International studio (56.1915)

On the Buying and Care of Pictures

number of galleries where the pictures have turned
black, although well kept.
Remember that a work of art should be noble in
subject and should be diligently worked out. St.
Aubyn, of Newlyn, in scorn painted fish, poultry
and onions; not being already great, nobody no-
ticed what he painted. St. Aubyn next, in fakir
fashion, painted satyrs, mermaids and centaurs in
the manner of the howling dervishes of art, and
rational people turned up their noses, and shortly
passed him by. St. Aubyn, in sincerity, painted
his sweetheart, with love in her face, tenderness in
her eyes and lips for kissing, and the world ac-
claimed St. Aubyn as an artist as well as a gentle-
man. The above is a true instance. I know St.
Aubyn.
When you obtain good pictures, keep them
properly. Avoid dampness and darkness and
have a proper light and heat. Some Dutch paint-
ings can stand the dampness of the Dutch canals,
and there is a Van Dyke in the Hermitage at Pet-
rograd, a portrait of one of the Whartons, which
has preserved itself gloriously for centuries among
a host of ruined pictures; but some French and
Belgian modern paintings turn dark, and become
practically ruined in the dark and wet galleries of
Venice and other wet places, especially if gas
and coal are burned. Even the Dutch pictures
are badly blackened in Florence, in the Uffizi,
Pitti and Corsini galleries. Cloth on the walls,
over furring, seems to be indispensable—even
though it is not fireproof—for the cloth prevents
condensation of moisture on the picture.
As for colour of the walls, a picture is best set off
on a wall that continues the fundamental colours
of the picture. Most of the walls in the Prado
have crimson, Indian red or tile red backgrounds.
There are other rooms that have a solid yellow
background. Nearly the same is true of the
Louvre. The Metropolitan Museum has walls of
various neutral tints to suit various classes of pic-
tures. In the Velasquez room of the Prado a
cloth, apparently of a luminous white silk, is
drawn across the ceiling under the skylight. The
Spanish artist, Benliure, in his gallery, hung a
white ceiling doth under the electric lights. Glass
over a painting, with an air space between, may
help preserve it. It is a pity to hang a picture so
that it cannot be kept in a proper condition, for an
honestly painted picture may preserve its colours
for two thousand years, almost, as did the Pom-
peian frescoes.

George de Forest Brush tells me that all pic-
tures should be painted in tempera. I believe that
Brush’s works will be things of beauty for many
generations to come.
The best heat for the gallery is that of hot water
and indirect radiation. The rule of the Metro-
politan is to maintain, as nearly as may be, fifty-
degrees of humidity and sixty degrees of heat.
Every collector should own a hygrometer to
measure the humidity.
To have more wall space and for other good
reasons introduce your light through a skylight in
the roof.
Naturally you should make your building
worthy of its contents, architecturally.
Make the house where gods may dwell
Beautiful, entire and clean—
Else our lives are incomplete.
w ESTERN ARCHITECTURE
The Twentieth Annual Architectural
Exhibition at the Chicago Art Institute in May
revealed an increasing appreciation among West-
ern architects of the movement toward individual
work and feeling in structure and design. For the
last five exhibitions, the Classic has been giving
way to the Romantic so rapidly that in this year’s
exhibition the once nearly all-inclusive Greek and
Roman spirit, with its conventional rendering in
painful detail, is conspicuously in the minority.
True, much of this individual work is crude, much
of it will never “arrive,” but to those who hold
dear the parent art of architecture, these signs of a
new era of life are cause for much rejoicing.
Important among those who are aiding in no
small measure in a presentation of this forward
movement is Cornelius Bodtke, an architectural
renderer, who has cast aside the traditions of his
profession to bring life and movement into the
architect’s preliminary design. The old method
which made the proposed building stand out alone
did not give the slightest hint of its relation to the
surrounding structures and, consequently, many
an important building in our American cities has
been selected only to be a great disappointment to
the owners when the building has been completed
and they see the incongruity of its surroundings.
Mr. Bodtke’s work brings into the picture the
surrounding buildings and the atmosphere of the
location, and it is this quality that counts.
H. B. S.

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