Studio: international art (14.1898)

Decorations for a Library

SOME DECORA-
TIONS FOR A
LIBRARY. BY
GERALD MOIRA
AND F. LYNN
JENKINS.

when experience has settled exactly
what aspect of the visible world it
is to be his main purpose to de-
pict. It is too early yet to pro-
phesy in his case : who would have
foretold the great marine painter
from Henry Moore’s patiently
wrought drawings of animals ? or
that the little bits of scenery in
Mr. Walter Crane’s New Forest,
1862, were but the prelude to a
long career of decorative triumphs?

E. B. S.

FROM A DRAWING

its presence. For humour—whether good humour,
or its antithesis, morbid satire—keeps its freshness
when other fashions have passed. Space forbids a
list of titles of the world’s masterpieces that could
be adduced as instances; but the few wherein
humour does not lurk are more often highly
technical achievements that never win the real
popularity of the greatest works which please a
whole world; but appeal with full force only to
those who themselves have some measure of
technical knowledge. Mr. Billinghurst keeps his
sense of the light side of things rightfully subordi-
nate ; but it is there, and this permits one to hope
that the promise he reveals may lead to fulfilment,
186

When coloured bas-reliefs were
first introduced, or perhaps, re-
membering early Italian examples,
it would be more accurate to say
revived, the very charm of their
novelty provoked praise which, on
after consideration, seemed per-
haps without sufficient evidence to
warrant it. Now, however, that the
novelty is past, one can approach
them more impartially. Certainly
as regards the joint work of Mr.
Lynn Jenkins and Mr. Gerald
Moira, each successive series seems
to show a marked advance on the
first, excellent though the Troca-
dero reliefs still appear. The
examples here illustrated have just
been finished for the decoration
of a library in the North of England. The position
they fill is above bookcases of dark and not highly
polished mahogany. The colours employed are
stronger and fuller in key than in previous works,
because of the scheme in which they play an
important part. Hence those which occupy por-
tions of the wall less well lighted are brighter and
lighter than others. The subjects chosen—with
no special sequence governing the choice—range
from Rossetti to Longfellow, and some of the
themes are such as find expression in landscape.
Indeed, these are the most novel and by no means
the least beautiful of the series, for they show a
remarkable convention of landscape forms in low

BY P. J. BILLINGHURST