International studio (53.1914)

The Society of Mitral Decorators


PORTION OF FRIEZE IN BEDROOM AT HORNTON LODGE, KENSINGTON

BY JESSIE BAYES

undertaken on his behalf have thrown much light
on very early painting. It has been proved that
the Minoans practised fresco painting—that is,
painting with simple colours on plaster while it is
wet, or rather unset, and also that they carried the
art to a high state of technical perfection as far
back as something like 3000 or 4000 b.c. Their
buildings seem to have been heavily plastered and
the plaster enriched with elaborate and beautiful
colour-schemes both of geometric patterns and
scenes from the life of the time. Further, this
painting seems to have been looked on as pure
decoration—that is to say, it was not surrounded
by any particular halo of “art” and treasured as
precious or exotic, but was freely replaced by the
simple process of hacking off the plaster, which
was then re-laid and re-decorated. A school of

decorators consequently arose who arrived at a
high standard of competence, both as craftsmen
and designers. The Egyptians on the other hand,
no doubt owing to their climate, worked more for
eternity, though they did not practise fresco paint-
ing, their colours being mixed with some form of
size; both, however, looked on painting as a
means of enriching their architecture, all attempts
at realism being subservient to this main object.
The Greeks doubtless practised painting for its
own sake as well as for its decorative qualities,
though many of the stories as to the extraordinary
realism attained by Zeuxis and others who painted
grapes so real that birds tried to peck them, may
be swept away as fables. Colour was to them a
means of enrichment, and even their sculpture was
enforced by coloured backgrounds and draperies


“VENUS LAMENTING THE DEATH OF ADONIS”
>74

BY SIR CHARLES HOLROYD