (87), has seen football shorts with the eyes of theeQuattrocente as well as the-

landscape ; the effect is pleasant, if the movement is somewhat frozen. Miss Shiffner has succeeded wonderfully in her half- clad soldiers wrestling on horseback; had she simplified her composition as a whole, her result would have gained greatly in value. But she has the power of giving incisive form and subtle modelling with the greatest economy of means, which ought to give her mastery over a large wall space. Decorative designs based on manufacturing industries never seem to be satisfactory for some unexplained reason.

Is it that machinery without its movement is uninteresting ?

The best things of this kind are undoubtedly Mr. Walter Ilayes's designs for panels at the British Empire Exhibition

(383, 390, 391). It will be most interesting to see these in place, for this artist is a master Of large spaces. A very attractive model is shown by Mr. A. K. Lawrence for a Cottrell Room in a Ministry of Fine Arts (440). The white architecture with the notes of blue and the light-toned frescoes look charming, and one would like to see the plan carried out.

Mrs. Sargant Florence (130), Mr. J. D. Batten (114), and Mr. Ernest Jackson (54) all show work in true fresco, and triumphantly prove that for lucid beauty no other medium can approach it as a method of wall decoration. Cannot the men of science find some way of making it possible in modem towns ? It used to be supposed that our damp climate affected the plaster ground, but the deterioration is more probably due to chemicals in the air, and also dirt. For wall-painting to be successful in England we must be able to wash it tolerably often. We may have in the end to use some form of mosaic.

Among the things which are decorations, though not strictly wall-paintings, arc Mrs. Sargant Florence's beautiful and strongly felt Spring (67). This cartoon is much finer in colour than its realization in tapestry, which hangs opposite to it. Mrs. Stokes's Snowwhite and the Dwarfs (56) is a charm- ing piece of fairy story telling; the background is specially delightful, it is so simple and so mysterious.

It is impossible not to be struck by the absence of what, for want of a better name, we may call the poetic and mystic side of design ; there is, however, one notable exception in the Benedicite °nada Opera, by Miss Tatham (75). Here the groups of figures really do float in the empyrean, and their complete want of logic in their relation to heaven and earth shows the true creative spirit of art. It is to be hoped that this design will be carried out.

One room of the exhibition has been wisely reserved for the greatest of English decorators, Alfred Stevens. In it we see the tardy honour paid to the great artist by the Chantrey Trustees. The recognition has taken the form of the purchase of a number of drawings and cartoons for the unrealized decoration of the dining-room at Dorchester House. Here, in distinction to the works which have been considered in this article, there is no hesitation, no searching and simplifying ; instead, the master pours forth a torrent of noble forms, combining or separating them according to the nature of the space to be filled. The large cartoon 257 shows how the coherence of a group can be made by the rhythm of the arms, and in 224 we see that awkward spaces are no bar to beauty o line when such a man as Stevens fills them. In 232 and 234 we can see the artist at work, for the latter is a red chalk drawing from life for the former. There is no essential difference between the two; the noble qualities of the finished design were not added to the life study, but were inherent from the first. How refreshing it is after being guided through the locks and canals of recent experiments to float down the great brimming river of Stevens's art.

A welcome and appropriate addition to the paintings is the section devoted to the works of members of the Arts and Crafts Society. Taking a general look one cannot but notice bow great an advance has been made in the direction of simplicity of design. In former exhibitions there was, especially in the furniture, an affectation and straining to do something original, which in the case of objects of daily use was disastrous. The pottery is, perhaps, the least interesting of the things shown, so much of it is undistinguished in shape and dull in colour. The general run of technical accomplish- ment is very high and nowhere more so than in the jewellery. There are many cases which equal in workmanship and in design utterly put to shame the "base mechanicals " of Bond Street. Notably so the work of Mr. and Mrs. Gaskin in case 697 in Room X. Very beautiful are some of the silk damasks designed by Mr. E. Hunter and made by the St. Edmondsbury Weavers. 622 is a wonderful piece of dull blues shot with interwoven metallic threads ; and Mrs. Lodge's handwoven silk scarf (692), dyed in fadeless colours, is gorgeous in hue. Mr. Basil Oliver has made some good lead rainwater pipe heads, of which the best is 515. Several _ workers in stained-glass show that there is no excuse now for bad colour in church windows ; Mr. Armitage has recaptured. the mediaeval quaintness and beauty very successfully in 549. Pre-eminent among the woodcarving are Mr. W. G. Sim month's duck and drake (Case 946, M & Q). They are monu- mental in their perfect simplicity. Mr. Easthaugh has made some delightful paper-knives and window wedges, ornamented with birds, which are as full of character as they are simple and direct. Some small scale models in coloured terra-cotta for the proposed decoration of the "Old Vie" (681), by Mr. Sagant, are very promising, and among woodcuts Miss Gribble's classical illustrations have great charm, and Mr. W. Giles shows a fine water-colour print, The Rainbow, Isle of Jura (872). H. S.