DOI article:
Old Colonial Rooms [unsigned text]
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31083#0039
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Nobody feels this more keenly than the figure painter, who finds it difficult to
conjure up an appropriate background for his compositions. Realistic sub-
jects generally find a harmonious background in their own local environment,
but it is different with portrait or ideal figure subjects.
These do not adjust themselves so easily. They clamor for a simple
background that would have a deeper significance, like those of the Old
Masters, where a window in a corner, or an archway, reveals some enchanting
bit of scenery, characteristic of the country where the painter lived. What is in
our country typically American that would lend itself to such purpose ? A
machinery hall or a Pullman sleeper! It would hardly prove adequate.
In his search the painter is driven out of doors and only too willingly falls
into the error of imitating some other period of art, by preference the English
school of portrait painters. But their views through columns and curtained
drapery on lofty trees and quiet park scenes pervaded by a twilight atmosphere,
have nothing in common with the life of our continent.
Why not select something that possesses a fine native flavor, something
which everybody might understand and appreciate. Is there anything more
typical of our American civilization than these simple forms, the exquisite
proportions and pure geometrical lines of the Colonial style, which transplanted
the severe grace of Palladio’s and Vignola’s superb inventions to our soil ?
The Colonial style was not one of the great original ones, but it was
judicious and legitimate adaption. Everything had symmetry of plan, and its
ornaments rose flowerlike from the natural conditions of material and con-
struction. No showy decorations, no affected forms! The riches that archi-
tects have dissipated with prodigal hands on other styles are looked for in vain.
Clear, serene and classical, these mansions still imprison within their walls the
ghost of former beauty.
And it is within the reach of every artist to call the phantom back to life,
for the realm in which it lingers, in which everything is silent and grey, pos-
sesses that rare harmony which imbues every figure entering it with stately
grace.
A woman resting her elbow on a mantlepiece, or standing listlessly at the
entrance of an alcove, or leaning like some weary caryatid against a pilaster,
would offer in those calm attitudes all that beauty can yield in her luckiest
moments. The figure becomes steeped, as it were, in remembrance, and has
almost nothing of present day reality. Even a nude would lose all its corpore-
ality in such vague environment. It would come to us as from some far-off
realm and step into our life as a vague and fanciful vision.
The Colonial room is one of the heritages of the past left for our artists
to glorify. It is one of the ideal riches of our race. In its graces the more
stately needs of the painters’ joy in life could find gratification, as it furnishes
by right of tradition and history the most ideal and convincing “environment”
available to the American portrait and ideal figure painter.
25
conjure up an appropriate background for his compositions. Realistic sub-
jects generally find a harmonious background in their own local environment,
but it is different with portrait or ideal figure subjects.
These do not adjust themselves so easily. They clamor for a simple
background that would have a deeper significance, like those of the Old
Masters, where a window in a corner, or an archway, reveals some enchanting
bit of scenery, characteristic of the country where the painter lived. What is in
our country typically American that would lend itself to such purpose ? A
machinery hall or a Pullman sleeper! It would hardly prove adequate.
In his search the painter is driven out of doors and only too willingly falls
into the error of imitating some other period of art, by preference the English
school of portrait painters. But their views through columns and curtained
drapery on lofty trees and quiet park scenes pervaded by a twilight atmosphere,
have nothing in common with the life of our continent.
Why not select something that possesses a fine native flavor, something
which everybody might understand and appreciate. Is there anything more
typical of our American civilization than these simple forms, the exquisite
proportions and pure geometrical lines of the Colonial style, which transplanted
the severe grace of Palladio’s and Vignola’s superb inventions to our soil ?
The Colonial style was not one of the great original ones, but it was
judicious and legitimate adaption. Everything had symmetry of plan, and its
ornaments rose flowerlike from the natural conditions of material and con-
struction. No showy decorations, no affected forms! The riches that archi-
tects have dissipated with prodigal hands on other styles are looked for in vain.
Clear, serene and classical, these mansions still imprison within their walls the
ghost of former beauty.
And it is within the reach of every artist to call the phantom back to life,
for the realm in which it lingers, in which everything is silent and grey, pos-
sesses that rare harmony which imbues every figure entering it with stately
grace.
A woman resting her elbow on a mantlepiece, or standing listlessly at the
entrance of an alcove, or leaning like some weary caryatid against a pilaster,
would offer in those calm attitudes all that beauty can yield in her luckiest
moments. The figure becomes steeped, as it were, in remembrance, and has
almost nothing of present day reality. Even a nude would lose all its corpore-
ality in such vague environment. It would come to us as from some far-off
realm and step into our life as a vague and fanciful vision.
The Colonial room is one of the heritages of the past left for our artists
to glorify. It is one of the ideal riches of our race. In its graces the more
stately needs of the painters’ joy in life could find gratification, as it furnishes
by right of tradition and history the most ideal and convincing “environment”
available to the American portrait and ideal figure painter.
25
