Studio: international art (6.1896)

The Fireplace of the Suburban House

" I take another stone, with just a plan of the
design upon it, and ink it all over; then I wipe out
this tint, here and there ■ in fact, the hand of the
printer replaces the ordinary tint of the chromo-
lithograph."

" The added tint has been used before ?"

"Yes, often enough. In Roberts' Holy Land,
for instance, there was a second printing manipu-
lated to suit the subject, but in a way entirely
different."

" Here is quite another experiment," said Mr.
Goulding, taking up a river scene by Frank Short.
" In this the drawing was transferred to stone, and
then a mezzotint grain was transferred right over
it. This the artist worked upon, scraping away
exactly as he would on a rocked plate, so the result
is a true litho-mezzotint."

And then Mr. Goulding showed me a quantity of
lithographs by Sir Frederic Leighton, P.R.A., Mr.
G. F. Watts, R.A., Mr. Alma Tadema, R.A, Mr.
John Sargent, A.R.A., and many others, including
a most dainty Dutch subject by Mr. C. J. Watson.

" That is a little tricky in its printing," said
Mr. Goulding, as I paused to examine it, " and it
has had only one printing, but the colour, as you
see, is graduated in tint. Here is another in black ;
you can compare the two. In the first, the red of
the upper part imparts quite a different shade to
the untouched ground of the paper from that
which the rich hues at the bottom yields. It is
just the result of the juxtaposition of colours in
the paper, the same creamy-white throughout, only
the eye is deceived into thinking the sky at the
top is a different shade to the water at the foot."

" Were these shown at the Centenary Exhibition
in Paris ? " I asked.

" Yes," said Mr. Goulding, " nearly all. Indeed,
many were produced expressly for that Exhibition.
Yes; they will be seen in London soon, I hope, at
the Rembrandt Head Gallery. Shall I occupy it
entirely ? I hope not; I would rather others shared
it with me. Remember," he said, as a last word,
''all I claim is to have applied the principles of
the printing of etchings to the printing of litho-
graphs. Whether you like the result or not is a
matter of taste ; but I think I may say that I have
done what I set out to do."

By the kindness of those concerned, several of
these lithographs have been reproduced here; and
the fact that the reproductions differ in no way
from the result that would have been obtained
from the artist's drawing on the faced paper, is
proof that, save for the convenience of multiply-
ing copies, the " process " is non-existent. If the

drawing be good, and printed as Mr. Goulding can
print it, instead of a unique autograph original,
you get a dozen or a score of originals, that is all.
Of course where stumping comes in, and a second
stone is used, the effect is due in equal shares to
draughtsman and printer.

It would be a side issue to discuss how far
another personality should manipulate an artist's
work. Besides, the question has been long since
fought out over etching. If the etcher or litho-
grapher be his own printer, nobody objects. And
judging by the number of artists who exhibit their
plates printed by Mr. Goulding, with his signature
added to theirs upon the proofs, it is evident that
the few purists who still maintain that the person-
ality of the printer must never intrude, are in the
minority.

That a most interesting field is opened out by
Mr. Goulding's experiments it is impossible to
doubt; and since new methods and new materials
always appear with a certain freshness and tempt
draughtsmen to new enterprise, it is probable that
the Goulding lithographs will start a new school of
draughtsmen for stone, who will add no few things
to English art well worth adding.

HE FIREPLACE OF THE
SUBURBAN HOUSE. BY
M. H. BAILLIE SCOTT,
ARCHITECT.

So much of the comfort as well as the beauty of
a room depend on a well-arranged fireside that
few will underrate its importance. It is at the
fireside that the interest of the room is focussed,
and in our inconstant climate we may be driven,
at almost any season of the year, to seek there that
brightness and warmth which we fail to find in the
outside world.

In the average house the treatment of the tire-
place is painfully ugly, and the coarsely modelled
cast-iron grate, with its mantelpiece of enamelled
slate, are things which one can only try to oblite-
rate with drapery, while the stock overmantel with
its bevelled mirrors and flimsy construction is
hardly less objectionable.

In order to start fair with the consideration of
fireplace treatment, it will be necessary to dismiss
all such atrocities from our minds and mentally
picture the fireplaces of an earlier age, when the
art of home-making was so well understood. The
cottage ingle-nook, with its broad brick hearth, its
wide settle and roughly hewn oak beam, if not

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