Studio: international art (2.1894)

The French Decorative Exhibition

The stained glass at the Grafton is an excellent
sample of this difference. Excepting a group of
golden carp by L. J. Galland, quite good in colour
and admirably planned to utilise the lead framing
as a very important factor in the design, there is
hardly a window worth serious discussion as stained
glass ; yet it is quite probable that each in its
destined place might fall into a happy arrangement
of a room. With perhaps one other exception, all
that English designers prize as the very essential of
the craft is entirely ignored. True the thing is trans-
parent, and so far fulfils one function of a glazed
window, but it might be painted silk, or any other
texture for all the vitreous qualities it recognises.
Your English glass painter has a creed to which he
is inflexibly loyal; your Parisian delights in showing
his wilful disregard of any convention. To be
daring, piquant, and to a certain extent beautiful,
is all he cares for. Even the high key of colour,
which stained glass keeps as its most precious
monopoly, he turns aside to form delicate schemes
of pale hues attainable in a dozen other mediums.

The accident of the pattern that rules for the
moment matters little. Fashion is far more fanci-
ful than we recognise in this, and our tastes are
insensibly influenced in each succeeding period;
but while English art, stumbling and often abso-
lutely inept, does more or less endeavour to hold
fast to accepted tradition, France, with her real
obedience deep-seated, delights to trifle with the
fealty she owes, and professes to disregard those
laws which are such solemn realities to those
Englishmen who have by painstaking study ac-
quired their knowledge.

One might write columns cataloguing the
objects here. To praise adequately the class of
framed pictures, woodcuts, lithographs, and the
rest, would fill a number of The Studio. The
furniture and other objects of the house also
deserve careful study, yet few motives of new
feeling in decoration can be traced. Paris has
been to the land of the chrysanthemum and
caught its charm with a dainty ease, quite distinct
from our painful attempts to be Anglo-Japanese; but
all the same the decoration of William Morris and
his school is in its way a native style to be prized
all the more after a visit to the Grafton.

The first objects to arrest one's attention are
many designs in colours by Grasset, for Bill-posters,
and illustrations to periodicals. In the next room
a series of thirty-one plates, EEstampe originale,
in wood-engraving, lithography, &c, include some
of the most sensational numbers in the Gallery.
Here is the last word in the art of the fin de siccle
and the decadents, with that of the symbolist, the
ultra-Japanese, and a dozen other movements of
the hour. Besnard, Puvis de Chavannes, Raffaeli,
Rodin, Schwab, Vallotton, Willette, and a score
of other names less familiar to the average
Londoner, may be studied here with interest not
unmixed with astonishment. The cover of this
artistic journal is a marvellous example of the
power of re-creating in the idiom of another
school. As a design by Mr. William Morris seems
actually mediaeval, so this appears to have the
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essence of Japan in its whole effect and in every
detail. The Journal des Artistes issues a limited
edition containing forty proofs in the course of the
year, costing 200 francs the set. Its quatribne
livraison will contain examples by Whistler, Rops,
Cheret, Bracquemonde, and half a dozen others.

The drawings by P. Renouard, mostly of
theatrical subjects, the quaint woodcuts printed in
colour (published at The Vale, Chelsea) by Lucien
Pissarro, the etchings by A. Lepere, the wonderful
engravings by Florian, after Botticelli, Carpaccio,
and other old masters, the coloured etchings by
E. Delatre, the wonderful drawings by Lunois,
notably L' Evocation, and dozens of other en-
gravings on the walls, cannot be even catalogued
here, much less described ; but for the majority of
people who do not see the Parisian works issued
from time to time generally in limited numbers, the
Galleries will need many a visit ere their novelty is
exhausted, and the large number of pictures and
designs which are hanging on every wall can be
duly examined.

The furniture includes three Pleyel-Wolff piano-
fortes, one by H. Fourdinois with panels of
Japanese lacquer, and two by Mdlle. Desbordes,
each good as bric-a-brac, and a variety of pieces
of charming design and exquisite craft that can,
however, hardly be considered epoch-making. An
inlaid buffet by the Comte R. de Montesquiou,
with a design of blue and pink hydrangeas, is so
very beautiful that it ought to be reproduced here,
but as its charm lies chiefly in its dainty colour, a
black and white drawing would fail to suggest the
delicate beauty of the work itself.

Of the large number of exhibits in glass, porce-
lain and pottery, by Deck, Dammouse, Delaherche,
Dumontet and others, the very multitude makes
brief criticism impossible. The high qualities of
the design in many of the best examples raise
them to the level of important works of art not to
be dismissed with a more or less apt adjective;
while some of the rest are not noticeably above
the level of the best china shops.

All through the collection, which occupies over
six hundred entries in the catalogue, one finds
things of special technical interest to designers,
and as some of the catalogue numbers—445, for
instance, with thirty-one separately framed drawings
—represent far more than a single exhibit, it is
impossible, despite several visits, to notice even
a selection adequately. The bookbindings, the
book-plates, the metal-work, and the fabrics, must
be omitted, but not forgotten. Indeed, the
ensemble of the whole Gallery is so attractive and
the catalogue in its strictly alphabetical arrange-
ment of the artists' names so perplexing, that one
wanders here and there, lighting always on some
object of interest, without being able to collate
and classify the charming medley in a few lucid
orderly paragraphs ; but the impression is of a
very artistic and interesting show, for which the pro-
moters deserve the gratitude of every visitor. To
the colour-printing, especially a group on the left
as you enter the gallery, we hope to return on a
future occasion.