Studio: international art (10.1897)

Mural Decoration in Scotland

long hair soon disappeared. Eventually the whole monument of his own skill as an artist. The same
look gave way to the somewhat careworn features may be said of his much lamented successor, Sir
with the deep bar between the eyes, shown in John Millais, P.R.A. There may be still a Car-
Mr. Watts's somewhat idealised portrait in the dinal Leopold de Medicis in England who will
same collection. make it his hobby to collect the autograph portraits

These few notes on an interesting collection of of the artists who have been the chief ornaments
portraits may serve to show that there is material of the British School,
enough within the confines of the National Portrait

Gallery to make a national Walhalla of art. Doubt- -»» mar TJRAL DECORATION IN
less there exist among the portfolios of artists 1% /I SCOTLAND PART I BY
many studies of their own features. For the pur- I V / 1 MARGARET ARMOUR
pose of portraiture a mere sketch, such as that of I \f B

Rossetti, is not unfrequently of greater value than a ™ The march of intellect has wavered

finished oil-painting. It is a difficult task to select much in the world's history, but the march of art
among the numerous votaries of art those who has wavered more. That a nation like ours, posing
have a claim to national eminence. To some it as the world's mental pioneer, can endure placidly
may seem that a few of those already enumerated the chaotic ugliness of its manufacturing towns,
are of doubtful worth in the national estimation. and the sorclidness of its average street everywhere,
Lord Leighton is commemorated by a fine portrait, is a striking proof of the fluctuating advance of
painted and given by Mr. Watts ; but it is impossible aesthetics. Yet the instinct of beauty, though it
not to feel a pang of jealousy that the collection often sleeps, never dies. From time to time the
in the Ufhzi should possess so magnificent a por- creative mandate, " Let there be light," goes forth,
trait of Leighton by himself, and so convincing a and what was without form and void resolves itself

into ordered loveliness.

At present the architec-
tural sense, lost so long,
seems reviving in us.
Many have begun genuinely
to sorrow over the grotesque
proportions, the stupid orna-
ment, the heavy vulgarity
that civic folly or the jerry-
builder forces upon us, and
to cry out, not only for
beautiful lines, but for the
old joy of colour as well.
This joy of colour was one
in which the peoples of la
bonne antiqtiit'e revelled
without stint. India, Asia
Minor, Egypt, Greece,
painted their dwellings out-
side and in. The Romans
were insensitive to art har-
monies, but the barbarous
nations who destroyed them
loved and strove for gorge-
ousness of hue. Gothic
architecture, by narrowing
the flat wall-spaces, arrested
for a time the development
of mural decoration. But
when the architectural craze

BACCHANALIAN PROCESSION FROM A DECORATIVE PAINTING BY JOHN DUNCAN WaS OVd", painting re-COm-

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